Image theatre: transforming perspectives through embodied responses to refugee drawings in Yesterday/Today/Tomorrow (Traceability is Credibility) at the 2017 Venice Biennale

ABSTRACT

This paper documents the drawings, installations, video works, and performances that were produced as part of Bryan McCormack’s Yesterday/Today/Tomorrow (Traceability is Credibility) conceptual work at the 2017 Venice Biennale in collaboration with Henry Bell and undergraduate students at Sheffield Hallam University. It also includes two videos: the first of which was part of McCormack’s installation, and illustrates the application of performance methods inspired by Augusto Boal’s Image Theatre techniques. The second video gives a brief impression of how these methods functioned in a live performance in Venice in May 2017.

KEYWORDS:

• Image theatre
• Bryan McCormack
• Yesterday/Today/Tomorrow
• migrant crisis
• interactive

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributors

Henry Bell has been a Lecturer of Performance Studies at Sheffield Hallam University since September 2016. Previous to this, as a professional theatre director and applied theatre practitioner, he held the post of Associate Director at the Stephen Joseph Theatre and Community, Education and Literary Director at the Orange Tree Theatre.

Bryan McCormack creates works dealing with specifically social and political subject matters. He has participated in the 57th Biennale di Venezia and has had solo and group shows in venues such as the Centre Pompidou and UNESCO, Paris, the Empire Gallery, London, and the Museo Chopin, Valldemossa. One of his monumental public works is permanently installed in the park of Saint-Cloud, Paris.