Are we operating in a climate of timidity as regards artistic authority and definitions of success? Do a diversely mediated environment and globalised marketplace allow us to be more courageous?

Scribe

Gabriella Zogall

Facilitators

Harriet Affleck, Digital Theatre

Anders Lustgarten, Playwright

Dr Richard House, University of Birmingham

Provocation - Harriet Affleck

Harriet’s inspiring talk emphasised the connection between the arts and the radical. At the beginning of her argument she proposed the idea that ‘radicalism can be as simple as simply taking responsibility’. Harriet structured her argument around three provocations: 1. We are living through an empathy crisis, 2. The arts can help us to overcome this crisis, 3. Access to the arts is more important than it has ever been.

To support her first provocation Harriet pointed out several ongoing issues that we as a society are facing. Our deeply divided political views, the mass production of animals for human consumption and the exploitation of our planet are only a few factors that play into our society’s lack of compassion. This lack of empathy need to be challenged. In order to survive as a species it is our duty as a society to take the radical step of reconnecting with each other as people and show compassion for animals and our planet. Despite the grim picture she painted Harriet also stated that there is hope and that the arts can help to provoke change.

Harriet suggested that in order to overcome this empathy crisis ‘the arts must do the hard work to reconnect’. Through theatre or music we can tell stories that carry political voices and diverse views that can reach people and evoke change. The element of activism embedded in artistic forms is not a new concept. The arts and activism take risks, push boundaries and can be bold and courageous. However, there is a sense of urgency that the arts need to function even more as a visible platform for activist, political voices. This makes access to the arts of importance and digital platforms can help make the arts more accessible for the public.   

Harriet concluded with the statement that we as a society, but also as individuals, need to take responsibility. We need to take the responsibility to challenge injustices and hate when we see it and create change.

Provocation - Anders Lustgarten

Anders questioned whether art is too timid. His short and simple answer to this question was ‘yes’, and he offered reasons that led to his conclusion that the broken system of liberal capitalist democracy is not challenged and criticised enough by the arts.

Anders started his talk by pointing out that liberalism as a system, that has evoked tolerance and equality in the past, has now fundamentally changed, especially in how it distributes wealth. He explained that liberal capitalist democracy is a three part system, where the capitalist part has consumed the other two parts. The state now takes financial resources from public hands and puts it into the private sector.

This capitalist view has influenced the arts, and especially theatre. Anders explained that the theatre is a platform for the few in terms of contribution and consumption. Theatre plays are mainly produced from a bourgeois perspective that is aimed at an elite and not an ordinary working-class audience. 

Anders emphasised the lack of working-class content in theatrical plays. As a political playwright he tells political stories for a working-class audience. In order to catch the attention of the working-class and evoke political change the arts (including theatre) need to tell stories that a working-class audience can relate to.   

Anders concluded his argument by pointing out that the arts is not critical enough of liberalism in its current stage and that without challenging the system there will be no opportunity for change. 

Provocation - Dr Richard House

Richard focussed on authority and timidity in context to the arts and presented several questions in terms of authority in the arts: What does it mean to create work? Where does it sit in the world? What permission do you have to make your work?

He argued that art has the power to consume its audience and actively present its point of view. The arts have the ability, not only to engage, but also to give an audience no choice but to absorb an argument and actively consider it. Art has the power to reframe how we think about things and can change views. 

General discussion

On both days, the facilitators’ inspiring and engaging arguments enabled passionate debates for the participants who joined the sessions. Participants shared their own experience and opinions on art and the responsibilities it needs to take in our society. Several themes in context to the arts recurred over the two days: US politics, Brexit, refugee crisis, environmental issues and education. The education of arts and through the arts was a point of discussion on both days, particularly the importance of art as a platform to teach critical thinking and reach a wide range of audiences.

How could thought and theatre demonstrate new ways to participate in democracy?

Scribe

David Norris

Facilitators

Dr Cristina Delgado-Garcia, University of Birmingham

Dr Aneta Mankewicz, University of Birmingham

Lucy Ellinson, Actor

Chris Thorpe, Theatre-maker

Provocation - Cristina Delgado-Garcia 

Cristina invited attendees to explore their own relationship to democracy. Drawing on notions of identity relating to town, region, country, and adopted geographic identities this provocation challenged those present to consider whether democracy has served them well, how frustrations with the results of democratic processes can be approached, and questioning whether democracy can ever be as satisfying a process as it presents. Finally, this provocation queried whether addressing these large questions can ever truly be explored and reflected within the confines of a theatre environment, or whether theatre’s status, at least partially, as an escape from responsibility renders this too problematic. 

Provocation - Aneta Mankewicz

Aneta explored the ways that shifting perspectives can represent democracy in a world largely defined by social media and technology. Participants were invited to consider whether looking at both the mechanics of and participation in the democratic process was something that would be helpful or enriching to audiences. They were also asked whether virtual reality technology could render this juxtaposition between mechanics and participation in a performance environment. The attendees were asked to consider the negotiation inherent in democracy both on an individual and collective level and to contemplate the question of what ‘participating in democracy’ both felt and looked like. Is there a way that we can use both the ‘being-in’ and ‘being-out’ of a virtual reality world as a way of paralleling our relationship with democracy? How much of a self-reflexive process has democracy become, and what is the impact of this self-reflection?

Provocation - Chris Thorpe and Lucy Ellison

Chris and Lucy led a practical workshop on negotiated democracy. Participants were invited to place themselves in a physical democratic situation in which a belief statement could be made, evaluated and then responded to while retaining a non-judgemental and safe environment. This environment heavily aligned with notions of idealised rehearsal circumstances identified by, among others, Emma Rice in one of the introductory speeches to the Radical Mischief conference. The group was invited to consider firstly what further elements can impact on this safe space to render it even closer to a fully idealised democratic environment; and secondly how can the relationship of this idealised space relate to the realities of the current state of democracy outside the room.

General Discussion

This third provocation proved an exciting template for sharing ideas relating to democracy and much of the conversation was dedicated to exploring this dynamic, on-the-go. Key to this appeared to be something that participants adjusted to very quickly – the alteration in use of the word ‘Why’. The word seems so prevalent in our society that it doesn’t beckon analysis, but exploration exposed the weaponised manner in which we so often employ it: the ‘why’ that is used to trap, the ‘why that is used to win, the ‘why’ that is used to provoke or challenge rather than the why that is used to understand. The session showed that this final why provoked a fascinating dynamic, a dynamic that is used not to force a renegotiation of agreement, but instead a renegotiation of understanding. Any opinion proffered under the workshop conditions was treated first and foremost with thanks for the openness provided, then with the offer of clarity and exchange, then finally with renegotiation. Surprisingly this process allowed, within workshop conditions, for the adjustment of opinions without opinion-change ever having been the goal. Through avoiding the attempt to alter the opinion, or at least level of agreement with the opinion, exactly this had been achieved.

This raised a new topic that reflected back on the first of the provocations. The question of what constitutes ‘winning’ in a democracy and exactly how we should feel when ‘we’ either ‘win’ or ‘lose’ according to the democratic process. The exploration challenged the concept of winning and indicated that perhaps democracy is at its most effective when nobody is looking to win. That this creates a paradox invites both the possibility of artistic stimulation, and a return to the second provocation of the self-reflexive democracy: that the more aware we are of participation in a democracy, the less likely we are to be aware of the most relevant arguments and instead the likelier the distractions that the notion of ‘winning’ and the mechanisms of the process override the effectiveness of the democratic process. However, if ‘winning’ shouldn’t be the goal of an individual or group’s participation in a democratic process, where does that leave the purpose of providing an opinion or a manifesto for public consumption? 

Finally, the use of a grid to represent one’s relationship to an opinion demonstrated that the number of ways that we relate to an opinion can be much wider than the group initially perceived. Using any provocation, be it “I think Salt and Vinegar crisps are better than prawn cocktail” or something more contentious relating to the performing arts or politics, attendees initially placed themselves along a 2-dimensional axis of relative agreement. With the participants experiencing frustration at this format, or even distress with this process of defining oneself according to mere agreement as manifested by the affective discomfort of being in a line, a number of other axes were explored to turn the democratic grid into a 3-dimensional entity. Starting with a level of understanding of the person’s belief statement and then exploring further, a wide range of potential axes were explored, all of which demonstrate elements of the democratic process that may form an artistic stimulus:

• How much we agree with the opinion
• How much we understand why the opiner feels that way
• How much we understand what that opinion means
• How qualified we feel to proffer our agreement with that opinion
• How much we want to think about that topic right now
• How comfortable we are discussing that topic
• How comfortable we feel about our own opinion on that topic
• How much we care about topic
• How much that opinion impacts on our everyday life

The discussion did not come to a clear conclusion, nor was this the intention. However, the process may offer some templates for political discourse, the rehearsal or artistic development process, or as an artistic stimulus. ‘Democracy’, or perhaps as one attendant questions ‘Democracies’ is a rich provocation well worthy of its own exploration outside of the context of the questions contained within it. There are clearly ways in which in a contained environment a more satisfying democratic process can manifest, but how can (or indeed simply ‘can’) this superior process find its way out of a rehearsal room and into our everyday lives as participants in democracy?

How might difficult thinking play a greater part in public life? E.g. thought which is not binary, is ambivalent, dialectical, challenging of power structures, institutionalised dogma, or moral consensus?

What are the barriers to radical theatre and thought actually reaching a wider public?

Scribe

Jennifer Moss Waghorn

Facilitators

Juliet Gilkes Romero, Playwright

Professor Peter Holbrook, The University of Queensland 

Provocation – Juliet Gilkes Romero

A bust of George Orwell was recently erected outside the BBC Broadcasting House with the motto ‘If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.’

The quotation comes from the preface to Animal Farm, which was initially rejected by numerous publishers; including Faber and Faber, then led by TS Eliot. At this point Great Britain was allied with Stalin’s Soviet Union, the focus of Orwell’s satirical attack; Eliot’s justification for the book’s rejection was that he had ‘no conviction that this is the right point of view from which to criticise the political situation at this time.’

Juliet’s opening question for us, in light of Orwell’s relevance to the present day, was: are we George Orwells, or are we TS Eliots?

Within Juliet’s own experience as a journalist, she felt that she had a duty to investigate, report on, inform, and educate in order to have these difficult conversations; but with fewer press regulations and less money for quality programme making, she felt that the news outlets were becoming more reactionary and less rigorous. It was one of the reasons she left the BBC.

A particular problem was the advent of twenty-four-hour news, which Juliet saw as the beginning of a process of ‘dumbing down’ reports: there was no time for in-depth analysis. What is now needed in response to this kind of dialogue is deep critical thought, and a willingness to broach potentially taboo subjects.

Having left the BBC, Juliet found that writing plays and making theatre provided a “fantastic crucible for addressing the things that we’re afraid to say to each other”. Her recent work as a co-writer on Day of the Living (performed in the spring season of the 2018 Mischief Festival at The Other Place) drew on her experiences working for Sky News after leaving the BBC, when she covered the story of the forced disappearance of 43 Mexican students at gunpoint in Ayotzhinapa. The students are still missing; others who were killed at the scene were brutally tortured.

This kind of story usually only gets one to two minutes on air, and then slips down the bulletin after a few weeks: the show at the RSC gave Juliet the opportunity to tell the story more fully, with “masks, music, and pitch-black satire”. The show provided the opportunity to talk about something profoundly difficult, and to engage with an audience, many of whom left wanting to make a difference, for example by joining Amnesty International, or spreading the word amongst friends.

Challenging and radical theatre encourages us to ask those difficult questions: questions about how we live, what we want for society and each other, and how was can digest the many polarised issues that are happening today.

We’re currently wrestling with difficult questions of immigration, Brexit and Donald Trump, and it’s incumbent on not just theatre, but news organisations to speak truth to power. If it is the responsibility of journalists to present those truths incisively, it is the responsibility of those in power to listen to truths they don’t want to hear. There are people risking their lives to bring to our attention hard stories that we find difficult to discuss in the public sphere and we cannot allow them to be brushed aside.

Those working within the system, and within recognised structures of power, politics and the media, have a duty to stand up and speak out against injustice. After the terrible experiences of the twentieth century, which were supposed to be ‘never again’, terrifyingly similar situations are now arising. It is up to us to make a difference and encourage people not to be afraid to speak out. Are we TS Eliots or George Orwells?

Provocation – Peter Holbrook

We are currently experiencing an ecological crisis: living on an increasingly damaged planet, threatened with a complete loss of civilisation, of art, of everything. As a species we have never had to deal with something like this before. We are effectively living through a time of “war”; war against life on earth, a period of disorder and collapse. Peter believed that the Radical Mischief conference spoke to the difficult times we are living through.

A key part of our self-destruction is linked to the fact that our economy is increasingly and avowedly devoted to the amassing of private wealth. With the gross inequality of wealth distribution, the cultivation of consumerism, and the bleak environmental outlook, our society experiences both depression and complete powerlessness, and the need to constantly search for entertainment and pleasure. This search essentially cultivates a non-thinking society.

As Mark Fisher discusses, this approach of ‘capitalist realism’ has resulted in a deliberate cultivation of idiocy across the arts and sciences, and nothing is immune from the idolatrous cult of money. This ‘cult’ caters to the worst parts of ourselves, as the ‘I want it so I must have it’ approach becomes normalised. Nihilism has become the official philosophy of the age, as all that matters is ‘do what thou wilt’.

Alain Badiou commented that nihilism is implicit in market relations; with the rise of ubiquitous commercialism, it permeates all aspects of our culture. All previous cultures and societies have tried to push this ethos away, as frightening and destructive – until now. Having given up on religion, we’re giving up on arts and culture.

Arts and culture should – and generally do – try to stand against this cult of idiocy, upholding the tenet of ‘man cannot live by bread alone’. The most important redemptive option is maintaining the dialectic, and speaking across boundaries. We need to find bigger and bigger groups of people to combat our problems.

A potential way of combatting the negativity is to look at what people value, and find the positives in them: for example, while nationalism and isolationism can have extremely negative effects, there are positive ways to express the values of patriotism and family in order to counteract them.

Respect for particular members of the community can also be amplified and used to connect us to our core values: if people who work for the military or in healthcare are particularly respected, we can use this approval of the drive to protect and heal to express positivity.

These ideas need to be expressed through a language of commonality, and not through more theoretical or academic ‘jargon’; we have to avoid exclusion and elitism in order to break through these barriers and develop meaningful conversations.

General Discussion

Stupidity vs Difficulty?

Academically, we explore complicated and complicating material. But discussing difficulty in terms of stupidity and ‘dumbing down’ is unnecessarily dismissive, and fuels the problematic ‘us and them’ divide. Different backgrounds, education and opportunities result in what might be perceived as differing intelligence levels: it is unfair to risk excluding people on this basis.

There is power in simple and enjoyable facts and images: such as the recent discovery of a 40,000-year-old bone flute, or a photograph of children jumping in a puddle in Aleppo. It is still possible to engage with the complexity of these subjects without oversimplifying or overcomplicating discussions.

The opposite of difficulty is ease, not stupidity; and pleasure and enjoyment should be valued as cultural conduits, providing routes through difficulty. Cultural institutions have a responsibility not to underestimate their audiences.

There shouldn’t be a dichotomy of ‘intellectual’ and ‘normal’ people, when the focus topics are for everybody’s consideration.

Escaping from the Echo Chambers

In order to ask the difficult questions, the key approach is to listen for what creates them in the first place, and to listen to different takes on the answers. Not all artists are left-wing, or anti-Trump: our approach to answering difficult questions is complex, and very varied.

Not everyone shares a left-wing mindset, breaking out of our echo chambers is crucial – and theatre is about empathy. What if we consciously staged right-wing theatre? Shakespeare presents both, and all, sides of the argument through characters’ differing outlooks. The presence of a multifaceted audience is vital.

How do we combat this? The Scottish referendum was given as an example, where rationality won out by ‘being sneaky’, and appealing to emotions. Dry questions of financial logistics were turned into projections of fear about individuals’ monetary problems. Could rationality also win out through humour?

We as academics and theatre makers have the tools to present emotional arguments, to capture people’s sense of humour, of empathy and emotional response to difficult issues: and a duty to broaden the conversation to reach more of the public.

Cultural Spaces

An awareness of different cultural institutions, and their responsibilities to ask different cultural questions, or the same questions in different ways, is key. In the case of theatre as a living art, it only exists temporarily: the creative consumption of its output is potentially very different to libraries and other institutions.

It’s frustrating and difficult when there are fewer and fewer places where people can be collectively creative: libraries are being closed, arts subjects are being cut in schools. There are people fighting against this: in Stoney Stratford Library, which was threatened with closure, the library users borrowed every book except for one: The Borrowers. The library stayed open.

The challenge is to create spaces for people to engage with difficult questions, to feel that they can make a difference, and come back. Access and accessibility form a key part of this, especially cutting across barriers like the class divide to reach new people. A great example of this includes the temporary theatre space being built in Detroit out of shipping containers, or ‘guerrilla’ street theatre in the UK which draws on the audience’s own stories to develop a performance.

Theatre’s Responsibility

Theatre as an art form usually has a captive audience: they have chosen to attend. The real challenge is to reach out to ‘the nihilists’, and the people that either avoid or haven’t been presented with the difficult questions, and stage different viewpoints through theatre.

If we fight for anything as theatre makers, it is about creating space and inviting people to use it. If the real difficulties and threats for art and culture are nihilism and apathy, key ways to combat them are by developing stronger networks of love and creativity, and to acknowledge and be thankful for these.

What about Shakespeare?

If the majority of people attending the Radical Mischief conference were there due to a shared love of Shakespeare, how does he fit into the question of difficulty in the public sphere?

Shakespeare is about complexity, not difficulty. If you can understand Shakespeare, you can understand many other things. He is accessible for all if you find the right channels. Shakespeare may not be enjoyed in the UK because of class, or ‘elitist’ connotations; for many years his work was deliberately portrayed as ‘not for everyone’. However, he has four hundred years of cultural baggage, which includes being populist, and having a global cultural resonance.

Generations of writers and theatre makers have been inspired by Shakespeare: his work has a two-way nourishing effect, bringing life to contemporary performances of his plays.

Theatre More Broadly

How do we get more people interested in plays, both in Shakespeare and in newer radical writing like the Mischief plays?

What does theatre do to our thinking? Does it give people an open experience, and articulate ideas we haven’t thought about? Does it give people the chance or the impetus to go out and fulfil their imaginative or political potential?

Plays can give us the opportunity to present arguments, in a literal dialogue form, everywhere. For example, the difficult questions about the environment were posed by staging Shakespeare in Yosemite National Park, by Katherine Brokaw and Paul Prescott, and through the newly-written Mischief play for 2017, Myth.

On the other side is the more abstract “dark theatre”. Trump’s “performances” are visceral, fascistic and appealing directly to the emotions: he understands the power and politics of theatre. It’s almost unbearable to watch, because you can see why it appeals to some. The fact that this can happen again, after the horrors of the twentieth century, is terrifying.

How can the forms of artistic and critical practice challenge and renew each other?

Scribe

Ella Hawkins

Facilitators

Dr Abigail Rokison-Woodall, University of Birmingham

Terry O’Connor, Theatre-maker

The Form provocation sessions were run as participatory workshops. The participants – a diverse group of theatre-makers, actors, PhD students, and academic staff – were invited to explore the forms of artistic and critical practice through two practice-based exercises. The format of the workshop was in itself an investigation into form. What strategies might be best for communicating with one another? Which forms of communication might lead to fruitful discussions? 

Part One

The first part of the session, led by Abigail Rokison-Woodall, provided a space for the group to unpack the conventions and stereotypes associated with current artistic and critical practices. The discussion was initially divided into the three key areas that formed the focus of Radical Mischief: theatre, politics, and academia/criticism. As well as considering the current forms within each of these areas, the group were asked to think about what might be done to change the status quo (with a particular focus on how these different areas might cross-fertilise and learn from one another). Twenty minutes of frantic discussion followed, along with the scribbling of coloured pens onto large sheets of paper, resulting in three statements:

Theatre is currently limited by its associations with realism, the proscenium arch, the fourth wall, and a silent, passive audience; participation, openness, conversation, more new voices, and freedom from theatre auditoria would help to reinvigorate modern theatre practice.

Academia/criticism is characterised by its inclination towards written forms and inward-facing events, and its history of elitism and privilege; prioritising transparency, access, and new ways of sharing ideas would make academia a more inclusive space.

Politics suffers from the weight of tradition, alienation, deception, oppression, and exclusion; by aiming for a more honest, diverse, representative, and collaborative future, politics would better serve society.

The following discussion focused on the idea that these three areas are all built on forms that originated almost a century ago. Crucial elements of theatre, politics, and academia/criticism are extraordinarily outdated, and change is needed to bring these areas up to date. Collaborations across forms could be a powerful way to make these changes happen. It was also noted that the speed of communication/progress varies hugely between these areas: politics is often immediate and reactive, theatre can usually respond to current events within weeks/months, and academic responses often take more than a year to become publicly available. What might happen if these areas all caught up with one another? How might theatre and academia influence society if they could compete directly with politics and the media?

Part Two

The second part of the workshop, led by Terry O’Connor, took the form of an improvised group response to a Shakespeare extract. The participants were given a short excerpt from The Comedy of Errors (Act 2, Scene 1), and were asked to devise two individual responses to the text – one personal (a thought, a memory, a feeling), and one academic/critical. The room then became a performance space: the group members took turns to share their responses aloud, and in doing so created a performative, collective reading of the extract.

‘Language fixes definitions that we scream against… We are smashing the glass menagerie… Should I be able to speak those words? I felt like I was back in college… Why does she sound like a 50s housewife? Is this really Shakespeare? What words mean changes depending on who wrote them… When will we stop using adjectives when we mean people…  This is a comedy full of errors.’

The improvisation was followed by a discussion that centred on the open and inclusive nature of the exercise. Many felt liberated by the lack of judgement they felt towards their immediate and personal thoughts; there was a sense of permission to share ideas that would normally be dismissed. These feelings around judgement were seen to be a symptom of academia, wherein personal and instinctual responses are generally not valued. The group felt that the exercise resulted in a comfortable shared view rather than disagreement achieved through respectful sharing of  individual responses.

At one point, the discussion turned to the cultural baggage that accompanies Shakespeare. Almost all the responses shared during the improvisation had taken issue with the male-centric content of the excerpt. Members of the group noted that they had ascribed the viewpoint to the playwright, rather than the character speaking the lines (Luciana), and that the original context surrounding the excerpt had not been factored into the group response. This was a sobering moment as the participants thought deeply about the extent to which the ‘Shakespeare’ label affects how they engage with the playwright’s works.

The workshop ended with a consideration of how academia might benefit from the group’s findings. Research might be more fruitful if there is no fixed question to guide a project and no expected outcome at the end of the process. An essay should be considered an exploration of ideas, rather than a document with a clear end goal, and students should not be penalised for submitting assessments that are (in the words of Emma Rice) ‘strong but wrong’. We should ensure there is always space for subjectivity, admit that as human beings we all have different voices, and look for opportunities to fuse different forms together as we work towards a brighter future. 

Can the theatre and the academy radically rewrite our gender expectations?

Scribe

Juliano Zaffino

Facilitators

Catherine Silverstone, Queen Mary, University of London

Kimberley Sykes, Director

The provocation on Gender was facilitated by Catherine Silverstone, an academic interested in Shakespeare on stage and screen, and gender and sexuality in performance, and Kimberley Sykes, a freelance theatre director whose most recent credits included the 2017 RSC production of Dido, Queen of Carthage, which explored themes of female leadership and attitudes towards emotion (and hysteria) in women.

Kimberley Sykes argued that, in order to get out of bed and do her job with any conviction, she had to believe that the answer to the provocation would be an absolute ‘yes’, and was very hopeful that representation and diversifying were already achieving a good effect, and that we need to keep going with it, and take it further, to both teach and to make theatre with inclusivity in mind at every step of the way. Meanwhile, Catherine Silverstone offered up a ‘qualified yes’, in that she had strong caveats about the terms of the question, and the lasting impact that ‘radical rewritings’ can have to begin with. Referring to a ‘new gender cosmology’, she also offered the view that such radical change comes entwined with the risk of violence and discrimination.

The first conversation had a marked focus on the difference between theatre and academy, as well as what they share: while it was thought that theatre was more accessible, insofar as one doesn’t need to ‘research’ or gain entrance to the theatre in the way they do with the academy, it was also argued that the theatre seems to be entrenched in elitism and misconception, and that there is still a cost associated and a need to increase access. Much of the uncertainty towards the provocation came from a measured cynicism of the accessibility of both institutions. There was also a strong interest in what Shakespeare means to gender expectations; after much impassioned discussion of the issue of Shakespeare’s roles for women, a delegate (who had until this point remained fairly quiet) asked with honest insistence the unspoken question of the room: ‘why are we still doing Shakespeare? Write some plays and get some women on stage’. Though many other delegates instantly came to Shakespeare’s defence (‘there’s room for both’… ‘there is something powerful with taking ownership of something like Shakespeare’), many heads nodded in agreement when the challenge was first made. Perhaps raising the point in Stratford-upon-Avon, shortly before the conversation was set to conclude, was not the time or the place: but it was the most radical challenge the room seemed to face on that day.

The second conversation focused mostly on gender expectations themselves, rather than radically rewriting them. There was some reactionary discussion about binary genders and the imposition of labels, and some of the conversation was derailed by a lengthy discussion on genitals and so-called biological fact, and the toxic binary that biology imposes. The feeling of the room was one of acceptance and inclusivity towards Trans and non-binary people, one that resisted gender exclusion and argued that only the removal of ‘artificial constructions’ would allow for real progress.

Neither conversation had a clear and satisfactory denouement, an embodiment of the impossibility of the question. Though the atmosphere in the conversations suggested the necessity of asking the question, the meandering and unfinished conversations spoke to its insurmountable weight.

How can artists and scholars move beyond a ‘poverty of conversation’ about race?

What would fully acknowledging white privilege mean or look like in thought or practice?

Scribe

Elizabeth Moroney

Facilitators

Floriana Dezou, Director

Dr Islam Issa, Birmingham City University

Dr Karen Salt, University of Nottingham 

It seems important and encouraging to note that the sessions were attended by people from a multitude of nationalities and disciplines, who came together to discuss the importance of race and representation. Both artists and academics alike fully acknowledged the need for change, particularly in terms of representation within workplaces. The key question for most was: how? How do we bring about the much needed, and long sought after, change necessary for equality?

Britain needs to take account of its own diversity. This is becoming more and more challenging. Yet, how do we work/ challenge without creating oppositional standpoints? Solidarity without censure? Further questions were raised: as a white academic, what can one do to facilitate productive and effective conversations about race? And ensure that non-white students return to the classroom?  Decentring the curriculum might be a good place to start: shaping literature and canonical work through a different lens. Poverty of conversation exists because the conversations are constantly determined by the same people. The mainstream reception of literature, as described by Issa, is white, middle class, anglophone and male. He offered the term ‘periphery neglect’ to describe the side effect of such a narrow literary canon and readership, that goes to the core of where writers of other background’s place is in literary criticism or reviews, as well as their representation. However, is the periphery going into the centre going to solve any problems? If the centre remains desirable, inequality still exists. How do we alter this dominant, hegemonic narrative? This is a grassroots issue, so we need to go further than diversity on stage or in workplaces, and start from the ground up.

Dezou initiated her response to the provocations by putting forward the idea that perspective is central to the concept of white privilege, and that in order to evolve, a reframing of perspectives and a redistribution of power needs to happen. The terminology of ‘white privilege’ is itself unhelpful, she felt, as it carries with it a positive inflection. In order to fully consider the effects of white privilege, maybe a more useful term to consider is ‘passive violence’? She offered a theory developed by William Du Bois at the turn of the twentieth century: ‘double consciousness’. The term refers to the way in which minority figures in a particular society have to act or think in order to survive: they must not only be aware of their own thoughts and actions but also how those thoughts and actions might be received by a majority. Her motivation was to suggest that we should all develop a double consciousness to move away from a poverty of conversation about race. Not just non-white people, but everyone should have an extra awareness of their position and role within society. That is not to eradicate the term white privilege, as that would negate the troublesome history attached to it, but to move towards a greater understanding of the actualities of its effects on non-white people so that we as a society might evolve.

Salt spoke about the need for accountability within the workplace, rather than a focus on progression that erases the mistakes of the past. It is important to acknowledge history’s impact and question why we are having these conversations today. The call was for a reshaping rather than a breaking away; a need to create space from within for more substantial diversity. There is an urgency for reparative work. Theatre and literature have important roles to play in this. Salt asked of academia, what is embedded structurally that puts people off? Representation within the workplace needs to hold the whole institution to account, it needs to involve every department, rather than simply being tokenistic. This requires flexibility and a decolonisation of both university and theatrical programmes. We are all knowledge bearers but there needs to be an equitable, protective relationship between us. We should not stop at thinking about the terminology attached to race, but move further to consider the continuing impacts, trauma and history.

In the last ten years, on British stages, things have begun to shift slightly. And yet, we must find a way to create productions that are ‘all black’ or ‘all Indian’ without setting those plays in Africa or India. Whilst it is important to acknowledge ethnic heritages, those same heritages should not necessarily impose on actors a national identity, as those could be very different. Similarly, for Dezou, colour-blind casting cannot exist as that does away with the personal histories of actors that inform their performance.

To make a positive difference, we are all responsible for fighting battles with integrity and truthfulness. Salt called for co-conspirators in order to enable the mechanics of greater agency and representation. Issa echoed her in asking for allies to decentre Shakespeare’s capital to create a broader literary canon. Dezou asked for a relearning and rebuilding to occur within theatre and further afield, reshaping perspectives to reveal a shared history rather than a linear narrative that is dominated by one force. There is hope for a more equal future, but the journey will be a long one.

Can secular scholarship or performance ever get at the truths of radical religious beliefs?

Scribe

Robert James Buehner

Facilitators

Professor Julia Lupton, University of California, Irvine

(Hassan Abdulrazzak, Playwright was unfortunately unable to be present)

Discussion around this provocation was sometimes contentious, sometimes consensual, providing new insight into both how academics and practitioners in the fine arts discuss performance and how they truly share feelings about religion in real life versus on the stage. Some questions discussed were: Can modern theatre demonstrate modern radical religious practice? Are those views valid? Do they adhere to the idea of theatre being a reflection of society?

Many recurring themes arose out of discussion on this topic. The intersection between perceived moralised secularism in modern academia and theatre and the reality that there are indeed religious individuals that operate in both arenas was fervently highlighted. This is not to suggest that this is problematic by nature but simply a fact. When one is academic and religious it was revealed by several members that this appeared foreign to the ‘secular academics’ within their own ‘tolerate’, ‘open minded’ discipline. Those who professed religious affiliations were made to feel as if they could not possibly be both or worse, that they were unworthy of scholarly pursuits. When these religious scholars bravely stepped forward to offer their views on the treatment of religion by academia and theatre they were acknowledged fully by these groups. There was, at no time, anyone who sneered or demanded that you cannot possibly be both.  As such, the conversation regarding religion went deeper and therefore became richer.

In addition to successfully blowing the walls between academia, theatre, practice, and religion asunder, there was lamenting by many in these groups that religion has been, for the most part, tamped down or outright avoided by the secular society who produce performance, writ large. It was not clearly decided whether this was a good or bad reality in the present world circumstances, it was only pointed to as factual normality in modernity. Religion in this sense is seen, according to the participants, as something ‘old’, ‘rare’, ‘quaint’, ‘simple’, or ‘narrow minded’. Interestingly enough, both religious adherents and secularists used these labels. It must be pointed out that these markers were used as a negative image of religion and found by the respondents to be extremely hostile to any religious person or domination.

The most striking aspect that encompasses these two diverse worlds or paradigms, though there was no desire to dichotomise these views, was the need to have ritual in everyday life. It did not seem to matter whether that was fulfilled by religion or performance, or perhaps by both. The important consensus was that that goal of meaningfulness in community through ritual was arrived at by the individual. In other words, the temple is sometimes treated as a theatre or artistic performance and in turn a theatre is sometimes treated as a temple or ritualised performance. Within these groups, that was never seen as counterproductive to the applications connected to each arena. Shakespeare, in particular, was highlighted as a very powerful force for furthering the purposes of these two pillars of human existence.

There was far more contention centred around what ‘radical religious practices’ means. How do the worlds of academia and theatrical performance define those terms? Content and context do matter to the assigning of labels in most cases. For instance, should the theatre practitioners recognise a distinct difference between radicals, spirituality, and organised religion or is it all faith based in the first place? First, how could theatre possibly present radical views if it is not sure what those rituals within that particular community of radicals means? Even when those views might be seen by the populous as determined or crystallised, the theatre should always strive to fully understand what those agreed upon practices actually are before proceeding with any commentary on that religion. This was not presented as a question of challenging the rights of speech, assembly, or even religious practice, but rather as due process that must be carried out in order to present these rituals in the best possible light.

Overall, the central dilemma of theatre that contains religious material is evident when the director or writer of a piece of theatre tries to secularise that ritualistic material. Many participants felt this stripped the material of its power. It was mourned that religion is avoided by these highly influential creative forces. Furthermore, when these artists do tackle these topics it is usually presented in a sacrilegious fashion or vastly outdated notions. When done so, it is a disservice, not only to the religious conventions but to the art itself. How then can theatre and academia think and act toward religion?

It was argued many times by participants that this disservice can be counteracted by encouraging these artistic forces to learn more about the religious implications in the material before they choose to forego them or dare include them within the productions. One exception would seem to be Shakespeare. The respondents agreed that he not only represents the Christian ideals (as literary history tells us), but also those of Judaism, Islamic tenets, ancient Greek gods, Roman demigods, Paganism, and even modern mainstreamed secularist views (which could have been seen as radical by contemporaries). This is perhaps, they agreed, why he still resonates with audiences today. There is something for everyone in his works. The texts of his plays present religious material but not in a way that suggests that this the only path that people must follow or even choose to follow. There was some consensus that Shakespeare was perhaps the most radicalised, mischievous writer and practitioner of all time. In this spirit, both academics and practitioners should encourage continued, actively open forums to fruitfully converse about what academia and theatre can do to involve religious concerns or concepts within their largely secular purviews.

How can performance and scholarship get closer to and illuminate the violence of our times (including about non-physical violence, silencing, the everyday violence of ideology)? 

Scribe

Caroline Curtis

Facilitators

Professor Kiernan Ryan, Royal Holloway

Ayse Tashkiran, Movement Director

Provocation – Kiernan Ryan

Kiernan has a particular interest in non-physical violence, the silencing forces which unconsciously manipulate us and shape us from childhood. He spoke of the witches in Macbeth and fairies in A Midsummer Night’s Dream as Shakespeare giving palpable visible forms to attitudes and assumptions which control Macbeth and the lovers from within, personified expressions of social constraints. By dramatizing reality, Shakespeare assists the audience in becoming more aware of these silencing and violent forces, but also in recognising that these forces are external to oneself. Coming out of that oppressive reality is the principle of equality founded in our common physical nature: the result of violence in Shakespeare is, paradoxically, radical utopian principles. 

Provocation – Ayse Tashkiran

Ayse’s opening statement focused on her own practice of putting research into movement and exploring how movement may be read dramaturgically. Themes, including themes of violence, are embedded into the movement and images of a play, with a performance becoming a nexus of motion, emotion, and imagination. Working between the director and the actors, Ayse uses a revisionist dynamic and a feminist gaze to put questions about violence into action, and she used her work on two recent RSC productions to illustrate this. In the 2016 production of Doctor Faustus, a prepubescent Helen of Troy running from Faustus reframes lust as rape, exposing the myth of a war caused by a great beauty rather than the drive of possession. In the 2018 production of The Duchess of Malfi, an omnipresent male chorus take their movements from the world of sport and controlled aggression, redirected to demonstrate the toxicity of unchecked masculinity.

The first participant response to these opening statements continued to discuss The Duchess of Malfi but brought the conversation back to physical violence. Buckets of blood filling the stage cause the audience to fear for the actors’ safety: is it necessary for violence to be literalised when we can experience it through language? This point was returned to several times over the course of the hour and proved to be something of stumbling block. It was explained that an enormous amount of training, experience, and technique goes into every production at the RSC, yet the question of the necessity of seeing violence represented at all continued to dominate.

Several thoughtful counterpoints were made. One participant recalled how a performance of The Taming of the Shrew which subjected almost every member of the cast to a beating made her aware of the theme of domestic violence inherent to the text. Others spoke of the violence already in our heads – societal, cultural, endemic - which we bring to any form of art when we encounter it. What can the value of theatre be for young people who experience violence but are unable to contextualise it? The RSC’s consultation with the Ben Kinsella Trust for the 2010 Romeo and Juliet can indicates a desire to de-institutionalise the company with a production which explores what it means, how it feels to stab someone.

The final contribution expressed a need for more intelligent spaces for radical thinking but denied that heritage culture theatre was capable of pushing the envelope, arguing that the physical violence at the RSC is silly when compared to the challenge of understanding diachronic prose. There was little time for rebuttal. As a spectator, I felt that I had witnessed several incidents of silencing during the provocation, and that it had ended with one. The predominant concern with the safety of actors subjected to unimpeded directors may carry with it a buried compliment about theatrical verisimilitude, but ultimately needed to be answered non-phenomenologically with statements about health and safety rather than theatrical scholarship.  The final contributor was likely unaware of the discussion time having run out, yet to end on a broadly invalidating note was unsatisfying, although pertinent.

Saturday’s conversation began with each participant introducing themselves and their personal interest in the subject of theatrical violence. By allowing everyone to voice their own perspective at the outset, the topic pool was immediately widened. Kiernan and Ayse identified common themes: gendered representations of violence, domestic and political violence, and responses to staged violence. As with Friday’s conversation, the discussion focused largely around recent RSC productions: The Duchess of Malfi (2018), Romeo and Juliet (2018), and Titus Andronicus (2017).

The choices in framing gendered violence was particularly commented on. Is it ever possible to escape the pornography of representation? Is staging violence inalienably voyeuristic? One participant admitted that they dislike seeing any act of rape performed onstage, but is nonetheless interested in ways it can be made more thoughtful, directing the gaze away from the physical violence and toward the emotion involved. It was agreed that the focus of the most recent Duchess of Malfi was the Duchess’s pleasure and fecundity before the violence. Ayse proposed that the torrent of blood at the play’s conclusion is an evocation rather than a representation, the presence of blood outside of the body being experienced differently by women and men. Capulet’s sudden attack when rejecting his daughter in Romeo and Juliet was used as an example of a violent act redirecting the gaze of the audience, which re-examines the constrained movements of Lady Capulet earlier in the play when there had been no hint of domestic violence.

Discussion turned to Titus Andronicus and negative examples of framing. One participant had seen productions of Titus which cut the scene where Marcus finds Lavinia, a scene which forces the audience to look at her mutilation. In a play which sells tickets through the promise of gore, why was this scene removed? It was suggested that some directors may find the ‘generic mongreldom’ of the play, and its differing levels of humour regarding violence, difficult to resolve. Kiernan pointed out that comedy suspends ethics: pain plus emotional distance equals humour. But has the amount of distance required changed in the last ten years? It was noted that recent productions of The Comedy of Errors seem to be introducing more onstage violence. We tend to dichotomise violence and good people, so what happens when the two are presented in conjunction?

Finally, the non-homogeneity of the audience was considered. One participant explained that he grew up in Mexico, and therefore had a different relationship with death. For him, humour could be an escape or a means of reflection, having grown up associating death with feasts and parties. Cultural differences to death have evolved differently within Europe as well as outside of it: the UK may be shocked by Catholic processional attitudes to death, while Spain may be appalled by the linguistic violence of the British media in a country with such strict libel laws.