‘A Process of Transformation’: Tim Crouch on My Arm

Abstract

This document presents an edited transcription of an interview with actor-playwright Tim Crouch, conducted by Seda Ilter in 2010 following Brighton performances of Crouch's 2003 play My Arm. Crouch discusses the ways in which My Arm illustrates certain key concerns of his playwriting. The interview is introduced with a critical overview of Crouch's concern for theatrical transformation to originate in the mind of the spectator.

Notes

This quotation is taken from the interview below, p. 403.

Tim Crouch performed preview showings of My Arm at the Hayward Gallery (2003), Battersea Arts Centre (2004) and at the ICA (2009) in London.

Tim Crouch, quoted in Caridad Svich, ‘Tim Crouch's Theatrical Transformations: A Conversation with Caridad Svich’, HotReview.org Hunter On-line Theater Review http://www.hotreview.org/articles/timcrouchinterv.htm [accessed 23 September 2010].

Tim Crouch, quoted in Stephen Bottoms, ‘Authorizing the Audience: The Conceptual Drama of Tim Crouch’, Performance Research, 14 (Spring 2009), 65–76 (p. 69).

Bottoms, ‘Authorizing the Audience’, p. 74.

Svich, ‘Tim Crouch's Theatrical Transformations’.

Tim Crouch, An Oak Tree (London: Oberon, 2005), p. 17.

See the link to the play ENGLAND on Tim Crouch's official website: http://www.newsfromnowhere.net/shows/england.html [accessed 23 September 2010].

Shunt is a collective of artists creating and curating live performance in unusual locations within London, such as Bethnal Green Arches, London Bridge Vaults and Bermondsey Street Warehouse.

Bertolt Brecht in Brecht on Theatre: The Development of an Aesthetic, ed. and trans. by John Willett (London: Methuen, 1964), p. 27.

Jacques Rancière, The Emancipated Spectator, trans. by Gregory Elliott (London and New York: Verso, 2009), p. 22.

See a smith's ‘Gentle Acts of Removal, Replacement and Reduction,’ printed in this edition of Contemporary Theatre Review, pp. 410–15.

Karen Jürs-Munby, ‘Introduction’, in Postdramatic Theatre, Hans-Thies Lehmann (Abingdon: Routledge, 2006), p. 4.

Bottoms, ‘Authorizing the Audience’, p. 67.

David Lane, ‘A Dramaturg's Perspective: Looking to the Future of Script Development’, Studies in Theatre and Performance, 30 (Spring 2010), 127–42 (p. 140).

Tim Crouch, My Arm (London: Faber & Faber, 2003), p.17.

Tim Crouch, ‘Germany Loves My Arm’, Guardian, 7 April 2004, http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2004/apr/07/theatre3 [accessed 23 September 2010].

Susan Mansfield, ‘Interview: Tim Crouch – Theatre Director’, Scotsman, 7 August 2010, http://news.scotsman.com/arts/Interview-Tim-Crouch–theatre.6457784.jp [Date accessed 18 July 2011].

Crouch, My Arm, p. 31.

Ibid., p. 26.

Ibid., p. 34.