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Petit Cheval Blanc

This research is a devised theatre production, inspired by George Orwell’s Animal Farm, exploring the possibilities as a kind of triple clockwork: where the recurrent theme of power is amplified whilst the scenic solutions and the characters transform.

The piece operates as research experimentation in the impact of architecture (understood as the function of the theatrical environment) and the dramaturgical potential of space. Act 1 was first produced as Clover’s Lost Petal (2011), a collaboration with Professor David Dernie (Department of Architecture, DeMontfort University Leicester) that involved the planning and realization of a new theatre pavilion by Graham Cartledge CBE, Benoy architects. It sought to explore how the architectural qualities of a theatrical space influences the composition of dramaturgy (for example the Skene-Orchestra-Theatron triptych’s influence on classical Greek drama).

The work’s final form, Petit Cheval Blanc (2013) examined these themes more fully. Orwell’s work is a meditation on Soviet communism, but applies (as indicated in his intended 1945 preface to Animal Farm, ‘The Freedom of the Press’) to every form of power. Space and form in theatre, no less than speech, manifest the manipulation of opinion. How can these processes be made manifest? The figure of Casanova eulogies the Ancien Regime in the first act, while the stage picture is transformed into Tiepolo’s Mondonovo; in the second act, a therapist (Napoleon) and a patient (Clover) try to find narrative amid the unpredictable dream of a ‘House’ in which people are reduced to animals, and revolution is corrupted into uncanny violence. A video projection shows Marx falling from a rocking horse. PCB thus positions the relations of space, scenography and character to tackle wider questions of propaganda and censorship, and ultimately, the freedom of choice.

The complete play was first produced at the International Theatre festival of Kerala in January 2013.