Output details

The Temperance Society, street theatre performance mostly strolling but with some static sequences.

The research aim was to investigate the establishment of a rule system for interaction and audience play, presenting high status characters who are absurdly critical, thus parodying authority with the genre of carnival (in a Bakhtian sense). The performances investigated the information needed for a group to interact understanding the contract being established. This varied from a simple statement to the need to educate a group into the entire nature of performance. For example, once given an explantion of the ‘rules of play’ by the characters in character, a group of disengaged teenagers in Cleater Moor went from potentially aggressive bafflement to playing arcane games, such as seeing who could walk furthest with a book on their head. In a real sense this corroborated Beeman’s assertion about performance demonstrating ‘that a culturally conditioned cognitive state frames and orients human action’ (Beeman: 370)

Other research elements have arisen in performance. For example, the conceit involves translating the audience into their ‘Victorian equivalent’. What issues arise with a group including black members or other ethnic groups whose role in Victorian society was highly marginalised, or at least might be perceived to be. To date the Temperance Society has asked children if they are taking a break from sweeping chimneys, but have not asked black audience members if they have escaped from slavery.

This on-going project had the benefit of a week’s tour in the Lake District in 2011 (‘The Banquets’) commissioned by Lakes Alive with a brief to perform to a varied demographic. The performance was developed from characters originally created for the BAFTA nominated interactive website for Manchester Art Gallery.

Beeman, W.O. (1993) The Anthropology of Theater and Spectacle in Annual Review of Anthropology, Vol. 22 (pp. 369-393).