Alternative Spaces

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Alternative Spaces
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The Modern Approach

• Throughout theatres history, the physical
  dimensions of the space have affected the
  performances held in them.
• A new approach is called Environmental Theatre.
  This type of theatre does not use conventional
  seating but rather uses the audience as part of
  the playing area.

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20th Century Quotes...

• Art is not a mirror to reflect reality,
  but a hammer with which to shape it.
  Bertolt Brecht 
• No one has ever written, painted, sculpted,
  modeled, built, or invented except literally to
  get out of hell. Antonin Artaud

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The Modern and Postmodern

• Modernism is symbolized by its complete break
  from the past and its freedom to redefine the
  conventions of the theatre or art in general.
• With modernism came a new approach to theatre by
  a revolt against any rules toward art, classical
  rebirth or genre.
• Postmodernism is more of a style using random
  associations and reflections.
• There are two kinds of these postmodern
  reflections.
• Sometimes works of art pay homage to
  themselves.
• Sometimes works of art pay homage to past texts
  and models
• Postmodernism embraces, quotes and even recycles
  the past.

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Jerzy Grotowskis Poor Theatre

• Founded in 1959, it began with the premise that
  the theatre had borrowed too much from film and
  television, and therefore had violated its own
  essence.
• He sought to recover the true essence of theatre
  by eliminating everything but the two essential
  elements of actor and audience.
• He abandoned the proscenium theatre in favor of a
  large room that could be arranged for each
  production.

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Jerzy Grotowskis Poor Theatre

• The Holy Theatre Idea
• He viewed theatre as a secular ritual to which
  spectator-witnesses were admitted.
• For Grotowski, actors were like modern shamans
  who took on the suffering of the community.
• He was attempting to cause the actors and
  audience to confront themselves much like a
  religious experience.

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Jerzy Grotowskis Akropolis

• The play was written by a Polish playwright in
  1904 about paintings and statues coming to life
  to tell stories on the eve of Easter Sunday.
• Grotowski shifted the play to an extermination
  camp to contrast human dignity with human
  degradation.

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The Living Theatres Benevolent Revolution

• In the sixties, Judith Malina and Julian Beck
  presented highly ritualized performance pieces
  critical of institutions that the company
  considered inhuman.
• The Living Theatre wanted to overhaul society
  non-violently by creating revolution using the
  Theatre.
• Julian Beck said, Art opens perception and
  changes our vision. I think without art we would
  all remain blind to reality. We go to the
  theatre to study ourselves. The theatre excites
  the imagination, and it also enters into the
  spirit.

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The Living Theatres Benevolent Revolution

• The Connection (1959) is about the making of a
  documentary dealing with the lives of heroin
  addicts.
• The group was reprimanded for tax evasion by the
  I.R.S. which led to prison sentences.
• The groups apex was Paradise Now!, which was an
  attempt to create a revolution by causing the
  audience to increase its political awareness

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Bread and Puppet Theatre
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The Bread and Puppet Theatre

• The Bread and Puppet Theatre, founded by Peter
  Schumann, still continues today and advocates
  virtues of love, charity and humility.
• His name came from the two basic elements of his
  work, bread and puppets. Theatre should be as
  basic as bread.
• The company renounced violence and capitalism in
  favor of love and community.
• His company will perform in any situation from
  streets to fields to gyms.
• The company uses biblical and legendary texts
  using actors and larger than life puppets.
• His stories are simple and the pace of his
  productions are majestically slow.

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Domestic Resurrection Circus

• Each production is called Nineteenth and is
  performed each August in a grassed over pit with
  sloping sides.
• The production is free and includes ten hours of
  demons, angels, peasants, dragons, birds and
  strolling entertainers.
• The interaction of oversized puppets with the
  elements of nature reinforces the death and
  resurrection them that is found in all Bread and
  Puppet productions.
• Peter Schumann said, Puppet theatre, the
  employment of and dance of dolls, effigies, and
  puppets...is an anarchic art, subversive and
  untamable by nature...an art which does not
  aspire to represent governments or civilizations
  but prefers it own secret demeaning stature in
  society, representing more or less, the demons of
  that society and definitely no its institutions.

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Alternative Spaces