Alexander Devriendt was at a standup show with his girlfriend a couple of

years ago, when the comedian on stage unexpectedly turned on her, calling
her a bitch and telling her to sweep up the stage, since that was all she was
good for. She professed not to mind, but Devriendt was infuriated, not least
because he couldn't retaliate. "Because it would seem like I wasn't getting
the joke. I hated that feeling," he says, still bristling. "I felt so unmanly."

That experience fed directly into Audience, Devriendt's latest project with
the Belgian theatre collective Ontroerend Goed. The show examines crowd
behaviour in various cultural and political contexts, testing the extent to
which people retain their individual identity and beliefs, and how easily
their thought processes can be manipulated by those around them. One
scene in particular stunned and appalled audiences at this year's
Edinburgh festival, and will no doubt do the same in Plymouth and London
this autumn. (Spoiler alert People planning to see the show, please look
away now: it's when performer Matthieu Sys trains a video camera on a
young woman in the audience and begins to insult her, telling the rest of
the audience that he will stop when she spreads her legs.)

"Is it shocking? Yes," says Devriendt. "But I wanted a moment where the
audience have to make a choice: even if they make a decision not to
intervene, it's a decision."

The creation of the scene was itself contentious. Maria Dafneros, the only
female performer in the piece, recalls: "We looked seriously at what we
could do to divide the audience, what would be that one step too far. When
we decided on 'spread your legs', I said, 'Absolutely not: it's sexual
harassment. We cannot do that.'" But the fact that Dafneros was so
repulsed by the idea was what persuaded her that it would work in the
show.

Test audiences were involved throughout the rehearsal process. If those

watching had been British, say the company, the scene may never have
passed. "In Belgium, they're like, you're pulling this joke on us, so we'll play
along," says performer Tiemen Van Haver. During the show,
Dafneros's character condemns the scene, while Joeri Smet's counters that
it's just a bit of fun.

"In Belgium, people are more on my side," says Smet. "In Britain, people
are on Maria's side. The moral outrage is bigger – as is the need to express
it publicly, and take a stand."

It's not the first time that Ontroerend Goed – whose name translates
roughly as "feel estate" – have been taken aback by the controversy one of
their shows has provoked in the UK. In Internal, which they brought to
Edinburgh in 2009, audience members were taken one-to-one into private
booths by the performers and seduced into revealing personal details about
themselves – only to witness those details being broadcast for all to hear in
the second part of the show. The company was accused of betraying the
trust of its audience, something Devriendt regrets. "I should have seen that
one coming. When you confide something to somebody, I think you [feel a]
need to communicate. But it wasn't my intention to be mean about that."

He has, however, always sought to test the boundaries of what people will
consider acceptable. As a teenager, he was expelled from school for
publishing a magazine satirising his teachers. His favourite hangout at the
time was an alternative jazz-poetry club in Ghent; it was here that he
befriended Ontroerend Goed's other founder members, Smet, and
producer David Bauwens, people he felt shared his aversion to rules.
Initially, they were a poetry group, but one that sought to change the way
poetry was performed. Their first proper show together, 2001's Porrer – "a
mixture of porn, horror and poetry" – featured Smet as "a sort of Jesus-
Hitler figure", and a scene in which Smet strangled Devriendt until he fell
unconscious. Although Devriendt was in physical danger, the audience
didn't realise. "Nobody believed [he was genuinely unconscious], because
it was so absurd that we would do that," says Devriendt.
Although after that show they dropped the poetry and focused on
the performance, it wasn't until 2005 that Devriendt began to think of
Ontroerend Goed as a theatre company. The turning point came with the
creation of a piece they called The Smile Off Your Face: "The basic idea for
that was to change the whole experience of theatre. Normally you're with
100 people: [with us] you're alone. Normally you're immobile: let's
make you mobile. Normally you can see: let's take that away." What
resulted was a piece in which audience-members were blindfolded and
bound into a wheelchair, then had each of their senses teased before a final,
unsettling moment of intimacy with a performer.

The goal of that – and of every show Ontroerend Goed has made since –
was to "show how your view of the world is mostly a projection of your inner
world," says Devriendt. He admits he struggles to find the balance between
confronting people and offending them. But he also thinks that audiences
who feel manipulated might be shying away from a fact of modern life: that
in a world of political spin and untrustworthy media, "we are being
manipulated all the time."
How far will you go to create an exciting theatrical experience?

As far as possible. With actors or colleagues: as far as they are willing to

go without sacrificing the joy of a rehearsal process. I try to give as much
ownership as possible to each of them. For me, that's the best way to
achieve a collective beautiful work. With an audience: I always want to
reach as many people as possible. I always to want to challenge my
audience because if art is not challenging, why bother? But sometimes the
line between shocking or challenging is a thin one, but one I'll definitely
not cross with History, I think.

Where do you find inspiration?

Reading is my first inspiration, from fiction to non-fiction, from newspapers

to novels, to commercial on the street, to forums on the web. From the
moment I see text I read it. No matter where it is. And the most interesting
is when patterns come to the surface.
Which theatre-makers do you find most interesting/inspiring at
the moment?

I don't see a lot of theatre but whenever I see good work it makes we want
to add beautiful things to audiences too. But I'm a bad theatre audience,
thinking too much. For me it's hard to find inspiration in my own medium.

Which artists working in mediums outside of live theatre do you

find interesting?

Writers like Julian Barnes, or Murakami. Great scientists like Richard

Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Brian Greene, Jared Diamond. And visual
artists like Sophie Calle (she's amazing, her work is like a holy grail for me),
Richard Prince, the Chapman Brothers. Comic book artist Neil Gaiman and
Craig Thompson.

What is your favourite era from the past?

Now. We're at a time where scientists and thinkers have provided us with
an explanation for the world we live in, with no need for inequality or
religion or whatever. It's definitely imperfect and a disaster sometimes but
I can't help feeling that in every other era it was even worse.

If you could be anyone from the history of everything, who would

it be?

Marcel Duchamp. He lived at a time where everything seemed possible in

the arts. The whole concept of modern art had yet to be started, and he
was in the middle of that.

What makes a good audience?

An audience that has chosen to come and see a performance.

What is the best theatrical experience you have had as an

audience member?
My second viewing of Bloody Messby forced entertainment. The mixture
of disappointment that everything was exactly the same as the first time I
saw it, and excitement on the other hand because I realized that they made
me believe it wasn't the first time. Well, that opened up my mind about
how reality was possible in theatre.

If you weren't a theatre-maker, what would you be?

I always hoped to be a musician. A pianist or singer or guitar-player, it

doesn't matter. But I can't, I'm a terrible singer and can't read notes. I'm
always jealous of musicians that they have both the live experience and
the possibility of sharing their music without them needing to be
there. Visual artists, writers or moviemakers mostly don't have the live
experience, but theatre doesn't have the possibility of not being there to
make it happen.

Describe A History of Everythingin three words.

Anti-creationist. Awe. Journey.

HK Magazine: How did the idea for “Fight Night” come about?

Alexander Devriendt: I had the idea for the longest time: what if the
audience could vote the actors out? I wanted to question the idea of a
majority that decides everybody, even in a democracy. For instance in
America, Obama had 53 percent and suddenly was in power. And what
about the different systems of democracy?

HK: Does the show support democracy?

AD: I don’t want to be moralizing, like “This is what you should do,” so I’d
like to keep I want to keep it open. As Winston Churchill famously said, it’s
the best and worst form of government. The show doesn’t approve and it
also doesn’t disapprove. It just makes you think about how you, the voter,
position yourself towards different kinds of democracy. What makes you
vote, how does it work for you, which form would work?

HK: So it’s questioning how or if democracy works?

AD: I want to see what people really believe in. What makes you like
somebody and then vote for them? What triggers you? A lot of people I
know vote for the appearance of somebody—he seems trustworthy, he has
authority—but seldom on their agenda or their beliefs. For instance in
Belgium, there’s a politician now in power who was on a quiz show called
‘The Smartest Person in the World.’ The problem is he’s quite right-wing,
but because he won that quiz, people started to think that he’s smart and
funny. But they seldom ask what he stands for. Then what happens is he
comes in power and suddenly we have a lot of protests against the
government. A lot of people voted for him because they trusted him. That’s
what I want to question: the danger of democracy.

HK: How do you think the “voting” process will resonate with
Hongkongers, given the sensitive political scene right now?

AD: I dont want to pretend that I know what happened in Hong Kong. But
I am curious. Even though there’s no decisive form of democracy [in Hong
Kong] yet, I want to talk about it on a big scale. Voting is not only in [political]
democracy. Sometimes, for instance, you have a club and you have to
appoint a leader. I wanted to take the real political issues out of the show,
and then see how similar it feels to the broader political arena.

HK: How big a part does the audience play?

AD: The audience’s choices will be really important because they decide
which actors will leave. The actors know a lot of lines, and every night the
audience will see a part of the show, but every night it’s the same show…
more or less. [When you vote] you answer for yourself, and you will feel the
power you have.
Ontroerend Goed’s All That Is Wrong comes to Arnolfini between 21
and 23 May. Director Alexander Devriendt explains more about how
the show came to be.

Before I started this project, I figured that I had many desires for it. First of
all, I wanted to work with Koba. She has performed in [Ontroerend Goed’s]
Once and For All and Teenage Riot and I love her presence on stage.

She has just turned 18, the age of entering into the ‘big world’ and feeling
the pressure to make important decisions. Koba is also a good writer, but
she’s suffering from a writer’s block. I envisaged a show in which she would
deal with what’s stopping her and turn it into a piece of art.

For Ontroerend Goed, I wanted to find a way to create an intimate

performance, without resorting to one-on-one theatre. I’ve never made a
solo, but it has been on my wish list for a while. I was interested to explore
different ways of presenting a single person’s life experience – his or her
universe – without using the classical techniques of a
theatrical monologue. In this sense, I thought of Koba as an artist rather
than an actress. I wanted her to apply her own personal instrument of
expression, which is writing and I wanted her to have complete ownership
over her act. I think there’s an intimacy in the fact that she’s there, all alone,
with only chalk and a cloth, allowing the audience a closer look into her
thoughts and feelings. It’s a highly vulnerable position, but she manages it
with great stamina.

All That Is Wrong approaches very closely the kind of work I’d expect from
a company that calls itself a theatre-performance group. I’ve always been
fascinated with visual artists who produce exhaustive work, like the
Chapman brothers and their immense scale model landscapes of hell, or
Sophie Calle who has a break-up letter analysed by no less than 107
women. The curiosity I feel when an artist is fully absorbed by his work,
when he tolls at an installation day by day, for years, getting every detail
right, seeking completeness, is extremely beautiful and compelling. I
wanted to let the audience have a taste of this craving in a performance. In
a way, we present a process rather than just showing the result, which
might as well belong in an art gallery.

As the third part in a trilogy of teenage shows, All That Is Wrong marks the
final stage, the ‘coming of age’. Koba is at the point in here life where she
has to start taking position in the wider world, which includes making
choices about what to care for. For me, it’s also a way to address the ‘blind
spots’ we all have – the fact that most of us know there’s so much wrong
in the world, but we deliberately dismiss and ignore it, because we’ve
already made our choices. As a young adult trying to find her way, Koba is
the perfect person to talk about that disturbing complexity, without pointing
the finger.
scratching at the surface of ontroerend goed

Note for anyone who hasn't seen Audience and is planning to attend the run at
Soho: please be aware that I give away heaps about the show, so if you want to
go in completely fresh, don't read this until after you've seen it. Thanks!

What a slippery bunch of people Ontroerend Goed are. Before I met up with their
artistic director, Alexander Devriendt, I was warned to beware: he's an arch
seducer, who would fix me with his soulful brown eyes and hypnotise me. I left
the interview secure in the knowledge that I was immune to his charms, and
wondering idly whether his eyes perhaps weren't brown but hazel-green.

I haven't seen all of their work, for two reasons: they arrived in the UK while I was
distracted by pregnancy and the implacable demands of small children; plus their
shows required a level of audience participation that made me shrink. I'm mostly
too fearful a theatre-goer (and, more consistently, too much of a control freak)
to submit to being bound, blindfolded and steered around in a wheelchair, as you
are in The Smile Off Your Face, too gullible to risk the sweet-talk of Internal.

So it wasn't until 2010, and the run of Teenage Riot in Edinburgh, that I caught up
with, if not OG, at least Devriendt. And I hated Teenage Riot, so much so that I
wrote a post-script to Lyn Gardner's review detailing everything I felt to be wrong
with the show. What infuriated and saddened me was the sexism, the MTV-
fuelled vision of women as semi-clad playthings and anorexics, and the teenagers'
willingness to promote that vision. Even when they spat in the face of the
audience for “creating” this sexualised adult culture, or appeared to be rejecting
it, they did so in a fashion that merely underscored their acceptance. When two
of the girls started to give earnest advice on how not to gain weight, I thought of
all the teenagers watching who might go home and put their tips into action, and
wanted to scream. This was the gender status quo masquerading as audacious
subversion, and I wanted nothing to do with it. (Recently I unearthed Matt
Trueman's typically penetrating review of the show on Carousel of Fantasies and
began to see the shortcomings in my bridling response, but that's another story.)

It was that disappointment, more than apprehension, that disinclined me to

engage with OG until the second incarnation of BAC's One-on-One festivals earlier
this year. What persuaded me was word-of-mouth at the first One-on-One:
anyone who took part in A Game of You talked about it with a huge grin on their
face, and declared it the hit of the night. Perhaps inevitably, part of me was
disappointed again when I finally joined in – although less by the show itself than
my involvement in it. I didn't give myself to it; I was reserved, reluctant to speak.

Some of that was down to mental discomfort: throughout I felt watched and
judged. You enter and sit in a cramped and stifling curtained space, facing an
empty glass jug and an oversized mirror that – I intuitively knew – conceals people
sitting behind it. When a man came in and began talking to me, I barely said a
word. If I remember rightly, in the next room I had to watch and discuss a
recording of myself in front of the mirror. My response to each question was
evasive: I didn't want anything I said to be used against me, so I kept as much as
I could to myself. Further along, I watched another performer impersonate me
while I sat behind the mirror of the first room, and the incompleteness of the
taciturn character I saw made me feel oddly wistful.

At the heart of all this naval-gazing is another room, possibly the most interesting
and excruciating of the whole scenario. Here I watched a recording of another
audience member sitting in the first room. The performer who sat with me asked
what I thought she did for a living, about her personal life, what I thought her
house was like. Answering the questions, I felt painfully divided. On the one hand,
how could I possibly know anything about this woman? All I could do was
construct wayward surmises from her appearance, which seemed an absurd,
even malicious thing to do. On the other hand, something about her sleek hair,
mousy but with blonde highlights, her enviably nice, smart-casual brown dress,
subtly detailed around the neckline, her generally neat appearance, her soft face,
her failure to notice that the jug was empty until she tried to pour a drink, gave
me the irresistible impression that she was utterly ditzy, that she worked in admin
but frequently made mistakes, and that her personal life was a concatenation of
failed relationships. I was appalled by the belittling thoughts in my head: under
no circumstances could I voice them, even in the privacy of that little room. So I
hedged and I fudged and still managed to sound pretty nasty and judgmental,
chiefly because she had sleek, mousy-blonde hair.

Fast-forward to the final bit of the show, and I'm handed a CD: on it is written
“About you”. My stomach lurched as I guessed that this was a recording of
someone else talking about me in that treacherous enclosed space. And that I,
too, had been recorded. And that the sleek-haired woman would be handed her
own CD, and would hear all the demeaning things I'd said. Part of me was
horrified: no one wants to hear themselves being put down. And part of me was
thrilled by the transgression: there would be no retribution, because she would
never know that the speaker was me.

For months afterwards, my CD sat on my desk: I couldn't bring myself to listen.

But in the week before travelling to Edinburgh for the festival I finally plucked up
the courage, and was startled. The woman talking about me was adorable. She
guessed that I write, that I'm a perfectionist, that I have a controlling streak, that
I am far more vain than I would admit to being; she guessed that I was putting off
children for the sake of work (which is how my life would be if I had been left to
my own devices); that I live in a house without junk or clutter (although that's
only true because my husband makes me tidy up). There was such kindness and
generosity in her portrait of me: a kindness and generosity I had failed to
demonstrate or even locate within myself.

The more I mused on the unknown woman who had talked about me, the
unknown woman about whom I had talked, the various images of myself, both
self-generated and generated by others, the more I appreciated what Ontroerend
Goed had achieved. A Game of You made me completely rethink, then rethink
again and again, over the course of several months, how I present myself, how
people understand that presentation, how I understand other people's
projections of self, and how entire social structures are built from those
projections. And it does so without even seeming to – by playing a cheeky little
game that lasts barely 20 minutes. What an extraordinary, subtle piece of work.

It was with all this in my head that I arrived at Audience, OG's new show in
Edinburgh. That, and the crackling of a furore already surrounding the show
following early performances, most of which I'd managed to block out, although
not enough that I didn't feel horribly apprehensive about taking part. I find
traverse theatre intimidating enough (perhaps it's sheer egoism that makes me
fear I'm being watched at all times), let alone being filmed and seeing my image
projected in remorseless close-up. And yet, as the camera began its slow sweep
across the room, what struck me wasn't the aggression of its attention but the
gentleness. It picked up the flare of a sleeve, the mottled pink-and-white skin of
tensely clenched fingers, the flickering of a nervous mouth trying not to smile:
tiny details, so insignificant, but made beautiful by the camera's concentrated
caress.

And then comes the ugliness: the moment of division. The camera is trained on a
young woman sitting near the front, someone radiant yet unobtrusive – unlike
the raucous women sitting at the other end of her row, pretty but brash, noisily
laughing – and one of the performers begins verbally abusing her. It's
astonishingly uncomfortable, but electrifying too, at least on the night I saw it,
because barely had the abuse begun when a man sitting behind me stood up and
hurled a boot at the performer, with an aim almost true. As others in the audience
began to clamour for the performer to stop, part of me felt annoyed: I wanted to
see where OG were going. As it happened, where they were going was a place I
found utterly repulsive, and I was relieved when the OG performers moved the
show on – despite the audience's obstreperous desire to continue arguing over
this scene.

Even as I watched, I had a sense that what had needed to happen had happened:
that someone had reacted, strongly, but that the show wasn't about that reaction
any more than it was about that provocation. What followed was an interrogation
of intervention, of what we will stand up for and against, individually and as a
group, in a variety of contexts. As the audience continued to grumble, I wondered
how many of the people in the room had sat in, I don't know, the Royal Court,
and watched silently as a woman was raped or abused. How many had witnessed
couples arguing in the street, women crying as men raged at them, and walked
on by. As a spin-doctored political debate was staged by the performers, as music
blared and we were encouraged to stand up and dance, as the images of the
audience melted into archive film of rallies and dissent and dictators and liberal
leaders, I wondered how we choose to behave the way we do, whether we
behave the same regardless of context, whether we're aware of influence and
wholly able to resist it. I thought about the rioters who had torn through London
just a few nights before: who was leading, who was following? Why was it so
difficult to maintain a clear personal response to their actions? How can one
maintain a sense of self within society? What is that self anyway?

By the end of the show I felt as though I was vibrating – it's the first time in ages,
really ages, when I haven't just earwigged other people's conversations in the
foyer afterwards but asked them what they thought. What I discovered was that
I was very much in a minority in loving the show. What most people said to me –
comments echoed by Lyn Gardner when I spoke to her a couple of days later –
was that they thought the political content was naff, that the real meat of the
show was in that attack on the girl and everything that followed was heavy-
handed and sentimental. Immediately I worried: had I just not been smart enough
to see the show's weaknesses? That nervousness is yet to leave me (another thing
I hate about myself), although I felt a lot better after reading Joyce McMillan's
positive review and finding I wasn't totally alone.

Since talking to Ontroerend Goed, I've wondered whether the naivety those
audience members reacted against doesn't generate directly from Devriendt. We
were, admittedly, both performing in the interview, and there is, of course, the
strong possibility that I was unwittingly mesmerised by him, but even so, there
seemed to be something disarmingly ingenuous about him, a softness that I
hadn't expected. Some things he said that have stayed with me: he is the accident
child of a painter (father) and a businesswoman; Joeri Smet, his best friend and
collaborator in OG, describes him as a weird combination of their artistic and
commercial natures. He is genuinely, deeply affected by reviews, taking every
criticism to heart. Talking about the attack on the girl in Audience, he told me
about the night his girlfriend was similarly abused by a comedian: he wanted to
react, “but if I would have I would be the laughing stock because it would seem I
was not getting the joke. And I hated that feeling, I felt so unmanly: I didn't
protect my girlfriend. My girlfriend said, 'Hey, I can handle it.' I was like, yes, but
my cavalier feeling, my white knight, I couldn't be. I wanted to have the
opportunity for an audience to be a white knight, I wanted to give that freedom.”
I've put what he said more or less verbatim, for one because it seemed so
extraordinary to me, both absurd from a feminist point of view, and curiously
romantic in its fairy-tale sense of manhood; and because it's clear to me that this
is exactly what that scene in Audience is about: inviting a man to behave like a
white knight, to throw a boot at the performer and save the pretty girl. No
wonder the women around me were so infuriated when they weren't allowed
space to speak; come to that, why wasn't I? The gendering is retrograde and
ridiculous. Contrarily, I like Maria Dafneros' point of view: she resisted the scene
during rehearsals, performs her disapproval during the course of the show, and
wonders whether, “These guys that get up and say, 'stop it, leave her alone', I
don't know if they realise that they take her choice away. One girl actually said
afterwards, 'What if I wanted to spread my legs? Let me do that.' But they were
not busy with that, they were busy with another issue, whatever it was.”

Another thing Devriendt said, or at least intimated, that continues to play on my

mind is that he feels a sense of guilt about Internal, troubled that so many people
felt betrayed by the show. A Game of You, he said, was specifically designed in
response to those adverse reactions: “I'm really protective of you,” he says of
audiences in A Game of You, “I don't break the trust of audience there – and I
found a way to be more confronting because nobody will have seen that you
didn't give enough, nobody knows what you have experienced there.” In the
moment of him talking about this, I agreed with him absolutely; then walking
home from the interview I thought of the girl I had talked about morosely
listening to her CD and felt duped. Again, reading Matt Trueman on A Game of
You was usefully clarifying: he argues that it isn't individual personalities being
scrutinised but the act of judgment. But then his response came straight from his
response to Internal, and it's not one that I, in all my guilt and tendency to self-
criticism, feel wholly able to share.

A question hangs over Ontroerend Goed, raised by Ian Shuttleworth in the

comments below Lyn's brief piece on Audience published during the festival: are
they actually in control of what they do? Do they realise the extent to which they
affect people? Lyn is convinced that they are, that Devriendt is an arch
manipulator who knows exactly what he's doing. Reading Matt on Teenage Riot
– which Devriendt essentially forced him to see again, to watch through his own
(ie Devriendt's imposed) perspective – inclines me to agree with her. And yet,
when Devriendt talked about protecting people in A Game of You, there was no
sense of him accounting for those CDs at the end – a lot of people, Lyn tells me,
never pluck up the courage to listen to theirs. When he talked about people
feeling betrayed by Internal, he said: “I should have seen that one coming.” His
tone was properly rueful: he felt bamboozled, and stupid, and disappointed in
himself. When I asked him whether Audience wasn't perhaps compromised by
the fact that so many people were coming in knowing what to expect, and
intending to intervene, he confessed he had been caught out by that, too.

Something else that has stayed with me, although we didn't talk about it, was a
line I read in another interview with Devriendt: “Joeri wanted to live in Berlin
[when they were in their very early 20s] and I begged him not to go, because I felt
I needed him to create amazing work. He stayed.” Whereas Devriendt struck me
as open and genuine, Joeri Smet seemed contained, a little bit intimidating,
someone to be approached with caution. Perhaps I felt this because of his role in
Audience: he's the performer whose political speech, bland at first, increasingly
firebrand, ends in a Nazi salute. There was something Smet said about Internal,
when we had finished talking but the recorder was still running, that intrigues
me: “It made me love people more.” Had he not loved them very much before?

In his way, Devriendt is as inscrutable as Smet. The work they make together
demands that you take long, hard looks at yourself, yet offers no respite if you
don't like what you see. Before the interview, one of my key questions, the one I
was most looking forward to asking, was what their shows have taught them
about themselves. I spoke to four people from the company – Devriendt, Smet,
Dafneros and Tiemen Van Haver, coincidentally the person who guided me
around A Game of You (and who told me that when he's appeared in that show
as an audience member, filling in gaps, three people have described him as gay,
teaching him once and for all to take the things people say about him with a big
handful of salt) – and not one of them answered me straight. Smet came closest:
“If it works, people really want to share things with you. You hear life stories or
choices that people are struggling with you that reflect on you as well, because
you have the same question or struggle. Then after a while you, I, ask the
questions that really interest me, so I get a lot of answers to that same question.”
What those questions or struggles were, though, he didn't say. Otherwise, what
they all talked about was what they had learned about other cultures, about
group mechanisms around the world. Always, always, this tension between the
group and the individual, the impersonal and the personal, the predictable and
unpredictable.

I wanted to write this because there wasn't space in the short piece I wrote for
G2 to ask or answer all the questions I have about this company. It was supposed
to be clarifying; instead, my thoughts feel more tangled than ever. But that, I
suppose, is what makes OG so fascinating. Their idealism is laced with cunning;
they put audiences under a microscope while remaining elusive themselves.
Perhaps if I had seen more of their work I'd have a better handle on who they are,
what they do, how they do it. But somehow, I doubt it.
In his company’s first show, Alexander Devriendt was strangled onstage
each night until he passed out. The Belgian-born director has been pushing
the boundaries of live performance ever since he founded Ontroerend Goed
in 1994, creating theatre characterised by its focus upon an honest account
of young people’s experiences.

They’ve won praise and condemnation for their challenging approach; even
the laissez-faire European theatre scene was shocked by shows
like Internaland Audience, where one of the performers turned a camera on
a young woman in the audience, insulting her and telling everyone else that
he would only stop if she spread her legs.

In 2009 the company began their coming-of-age trilogy with Once And For
All-the same performers have spent their adolescent years growing up on
stage, and now Devriendt is bringing the second and final parts of the story
to the Melbourne Festival.

Teenage Riot incarcerates its eight young actors in a room with a handheld
camera; in All That Is Wrong, the cast is stripped down to the solitary Koba
Ryckewaert, who traces the fragile border between rebellion and political
awareness.

EG: What attracts you to presenting your work in Australia?

AD: I think it’s a bit of a love relationship; I like Australia a lot, and I’m just
happy they like my work too, there’s a connection there…and a lot of open-
mindedness to new and experimental work.

EG: Is there something that attracts you to presenting your work to a festival
context rather than on its own–what you can get in Edinburgh, or
Melbourne?

AD: What I like the most about presenting work in festivals is it teaches
communication and a lot of my work benefits from that. When people go
outside and they talk about it, the performance lives on. And in a festival
that’s more likely to happen.
EG: After working with her in the first two parts of the trilogy, what was it
about Koba Ryckewaert as a writer and performer that made you want to
make All That Is Wrong just with her?

AD: She was the youngest in Once And For All and because she’s now
turned 18 that whole cast–she was the last one to become an adult–that felt
right, to have a full circle. She’s also just an amazing personality; she has a
beautiful presence both onstage and outside–she has these qualities that
are really interesting to watch and in that sense, although Koba’s not really
an actress, she can really fill the stage.

EG: Some of the work you’ve done in smaller settings has been quite
controversial, especially with audience interaction; are you less interested
now in using that kind of approach?

AD: I never really change these things. What I feel like–is that the
possibilities of a theatre space are just… you can do anything. If you want
to do a one on one performance and put your audience in a wheelchair you
can do that. The problem isn’t whether something is provoking or
challenging–it’s always a thin line between the two, but I always try to make
work that is challenging because if art isn’t challenging, why bother?

EG: I’ve read that you find it quite hard to enjoy watching theatre.

AD: I just don’t get a lot of inspiration out of it. If I see something beautiful
in the theatre I can really enjoy it of course, but the problem is that I can’t
transfer it to my own work, because it’s already been done.

EG: So you find then that you draw most of your inspiration from other art
forms?

AD: Mostly from non-fiction or from visual art.

EG: And what sort of role does music play in the work that you make?
AD: Music is just the one medium that can always take me to another place
and can really touch me emotionally…sometimes, when something
emotional happens, you’re always present with yourself in the audience
setting and you can resist that feeling, because you feel the manipulation.
So music can be manipulative without any resistance.

EG: How do you see the role that theatre plays within our society changing
with accompanying advances in media technologies?

AD: In a way we’re always trying to tell the same stories–I’m

overgeneralising, but we always try to communicate the same stories in a
new way, and the new media and new possibilities in the here and now,
they can let you tell those same stories in a different way, so they make
sense to you. When you come to see my show you will be in the room with
the director and the actors. That kind of direct communication is so unique
to the medium of theatre-and in that way, theatre will always incorporate
new media because they are helpful for telling our stories.
In their most extreme moments, the Belgian theatre company Ontroerend
Goed have had people throwing shoes at them and they’ve had people
falling in love with them and even stalking them around the streets of
Edinburgh. Their first piece shown at the Fringe – the 20-minute one-on-
one performance The Smile Off Your Face in 2007 – was immediately
crowned with the Festival’s most coveted awards as well as much critical
acclaim. Joyce McMillan called it an ‘essay in intimacy’, while Lyn Gardner
qualified it simply as ‘therapy.’

This was the first part of what became The Personal Trilogy – a series of
short one-on-one pieces, containing the controversial take on modern
dating – Internal.

Equally important for the company’s oeuvre and their overall image was
their innovative and extraordinarily sincere work with teenagers. In an
interview I did with the company in 2010,the artistic director Alexander
Devriendt explained their first teenage show Once and for All We Are
Gonna Tell You Who We Are So Shut Up and Listen came from wanting to
explore the ‘paradox of adolescence’ where ‘it seems you are very free as a
child, but at the same time you are very self-conscious’.

Incidentally the key company members themselves – Devriendt,

dramaturg/perfomer Joeri Smet and producer David Bauwens – had all
met each other as teenagers too, when they started performance poetry
evenings together in the mid-1990s. This youthfulness of spirit as well as
accompanying arrogance and raw passion, never seem to have left the
company’s work. Each one of their pieces is – like Once and for All – always
rooted in a kind of complex question they are trying to answer. Over the
years, their work has acquired a global significance and they regularly
perform in Australia and the US as well as Europe.

This summer, Oberon Books has published a collection of nine of their

scripts under the titleAll Work and No Plays, a uniquely exciting volume
(reviewed here) featuring production shots as well as texts that sometimes
look like they could be secret code.

Alexander and I meet on Skype one Sunday afternoon to talk about this and
other projects. As ever he is congenial and unusually generous with his time
for someone with such a busy international schedule.

“The reason why we did the book was that once in a while we get an enquiry
about scripts. And the scripts we had were unreadable, because they just
don’t work the same way. Once and For All, the script, just didn’t make
sense – you couldn’t envision it. Sometimes we sent in recordings. But
with The Smile Off Your Face you can’t even send a recording. And when I
saw some restagings of Once and For All – they were exactly the same. I
was like: ‘Oh, no, that’s not the point!”
Smile Off Your Face

The company also receives a lot of queries about their process – especially
concerning their one-on-one work – so the book was intended as a way of
providing this sort of insight. And in addition, there was a desire to record
the work for posterity in some way: “I saw that my generation of theatre-
makers doesn’t put things on paper, because it’s all so impossible
sometimes. So videos are the only means to record it. It seems that in, say,
50 years time there will be this gap of work that’s not accessible anymore
except on video where you don’t get the same feeling. So what we try to do
for each of the several plays is to ask – ‘how can you transpose this on
paper?”

This kind of conceptual engagement with the performance script and its
potential purpose is certainly a feature that, one could argue, makes
Ontroerend Goed a true 21st century company. Their position in this
respect is helped by the fact that as continental Europeans they possibly
escaped the kind of text vs. devised performance heritage characteristic of
the English-speaking world. The Personal Trilogy, for example, began life
as work for galleries rather than theatre spaces, and yet, they consistently
refer to all their work as ‘plays’ (a term more often heard in the context of
literature).

Interestingly, Devriendt has often invoked Forced Entertainment as one of

the key formative influences: “I remember when I was 19, I saw Forced
Entertainment’s First Night and I wanted something tangible from that. So
I got the book Certain Fragments – which I loved having, but I remember
I was also missing something: ‘Yeah, I know more, but maybe it’s not that
that I want’. I liked this solution of Forced Entertainment – just fragments,
just inspirational material – but I also regretted the fact that it doesn’t feel
like a play in my theatre class or something like that. For them there was
also this thing of ‘Let’s not even try it, let’s take a different approach’ –
which I respect, but I also wanted to acknowledge the fact that sometimes
you just want to read a play.”

Alexander quickly follows this up by saying that he in fact doesn’t enjoy

reading plays in the way they are usually available to us. In this respect, it
was important to the company that the transposition of their work on paper
should not create in the reader the feeling that they were missing out on
something by not seeing it live. Like a lot of their performance work
therefore, this project too had a paradox at its core which became pretext
for creative investigation. Their attitude to the old text vs. performance
problem could in this way be seen as more playful than partisan, and this
is reflected in their choice of the title for the book: “We wanted to find a
balance between the fact that it is not exactly plays you will be reading (at
least not in the exact definition) – and on that level broaden the definition
of course – and on the other hand, the fact that it is also a collection of
work.”

How did they work on the text as an ensemble? “Most of all it was Joeri, he
did the main editing, then me and Mieke [Versyp] who is sometimes our
dramaturg. The recipes of Once and For All was just me remembering the
rehearsal process and trying to put that down. Joeri was already playing
The Personal Trilogy longer than me, so he was doing that translation. The
History of Everything Joeri did too. But it was always a collaboration
between us three and the designer. That was a really, really close
relationship. Because we always felt that the design was essential for the
reading process. That was Bas [Rogiers], our regular website designer.”

The project was originally

envisaged as an ebook intended primarily to meet the pragmatic needs of
an interested readership. Even in the early stages of the collaboration with
Oberon, the ebook option was still considered. However, the company soon
realized that they would have more creative freedom in design if they opted
for a printed version. The page layout is not fixed on digital platforms, for
example, so they decided it was important to ‘keep control of the page’. The
page is, in a way, laid out as a stage in this book, or at least as a visual image.
Words chase each other across the page, sometimes – especially in the
teenage pieces – they are angrily crossed out, or capitalized into graphic
shouting.

The design decisions, however, always emerge out of the theme, intention
and aesthetic of the works themselves. For example, All That is Wrong – a
piece where a young performer wrote all her grievances with the world on
black board with chalk is printed in white on black pages. This was one idea
that came from Bas Rogiers.

“Most typical plays have stage directions in italics and the text is straight.
Bas’s main approach was – let’s scrap that. OK, text is important, but the
stage directions are the most important. He changed that whole thing of –
that’s what’s typical of a playscript. So it feels really light, because with most
theatre plays – it can be a lot of text, and I think you can read this book in
a couple of hours, it’s really easy. Even though we are not book-sellers and
we don’t really know how to make books – this book is what an OG book
should feel like.”

The process of working on the scripts lasted for a year and a half overall,
allowing time for the company to ‘digest the plays, to try different
approaches, to test things out’. There was a lot of proofreading involved,
carried out by the performers themselves as well as other associates who
had and those who had not seen the shows. The script for Audience
presented a real problem because the contribution of each live audience
was central to the performance, so a suitably analogous way of framing this
for a potential book-reader had to be found: “There was a moment where
Joeri said: I found my writing drive for the show, and that was the
[overarching narrative voice] of Manipulator. Joeri found the drive to write
it and I enjoyed so much reading it. I was like: ‘I hate this guy, but it’s
perfect for the show!”

Was the main aim to encourage people to create new performances or was
it simply to provide a record of the work?
“For me it’s always been threefold. If you have an interest in the working
process, it’s a sort of insight – that’s why there is always a Creation section
[at the beginning of each script]. If you want to restage it – that’s possible.
Or if you simply just want to revisit the experience [you had as a viewer],
it’s there too. We wanted to have these three possibilities because we
already have a small audience, if people want to read about a theatre so
small, let’s keep it open enough – but ‘open’ without being ‘undefined’. For
people who haven’t seen it we did provide additional information, but not
too much so it doesn’t feel in the end ‘that’s the play’. It was about finding
the balance between these three groups of people.”

All That is Wrong

Suspicion against ‘devised’ scripts in the English-speaking context has

often been fuelled by the question of what happens with the royalties in
such a case – who is ultimate ‘author’ here? But for Ontroerend Goed this
question does not seem to arise in the same way.

“The royalties always go to the company. It’s really weird, authorship of the
plays is for me never divided. Maybe one day I will have to deal with it, I
don’t know, but we haven’t come into trouble with it yet. The work is
protected but in the name of the company. The idea is if you don’t make
money out of it – if you want to do it in a school – it’s there; but if you make
money out of it, could you ask permission. But I have this feeling of – use
it, whatever, do with it what you want! If you wanna do something with
people in the wheelchair, it’s not our idea, do something with it and get the
inspiration out of it.”

The extent to which the book has been an important but nevertheless a
secondary pursuit for the company is evident in the fact that Ontroerend
Goed seems busier than ever. They have six productions on the road at
present. One is a French version of A Game of You, which opened in
Avignon this year – the company’s first appearance at this festival. The
French team are supervised by Joeri Smet – ‘because his French is the best’
– and are currently touring France. The core artistic team of Ontroerend
Goed has grown in numbers too with some younger blood coming in –
including Charlotte de Bruyne who had initially appeared in some of the
teenage works, Angelo Tijssens who was in Fight Night and Karolien De
Bleser who has worked with the company sporadically in the past.
Alexander is particularly fond of the fact that OG has this year curated
the Theatre at the Sea Festival - the event which in fact launched their
career through an award they won there in 2003. Then there was Sirens –
a kind of ode to feminism – in Edinburgh. “Which I was approaching with
caution. With Edinburgh you never know. But it was the first time that a
play of ours was so warmly received. Almost by everybody. Some people
could say almost cynically, ‘Ooh, they are mainstream now’, but the play
wasn’t. The play was for me tricky because it was really, really personal –
although I didn’t write any text, I only listened to the girls, like I
approached All That is Wrong.”

So where did the impetus for the piece come from?

“The feminism came completely from me from the start. Four years ago we
wrote an application where I wanted to do something with six girls. And I
do have to say, six years ago, it was more: ‘Yes, that sounds fun!’ But after
making All That is Wrong, I said I don’t want to make a show that’s about
an issue that’s not on that board. I had two starting points: the issue – I
read some books like The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir and The
Feminine Mystique [by Betty Friedan]; and I had the idea ‘I want you to
scream’ as an expression of joy, complaint, anger. And they said ‘Oh, that’s
a cliché, let’s do it!’ And it’s a concert – that’s pretty important in the show
– these girls have a different way of talking in that sense.”

“I also thought before the show – I don’t consider myself sexist, but nobody
does. But if we all don’t, why is it still there? And it felt like – OK, let’s
investigate this, because it’s probably not true. We probably are sexist. And
it was a heavy process. It was good. It was really fucking personal. Also, I
was the male ear. For instance, sometimes we talked about things and they
said, ‘Yes, but we know’. And I said, ‘Yes, but I don’t’. And also at times
there may be separate aspects of an issue, but if you put them all together,
it’s harder to ignore. And that was the point of the show to some extent.”

Sirens is coming to Soho Theatre in December, and Fight Night – the show
which invites the audience to consider their democratic agency – is coming
to the Unicorn Theatre in April, just in time for the general election.

“And also for the first time we are gonna be in the Hong Kong festival. I like
that Fight Nightgoes from Turkey to Hong Kong and seems to connect with
different democratic processes all over.”

New projects are in development too. A production that Alexander has

already been working on mentally for a year and a half has the palindromic
title Are We Not Drawn Onward to New Era. And the show will be a
palindrome too:

“You’re gonna be able to see it from the back and from the front. With
an ‘O’, a zero-point in the middle. It’s an English show it’s gonna be only
in English. And the question is also essential: Are we gonna make it as
humanity or not, will we make it through progress or will we make it
through doing less? Because it feels like one of the main questions we battle
with now. Maybe every age does. I can imagine that during the Cold War
people talked about it, or during the Black Death people talked about it, but
it feels like it’s hard as an artist to find a metaphor for that. I don’t want to
take a standpoint, I want to present both of these possibilities. Once in a
while you have an idea where form and content go so closely together. I had
it with A Game of You, I had it with Once and for All, it’s just like – I need
to take care of this idea. It doesn’t always mean that they have to be the best
shows but they have the greatest starting points. So I’m grateful I had the
idea, and I just need to cherish it.”

The problem is: this will be a big show. It’s an international co-production
with Adelaide festival, featuring a 12-member cast. It will not be possible to
tour this to the Edinburgh Fringe (though the company are talking to the
Edinburgh International Festival), and the situation is not helped by the
fact that Belgium’s right wing government has also introduced arts cuts.

“The hardest thing is that since I made All That Is Wrong I don’t want to
make anything that doesn’t clearly resonate with everything that is
happening – whether it’s sexism or whether it’s young children dealing
with everything, whether it’s democracy. And I do have to say, sometimes
you wonder: is it because the funding is constantly questioned, you don’t
feel the freedom to just make art. For instance, I can’t imagine now that we
can make anything likeThe Smile anymore. Because The Smile doesn’t deal
with an issue. It’s a journey.”

I’m struck by these growing concerns with politics so I wonder whether

Alexander feels that Ontroerend Goed have matured as a company in some
way?

“It could be. But there is always this danger with maturing that you lose
something. And maybe that’s why I mentioned earlier that part of the
artistic company are very young people now. I can only speak for myself.
Before Teenage Riot and A Game of You there was this thing of me wanting
to be a good theatre director and needing to prove it. But now it’s about
how can we each time look at a different approach. So for instance,
with Sirens, the question of feminism and sexism was really something I
didn’t have an opinion about before. It was lingering and it was
underneath. With Fight Night, I had this feeling about the democratic
process that I as a voter was concerned but not informed well enough. So
it’s always trying to get outside of your comfort zone. I don’t want to boast,
but I always feel we need to reinvent ourselves with each performance. And
now after a certain amount of time, you just always have to do it. Otherwise
there’s no use, and there’s no risk, and there’s no joy.”

Sirens will be at Soho Theatre from 2nd December 2014 – 4th January
2015. For tickets visit the Soho Theatre website.

All Work and No Plays: Blueprints for Nine Theatre Performances by

Ontroerend Goed is available from Oberon Books.

Theatre-Making: Interplay Between Text and Performance in the 21st

Century, by Duška Radosavljević is available from Palgrave Macmillan.
Once And For All We're Gonna Tell You Who We Are So Shut Up and
Listen.Yes, it is a very long title. However, it's extremely appropriate. The
newest show to come to Harbourfront Centre as part of the very popular
World Stage line-up is a moving piece of physical theatre from Belgium's
performance group Ontroerend Goed. The piece is comprised of thirteen
teenagers who struggle with various issues of youth and adolescent
rebellion, and so in a way, the long and convoluted title is well suited to a
chaotic show that tells the story of a very turbulent time in everyone's life.

The show comes to Harbourfront's Enwave Theatre February 16th - 20th.

It has taken the world by storm, winning Fringe First, Herald Angel and
Total Theatre Awards in Edinburgh and touring Australia, Europe and the
United States. It is directed by Alexander Devriendt, who took some time
to talk with BWW about the show and what it means to him:

You have said before that you created this work because you feel
teenagers are under-represented in theatre, what kind of message are
you hoping to get across to young people who come to see the
performance?

First of all, I would like to say that the show is directed at the teenager
inside everyone, and in that way it's not only for young people, but aimed
largely at adults. I wanted to make a performance with youngsters that was
for an adult audience, and also something where young people could
recognize themselves.

Regarding the message I would like to get across, it really is mainly to "shut
and up and listen" to them, and see how you feel about it when you do. A
lot of adults will say that they long to re-experience their childhood but not
their teenage years, and I feel those are the years that should really be
cherished. A lot of people see those years as an age where they are happy
when it's over. However, that attitude breeds a society without rebellion.
It isn't necessarily that teenagers are under-represented in theatre, but I
wanted to look in a positive way at the destructive nature of that particular
age. That is something I think has been missing in any work I have seen
on stage with youngsters.

In an interview you stated that teenagers often miss out on that

wonderful part of their youth because they are too busy wanting to be
adults, and now you work every day with a group of teenagers living
an atypical life because they are on the road touring with this
production. Do you feel the production gives them a chance to live
out some of that teenage rebellion in a more "safe" environment?

Yes. Although the performance space isn't the only real safe place I
provide. I have tried to create that everywhere, including in the rehearsal
space, I have made it a place of freedom. When I was young I didn't have
a place like that so I went looking for it in other areas. I remember some
abandoned houses I could go to with my friends. A lot of teenagers will go
looking for it, and find it in dangerous places.

This show has been all over the world, how have the reactions
differed between countries? Have you been particularly well received
in certain areas?

When we first started touring, I think I noticed differences much more than
I do now. I remember that when we were in the UK I felt that the show had
a bigger impact socially than artistically, but now after touring in several
different countries and continents in the Western World I can't help but
notice that most people react in the same way. It's hard to believe that a
production from our little town in Ghent could make such a connection with
teenagers from other countries. We just had an amazing run in New York,
and now I believe more and more that teenagers all over the world feel the
same power inside themselves, and they all recognize that this is a big
metamorphosis in their life.
One very successful show about teenagers was the recent adaption
of Wedekind's Spring Awakening that won the Tony and played on
Broadway - however, that show was relatively tame in comparison to
yours. How does physical theatre such as Shut Up And Listen differ
from something like a traditional musical theatre production that is
trying to explore the same issues (growing up, adolescence, sex and
sexuality, drugs, rules etc)?

I never wanted to push my vision, and often worried during rehearsals

about some of the stuff I would see or hear, but I always tried not to interfere
and worked on simply trusting them. We had this one simple rule: don't hurt
anyone that doesn't want to be hurt.

I think the openness on my part helped to push some boundaries. I have

never worked professionally with youngsters before so I wasn't aware of
the rules, and in that sense, I couldn't really worry about breaking them.

Music plays an integral role in this production, did you have

assistance choosing the music and what made you decide on such
bold and diverse choices such as the ones we will hear in the show?

From the very beginning, I knew I wanted to make a connection with more
than just the current generation and its teenagers. I felt that teenagers from
every generation dealt with the same issues. Because of this, I wanted to
use songs that defined the rebelliousness of each age. Peggy Lee was a
pretty bold song from the time of my grandmother, and my father's
generation had Velvet Underground. My teenage years were influenced
and connected with Monster Magnet. And the last song is rebelliousness
in its positivity - Explosions in the Sky - and it is essentially from right now.
What are some of the unique challenges of not only working with such
a young cast, but traveling the world with them as well?

It was hard to find a balance between being the "adult" and providing the
guidance role and also being one of them. I try not to interfere with their
choices and behavior, but sometimes I try and be there for guidance,
almost like an older brother. I like to try and show them a positive way of
dealing with things.

You have said this production won't be able to continue much longer
because the kids are getting older, have you given any thought as to
what you might like to do next?

Since this production started, Ontroerend Goed has made three other
plays, so I haven't had much time to think about them. But regarding "Once
and For All," I have felt from fairly early on there was more to tell.

Because of this, we began working on "Teenage Riot" which is a play about

the right to not be okay with how things are. A teacher used to say to me
when I was young "You can say don't agree with things, and you don't have
to give an alternative." This is something I wanted to focus on because I
think too many people are scared to speak up if they don't have a solution.

Anything you are hoping to get to see or do while you are in Toronto?
Or anything the cast is looking forward to?
Some of the actors want to go skiing but I hope the 'break a leg' mantra will
stay figurative. But every city we went to I just love to feel it, to walk around
and get a feel for the city. For me, that is the beauty of touring.

Finally, what do you hope people will take out of this experience?
What is it that you hope it will get people really thinking/talking about?

I can't really answer that, because the performance has to speak for itself.
If I were to put it into words, instead of letting people feel it when they
experience it, it wouldn't be the same.
C PRACSIS International Conference on "VISUAL SPACES" in association
with Asian College of Journalism, Chennai.

"The space of our primary perception, the space of our dreams and that
of our passions hold within themselves qualities that seem intrinsic: there
is a light, ethereal, transparent space, or again a dark, rough, encumbered
space; a space from above, of summits, or on the contrary a space from
below of mud; or again a space that can be flowing like sparkling water, or
space that is fixed, congealed, like stone or crystal."

—Michael Foucault, "Other Spaces"

Space, as Foucault observes, can no longer be seen simply as an empty

backdrop against which beings, events and things fold and unfold. Rather
it is a dynamic entity, with a unique history and kinetic characteristics,
displaying the potential for evolution, mutation, transformation and
obliteration. In short, space itself is a being, an event, a site. The concept
of visual space envisages a wide variety of ideas, notions, theoretical
premises and deliberations evolving within the purview of visual culture,
which is an open ended and interdisciplinary interplay of images. For
instance the cultural significations of space, when defined as performance
space, cinematic space, mediated space, architectural space and virtual
space get subjected to a spectacularly radical transition in comparison with
the conventional interrelations of space. In a sense, visual space can
sometimes be viewed as heterotopias and as locations of scopic otherness
and introgression. This concept is formulated in congregation with the
prevalent fascination with the ways of seeing and the explosion of visual
experience which effected in a "paradigm shift in the cultural imaginary of
our age" as Martin Jay suggested. The concept of visual space also
attempts to signify the visualizations of the things which do not naturally
 come under the rubric of vision. Martin Heidegger's notion of the 'world
picture' as the world 'conceived and grasped as a picture' articulates the
complex rendering of experience. For Lefebvre, the connection between
seeing and not seeing defines everyday life and more precisely, l'existence.
Gaston Bachelard's phenomenal work on space explains imagination as a
perpetual dialogue between the human subject which imagines and the
image itself. Further, in Guy Debord, everyday life presents itself as an
extensive accumulation of spectacles where modern conditions of
production prevail. From such a perspective, spectacle is not simply a
collection of images, but social relations mediated and materialized by and
through images. Also, there is this remarkable vision of Donna Haraway
that vision is ultimately a matter of power and positions. Maurice Merleau-
Ponty, has devised that the organization of spaces is in profound
resonance with the human body, its shape and its capacities. Visual is not
just the visible; the notion of visual space dismantles all characteristics of
habitual visual perception and thus brings to light the visuality of the
invisible. The central thematic of the conference pivots on questions such
as "How/why are visual spaces organized?", "How is vision constituted in
relation to space?" and "How are practices of seeing formulated in the
spatial matrix?". It also attempts to evince nuances of methodological
explorations in the organization of space and orientation of vision by raising
issues such as:

 Performance Spaces, Stages and Non-stages Dance

 Cultures/Rituals Theatres

 Architectural Spaces

 Graffiti/Sequential Narrative Space/Comics

 Media/mediated Spaces; Radio and Television/Cinematic Space

 New Media, Virtual Culture and Cyber Spaces

 Printed Spaces, Discursive Spaces

 Spaces of the Differently abled

 Sexuality and Visual Spaces

 Monarchic, Feudal, Capitalist spaces

 Caste, ethnicity and religion

 Village, Small Township, City, Metropolis

 Nation, Nationality, Subnational and Transnational Spaces

 Diasporic Spaces, Migrations and Movement

 Sports/Game/Recreational Spaces

 War Spaces, War Museums, Memorials

 Neo-nomadic/ Revolutionary/ Encroached/ Impoverished Spaces

 Academic and Administrative Spaces

 Colonial, Post-colonial, Global Spaces

 Navigational Spaces, Imperialism and Modernity

 The Void/Infinite Space/Future Space/No-spaces

Design in the Round

By Emily McMahon

Designer Amanda Stoodley is currently working on Hamlet at

Manchester’s Royal Exchange. She talks to Emily McMahon about the
challenges of designing for such a unique space.

Manchester’s Royal Exchange is a very special place for Amanda Stoodley.

She describes herself as an ‘Exchange baby’ who ‘cut her teeth’ at the
Exchange. The glass walled module set in the heart of the old cotton
exchange, at one time the largest trading hall in Britain, designed by
Richard Negri, is an incongruous and unique space often likened to
a spaceship. The theatre comprises a seven sided, glass walled structure
suspended from four columns which support the building’s central dome,
and can seat 700 audience members over three levels, making it the largest
pure theatre in-the-round in Britain.

Opened in 1976, despite some initial scepticism from Mancunians and the
theatre community, the space has proved popular with audiences and has
provided Manchester with a world class theatre space. Despite the obvious
challenges of the space: no wings, flats or backdrops, the audience on all
sides and above, Stoodley, never one to be phased by unusual and awkward
venues, describes her experience of working on the current production
ofHamlet, starring Maxine Peake, and Two, back in January 2012, with
undisguised passion and enthusiasm. Indeed, the designer has only worked
on one proscenium arch production since leaving college, favouring instead
the likes of Bolton Octagon, the Royal Exchange Studio, the Albert Hall as
well as faceless office spaces, like the fifth floor of Number One First Street,
Manchester.

Stoodley’s introduction to the Exchange came when she was working as an

assistant to Liz Ascroft on a number of productions, two of which were
directed by Sarah Frankcom. She describes working with Ascroft and
watching the way she approached the space as an ‘amazing
experience’ from which she learnt a lot, enabling her to tackle the, at times
tricky, Exchange main space herself. Stoodley often uses the space she is
designing for as the starting point for her designs, and this is also the case
for Hamlet. She spent time sitting in different seats, absorbing the feel and
sense of place, before beginning. Stoodley likes to work closely with the
director, supporting the story and its telling.

She describes the initial ideas behind Sarah Frankcom’s production: ” I

think that Sarah and Maxine had been talking about this for a long
time before I arrived into the process, and they were very keen that it was
stripped back and very exposing of the story, and the actors, and the acting,
and the theatre itself.” This collaboration with Frankcom, and Stoodley’s
own organic methods, have materialised in physical form in many ways in
her design. One of these is the presence of the Exchange’s actual theatre
floor. Normally it’s covered, she explains, but she had a fabulous
experience with one of the scenic painters who had been at the Exchange
for many years and who was able to point out the various paint splashes
and identify them as ‘a bit of The Tempest’ and countless other past
productions.

There’s an honesty at the heart of this production which is eye-opening. ‘I

suppose when it’s stripped back like that, you haven’t got anything
literal, you are really accentuating the artificiality of everything. It’s about
how theatre can make you feel, and tell your story, and we’re making no
bones about it.’ The idea, she tells me, ‘is that we start off with a layer, a
veneer that’s been laid over reality and covers the truth – which gets peeled
away as Hamlet discovers more and takes the decision to act.’

It seems to me what she is describing is a wonderful visual metaphor for

the essence of Hamlet, a painful process of understanding, conflict, and the
exposure of wounds below a seemingly acceptable exterior. Stoodley’s use
of shape in this design also works to support the sense of artificiality
that the production aims to highlight. The shapes have been informed by
the theatre itself, Stoodley explains, and they are quite simple and
geometric. For instance, to her it felt like Hamlet was symbolised by a
circle, and all its connotations, whereas the King(dom) is more angular – a
rectangle or square – imposed upon the space. The shape of the theatre and
the reality of the space reinforces Hamlet, whereas the King’s shape and
presence is unnatural and jarring.

The costume design was also a collaborative and natural process in which
Stoodley chatted with actors and listened to their ideas. She believes each
person brings something of themselves to the character and that you have
to really look at the person you are designing for, and ensure that they feel
‘right’. Again she stresses, as a designer you are trying to help, trying to aid
and support the delivery of the story to the audience. The monochrome
world into which Hamlet enters is appropriate, not only because of the
state of mourning, but also because of the King’s ‘state’ and rule. As
Stoodley describes Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and The Players
‘crashing in’ with colour and pattern and contrasting details and styles from
the world outside it is not hard to think go political overtures, both past and
present. I ask her about this and she agrees that the atmosphere of the play
at the beginning is repressive under the King’s ‘dictatorship’, however the
creative team steered clear of overt political connotations, emphasising
that Hamlet is about humanity, family, love, trust, morality, betrayal, belief
and honour and not the result of a set of specific political circumstances.

Despite this, our conversation turns irresistibly to the topic of Scottish

Independence, with Stoodley pointing out the referendum is only two
nights after the press night for the production. After all, nothing is created
in a vacuum, and one of the central quotes from her workbook on Hamlet
is about the tragedy of moral inertia: ‘it is only necessary for the good man
to do nothing for evil to triumph’, from a review from the 1998
film Festenby Thomas Vinterberg.

Stoodley is wildly imaginative but also self-deprecating, peppering our

conversation with ‘if it works’ and ‘I hope sos’. The depth at which
she designs however is quite remarkable, bringing a meticulous, detailed
approach to her work, whether it be creating a ‘ridiculous’ props list for a
lost property office of souls (you can imagine the length of that particular
document), or designing a pub carpet for Two from scratch, including
scenes, characters and segments from the play. We are encouraged to look
closer, think a little bit harder and as a result we gain a little bit more. More
understanding, more depth – new ways of seeing.
The Contemporary Ensemble

By Duska Radosavljevic

I went to the last day of Secret Theatre at the Lyric Hammersmith on

Sunday. I liked the fact that I was going to be seeing Show 1 for the first
time at the very end of the 18 months of the project. But prior to that here
was a Q and A with the company – all the actors plus writer/dramaturgs
Simon Stephens and Joel Horwood, and academic Tom Cornford in the
chair. Sean Holmes was sitting quietly in the back, deservedly taking – what
will probably be a temporary – break from months of campaigning and
explaining the virtues of the project to the public.

I sympathised with that particular struggle. In the early 2000s I had the
privilege of working as the Dramaturg at Northern Stage in Newcastle while
it was still an ensemble theatre run by Alan Lyddiard. Watching Holmes’s
actors glow with a sense of accomplishment, enthusiasm and creeping
nostalgia was so reminiscent of what I had seen before. The actors loved
working together long term, knowing each other well enough to take risks,
feeling safe about the artistic choice not to be literal in staging a play,
working with the same creative team of designers for a long time – they
loved the ‘deep voodoo’ of it all as one of the Secret Theatre actors put it.

As audience members we might easily underestimate the importance of

this way of working, but we certainly see a different quality of acting on
stage when presented with an ensemble (as noted for example by Honour
Bayes in her column in The Stage ). Lyddiard’s ensemble project – initially
set up as an experiment for just two years – managed seven years before it
lost the support of the powers that be and came to an abrupt end, ten years
ago now, almost to the day.
Some years later, I made an investigation into the circumstances around
Lyddiard’s sudden resignation and found that several important factors
were at play. For one, there were issues at the senior management level and
Lyddiard was not appropriately supported by all of his board members. But
more importantly there were stark cultural differences at the core of this.

Like Holmes, Lyddiard modelled his project on the continental ensemble,

more specifically in fact on Dodin’s Maly Theatre. He was sober enough to
know that in Newcastle he was never going to have the type of actor trained
according to the Russian tradition and for the Russian institutional system,
so quite wisely rather than pursuing the Maly’s aesthetic, he was simply
aiming for the notion of longevity coupled with a completely authentic
(British/Geordie/transnational) artistic sensibility. Former chair of the
board at Northern Stage, retired probation officer Mike Worthington, told
me in 2010 that the fact that the company’s income to subsidy ratio was
25:75 was a problem in his view, and that when the theatre went for a two
year refurbishment it seemed like there was an inevitable end to the
ensemble. Similarly, former Chief Executive of Northern Arts, Andrew
Dixon, confessed that Lyddiard’s project presented a dilemma for funders
as they wanted the public to see ‘a whole range of work’ rather than just one
company of actors, but on the other hand could also see the benefits of
longevity and the success that it could yield. While he did not consider the
ensemble to be ‘the most efficient use of the salary bill’ he did believe that
Lyddiard took individual actors and turned them into ‘theatre
professionals’ some of whom are still producing, directing and project
managing very successful projects in the region. Dixon claims that
Lyddiard gave people confidence and key experiences they would not have
had otherwise – by performing both in village halls and internationally.

I think it is great that Secret Theatre has generated a cloud of support

around it with the most zeal coming from young people with a strong voice
– StewartPringle , Catherine Love and Megan Vaughan have all written
beautiful tributes to the project. (Lyddiard’s Northern Stage had the most
notable supporter in Lyn Gardner, so there might be an interesting pattern
emerging there.) But I am slightly worried about the defence of tribalism
that has emerged in among these efforts. Tribalism is good for those who
are inside the tribe, it is empowering and cosy, but it also makes it difficult
for the outsiders to become members of the tribe, and, in its worse
manifestation, can lead to wars. (I speak as a person who saw that happen
in real life). Some might argue that radical measures might be needed in
British theatre. But what I think ensemble model in the UK needs is a wiser
approach to change. Simon Stephens in the Q and A mentioned an analogy
to British cricket whereby the changes to the internal structures of the
British team eventually led to its transformation into a world champion.
This is what he had hoped for the Secret Theatre project. But what is the
structure that needs changing? And how do we ensure that this is not about
just winning one championship but staying on top of the game for a while.

Listening to the Secret Theatre actors enthuse about the ensemble way of
working in the same way as some other generations of British actors before
them had done made me wonder how do we move beyond this and build
on it in a way that has a more lasting significance? How do we re-invent the
British ensemble model for the 21st century?

During his leadership of the RSC, Michael Boyd often noted the need to
contend against hostility about the ‘ensemble’ as something ‘foreign’ and
even ‘Communist”. When asked where these criticisms came from, in an
interview he gave me for The Contemporary Ensemble, Boyd said:

‘They come from a theatre culture that is heavily influenced by the free
market economy of the entertainment industry, where actors are
encouraged to move like a commodity on the stock market, where any
restriction of that degree of nimble flexibility is seen as leaden, and stifling.
The English have a special fondness for the eccentric individual. ‘Every
man’s home is his castle’, while a collective is a foreign concept, and long-
term commitment risks disappointment. [...] There’s a very healthy fear in
English culture of conformity, in political terms of Fascism, Communism,
Nazism, the French Revolution. The English are proud to consider
themselves an exception to such attempts to homogenize society, and an
ensemble can be seen by some as an attempt to homogenize under the
control of an autocratic European-style director. [...] Some of the resistance
to the idea of a learning community is simply a lack of humility on the part
of some practitioners. A hunger to learn can be misread as a lack of
confidence in your expertise.’

The way I understand this: there are potentially three elements of the inner
structure that need addressing in British theatre in order for the idea of
‘ensemble’ to take root: the legacy of Margaret Thatcher’s government on
the country’s economy, elements of the national bias (if there is such a
thing) towards individualism rather than collectivism, and too much
artistic ego.

It is interesting that in 1984, theatre historians George Rowell and Anthony

Jackson concluded in their book ‘The Repertory Movement: A History of
Regional Theatre in Britain’ that the idea of the ensemble way of working
– which had ignited the British imagination ever since Granville-Barker
and Shaw at the beginning of the 20th century– had ultimately run its
course:

Does Continental theatre practice in this respect offer a goal to be aimed

at? It would seem not. While the actor on the European stage may enjoy the
security and other benefits of a long term contract with his company, the
British actor, by and large, especially in repertory, prefers to be mobile.

By the early 1980s, they claimed, it became evident that dependence on a

single funding body made ‘theatre’s future vulnerable to changes in
political control’, large subsidy could ‘buy its way out of trouble rather than
[solve problems] by critical ingenuity’, and the model ultimately led to
increased levels of bureaucracy and administration. In addition, as an
interesting historical footonote, it is worth highlighting that the authors
noted the influence of television-style naturalism on directors of the period
who therefore aimed ‘for the most suitable casting character by character
rather than at the development of ensemble playing’.

It is great to see that some of those trends – and specifically the latter –
have been challenged and to some extent reverted by projects such as the
Secret Theatre, Boyd’s RSC and Lyddiard’s Northern Stage. But the
difficulties faced by all of these ideas previously just go to show that
Holmes’s task has by no means been an easy one.

There are rumours that the ensemble idea might continue at the Lyric
Hammersmith in one form or another. It is not enough for us to just wish
them luck or crowd around them in a spirit of tribalism – those structural
changes will demand a lot more than that.