Authorizing the Audience: The conceptual drama of Tim Crouch: Stephen Bottoms.
Below follows the statements that I felt were important from the reading and were points that were discussed in my seminar.
Tim Crouch performing An Oak Tree at Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, August 2005. Jon Spooner plays the second actor.
“Things become art in space where powerful ideas about art focus upon them. Indeed the object frequently becomes the medium through which these ideas are manifested and proffered for discussion” (O’Doherty, 1999, 14).
“Crouch demonstrated that the theatre space – together with the performance of written dialogue spoken within it – had transformational possibilities potentially exceeding those of the gallery” (Bottoms, 2009, 65).
” reality is somewhat undermined by the fact that her lines are performed by Crouch himself, standing there in the garb of the stage hypnotist character that he plays through most of the piece: the tree s/ he gestures at is a piano stool, the road a bare stage floor, and the daughter a plastic-arm. The Father, moreover, is played by a second actor (male or female) who has neither seen nor read the play prior to stepping onstage in the given performance” (Bottoms, 2009, 65-66).
“the ‘perpetual field’s of force’ operating within the theatre space, that despite all the blatantly telescoped signals of the scene’s artifice” (Bottoms, 2009, 66).
“Spectators take the information they are given, partial and contradictory as it is, and fill out the perceptual and emotional landscape through an investment that, because personal, makes the material all the more intensely felt” (Bottoms, 2009, 66).
“The distinction between fact and fiction is a late acquisition of rational thought…”(Bottoms, 2009, 66).
“The spectators are cast as ‘characters’ in the play but simultaneously reminded of their non-coincide with the spectators they represent – just as they remain conscious that the second actor is non-coincidental with the character s/he is asked to portray” (Bottoms, 2009, 66).
“the adjective “postdramatic” denotes a theatre that feels bound to operate beyond drama, at a time “after” the authority of the dramatic paradigm in the theatre’ (Lehmann, cited in Bottoms, 2009, 67).
“liberating the authority of the audience to see their own thing. For me that’s very important: it’s about relinquishing control from the stage” (Crouch, cited in Bottoms, 2009, 67).
“Crouch makes his audience conscious of their own process of spectatorial meaning- seeking, by showing them- dramatising?” (Bottoms, 2009, 68).
My observations.
An Oak Tree is influenced by postdramatic dramaturgy that is contained alongside Craig-Martin’s various artworks, which arguably has come before and influenced its inception.
An Oak Tree takes its teachings from the material, that is by the poststructuralist and postdramatic philosophy.
Every performance is unique as the second actor is unaware they have been allocated the part to mere hours before it is due to be performed, they also have not been given a script. This leads to there being no pre-conceived emotional attachment to the character-troupes or stereotyping. The performance given, is very much a real birth of a new life.
Works Cited.
Bottoms, S. (2009) Authorizing the Audience: The conceptual drama of Tim Crouch. Performance Research, 14(1) 65-76
juliageek (2007) An Oak Tree by Tim Crouch.
Available from https: //www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIf3a49W_iI [Accsessed 28 October 2016].
O’Doherty, B. (1999) Inside the White Cube: The Ideology of the Gallery Space. London: University of Califonia Press.