One of the things I've asked our Creative Associates Catherine and Mathilde to look at is how we create 'theatre of debate'. In recent years there has been a fascinating movement in theatre around debate, discussion and exchange of knowledge. Well known examples include Open Space workshops, particularly the 'Devoted and Disgruntled' sessions that Improbable Theatre have run. In Berlin, one of the most fascinating companies is the Mobile Academy, which runs the 'Blackmarket of Useful and Non-Useful Knowledge' where, rather than watching a show, each audience member books a series of 15 minute one-to-one sessions with experts in every imaginable subject (and remember we are all experts in something, so this is not an academic project). In New York, Foundry Theatre has been combining some of the best experimental theatre in the world with a series of political and social 'town hall' meetings for many years - building a different kind of theatre community. I'd be really interested to hear people's ideas and experiences around theatre and debate.

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I'm afraid I'm very old fashioned, I think theatre should be crafted & honed, relying on it just "happening" is a risky scenario. Can maybe be good but it is a much better option to actually use your talent and really think about it. Yeah sure we are all experts but can we all talk about it in an interesting way. I mean have you listened to Neil Armstrong, this is the first man on the moon but is he interesting, well actually not very but a craftsman can make a trip to the shops interesting, cue Allan Bennett
@Keith, for me its not an "either" "or" scenario. I think of approaches to theatre as a horizontal street, you can drop in and out of houses as your concerns and thinking suggests. Its certainly not a hierachy. There's enough room in a life for all kinds of approaches to making theatre, and there should be enough opportunity for people to see a range of approaches. Telling stories is only one form of theatre, creating experiences is another, bearing witness a third and there are many more. Armstrong may not be the best storyteller, but he is the man who was on the moon.He is the expert in that. So its about how you listen to him, or if you're a theatre maker, how you frame him. He's as interesting for what he doesn't say as what he does, for showing the kind of personality it took to sit in a tin can in a vacuum far far away from safety. As an audience listening to him I ask my own questions of the story he tells and the way he tells it, I'm rarely a passive audience. With someone like Allan Bennett I can choose if I like to be a passive audience because he is a master storyteller. Its all about choice. Looking forward to the launch.
Neil Armstrong doesn't have to be interesting, he is inspirational, and I mean that in a 'Let's write a play about him' way rather than the norm. What was he feeling when he went to the moon? What did he think when he became the 'first man in history' etc? This is his part in theatre, he did it, Alan Bennett can fill in the gaps, as M'sieur Campbell says much more eloquently. And was the irony of Neil Armstrong & 'launch' intended?

As for forum theatre, why don't we do just that? Use this forum to create a play! A subject is given and our replies are edited into a play. Whaddya think people? Who's with me???

(I'll just get me coat)
So, now that people know the shows, it would be great to hear your ideas about what the debates might be. Clearly there are some shows that have very specifically debatable subjects, but maybe the shows also give you ideas about the form that debates could take - of about subjects not yet covered that could be. J
now there's a fun thing to think about. DC
Indeed! Would be great to hear your thoughts Dom. J
Keep pondering this, and though I don't have time to think properly, to consider each show in detail and start my thinking from there, even so three distinct strands come to mind. One is specific to the individual show and inspired or in relation to that work/place/themes/art/makers etc. Another strand is informed by the accrual of knowledge, it's informed by more than one show, is a conversation or discussion developing over the year, where viewpoints are affected by seeing each piece. The third is about placing this year's program within a broader context which could be geographical, cultural or temporal - so for instance how would these performances be perceived by a Tuareg nomad, a member of the French royal family, a successful Chinese entrepreneur a South American social worker but also how would they be perceived by a 19/20/21st century theatre historian, or an anthroplogist or a geologist or a "across-the-isms-ist" or a local specialist or very young or very old theatre makers. (you could swap or for and). How would these people express their understanding?.
It seems to me at this remove that the net is useful (otherwise we wouldn't be doing this) but also limiting. The programme is already embracing notions of pilgrimage and pleasure trip (same thing?) which are "forms". Could you push this? Aren't there previous examples of walking and learning? Could someone take a year off only ever walking between each show and talking as they go? (i quite fancy that!). or drag something (Fitzcaraldo?) or tweet constantly. Could you adopt a mobile library to gather from each place and be present for each event?(That takes the temperature? measures audiences heartbeats before and after? collects the perspiration of performers? gathers diaries written by Front of house staff? sews a quilt made from lighting techs T shirts? has a special space to encourage the dissenting voice?). Is this the Constructivists train? Is this a nomadic theatre company making work on the hoof in response to each work? Linking? There's something in this that is dance like, and links with genomes, family trees, and the "y" bit in Welsh names or the "diottur" bit in the names of Greenlanders - so maybe I'm getting fixated on transmission and linking migration to the dissemination of ideas or virus (virii?)and how many rivers make a sea. Fixed points and fluid points? Maybe talk to Liz Lerman? Maybe look at sciencegallery.ie "What If"?, Maybe Joan Littlewood was a genius? Maybe there's a word like luibin in Irish that means little link (think lace stitch) but also means a type of slanderously funny poem (think rap face off or kaiso master) and opens up the idea that to link things you need to find the point of shared laughter that arises from the honesty at the bottom of having your personal artifice taken apart. There's a canadian indian clown tradition also based on this. Maybe I need think some more? Maybe its just time to stop, make some coffee and go to work! Have fun, look forward to any replies.
This is an extremely interesting discussion. I come at this from, as it were, the other side - not as someone involved in creating theatre but as someone (an academic) who studies how political debates take place, how they are performed and how they create or close down public spaces and forms of engagement.

I find theatre - of all kinds, not only the explicitly political or that which intends to foster active consciousness in audiences - capable of producing profound philosophical propositions about the nature of rule, sovereignty, "kingship", equality and so on. Part of reflecting on 'theatre of debate' is thinking through what 'debate' is and how theatre can, in addition to being a mode of politics, be a way of reflecting upon it.

That is not at all to rule out a self-consciously political theatre. Theatre is always in some measure allied to broader political interests and actions - but, I think, what I want to suggest is that what might be important is not theatre that stages debate but theatre that makes things debate-able that weren't before.

I am not sure about all this. And one reason I signed up to this forum was to find out more about how theatre people think these kinds of things - there is certainly a lot a political theorist can learn from theatre.
Hi Alan

Thought you might be interested in this perspective from Robert McKee's seminal book STORY. He mainly focuses on storytelling through film but in reality his analysis covers the wider field of drama and the creation of performed story that could apply to many different theatre models.

‘Storytelling is the creative demonstration of truth. A story is living proof of an idea, the conversion of an idea into action.’

‘A story’s event structure is the means by which you first express, then prove your idea… without explanation.’
Thanks Peter. I have heard of the McKee book - am I right in thinking it has been very influential among screenwriters and that he runs seminars and so on? I suppose the political philosopher in me has to ask, how to we know that the truth the story demonstrates is indeed true? Must it avoid explanation (as he says in the quote)? The Todd Solondz film 'Storytelling' uses as part of the soundtrack a song by the Scottish band Belle and Sebastian that includes the lines(and it is in large part what the movie is about) "If you're a storyteller you might think you're without responsibility/And you can lead your characters anywhere you want/You have immunity" but concludes "You're just a storyteller/You're not trying to escape responsibility". I am interested in what that responsibility might be.
Anyone going to http://www.improbable.co.uk/show_example.asp?item_id=44
Might be a way of carrying this on in real-life? Though I notice opportunities in Cardiff too
@Alan. There are also performance based explorations in contemporary music, http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org provides one way in, I'll dig out more "theatre" based ones but John credits some in the provocation. Can you provide information on the references from your discipline? reading list maybe?

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