Output details

Triangle's Work in Times of War (2008), Video (DVD), directed and edited by Talbot, R J & Waterfield, C. Palatine (HEA) UK, Lancaster, UK.

A DVD-Rom shared 50:50 with Carran Waterfield, as co-artistic directors of Triangle Theatre (UK). This is a digital archive commissioned by Palatine UK and Coventry City Council, produced in collaboration with Coventry Schools, The Herbert Museum & Art Gallery, Coventry Cathedral and disseminated to 50 university libraries nationally and museum and theatre practitioners in the UK, Australia, USA and Canada. The archive offers analysis and case studies is organised into four chapters of videos showing durational and participatory performances from the Whissell & Williams project (2002-2008). There are a further 8 chapters of commentary in the form of academic accounts, participant feedback, interviews with artists and journal extracts. The DVD also lists the catalogue of archives of company work and wider Second World War archives held in Coventry City Archives. Talbot’s contribution to commentaries introduces contexts, definitions, and methods of immersive theatre, specifically characterization and the elements of the immersive world: the bureaucratic hierarchy and terminology that frames the immersive environment and interactive performance tactics. There are reflections on uniform, the use of role and site-specific methods. While there is some resonance in the work with Peter Slade (1995) or Dorothy Heathcote’s in-role educational methods (Bolton & Heathcote, 1995), the method here departs significantly in terms of the extent of immersive environment, influences from post-dramatic performance and the involvement of diverse adult performers in institutional critque. Talbot places this in the wider context of Triangle’s studio theatre productions which have also drawn on the wartime experience and on Coventry histories. Triangle’s method develops concepts that have been further discussed in articles such as Johnson, Paul (2010) 'Art or Honesty? Breaking the rules of the game with immersive museum theatre' in Townley, B. & Beech, N. (Eds) The Discipline of Organizing Creativity: Exploring the Paradox Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.