On Theatricality and the Space Between

Abstract

With reference to a practice-led research process and the ensuing devised performance-in-progress of Black/White, this paper draws on conversations between the director, actors and audience members. The key focus is an exploration of Féral’s claim that theatricality is a dynamic of perception, creating a special condition theatricality between the spectator and the one looked at (the actor) (Féral, Josette, 1998 La théatralité: Recherche sur la spécificité du langage théâtral in Poétique (75) pp 347-361). Further the paper explores how this is then complicated by learning disability.

Notes

1 Reinelt differentiates the term ‘performance’ (which includes ‘processes of performing’ and ‘valuing the processes of signification in performance’ of the ‘subject in process’) from the products of theatrical performance (2002, 201-2).

2 Schmidt provides a useful consideration of co-creation between learning-disabled and non-disabled artists in the theatre, for which she provides a working tool in order to understand what she terms the ‘spectrum of collaboration’ that arises in such work (2017: 450).

3 Invited audience members included representatives from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, academics from Queen’s University Belfast, members of disability organizations (ActionAbility and Open Arts, Belfast), arts practitioners who work in and for disability organizations (ActionAbility, and Stage Beyond, Londonderry) and the Executive Director of Open Arts, Belfast.