On invisible vs. guerrilla theatre:
I feel as if the line between these two types of theatre is a very fine but important one, and if we cross the line it must be done deliberately. By this I mean that if the piece starts off as "invisible," and we go with the idea of a conversation between two people and joined by a third, the audience (spect-actors in this case) cannot be aware that they are watching/participating an a piece of invisible theatre. The dialogue must be natural and not overtly political. This could be a really interesting way of placing the topic of sexual assault in people's subconscious and hopefully provoking thought and discussion, which is the purpose of invisible theatre.
Furthering this concept by creating a daily loop to be repeated at the same time in the same place also sounds exciting. It begs the question, however, of whether as people become aware of the piece we are stepping into the realm of guerrilla theatre, and what this means for our presentation of the material. As the week goes on, do we become steadily more politically overt until we reach a full-on message with statistics, or do we remain "invisible" as actors? I'd like to know everyone's opinions. I think both ways have distinct advantages; it all depends on whether we want to metaphorically hit people in the face with the topic of sexual assault or whisper it in their ear so that they aren't fully aware of the thought being placed there.
On image theatre:
Since we can't organize a staged piece (according to the previous blog post), perhaps we might consider leading a workshop on image theatre pertaining to sexual assault. This could involve a brief explanation of Boal's theory of image theatre, warm-up exercises (such as they hypnosis we did in class) to make participants aware of their bodies, and a series of group created images, facilitated by us but driven by participants.
This could be a very educational experience, both for us as theatrical educators and participants. However, the problem with this is that only a small group of people will be involved, and will likely only be people with a previous interest in/concern about sexual assault. This means that we are not educating the general community, though there will be other events throughout the month that will reach a broader audience, I'm sure.
2 comments:
Thank you, Abby. I too am concerned about traversing that line between invisible theatre. On the other side of that anxiety I am concerned, actually, in reviewing our concept for "conversations" in the Library that by virtue of our intensely private society that those conversations, if kept realistic, would slip far under the radar. What are other people's thoughts on this? I look forward to discussing these concepts in class.
I know, I already commented, but you have so many good ideas! I love the idea of a workshop, let's talk about this in class. Remember, it is good to think about not preaching to the choir, but sometimes the choir (the people who will be very engaged with our message) deserve being preached to, and taught at! Perhaps we can think of a bigger "spectacle" that will generate more general attention, and then work on a more specific and smaller workshop.
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