Reflections on Ambient Noise

Political theatre has a long tradition of utilising pedagogical performance models to communicate the intent of the theatre-maker. Over the past year, I have battled to establish the place of pedagogy in my own performance work.

From the outset I have agreed with David Hare that;

“The problem with the political theatre-maker is that... the drama is fashioned above all to be accessible. No member of the enormous audience would be able to mistake the authors purpose or meaning. The demands of what you want to achieve politically are hard sometimes to reconcile with what you can actually achieve artistically” (Hare, 2005; 22).

Having read Jacques Ranciere’s influential lecture, The Emancipated Spectator , I became further confused as to the rightful place of pedagogy within a piece of political theatre. It appeared to me that Ranciere was advocating some sort of theatre without intent. I understood that Ranciere believed that for a person to gain from spectatorship they must be free to make a personal interpretation of the work and thus a theatre maker should allow space for the interpretation of the audience member to vary greatly from the message intended by the author.

This reading of Ranciere’s theories unearthed a lot of questions for me and challenged even the basic definition of political theatre from which I had been working. Political theatre is often defined by its intention. The political theatre maker differs from any other on the grounds that she intends to induce societal change with her art. Thus, if political theatre could not contain intent then I could no longer define what political theatre actually was.

I feel that my input to our group performance, Ambient Noise, evidenced my confusion around these theoretical questions. But on a positive note, I believe that in making the performance, I have come some way to finding the answers to my queries.

Due to my reluctance to evidence a political intent in Ambient Noise, I effectively said very little with the performance. I was intentionally trying to make theatre without intention. I provided a large volume of visual information, letting the audience members interpret it as they wished.

I am glad that I tested this mode of performance in Ambient Noise, but I now believe that this model of theatre-making is not the way forward for my practice. For a piece of theatre to open up a dialogue with an audience it must make some sort of statement. A dialogue must have two sides; if it does not, then there can be no communication.

In a book I am currently reading called Metapolitics by Alain Badiou I have found another argument why a theatre-maker must take a position with her work. Although the author’s criticisms are directed at political philosophers, his commentary can be extended to cover political theatre-makers also. He believes that a claim to political neutrality is a spurious one which is most often used as a fig leaf to allege ideological immunity. For Badiou, philosophers [and by extension political theatre-makers] are no more immune to political decision making than anyone else.

Returning to Ranciere’s text, I think I have found a new reading of his paradigm; one that allows room for intent while still providing space for audience interpretation.

Perhaps there is a light at the end of this tunnel...