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Art or honesty? Breaking the rules of the game with immersive museum theatre

Brief Description

This book, edited by two professors of management at the University of St Andrews, developed out of a series of AHRC/ESRC workshops from 2006 – 2008 entitled The Discipline of Creativity: Exploring the Paradox. The book is an interdisciplinary analysis of the creative industries, in particular investigating the supposed antitheses between art and commerce. http://www.cambridge.org/gb/knowledge/isbn/item2708194/?site_locale=en_GB

The book was reviewed by Chris Bilton in Cultural Trends, who observed that “many of the articles are striking and insightful on the creative process”.

This chapter explores the framing devices used by an immersive museum theatre performance created by Triangle Theatre, and how the various audiences for it construct their roles. Triangle Theatre’s museum theatre work has won awards, including Curiosity and Imagination Roots and Wings Award and the Museums and Heritage Awards for Excellence - Best Educational Initiative (both for Coventry Kids in the Blitz) and went on to be one of four case studies for a major AHRC funded research project investigating museum theatre.

Research Rationale

These ‘rules of the game’ are established through enactment, and the chapter considers what happens when conventional understandings of role are challenged. It further analyses the particular devising methodology used by Triangle Theatre, which is used in both their museum based and theatre based work.

Strategies Undertaken

The chapter continues the work as a participant/observer with Triangle, and is one of a series of publications exploring their work.