Output details

The Threat of Silence : A practice-led research project investigating the notion of quietude as a primary aesthetic precept for performance: produced, devised and directed by Jill Greenhalgh. This project investigated, developed and applied traditional and innovative principles to the construction of a contemporary exposition employing silence, stillness and slowness as the primary aesthetic choice.

Theatre performance: produced, devised and directed by Jill Greenhalgh. 60 minutes.

A practice-led research project investigating the notion of quietude as a primary aesthetic precept for performance: first performed at Theatr Mwldan, Cardigan September 9th 2010. Tour: Wales, Denmark: Ongoing

Research questions:

How might the performance space become a place of refuge from an increasingly agitated human condition suffering from image and noise overload?

How might performance provide the time, space and opportunity for audiences to engage in a contemplative reflection on contemporary social and aesthetic issues?

What are the understandings, practices and principles that have enabled the constructions of contemporary and traditional performance forms employing quietude as a dominant aesthetic?

What practices and discourses might be convened to enable an examination, evaluation, understanding and articulation of these principles, practices and procedures?

The research acknowledged that minimalist and post-minimalist movements in art and music offer objects and sounds scores that are stripped to their essential elements. In the field of performance, however, we have yet to identify and articulate the principles being engaged in work that consciously embraces the use of silence, stillness and quietude.

This project investigated, developed and then applied traditional and innovative principles to the construction of a contemporary exposition employing silence, stillness and slowness as the primary aesthetic choice. The cross-disciplinary work with a writer, a musician, a filmmaker and a performance artist/singer/dancer, attempted to identify, consider and then pursue an applied practical understanding of dynamic quietude across the different disciplines to propose a viable and effective contemporary performance practice and vocabulary. Central to this investigation was the examination of how influential traditional and contemporary forms and artistic innovations move beyond the static or simplistic in their application of slowness in the staging of performance material, to produce engaging, dynamic, and critically acclaimed evocations.