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Play(ing) it again: Recycling as Theatres, Histories, Memories.

This article develops my central concerns regarding the spectator through wider perspectives of histories and memories. I emphasise that cultural recycling is at the heart of our being as (qualified) agents in a social and cultural nexus; a dynamic framing and reframing of the world from genetic, material, social and cultural inheritances. I argue that our theatres and histories are both palimpsests of those before and potential pre-figurings of those to come, marked by opaque shadows and spectres, memories and knowledge that inscribe each experience. Thus, the knowing spectator draws on, is reminded of, and consequently mediates what they are watching, in the light of what has gone before and inklings of what may come. The performance text is formed, deformed and reformed. We bring our own ‘ghosts’ to what we see and experience as (qualified and qualifying) agents inhabiting a shared world.

I use an original ‘choric quotes’ device to plant signposts and provocations that leave the inherent ‘paradoxes, seeming contradictions and oppositions’ of theatre in place. Attempts to flatten out or resolve these seem to be out of place with respect to the nature of theatre and the spectatorial experience. Rather I promote an ethos of heteroglossia, dynamic relationships of mediations and multiple perspectives, and thus a confronting ambiguity.

Such an original methodology attempts to capture the nature of theatre itself - apparent clarity meets paradox and ‘unruly complexity’ in a reflection of life outside the theatre.

The research responds to and contributes to current debates about spectatorship, by advancing original ideas on ‘re-cycling’, the ‘always-knowing spectator’, their ‘agency’ and a paradoxical position that extends to research itself as a re-cycling.