Tuesday 17th November 2011
Saw the amazing play ‘A Place at the Table’ at the Camden Peoples Theatre, London (www.cptheatre.co.uk)
I joined the actors round a large table and they created a powerful discussion around us, which led the way for participants to get involved. Several times, I felt the urge to storm the table, jump up and join them. Which led to a discussion with some of the performers afterwards about how far could the participants go and how would they control their actions, or bring it back to the scope of the play?
This led to further discussions with fellow artist Priya Saujani, (www.utopriya.com) about creating a performance that created itself as it went along, using the audience as active catalysts. How and where would it go? Would you still be able to have a tangible narrative? Would the performers become obsolete amongst the audience? And would it just descend into total chaos and be pointless? Although the idea of creating something that is pointless and just exists in that moment and between those people, is quite a beautiful experience.
Other discussions had that night between artist Jennifer Muteteli, Priya and myself were the idea of whether creativity comes from a place of darkness or trauma within a person, or whether creativity can sometimes cause this. Its a chicken and the egg scenario. The idea of contentment maybe leads to a lack of edge, drive, or force that sometimes creates the most poignant honest work.
Another slightly more pretentious and contentious discussion was the idea that artists are a completely different breed of person altogether, and maybe only artists can ever understand, listen to, or ‘get’ what goes on within the mind of an artist and why they create in the first place. But maybe that level of understanding holds true for anyone in any field, as birds of the same feather seem to flock together.
I recommend the books ‘The Gift’ and ‘Trickster makes the world: How disruptive imagination creates culture’ by Lewis Hyde.