Output details

Process and Performance of Our Country's Good

Playing for Time Theatre Co

Theatre in prison contexts often consists of a company taking in professional actors to stage a production and allowing prisoners to participate in minor roles. Building on Annie McKean’s research, I undertook Wertenbaker’s play because it speaks directly to questions of the value of theatre in a penal colony and opens up debates about the fluidity of identity in this context. My research was on the specific use of ensemble techniques adapted from my ensemble training in post-Grotowskian practices and with the Rachel Rosenthal Company. These practices are infused with an ethics that relates to community and inclusivity but they occur in the context of alternative practices in the professional theatre world. They are not designed as applied theatre tools, but are rather identified as practices – albeit alternative/historically avant-garde - for ‘professional’ artists.

Aim: facilitating the fostering of ‘community’ and inclusivity in the process; creating a visible equality amongst the cast to blur lines between prisoner and student identities. Performance quality, including physical and vocal work were important in this.

Questions:

1. How successfully might adapted aspects of these ensemble practices function as training tools for a diverse non-professional cast in a prison context?

2. How far would working with these practices develop a sense of community within the cast – a disparate group at the outset of the project – and how would this sense of community translate into the performance?

3. How/in what ways were identities ‘mark[ed] or change[d]’ (Schechner 2002:37) through the process and performance?

Methodology involved:

• Daily with a ‘ritual’ warm-up with cast, involving body and breath work followed by acappella, harmonised singing. We ‘walked’ this through the space, allowing sound to become the impetus for movement followed by structured ensemble improvisations with movement, action and song/speech.

• Group space/composition/’listening’ exercises.

• Mid and post-process discussion/evaluation sessions with prisoners.