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8/3/2019 Interactive Theatre Dissertation
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Joel Stanley
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Discuss the impact of interactive theatre on the social interactions of its audience
Introduction
In this dissertation, I will examine the unique characteristics of interactive theatre
in particular the confluence of play, interactivity and spectacle (or its close relative,
participation) and ask how and to what extent they impact the audience and their
social interactions, both within and beyond the performance space. I will focus my
analysis on two specific contexts, namely Ladder to the Moons interactive plays for
older people in care homes and hospitals, and the Burning Man festival in Nevada,
USA, which incorporates various interactive art forms and functions as a Temporary
Autonomous Zone within the larger social fabric (a highly developed Western
society). I will trace interactive theatres relationship to what Schechner calls
orthodox, mainstream theater (Schechner, 1994, p. xix), as well as to other modes
of performance and interaction, such as games and play. I will analyse the main
principles of interactive theatre, especially the creation of a distinct play-world or
temenos through the use of roles, rules and a heightened sense of reality.
I will claim that the positive effects of interactive theatre depend on the notion
of the extraordinary, which allows participants to explore scenarios and identities
they may not be able to access in normal life. By analysing the work of Ladder to
the Moon and its relationship to recent developments in treating dementia, I will show
why this is particularly useful in interactive theatre with, by and for older people in
care settings. I will go onto explore the paradox inherent in attempts to make the
effects of interactive theatre more permanent, when the genre itself depends so much
on temporaneity and the extraordinary. I will suggest some solutions to this paradox
using the example of Burning Man and its techniques of creating a distinct
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environment and play-world, but also of looking to identify and retain its transcendent
values afterthe event. I will show how the concepts of self-consuming spectacle and
Hakim Beys Temporary Autonmous Zone provide potential tools for transitioning
from one-offcommunitas to a more durable community, ultimately transcending the
particular circumstances of the original interactive theatre event and practicing its
social interactions in the longer term.
Literature and Practice Review
In tracing the development of interactive forms within modern Western theatre, I refer
to ideas, practices and theories of staging and dramaturgy as pioneered by twentieth
century practitioners such as Artaud, Meyerhold and Grotowski. From the many
works available on this subject, the two I have chosen to use are Antonin Artauds
The Theatre and Its Double and Robert Gordons comparative survey of major
dramatic approaches, The Purpose of Playing: Modern Acting Theories in
Perspective.
This dissertation uses as a major conceptual framework the discourse of
performance studies, an approach that places theatre within its social context and
alongside a wide variety of everyday instances of performance, from popular
entertainments to legal processes. Richard Schechner has articulated and developed
this approach in numerous works, among which I draw particularly onPerformance
Theory andEnvironmental Theater.
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This latter work is also an example of writing on interactive theatre itself. The
other such work I build on is Gary Izzos practical guide to making interactive theatre,
The Art of Play: The New Genre of Interactive Theatre.
There also exist a variety of works on the specific contexts of work with elders
on the one hand and Burning Man on the other. I use these journal and newspaper
articles, and internet resources to examine the particular uses and potentials of
interactive theatre, and construct a deeper overall context for my enquiry.
Towards the end of this dissertation, as I turn my attention to issues of long-
term benefit and lasting impact, I introduce a further conceptual framework through
the writings of the anarchist theorist Hakim Bey, which are widely accessible on the
internet.
Methodologies
My primary sources for this dissertation are largely theatre practice carried out by
others, which I observed and participated in, and then assessed by further qualitative
research. As my topic is interactive theatre, the very concepts of pure spectatorship
and the objective researcher, who stands outside the practice looking in, are called
into question. At the Acton Care Home performance of Ladder to the MoonsA Very
Greek Romance (2008), I had been invited to observe but was in the room, affecting
those around me and inevitably interacting with them. This was true both duringthe
performance, such as when a resident turned from the stage area to ask me where I
was from, and afterthe play had finished, when I asked questions of the care staff and
residents, and was very much part of the social interactions in the transition back to
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normal life. There are often visitors and residents relatives present at Ladder to the
Moon performances, and Chris Gage, the companys Artistic Director, had invited me
to be there, so I was not so much an intruder as part of a regular Ladder play.
Nevertheless, I acknowledge my influence and do not claim that my research can be
entirely objective.
This is even truer of my first-hand research at Burning Man. At the 2008
festival, when I was intentionally researching and gathering material for this
dissertation, I was also aware of my non-academic reasons for being there, having
attended in 2002, 2003, 2005 and 2006, and received what I felt to be great personal
benefit. My experience at all five events has affected the substance and style of my
research, just as my full participation as an attendee has heavily influenced the nature
of that experience.
There were however occasions on which I was able to stand further away from
the work in both contexts, in order to unpick its construction and gather qualitative
data in a more detached way, especially by formal interview and questionnaire. I
prepared a series of questions to ask Gage at his home, audio-recording and
transcribing the interview, and designed a paper-based survey (Appendix) which I
distributed to participants at Burning Man 2008. I chose to conduct this latter research
in Burning Mans central meeting place, Center Camp, through which the broad
cross-section of the festivals diverse population pass at some point. Nevertheless,
there are a number of participants who do not spend much time in Center Camp. As
my intention was to analyse as fully as possible the models of social interaction
propagated by Burning Man and its interactive theatre, I gave out a number of surveys
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away from Center Camp, as and when I met individuals who agreed to fill them in,
and sent some to attendees I contacted afterwards, via Burning Man email groups. I
have no guarantee that my research is fully representative, but my attempts to reach a
range of participants, as well as its qualitative nature, should ensure its value in
addressing the concerns of this dissertation. In general, the results of this research
have informed my conclusions, even when I have not quoted directly from the
completed questionnaires.
I also acknowledge an absence of hard data and evaluation, particularly in
relation to Ladder to the Moons work. In the absence of costly longitudinal studies, it
is extremely difficult to quantify the lasting effect ofany theatrical event or series of
events. It is for this reason that I take mainly a theoretical approach, working within
the discourse of performance studies, and construct my argument from a tapestry of
diverse subjective viewpoints. At the same time, I have consolidated and underpinned
my findings with quantitative research (the Burning Man Census) carried out by the
Burning Man Organization at and immediately after previous Burning Man festivals.
Terminology
There is a wide diversity of practices and forms that could be included under the
category interactive theatre, but my main interest here is to explore the interactive
plays and theatrical events that bring together a combination of spectacle, narrative,
and interactivity or participation. By this, I mean events where the guests present are
simultaneouslyspectators and co-creators of a fictional theatrical world. I sometimes
use the word guests in order not to privilege either of these roles, yet still to
distinguish between the creators of the theatricalstructures that facilitate co-creation
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(i.e. members of the initial ensemble) and those who co-create through participation
in the event. As Gary Izzo writes, there is a distinction between an interactive theatre
events actors and its audience, but it is one of preparation and perspective: with
our image of play as a circle, the audience players face inward and the actors face
outward (Izzo, 1997, p. 16). During the performance itself, both groups are players
together. Thus:
the term audience seems inappropriate for interactive theatre. It implies a
group of aloof watchers. The word literally means those assembled to hear. I
prefer to refer to the audience as guests. What else would you call someone
you invite into your private space? (Ibid.)
It is important to mention, however, that in order to avoid confusion, I do not use the
word guests in this way when writing specifically about Ladder to the Moons
theatre work in care homes and hospitals. This is because the company enters these
places as visitors, so in a way both groups are guests, one in the fictional world of the
theatre and the other in the space (often a home) itself. I therefore use other terms to
distinguish between Ladders company members and their target audience, as outlined
later in this section.
What of the distinction between participation and interaction? According to
Izzo, in participatory theatre [] there is a fixed outcome to the story [] arrived at
through a finite number of scenes that must be presented in a certain order, one after
the other and the audience participant responds or reacts to the production but does
not alterit (pp. 22-23, Izzos italics). In interactive theatre, on the other hand, the
participant cocreates the scene with the actor, but on the actors terms, and within the
general goals of the performance (p. 26). While it is true that the word participation
can imply a more localised and circumscribed role, in which audience members are
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invited to take part in something that has already been prepared or fixed and does not
belong to them, the continuum is clearly quite fluid. There is a great deal of
preparation and rehearsal that goes into interactive theatre, even by Izzos definition,
and arguably, with participation, the audience or guest always has the power to alter
the production. Gage defines interactive theatre as Theatre in which characters have
direct, two-way, meaningful conversations with their audience (Interactive Theatre
Makers Facebook group). The difference then between interactivity and participation
is one of degree, hinging on questions of what is meaningful, how open the text (or
dramatic score) is, whether guests and actors are in character or being themselves,
and what constitutes altering the production.
I also sometimes refer to environmental theater, as described by Schechner
(Schechner, 1994, pp. ix-li). Like the terms promenade and site-specific, the name
emphasises space over personal interaction. Nonetheless, it is a useful and related
genre, and broadens the idea of what guests are interacting with. In other words,
social interactions in interactive theatre may stretch as far as anything found in the
performance space, including the performance space itself: An environmental
performance is one in which all the elements or parts making up the performance are
recognized as alive. To be alive is to change, develop, transform; to have needs and
desires; even, potentially, to acquire, and use consciousness (p. x).
There are, in addition, a number of terms related to the specific contexts of
Ladder to the Moon and Burning Man that require definition. Ladder to the Moon
conducts work in both hospitals where there are patients and care homes where
there are residents. I do sometimes use these terms but I also follow Chris Gage in
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referring to older people (Gage, 2008), thereby including the whole of Ladder to the
Moons primary target audience. On a further practical note, Ladder to the Moon is at
times throughout this dissertation shortened to Ladder.
Burning Mans participants are, by their own conventions, referred to as
Burners. Burning Man itself is a term with numerous meanings, referring diversely
to an actual instance of the festival (Are you going to Burning Man?), the festival in
the abstract (Burning Man has changed my life) or the organisation that puts the
festival on (I spoke to Burning Man about the ticket situation). Burners sometimes
call an actual instance of the festival the Burn, which can also refer to the climactic
event that takes place on the penultimate night of the week-long festival, namely the
burning of the 40-foot wood, metal and neon figure (the Man) that presides over the
festival from its physical centre. The Playa is at once the deserts dusty surface (I
got Playa all over my shoes), the general environment of the festival (What happens
on the Playa, stays on the Playa) and the open space spreading out from the festivals
streets (Theres a lot of beautiful art way out on the Playa this year). While all this
can be confusing to the outsider, it is worth noting that such insider terminology is
characteristic of the construction of an alternative world. Throughout this
dissertation, I endeavour to make these terms meaning clear by explanation and
context.
Context the development of interactive theatre
A note on theories of origin
There is a line of thought, identified by Schechner as the Cambridge thesis
(Schechner, 2003, p. 2), which understands Greek tragedy (and, by extension, much
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of Western theatre) as deriving from ancient Greek rites celebrated annually at the
Festival of Dionysus (the Dithyramb) and even from an earlier Primal Ritual.
Aristotle himself claims that tragedy arose out of the Dithyramb. It might seem that
comedy is its springtime counterpart, a celebration of rebirth and equally rooted in
ritual (p. 3). Thus it is tempting to imagine an origin for theatre, altogether more
participatory and ritualistic than its modern day orthodoxies might suggest:
Though they [these ritual roots of theatre] would have relied on certain people
performing specific roles the priests or principal actors in the rite they
were intended to work upon the participants, effecting some form of
transformation. Aristotelian catharsis can be seen as the echo of thattransformation, but via the spectacle of a tragic play, with the actors
performing the role of initiating officers or surrogate priests, while thespectators become witnesses, rather than participants (Bermel, 2001, pp. 33-
34). (Stanley, 2008, p. 13)
It is safe to say that such rituals have affected the course of Western theatre, insofar as
someone like Antonin Artaud, who influenced the development of affective and
therefore interactive theatrical forms, refers directly to the Orphic and Eluesinian
Mysteries (Bermel, 2001, p. 33), and explicitly claims that theatre is only a
reflection of magic and ritual (Artaud, transl. Corti, 1993, p. 70). In other words,
the Greek rituals had an effect on theatre to the extent that they influenced Artauds
and others theory and practice, and then the extent to which they influenced further
development.
However, any grander claims of historical origin are unreliable, in that they
lack evidence, and may not be particularly useful. For Schechner, Origin theories are
irrelevant to understanding theater (Schechner, 2003, p. 7). Rather, and this is the
line I mean to follow in placing interactive theatre in its contexts, Ritual is one of
several activities related to theater. The others are play, games, sports, dance, and
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music (Ibid.). I, like Schechner, approach these not vertically, with the idea of a
pristine antecedent in the distant past, but horizontally, asking what these related
genres have in common, and understanding interactive theatre as a particularly
mixed form. Sometimes rituals, games, sports, and the aesthetic genres (theater,
dance, music) are merged so that it is impossible to call the activity by any one
limiting name (Ibid.).
Interactive theatre and related forms
Schechner, inEnvironmental Theater, describes a scale that can be used to elucidate
interactive theatres place among related forms. It is a continuum of theatrical events
[that] blends one form into the next, ranging from non-matrixed [open, unscripted]
performances to orthodox mainstream theatre, from chance events and intermedia to
the production of plays (Schechner, 1994, p. xix):
(Ibid.)
Interactive theatre emphasises relationships over space. Depending on the production,
it probably sits on this continuum somewhere around or just to the left of
environmental theatre. Like Schechner, I include the whole scale in my definition of
theatre; thus traditional distinctions between art and life no longer apply (Ibid.) and
something like Burning Man is a legitimate subject for analysis.
Moreover, the specific genre of interactive theatre as defined earlier is itself in
the middle of the scale, and therefore has relations on all sides. To interactive
Impure, lifepublic events,
demonstrations
intermediahappenings
Environmentaltheatre
Pure, artorthodox
theatre
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theatres left are demonstrations and protests, in which demonstrators, opposing sides
and/or police or army play roles, and follow certain conventions and rules, and in
which spectacle is used to make a political point and/or display power; carnival and
festival, in which normal relations are temporarily suspended and hierarchies
symbolically inverted, and attendees are at once the spectators and part of the
spectacle; sports and games, that use explicit rules to create an internal world, and
orchestrate a conversation between the player and the spectator or supporter, the
latter of whom is again given a new identity as part of a conglomerate group; and
religious and shamanic ritual, attempting to effect or mark change in its initiates,
again employing rites, roles and rules. Significantly for Ladder to the Moons work
with older people in care settings, interactive theatre is also related to therapy, a topic
that I will return to later in my discussion. As to the left of the continuum is life
(rather than art), there are too many related categories and genres to catalogue fully.
Nevertheless, I will return to some of these forms and their characteristics later in this
dissertation.
To interactive theatres right is orthodox theatre. Here the audience watch a
play, which tells a story, as though through a fourth wall, and there are few direct
interactions between actor and spectator that are not conventionally circumscribed.
Though the performers may feed off the energy of the audience and certainly hope to
affect them emotionally, the spectators are not part of the fictional world but rather
observers of a generally linear plot.
Another useful schema set out by Schechner is his categorisation of related
transactions comprising the theatrical event. These are primarily Among
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performers, Among members of the audience, and Between performers and
audience (p. xxiii). In orthodox theatre, the first of these categories is foregrounded,
rehearsed by the actors and attended to by the audience. The second is heavily
prescribed by decorum and strict rules of behaviour: They [the audience] arrive more
or less on time, they do not leave their seats except for intermission or at the end of
the show, [and] they display approval or disapproval within well-regulated patterns of
applause, silence, laughter, tears, and so on (Ibid.). The third category, as alluded to
above, is also stable and traditional, with the action on stage evoking an empathic
reaction in the audience which is not an imitation but a harmonic variation (p.
xxiv). In turn the actors may be aware of, but do not acknowledge within the
representational fiction of the play, the audiences receptivity. This may have an
effect on their performance, but the interaction is more a side-product than a main
focus. In fact, if the actor focuses too much on the nature and quality of his or her
interaction with the audience rather than being in the moment, it can seriously
detract from the quality of the performance and the illusion may be broken. In
summary, Orthodox theater in the West uses a thin fraction of the enormous range of
audience-performer interactions (Ibid.).
Twentieth century innovations and antecedents
According to Schechner audience participation [has] appeared at this moment in
Western theatre history, reintroducing methods that have been dormant since
medieval times (p. 45). He sees this as counter-cultural: In society in general, and in
entertainment in particular the movement is to self-contained, electronically
processed, unresponsive systems closed systems on which the individual can have
little effect (Ibid.). Schechner is writing before the rise of the internet, the video
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game, virtual reality and the reality TV show. For Izzo, writing in 1997, interactivity
in theatre is part of a general rise of interactive styles of entertainment, which
reflects a need for the play element in todays culture (Izzo, 1997, p. 5). Regardless
of the psychological and social causes, and its relationship to other cultural and
artistic trends, it is clear that interactivity in theatre has become much more common
through developments in the twentieth century.
The Russian director Vsevolod Meyerhold was one of a number of theatre
practitioners to experiment with stylisation, and play with the relationship between
the actor and spectator. It was this relationship that he placed at the centre of the
theatrical event. Thus in 1914 he wrote in his journal, The Love of Three Oranges:
The actor, having assimilated the authors conception via the director, stands face to
face with the spectator (with director and author behind him), and freely reveals his
soul to him, thus intensifying the fundamental theatrical relationship of performer and
spectator (Braun, Edward, ed. and transl. (1969), Meyerhold on Theatre, London,
Eyre Methuen, pp. 51-52, quoted in Gordon, 2006, p. 102). This dynamic may not, to
quote Gage, be a two-way, meaningful conversation (my italics), but there is
certainly a heightened consciousness of Schechners third category of theatrical
transactions.
Interactive theatre also owes something to traditional street entertainment,
which is, according to Izzo, usually participatory and can contain any or all the styles
of variety, improvisation, storytelling, dialogue, music, pantomime, or scripted play
and has its roots in the minstrelsy of the common player, who performed in the
streets of Britain from the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries (Izzo, 1997, pp. 24-
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25). Meyerhold brought these techniques further into the established theatre by
insisting that his actors were taught the physical skills of traditional street
entertainers clowns, pantomime performers, minstrels, jugglers, and acrobats in
order to interact spontaneously with an audience (Gordon, 2006, p. 104).
There is a further connection between Meyerhold and interactive theatre,
through the commedia dellarte of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which was
a major influence on Meyerholds work. Interactive theatre, which must communicate
to its guests a clear and recognisable world to step into, shares with the commedia
the improvisation of quintessential characters revolving around their idiosyncratic
behavior and their reactions to circumstance (Izzo, 1997, p. 198).
Another influence on the development of interactive theatre was Antonin
Artaud. As with Meyerhold, Artauds theatre was deliberately meant to affect the
audience. It could reach beyond the boundaries of the drama and achieve a social
purpose: I do believe theatre used in the highest and most difficult sense has the
power to affect the appearance and structure of things (Artaud, transl. Corti, 1993, p.
60). In order to effect such a change, the theatre would have to impact the audience
not only intellectually and emotionally, but bodily and spiritually. Theatre must speak
a physical language, aimed at the senses and independent of speech (p. 27). Though
the actor and the director were still very much the subject and the audience the object
in need of wholesale exorcism (p. 18) Artaud took a step towards interactivity
by experimenting with space, describing a form of theatre in which the audience is
literally in the centre while the show takes place around them:
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We intend to do away with stage and auditorium, replacing them by a kind ofsingle, undivided locale without any partitions of any kind and this will beome
the very scene of the action. Direct contact will be established between the
audience and the show, between actors and audience, from the very fact that
the audience is seated in the centre of the action, is encircled and furrowed by
it. This encirclement comes from the shape of the house itself. (p. 74)
In interactive theatre, where guests are actuallypartof the action, they can often
move around the performance space at will, whereas Artauds audience members
were seated in chairs which could swivel to face any part of the space. Nevertheless,
Schechner somewhat echoes Artaud when he writes of environmental theatre: Once
fixed seating and the automatic bifurcation of space are no longer preset, entirely new
relationships are possible. Body contact can occur between performers and spectators;
voice levels and acting intensities can be varied widely; a sense of shared experience
can be engendered (Schechner, 1994, p. xxix).
Although he denied having read Artaud until 1964, Jerzy Grotowski took
similar ideas and extended them further. He not only did away with the proscenium
arch and the fourth wall but sought to promote the affective relationship between
actor and spectator by actually casting audience in a specific, collective role within
the performance (Gordon, 2006, p. 288). For example, in his production of Slowackis
Kordian (1962) the audience doubled up as visitors to the mental hospital in which
some of the plays action takes place, and sat around the beds of the patients, unsure
of whether the psychiatrists will pounce on them and treat them as patients (p. 289).
Similarly, inApocalypsis cum Figuris (1968), the same space was shared by actors
and spectators, suggesting the encounter between the Simpleton/Christ and his
torturers was something that could take place at any point in the spectators journey
through life. Gordon notes the increased responsibility and choice that this offers the
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audience member: Each spectator was free to accept or reject the role assigned to
him by the structure of the mise-en-scne, but, however he chose, he would have been
responsible for deciding the nature of the spectatorship by being there either as a
genuine witness or merely as a detached observer (Ibid.). If the theatrical transaction
between performer and spectator is envisaged as a power relationship, Grotowskis
innovations were a move towards granting the spectator greater autonomy and more
control. Such a move may or may not have had an effect on the audiences awareness
of their responsibility and autonomy outside the production space.
Schechners own theatre company, The Performance Group, effected an even
greater shift in the balance of power when they offered audience members of their
1971 participatory play Commune the opportunity to stop the performance as a result
of their actions. James Griffith, playing the role of Fearless, asked each night for
fifteen members of the audience to enter the centre of the performance space and
represent the villagers at My Lai, who were killed by American troops in the Vietnam
War:
Then James Griffiths (Fearless) takes off his shirt and says: I am taking off
my shirt to signify that the performance is now stopped. You people have the
following choices. First, you can come into the circle, and the performance
will continue; second, you can go to anyone else in the room and ask them to
take your place, and if they do, the performance will continue; third, you canstay where you are, and the performance will remain stopped; or fourth, youcan go home, and the performance will continue in your absence. (Schechner,
1994, p. 49)
The company make the rules but the chosen participants are addressed directly (out
of character) and have the power to stop or facilitate the completion of the play. On
one occasion, four members of the audience refused to step in or choose
replacements, and the show remained stopped for more than three hours. Schechner
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notes that the emotional state of the four objectors went from fear and anger to
enjoyment and a feeling of empowerment: It seemed that for the first time in a long
while they were the center of attention in a matter concerning their ability to make a
decision. They were not in the spotlight because of some sudden accident or disease.
There were no lawyers of doctors to serve as intermediaries. They were in control
able to keep the play stopped or to license its resumption (p. 51).
Because he was more interested in such confrontations and the nature of
meeting than he was in making theatre as an end in itself, Grotowski eventually
turned to paratheater in which The structures of theatre were dissolved to permit
an equal collaboration among participants, so that freer and more spontaneous
investigations of the nature of human relationship might take place in a context of
meeting rather than theatrical performance (Gordon, 2006, pp. 300-301). Between
1970 and 1975, a specially selected circle of participants were led by members of
Grotowskis Laboratory Theatre in carefully planned forms of interaction, which
allowed all to participate rather than maintain the distinction between actors and
witnesses. Paratheatrical events took place in a wide range of settings, including
outdoor locations and natural environments, and were intended to give participants a
keener awareness of their own presence.
Grotowskis experiments with paratheatre stretched the boundaries of
interactive theatre and were further to the left on Schechters continuum of theatrical
events than interactive theatre experiences such as Ladder to the Moons. They
expanded the realm of possibility for interactive theatre. Today interactive theatre is
common in a wide range of contexts, from theme parks to site-specific and
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promenade performances, to walkabout characters at corporate conferences and the
phenomenon of ambient advertising, by which theatrical scenes are staged among
(and with) the public in order to promote a product.
Ladder to the Moon
Having outlined some of the context of interactive theatre, I now wish to turn my
attention to Ladder to the Moon and the companys most recent production,A Very
Greek Romance, in order to look specifically at its effect on the social interactions of
its target audience.
Ladder to the Moon was founded in 2000 and inherited by current artistic
director Chris Gage in 2005. According to its website, Ladder improves the quality
of life for older people in care by creating high quality participatory performances
(Ladder website,Home). A paragraph of Aims and Objectives is included in the
companys trustees report and financial statements for the year ended 31 March
2007, and is a useful initial description of Ladders work:
All Ladder to the Moon's work is highly interactive, involving the entire
environment residents, staff, patients, and visitors. It is created through
ongoing conversation with our audience, both in the development of the work
and during the performance. This ensures an entertaining, and often
transformative, experience for all involved. The work is bespoke andempowering - people can choose to engage directly, taking on roles andinfluencing the story, or they can sit back and enjoy the show. We work
primarily with older people, focusing on those with mental health needs and
neurological disabilities. We give an interactive experience that is totally out
of the ordinary. (Ladder to the Moon, 2007, p. 4)
In general, a team of two professional actors rehearse a Ladder production over one or
two weeks before touring it to care homes and hospitals. The final interactive play
lasts about an hour and tells a story according to Gage, it is always a love story as
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thats the most resonant part and the place of the most shared experience (Gage,
2008) while casting older people in a variety of roles along the way, through
interactions facilitated by the actors in character. They also usually feature moments
of song and dance, which function as further opportunities for participation.
Ladders specific context and target audience bring the interactivity of the
work more sharply into focus, because social interaction is already problematised an
issue I discuss in more detail shortly. Ladder to the Moon challenge the notion that it
is not possible to have meaningful interactions with older people living in care homes
and hospitals, or old people with dementia. When Gage took over the company it was
doing a vast range of work from fairly conventional youth theatre, young people
putting on their own stories, through street theatre, through working in care with
children and with older people exclusively in hospital settings (Gage, 2008), but he
decided to hive off the other work and focus on working with older people in care
settings. This was where he thought the greatest need is, and the greatest hunger for
this kind of work (Ibid.). Ladders work takes on what is for Gage a serious and
significant question in our society at the moment: What is it that so many of the older
people end up in homes with a very low quality of life? (Ibid.)
A Very Greek Romance
The production I saw,A Very Greek Romance, was an adaptation of Shakespeares
Troilus and Cressida, taking place in the residents lounge of Acton Care Home for a
group of about 20 older people, the majority of whom had dementia, plus four or five
care staff and visitors. The audience sat around the edge of the room facing the action
in the middle, though the actors also interacted in role with the older people when
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they remained in their seats. Chris Gage had worked the original Shakespeare script
down to the bare bones (Ibid.), to those parts necessary to communicate the central
love story. The male actor played Troilus and the female actor played a servant,
enabling her to take on a number of roles including, effectively, that of in-role
facilitator. As a supposedly minor character she had more freedom than Troilus, so
it was often her task to encourage the residents into the fictional world of the play. It
is my contention that, by immersing in or simply being party to this world, Ladders
audiences experienced a radical shift in social interactions, at least for the time of the
performance and potentially after its conclusion.
Principles of interactive theatre
Gary Izzo, in The Art of Play, attempts to define interactive theatre as a genre and
delineate central principles for its creation. These principles provide a useful
framework by which to analyse the specific methods and effects of Ladder to the
Moons work. Because Ladders theatre is with older people in care settings, and taps
into issues surrounding dementia and its effects, Izzos definition and principles are
all the more pertinent.
For Izzo, interactive theatre is primarily the art ofplay. There is no simpler
or more accurate definition. (Izzo, 1997, p. 5) That is, a heightened, enjoyable,
exciting, alternative reality is created and, unlike in orthodox theatre, the audience is
invited to step in and take full part. Play has the power to create a sense of community
by offering us the mirror of human relationship and personal interaction (p. 6), and
is something that is innate:
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Only the absence of play is created. Our lack of awareness of play, or ourinability to play, is a function of what we learn as we grow older. As our
knowledge of the world around us grows, our connection to play is eclipsed by
the pressures of finding our place within it. (p. 7)
Play and thus interactive theatre is then an opportunity to live life for a while
without the pressures of finding our place in the world.
This opportunity is created in a number of ways. Most importantly, the
alternative reality, a distinct play area, must be demarcated and set apart, often
physically as when play takes place in a theatre or an enclosed area, or when
children play in a special place (the sides of a sandbox, the perimeter of a
backyard, a section of woods, or the confines of a playroom or tree house (p. 9))
but always mentally, in the imagination, via new modes of interaction, new identities
and roles, and heightened scenarios and registers of language. Izzo calls this separate
world temenos, the Greek word for playground:
It is a sacred spot cut off and hedged in from the ordinary world, a
consecrated spot, a hallowed ground within which special rules obtain [...]
Whether the rules within be of law, religion, contest, or make-believe, they are
by definition sacred places, temporary worlds within the ordinary world, set
apart for and dedicated to the performance of an act apart. (Ibid.)
What are these special rules? They vary from play space to play space, from one
interactive theatre production to the next. However, they generally give interactive
theatre a sense of simplicity and reliability, in contrast to the ordinary world, with its
subjectivity, uncertainty, and shades of meaning (p. 11). While they create the
temenos and distinguish it from the outside, they also serve the purpose of play and
enjoyment. That is not to say they need have a clear rationale; their very
delightfulness may stem from their apparent nonsensicality and arbitrariness.
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Besides the rules, explicit or not, that are peculiar to the specific playground or
production, there is a general secondary or fundamental rule, which enables the
creation of all the others: that participants play along, saying yes to other players
and the rules of the game. In terms of acting technique, this might be called accepting
offers. As Chris Johnston explains, the character is perfectly entitled to say no
[within the internalfiction of the play] but the actor is always saying yes to
everything [to the parameters of that fiction] (Johnston, 2005, p. 141). Izzo illustrates
the point:
If one picks up a stick and says This is a sword, all others need to agree and
accept that it is so, and it is so, and it remains so. Players can always add to therules; one might say, Now this sword has the power to heal dead people. []
If when confronted [however], another player were to say, Thats not a magic
sword at all, its just a stick, he would be denying the rules of play [] He is
in danger of collapsing the play space [] (Izzo, 1997, pp. 11-12)
Vitally, accepting offers both marks out the temenos (as somewhere other, fun,
exciting) and validates the other players and their imaginative world. This has
particular significance for Ladder to the Moon and work with older people with
dementia, and is again a topic I will shortly return to in more detail.
The temenos is also demarcated by heightening that is, the subject of play
always involves [] a situation larger than ordinary life. (p. 12) Stakes are higher, in
that characters (not the players themselves) have more to gain or lose. The play world,
with all it possibilities enable by the players ready acceptance, becomes a stage for
constructive fantasy and wish fulfilment. And because each player is playing at being
someone else (they are both not themselves and yet not-not themselves
(Schechner, 1985, p.123) they can make believe at doing all kinds of dramatic acts
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and put themselves in a wide range of situations that they might avoid at all costs in
real life. The understanding that they are inside a play world is the the theatrical
frame that Schechner describes as radically enabling: when [] imposed strongly it
permits the enactment of aesthetic dramas, shows whose actions, like Oedipus
poking out his own eyes, are extreme but recognized by everyone, including the
performers, as a playing with rather than a real doing of. This playing with is not
weak or false, it causes changes to both performers and spectators. (Schechner, 2003,
p. 190)
In practical terms, to emphasise the heightening and entice guests into the
theatrical world, Izzo recommends interactive theatre makers choose an
extraordinary subject, which is on the one hand familiar to the audience (familiar
to theirimaginations or fantasy-life, enabling them to step in with a sense of what is
expected of them i.e. the rules) and at the same time a subject that fires the
imagination: periods of history in which life seems to have been lived to the fullest,
ones filled with danger, excitement, discovery, and adventure (p. 42). In particular,
the fictional world should not depict the present: The temenos is an escape from
real life; there is no magic in being transported to where you already are. Its like
saying to your child, Lets play homework. People are far too close to the stress and
mundane concerns of the present for it to be an effective backdrop for interactive
theatre. (Ibid.)
Once the play world extraordinary yet familiar to the life of the imagination
has been established, guests can be offered or volunteer themselves to take on roles,
which constitute the most basic aspect of interactive theatre and what makes
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theatre interactive (p. 192). The act of offering a role can be referred to as endowing
a guest. In an endowment, an actor relates in such a way as to define for them their
identity and place in the created reality. Assumptions are made that imbue the guest
with attributes befitting the action. (p. 194) These assumptions are really implicit (or
sometimes explicit) invitations to play along in a particular way. The guest may
accept or not; no role should be forced on anyone and, as a performer, asking people
to accept who you claim to be means also accepting who they say they are.
What do roles do? They work within the extraordinary scenario to heighten
the guests experience. In concert with other characters and roles they rearrange the
social interactions of the group present, bringing relative strangers into contact with
each other around shared experiences and new objectives, and shuffling real-world
hierarchies. Izzo advises: Offer [guests] a higher dominance than your characters.
Giving guests the upper hand makes them feel safe [] Putting them in control
lessens [] uneasiness and inspires them to use their power. (p. 197) In other words,
endowing guests with roles allows them to play with status, at least temporarily
loosening ties to default identities. If the endowment is well chosen, well volunteered
for or fortuitous, there may be a harmonious relationship between the guest and his or
her character, perhaps playing to character strengths, tapping hidden talents or desires,
or stretching that guest by going against type.
Effects of dementia
I would now like to return to Ladder to the Moon and their work with older people in
care settings, and explore how the above principles are used and shed light on the
specific practice.
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When Gage became Ladders Artistic Director the company was already
working with people with mental health needs (Gage, 2008) in one hospital in
particular. To focus on and expand the work with older people with dementia was a
deliberate move. In order to understand Ladders work and its impact on the social
interactions of its target audience, it is important to understand something of how
dementia affects its sufferers. According to Gage, For people with dementia []
long-term memories are often far stronger than their short-term memories. (Ibid.)
Similarly, the psychologist Oliver James writes in the Saturday Guardian: people
with dementia suffer from only one major disability: they do not store new
information properly so their short-term memory is defective. (James, 2008) Thus,
people with dementia frequently go back to old memories in order to make sense of
otherwise incomprehensible situations. (Ibid.)
The most common way of treating dementia is currently anti-psychotic
medication. When someone suffering from dementia talks about things, people and
situations from their past, as if they are there in the room, they are often corrected.
This, according to James, is a potentially harmful response. He comments: imagine
how scary that must be and how aggressive you might become when your version of
what is happening is challenged. (Ibid.) According to his analysis, this leads to
innumerable instances of well-meaning relatives and professionals misinterpreting
the person with dementia as suffering from delusions, rather than using the past to
make sense of the present. (Ibid.) They are proscribed anti-psychotic drugs, the
effects of which are calming. Yet the drugs also dope, befuddle and reduce
communication (Ibid.).
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James advocates an alternative to the above approach. Specal (Specialised
Early Care for Alzheimers) was developed by Penny Garner and bears certain
striking similarities with Ladders approach, as well as interactive theatre in general.
The basic technique of Specal, rather than medicating, is saying yes to (i.e. not
contradicting) the reality invoked and inhabited by the person suffering from
dementia. For example, James describes an early occasion of Garners caring for her
own mother, Dorothy Johnson:
One day, they were sitting together in a doctors waiting room when out of the
blue Dorothy said, Has our flight been called yet? Garner was mystified andplayed for time. Her mother anxiously looked around and said, We dont
want to miss it, wheres our hand luggage?Suddenly, Garner realised what was happening. Her mother had
always loved air travel and Dorothy was making sense of this crowded waiting
situation by assuming they were in a departure lounge. When Garner
responded with All our luggage has been checked in, weve just got our
handbags, her mother visibly relaxed. (Ibid.)
According to Specals advocates, playing along rather than contradicting the reality
of the past situation allows carers and those they care for to tap into the reality
inhabited by the person with dementia, and thus discover genuine areas of enjoyment:
a whole care plan could be built around the person with dementias past experiences
of professional or social roles, or of enjoyable hobbies, enabling them to live a kind of
happy Groundhog Day. (Ibid.) For example, by plugging into his old memories,
one dementia sufferers wife discovered that he [her husband] loved Irish jigs. Thus
they would spend all day talking about jigging, actually doing so and engaging in
post-jig analysis. (Ibid.)
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How does this relate to Ladder to the Moon and productions likeA Very Greek
Romance? It is important to note that the plays are performed with a wide range of
older people, and their carers and visitors. Thus there are different levels and types of
dementia in the room, as well as people who do not suffer from dementia. The fiction
of the play functions as a vehicle in different ways for different people, meeting a
range of needs, from entertainment to play to a form of therapy.
Common to all these purposes, a temenos is created, allowing play to take
place. Even though many of the older people have defective short-term memory it is
usually still clear that a Ladder production is extraordinary (something different) and
playful. The smiles and laughter of visitors and care staff are an immediate indicator
and raise the energy in the room [] People pick up on the positivity in the room,
they look around and see smiling faces and that in turn causes them to smile. (Gage,
2008) This is the case even if, on a cognitive level, some of the older people arent
understanding the cognitive sense of what is happening. Theres an emotional
communication. (Ibid.) This was evident inA Very Greek Romance as the daughter
of the woman chosen to play Cressida grinned broadly throughout and encouraged her
mother at various points, mainly by her smiles and genuine happiness.
Gage also claims the heightened register and qualities of the Shakespearian
language works in a similar way, communicating on a non-cognitive level through its
innate emotional resonance (Ibid.). In any case, the subject matter ofA Very Greek
Romance was clearly heightened and distinct, not only from the day to day of the
care home but also from the world of the residents long-term memories. Gage has
observed that when the company does something period i.e. 1940s or 1950s, some
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of the older people think its now and respond [] in quite a normalised way, so
theres sometimes difficulty in signifying that this is play, that its theatre (Gage,
2008). This is more of a risk, given that the play is interactive, with residents forming
part of its fictional world. In the context of dementia, however, normalisation, may
not be so bad an outcome. By choosing Shakespeare and including songs from the
1940s and 1950s, both purposes were served: residents were offered an opportunity to
play in the heightened world of Troilus and Cressida and were also validated in
whatever their various orienting frameworks.
As Izzo recommends, endowments and situations, with a few small props and
costumes, functioned as invitations to try on alternative roles and situations, and these
were largely accepted in the playful spirit they were offered. For example, at one
point in the play Troilus asked a resident if he could watch on from her tent. The
resident, appearing to be fully in character, responded with humour: Oh no. I have
someone here with me.
It is here, however, that Ladders double effect is clearest. There was no way
of knowing for certain whether the woman in the above example was really
responding in character, as play, or using old memories in order to make sense of
otherwise incomprehensible situations (James, 2008), but by Ladders approach it
does not much matter. The acceptance of offers that is so integral to interactive theatre
validates individuals imaginary worlds as usual, but the significance of that
validation is potentially much further reaching, confirming the residents in what may
be for them the way they habitually make sense of the world. The effect on social
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interaction is radical: depending on the usual approach of the care staff, this
acceptance can change contradictions into affirmations, the default no into a yes.
Effects after the performance
From the above analysis, it is evident that the impact of Ladder to the Moons
interactive theatre stems as much from the experiences and reactions of those around
the older people, as it does from the experiences and reactions of the older people
themselves. Specifically, social interactions are shifted as carers, visitors and actors
say yes to a wider range of behaviours and realities than usual. For at least the
duration of the performance the sense of being in a temenos and especially the
premise of watching and/or participating in a play gives carers and visitorspermission
to accept things they might otherwise reject. This then is one of the functions of
narrative: narrative [] gives you a tool that says, This is for you as well. This is
for you the staff, this is for everyone. Its what enables you to create a piece that
works for people with full cognitive function and for people with dementia. Although
the narrative doesnt necessarily mean anything in a cognitive way, it then facilitates
the emotional journey that they do go on. (Gage, 2008)
Moreover, the presence of carers and relatives, not only as participants but
also as witnesses, is vital to the issue of longer-term impact and how social
interactions may be affected after the performance. As dementia hinders short-term
memory, many of the older people are unlikely to remember consciously the
atmosphere of play, acceptance, laughter and cooperation they experienced during the
play. Gage comments, there are definitely times when you go back into the room ten
minutes after and youre like, Were we ever here? Did anything actually happen?
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(Ibid.) While he thinks that even if its only [] in that hour it is still immensely
valuable, and equally youll often find a very different atmosphere in the room by
the end than you will at the beginning (Ibid.), the longer-term effects of Ladders
work depend largely on shifting theperceptions of the carers. As the older people take
on roles and play with new identities, they not only get to experience the benefits of
play and potentially access latent aspects of themselves, but also show others what
they are capable of. For example, Gage tells of one incident at a previous performance
ofA Very Greek Romance where Lynn [the actress playing the servant] had taken
out a letter for someone to read in the play and a member of staff went, Oh dont
bother. He cant read. He cant speak. But Lynn [] persevered, and gave him time
and space. And he read and spoke, the entire thing. (Ibid.) Referring to the episode of
the woman who had someone here with her, Gage observes the work often re-
sexualises the older people. It humanises them, and, he says, I hope changes the
day to day dynamics between staff and residents. (Ibid.) The company is currently
beginning to record more of its work using video and photography, to give carers and
visitors a tool to invoke the past performance and reinforce peoples experiences,
because for people with dementia, visual stimulus, photographs, are very useful to jog
memory, to re-evidence that they have done something (Ibid.). Already, even
without the visual artefacts, Gage finds care staff are talking about it to the residents
[] and will go back to it and revisit it (Ibid.). This is even clearer in homes we
have long-term relationships with, where a year on [they] will still be referring to
Keith playing Romeo. Their perception of that individual has shifted. (Ibid.)
There are, however, issues and challenges involved in coming in and
changing peoples perceptions of each other, especially in care settings. In the case of
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the man who read the letter, despite the member of staff telling the actress that he
couldnt even speak, the staff members got to feel quite humiliated after the end of
that (Ibid.). So an issue within the work is that going in and raising the bar so far
can cause people [i.e. carers] to be quite defensive about what happens (Ibid.). This
is partly because the carer may take it as an affront to his or her normal approach. But
is also to do with the paradox of trying to effect lasting change through a medium that
depends on its very status as extraordinary and therefore temporary. If, as Schechner
claims, the understanding of being inside aplay worldis radically enabling, what
happens when it is time to leave the play world? As Izzo puts it:
Each move we make in ordinary life, no matter how small, has a permanent
effect upon us. The fact of thatpermanence is the basis for the fear in ourlives. Once done, a thing cannot be undone, and, often, fear paralyzes action.
Play-space is impermanent. We may undo or replay our experience over andover again. We can discover ourselves without the danger of loss. In play there
need be no fear, and without it play experience is always a joyous event. (Izzo,
1997, p. 13)
Thus, while players may return to the world of ordinary life changed in some way,
negotiating the transition and establishing a regularised modus operandi that
incorporates these gifts nearly always pose a great challenge. The challenge is this:
it is impossible to live in the extraordinary every day, or surely it ceases to become
extraordinary.
Within the work of Ladder to the Moon, de-roling has become an important
part of the transition. At the end of the performance, the actors step out of role and re-
introduce themselves by their real names. There is a period of what Schechner would
call cooling down (Schechner, 1985, p. 125), during which residents and carers can
chat about the performance to each other, speak to the actors and gradually return to
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the ordinary world. Cakes and tea were wheeled in at the end of the performance I
saw, smoothing the transition with a basic but pleasurable social activity. That the
actors walk around asking residents or patients if they enjoyed the performance, and
engaging with them as human beings without the addition of roles and characters,
further signals that the performance was play. It facilitates the post-show
conversation, because in those setting people arent going to necessarily turn to their
neighbour and talk about it and it shows that the actor can be a normal person
talking to one of the residents in a fairly normal, natural way (Gage, 2008).
As mentioned previously, there are care homes and hospitals with which
Ladder to the Moon has an ongoing relationship, so experiencing the extraordinary
can become a more regular event. Nevertheless, in general, Ladder has no guarantee
or way of controlling what happens to the social interactions after the performers
leave the room. This is even clearer in hospitals, that are themselves, at best,
transitory communities (people are only there for a maximum of six months
(Ibid.)). Thus the question remains: to what extent can an experience that is inherently
extraordinary and counter-cultural be extended? By what means can it have a lasting
effect on the ordinary?
Burning Man
In order to explore these questions in more detail, I would now like to turn to Burning
Man. According to Burning Mans organisers, their mission is to produce the annual
event known as Burning Man and to guide, nurture and protect the more permanent
community created by its culture (Burning Man website, Mission Statement). As
will become clear, to create a culture and affect the world at large was not always a
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conscious goal of those associated with the event. It has, however, become so. In fact,
the example of Burning Man as evidenced in the public discourse of the events
organisers, the research I carried out via questionnaire and census, and my own
experience suggests the following: immersing the self in such a heightened and
positively differentiated play-world, in which social interactions are transformed so
thoroughly and compellingly, is usually sufficient stimulus for the individual to ask
almost automatically how the experience can be extended and the transformation
brought into his or her regular life.
Principal elements of Burning Man
Burning Man, in and of itself, is not technically interactive theatre, yet it has much
in common with what has been discussed in relation to the genre. While it needs to
be experienced rather than described1, for the purposes of this dissertation, I will
attempt to give an overview by describing its principles, values and features,
especially drawing out its implications for the potential of interactive theatre and its
effect on social interactions.
Burning Man is a week-long event that takes place in the Black Rock Desert,
northern Nevada, every year in the last week of August. In recent years about 45,000
people have attended each event, though numbers are rising with each year.
Participants come from different countries and range in age, though the majority
(about 85%) are from the United States (eligible to vote in US elections) and the
1Trying to explain what Burning Man is to someone who has never been to the
event is a bit like trying to explain what a particular color looks like to someone who
is blind [] you will find [] peripheral definitions of what the event is as a whole,
but to truly understand this event, one must participate. (Burning Man website,
What Is Burning Man?
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average age is 30 to 40 (Burning Man, 2007). 72% consider themselves to be white
(Ibid.), disproportionately high for the demographic make-up of the United States but
probably reflective of issues of social and economic disadvantage in the society at
large.
Central to Burning Man is the principle of radical self-expression, which
Burning Mans founder, Larry Harvey, describes as encouraging participants to
commune with themselves and to regard their own reality, that essential inner portion
of experience that makes them feel real, as if it were a vision or a gift, and then
project this vision out onto the world. (Harvey, 2002) This is supported by a number
of features, including the events open structure. This differentiates Burning Man
from other festivals as well as from the default world (a common Burning Man
expression for what others might call regular life), where the emphasis is often on
consumption rather than co-creation. Rather than there be an official programme
featuring acts, bands and celebrities, participants are invited to provide the substance
of the event themselves, bringing whatever art, games, workshops, talks,
performances or just about any type of event they have to offer. Like the theatre
ensemble described by Izzo, those who provide Burning Mans extensive
infrastructure (physical, medical, logistical, legal and so on largely volunteers with a
core team of professionals) are effectively inviting others into a wide, open circle.
Harvey describes this principle:
We have never dictated the content of radical self-expression because only the
individual can determine what his or her true gifts might be. [] We don't
create the culture, they do, but we create the societal vessel that helps to
contain this creative, interactive, utterly uncontrollable process that simply
happens in human populations when people are able to relate to each other for
any length of time. So we've created a social context (Ibid.)
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This structure is replicated in almost countless instances inside Burning Man, as
participation and interactivity are central to almost everything offered. Every smaller
event in the wider container of Burning Man is effectively another societal vessel
[] to contain a creative, interactive, [] uncontrollable process.
Besides (and in fact often the host of) the workshop, the performance and the
event, another major means of radical self-expression and participation is the theme
camp, crudely speaking a group of participants who camp together, collaborating to
produce a public service or an expressive theme of some kind (Ibid.). According to
Harvey, People began to create extensions of their living quarters that embodied
some creative idea, some kind of art project that they were willing to share with
everyone else; thus theme camps are essentially collective gifts, collaborative acts
of self-expression that are given to a civic world (Ibid.). An example he gives of a
very simple theme camp is Camp Fink, a tent which looked like a seedy sportsmans
bar but featured an ancient Corona typewriter out in front with an endless spool of
paper, and they invited you to rat out your friends (Ibid.). Thus it got really
interactive, because everyone wanted to read what everybody else was saying!
(Ibid.) There are too many and too wide a variety of theme camps to describe them
comprehensibly, but in 2008, at Sukkat Shalom, the theme camp of which I was part,
we had a 1:600 canvas map of Black Rock City (the temporary urban environment
created by Burning Man) with art materials for passers-by to mark their own camps
and memorable experiences.
Encouraging a similar interactivity, outside the space of theme camps, most
often on the open Playa which stretches away from the main streets of Black Rock
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City, are large scale works of art, created by both professional artists who have
exhibited their work in legitimating venues, and who have devoted themselves over
many years to their craft and calling (Van Rhey, 1999) and amateurs. No distinction
is drawn between these groups; thus there is a radical equality that is missing from the
commercial art world. The art is deliberately stripped of its normal marketplace
context, is created within and for a community, and, within this community, [] is
intended to be given away (Ibid.). Above all, it an art that is devoted to social
connection (Ibid.). To this end, there is a consistent emphasis on interactivity and
participation. The art of Burning Man can be touched, climbed inside, moved,
explored, interacted with or, at its most participatory, requires an action on the part
of participants to achieve completion (Ibid.).
An example of interactive art from the 2008 event was the Temple of
Fortune. This was an open-fronted hut with sloping roofs and a small staircase
leading inside to a back-wall, on which was painted a large image of a female face
and, over this image, pencil-drawn a myriad world of images to do with morality,
good and bad fortune, snakes, ladders, temptations, deities and devils. At the bottom
of the back-wall was a wheel that participants could step up and spin, revealing a
fortune or piece of advice (for example, my spin told me, If you cannot go up or
down, try moving sideways). These messages could, of course, be received however
the participant wished: humour, reflection, entertainment etc. The back-wall and
wheel are shown in Fig. 1.
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Fig 1.
The wheel took long enough to spin for the participant to examine the back-wall in
detail and form a deeper relationship with the work of art, noticing details he or she
had not before. Crucially, the work of art became a node for social interactions
between Burners, who would gather at the entrance to the Temple, observe and
encourage those spinning, and interact with one another as well as the piece. It is
worth noting that the hut appeared both as a theatre, with curtains framing the back-
wall, and as a temple or shrine, pagoda-like in shape and elevated. Thus it hinted
equally towards performance and entertainment on the one hand, and ritualistic
contemplation and transformation on the other. This can be seen in Fig. 2.
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Fig. 2
As in the interactive theatre of Ladder to the Moon, participants meet each
other in a new context, less hindered by default identities and histories. As takes place
when a guest at an interactive theatre event is endowed with a role, participants are
given a new motivation for interaction, a shift that prompts both more interaction than
might otherwise take place between so-called strangers and interactions of a different
type, potentially allowing latent characteristics to emerge. Many Burners consciously
play with the persona they present to others via costumes and Playa names. A Playa
name is an alias, a name a Burner goes by at Burning Man. According to Mike
Osborne, one of the Burners I interviewed by questionnaire, and who goes by the
Playa name of Tryp, Playa names are an important rite of passage for Burners:
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Choosing a Playa name has returned an important self-identification power to
individuals that our culture has lost. I thought long and hard about finding a
Playa name, until one of my camp mates said to me You sure are a trip,
man. I immediately knew that was it, although I changed it slightly to Tryp,in honor of my favorite molecule, tryptamine.
In other words, a Playa name can provide an opportunity to reinvent ones identity,
exercising choice in the act of self-definition. In that people habitually relate to and
see each other through the prism of names, it also has the potential to shift others
perceptions of and therefore interactions with that individual. The costumes
participants wear, often very lavish and usually homemade, work in a similar way,
playing with surface appearance and facilitating both more frequent and new kinds of
interaction. These may come in the form of compliments or, if the costume presents a
character, interactions in role. For example, when in 2008 I painted myself from
head to toe in green body paint, many people told me how much they liked it; when I
dressed as a rabbi with whiskers and bunny ears (Fig. 3) they came to me as my
bunny disciples.
There are also a number of important rules that mark Burning Man out as
apart from the default world, support its distinctive values and heighten the
experience, creating a temenos. These are both natural and man-made. The harsh
conditions of the desert, where daytime temperatures reach 40 degrees centigrade,
nightime temperatures drop below freezing and zero-visibility dust storms are a
regular occurrence, inevitably heighten the stakes and have a profound effect on
peoples interactions. Frequently neighbouring campers turn to each other for
equipment or help. It is impossible to set up or run a camp in the conditions without
pooling resources and cooperating. Seemingly strong bonds are created. As one
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respondent to my questionnaire put it: Any adverse environment which humans
experience together has a high likelihood of bringing a sense of community to those
who experience it. This is directly comparable to the sense ofcommunitas, defined
as an essential though temporary enactment of community (Kuftinec, quoted in
Kuppers, 2007, p. 36), that is created in an interactive theatre event through the
experience of exhilaration and a heightened sense of reality.
Fig. 3
The most significant and far reaching of the man-made rules is a ban on all
commerce. As the 2008 Burning Man Survival Guide puts it: You cannot buy or
sell anything. Black Rock City is a place of sharing and free exchange within a gift
economy. (Burning Man, 2008, p. 2) Although participants pay for their tickets to
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the Burning Man, they must bring enough food and water to last the week, exercising
the principle of radical self-reliance (p. 3). At the event, no workshop, massage,
drink, performance, experience or work of art is bought or sold. Everything is given
freely between fellow participants. This creates a sense of abundance, which in turn
can lead to cooperation and mutual play rather than competition. To illustrate this
distinction, Harvey quotes 19th
Century economist Richard Jefferies The Absence of
Design in Nature: The Prodigality of Nature and the Niggardliness of Man: There is
no 'enough' in nature [] It is one vase prodigality. It is a feast. There is no economy,
no saving, no penury, a golden shower of good things forever descending." (Harvey,
2002). He goes on to comment: Contrast this with the material economy of our
world, in which each individual is compelled, in order to exist, to labor, to save and to
compete with other people for control and possession of scarce resources. This is the
iron law of economics in our world: the suberabundance of nature and the utter
niggardliness of man. (Ibid.) Removing commodity transactions from the temenos
connects people with that superabundance and tips the balance away from contest
and towards representation: All play is either a contest for something or a
representation of something. Contest play strives for winning or achieving [] In
representation play, players strive to move beyond their ordinary selves so that they
almost believe they actually are what they are portraying, but without wholly losing
consciousness of ordinary reality (Izzo, 1997).
Thus the gift economy of Burning Man and the context of any performances
or interactive art experiences that take place, stand out in blatant relief against the
default backdrop of a highly developed capitalist society. Harvey contrasts Burning
Man to Retail Entertainment Destinations or R.E.D.s. These typically combine
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dining, shopping and entertainment attractions and are, in his words, the finest
flower of our marketing system and its commodification of our lives (Harvey, 2002).
Examples are Disney Land or the Strip in Las Vegas. These environments may well
contain specially designed civic spaces in which performances, usually of short
duration and often interactive, take place. However, the reason R.E.D.s create these
faux civic spaces, and the reason they're filled with such apparently civilized
amenities, is to cause consumers to linger in a retail environment (Ibid.). Harvey
describes his experience in Las Vegas, interacting with the great speaking statue of
Neptune at Caesar's Palace:
It was set in a courtyard, and, in a weird kind of cartoon way it might have
been Florence. It could have been a northern Italian hill town; a public square,a very civic setting. This robotic Neptune spoke to us for about 7 minutes, it
attracted a large crowd, and then it stopped and everyone dispersed and
where did they go? Right into all these shops that strategically surrounded it.
And every one was a brand name high-end retail outlet selling goods at a
200% mark-up (Ibid.)
The effect of this is to put a material value on the social interactions taking place
through the interactive theatrical event. Theirpurpose is to sell commodity. It is
possible to argue that this too is the purpose of commercial theatre, yet positive social
benefit and entertainment can still result. Nevertheless, at Burning Man, and within
many other interactive theatre performances, there is a more distinct separation
between the events internal play-world and the world of commodity transactions.
Buying and selling do not suddenly intrude on the temenos. In the case of, say, a
Ladder performance, the care organisation will have settled the fee in advance (Acton
Care Home paid 100 for the performance ofA Very Greek Romance). Thus the
simulation of monetary transactions, or any other kind of real-world interaction, can
take place in the plays fictional world, and, paradoxically, it will feel authentic i.e. of
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value in and of itself. This is in contrast to Harveys Las Vegas example, where the
brevity of the performances and the same-space presence of commercial activity,
combined with the sudden fragmentation and dispersal of any sense of a collective
that may have been built during the performance undercut the social interactions that
the theatre generates. It is not that commercial gain cannot come from an interactive
theatre event that enhances its participants social interactions. Rather, what is vital is
the emphasis placedon those interactions, the extent to which they are protected and
ring-fencedwithin the performance space, and how they are managed when the
performance disappears.
Self-consuming spectacle
Earlier in this dissertation I noted the shift at the end of a Ladder performance, as
actors de-role and the focus turns to the social interactions in the room. The walls of
the temenos dissolve, but Ladder attempt to steward the energy, laughter and joy of
the experience into the more normalised context. In removing costumes and
speaking to the older people out of character, traditional distinctions between
ensemble and audience blur to an even greater extent. Effectively, Schechners three
categories of related transactions in the theatrical event, i.e. those between performers,
those between audience members, and those between performers and audience, are
subsumed in a simpler general category of social interactions. Spectacle and
narrative recede into the background, existing principally as memory (conscious or
subconscious) and energy, and these social interactions are foregrounded. How at
Burning Man are the transitions back to the default world managed? I believe there is
a similar shift in focus and foreground, which is evident from the story of Burning
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Mans origins, the symbolism and effect of the burning of the Man, and theories
expounded by Larry Harvey.
Burning Man started not as a large-scale event, with tickets, insurance and
safety structures, but as a spontaneous gathering on a beach. In 1986 Harvey called a
friend and said, let's build a man and burn him on the beach (Ibid.). He did this on
impulse, not with any particular symbolism in mind but rather as radical-self
expression, a response to some passionate prompting, some immediate vision [that]
just had to be embodied in the world. (Ibid.) Harvey recounts: We built our man
from scraps of wood, then called some friends and took it to the beach. We saturated
it with gasoline and put a match to it, and within minutes our numbers doubled [to
20]. (Ibid.) Because people were attracted to the gathering and because Harvey and
his friends were moved, they decided to repeat the event the following year at the
same location, Baker Beach, San Francisco. The numbers grew and Burning Man
became an annual event. In 1990, when 800 people attended, police banned the
burning on the beach, but a compromise was reached allowing the statue to be
assembled and elevated, BUT not burned on beach site (Burning Man website,
Timeline). For the first time the man was burned in the Black Rock Desert, where
Burning Man has taken place every year since.
Harvey tells this story of origins and identifies a process he calls I Am, We
Are, It Is (Harvey, 2002). The process begins with radical self-expression: the
feeling that your inmost vital self is real and that you can project a vision of this sense
of your own being onto the surrounding world. (Ibid.) This stage is what Harvey
calls I Am, effectively an act of resistance to the default world and its culture, as
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most people just don't have the confidence anymore because they're too isolated;
they're too passive. (Ibid.) Harvey himself listened to some passionate prompting,
some immediate vision to build a man and burn him on the beach and decided
to manifest it in the world. This initial projection of personal artistic vision can be
seen as analogous to the primary act of theatrical creation. In terms of interactive
theatre, it is the conception and development of the performance, to which the guests
will later be invited.
In the case of Burning Mans development, others were quickly attracted to
Harveys creation. They formed a semi-circle around it and, in time, brought their
own performances and offerings (Ibid.). This is the second stage of the process:
It proceeds, as in a theme camp, to a feeling that you are united with others,
that you are linked in a bonded circle and that together you can share the same
experience through an act of giving, because the value of a gift is in its flow
not as you consume it, but as it consumes. And I'll call this, We Are.
(Ibid.)
Here Harvey emphasises the sense of togetherness, with each participant becoming an
active contributor and creator. In interactive theatre, guests respond to spectacle,
narrative interest (if there is a plot) and this apparent sense of I Am. As noted
earlier, they become co-creators. Harvey claims this semi-circle that formed around
his first burning effigy is still evident in Burning Man and its lay-out today: when I
look at Black Rock City today, I notice that its curving streets are like that semi-circle
of people so many years ago on Baker Beach. (Ibid.)
The third stage of the process is It Is, the feeling that somewhere outside
this circle there exists some greater gift that everyone is joined together by as they
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give to it (Ibid.). The sense of communitas inherent in We Are now transcends the
circ