Output details

'Total Football', International Touring Theatre, directed by Haynes, J & Woods, D, Ridiculusmus, National Theatre of Scotland and The Barbican plus tour, Glasgow & London, UK

Talbot is a long-term collaborator with Ridiculusmus. Total Football (2011/12) was a production produced by the National Theatre of Scotland in partnership with The Barbican, London, premiering on 18 May - 18 June, 2011 before an international tour: http://www.barbican.org.uk/theatre/event-detail.asp?ID=11497 As the associate academic Talbot’s role was to assist dramaturgical development by devising a new choreographic notation method suited to Ridiculumus’ devising process. Based on an existing convention among football commentators for contextualizing and narrating team play, a series of photographs of sketches-in-process are discussed in a supporting article available online: http://usir.salford.ac.uk/view/authors/30237.html and submitted for peer review. Talbot proposes that the approximate qualities of sketched notation, and its failed totality, capture the tone of comedy in this Physical Theatre production about masculine hubris. While the sketches attempt to keep pace with the spontaneity of tactics devised by performers, the paper argues that performance systems and dance notation that have paid attention to architecture and spatial arrangement as a score do not generally notate intention or strategy. Further, the dramaturgy and the essay present the idea that both the sketches and play document a multiplicity of tactics, and footballing metaphor in process. The notation can be understood both as documentation of movement and a contribution to a theatrical and scenographic discourse that is concerned with more than visual ‘blocking.’ The paper discusses the origins of ‘self-blocking’ in this production, its relation to a priori analysis of character and to unpredictable elements of game-playing in a piece about football. The high-calibre production toured extensively and internationally has received enthusiastic critical responses as can be seen here: Logan, B. The Guardian, Total Football. Theatre Review. 23 May 2011; Henry Hitching. Evening Standard. Total Football. Theatre Review. 20 May 2011 and others.