Issue 12: Open Rehearsals?

Convener John Wright

Participants: Paul Hunter, Phelim McDermott, Dickie, Fay, John, Merce Ribot and my biggest apologies because didn’t write down the names. (We started as a small group of about 6 and we were between 10-14 people by the end of the session)

Summary of discussion

A. On John Wirght’s Open Rehearsals (OR) experience in France

1. OR Format:
- Tickets sold
- Questions would be asked to the audience
- There was a talk to the audience before hand
- Very popular
- Similar experience to putting on a show every night

2. Ideas/discussion/questions on this particular experience:
- Need of a structure to establish the rules of engagement.
- How can we get people to participate more? And Why?
- David class- work in progress
- Listen to the audience for feedback?
- Can it develop to a director/group of actors defending their ideas?

B. Discussion. Ideas, challenges and rewards of OR and further questions

- The need to find STRUCTURE to establish audience participation (when, how...) in a NON-ISSUE based OR experience. This in contrast to WorldWork issue based interventions.

- OP has the potential to transform relation between (switch roles?)

Performer – Writer – Director
And
Audience member - performer

- STRUCTURE understood as a trigger to create an develop work NOT as overall schedule for a final result (not to create expectation for an end product)
AND
STRUCURE depends and emerges from the inter-action with audience.


- CHALLENGES experienced when working with audience participation/OR:

1. The audience can become a judge
2. Actors can experience- pressure, freeze, nerves...
3. Touching/bring up difficult topics (at this point, a brief discussion was held about the boundaries between therapy and theatre)


- POSITIVE IMPUTS found on OR experiences:

1. OR can help unite/bound a theatre company.
2. “drunk on theatre”: audience participation creates another level of engagement with the performance, “makes you interested and enjoy theatre” in a different way (most important: that’s a comment from a non-theatre consumer)
3. OR, can it create a new form of theatre?



C. Relevant organizations using audience participation:

-WorldWork
Issue based + characters/role changing (interesting: ability to defend difficult ideas + difficult issues topics come up)

-Coney theatre Company
Role play.
Combination of SET UP RULES + individual choices: PERSONAL INPUT. The performance duration varies from group to group.