Is All Theatre Writing Political?
Hydrocracker's AD, Jem Wall, was asked to be part of a panel with playwrights Rory Mullarkey, Dipo Agboluaje and Royal Court director Lucy Morrison and Paines Plough director Sean Linnen to share Hydrocracker’s view on Is All Theatre Writing Political?
The discussion raised many questions - Is most political theatre preaching to the converted? If ‘political’ means getting people to ‘change’ or ‘take action’ there is surely a problem if the audience already agrees with you. Isn’t this theatre of reassurance? And at its worse does this become ‘guardian porn’? Is political theatre’s role to be provocative? Or is a piece of work that attacks the audience playing to an empty gesture? Is political theatre giving a platform to voices that are rarely heard? How brave, really, is our theatre on tackling taboos? Is political writing most effective when it comes under the radar – ie when it is NOT ‘political’?
So where does Hydrocracker stand? The debate is making me think about what Hydrocracker means when we say we make work ‘with political intent’. How can our work contribute to making theatre that is ‘politically meaningful?’ I think there is real potential for us to do this through the ‘immersive’ and ‘site-specific’ movement we are a part of. Instead of the audience sitting in the dark and passively watching as they do in theatres, immersive theatre has the potential to give an audience a visceral experience of a world and even present them with choices within it and maybe even take action? A piece of work we have in development about undercover police work – OPERATON BLACK ANTLER - could be made in the form of a (brilliant) play that people watch in a theatre, or - as we are trying to do - treat the audience as undercover police, skill them up with a new identity and send them ‘undercover’ to infiltrate a far right political event.
One is a play ‘about’ politics. The other is – arguably - political? It gives an audience the chance to experience what it means to be undercover and find out themselves about the excitement, deception and jeopardy of the work rather than be ‘told’ about it. Once an audience has been complicit maybe then a more profound and informed questioning of the morality surveillance can be arrived at? A piece of work that is sited outside of a theatre maybe has a greater potential to attract a different kind of audience. People who are put off by theatre buildings (for whatever reason) feel less intimidated and maybe people used to theatres feel a little less comfortable and are more open to change?
Maybe in these new places it is easier to avoid preaching to the converted? That said, I’m aware that site-specific theatre has a real challenge because it often plays to small numbers so one theatre going elite who are in the know is replaced by another and access is denied to all but cognoscenti. Also, it is hard to tour (it is after all ‘site-specific’) which again limits access. Questions? Always more questions……
Jem Wall November 2014