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Environmental
Theatre Unlimited
Creating epic theatre for the great outdoors.
This performance company will respect the related transactions essential
to the theatrical event. Of these transactions the most significant
will be those between the performers and the audience and between
the theatrical event and the immediate environment.
Aim:
- To
create large-scale outdoor theatre that both moves and impresses
an audience and achieves broad popular appeal.
- To
create theatre that embraces the outdoor context while achieving
theatrical content that goes beyond spectacle.
- To
employ the theatrical form in a manner appropriate to the environmental
context and that acknowledges and responds to the presence of
the audience.
- To
employ non-verbal techniques to communicate between actors and
to engage with the audience. These essential transactional relationships
are central to the creation of environmental theatre.
- To
bring together experienced practitioners to work together collaboratively
and who will employ multi-disciplinary performances skills and
techniques.
Environmental
Theatre Unlimited was brought into being with the specific aim to
create large-scale theatre for the outdoor arena, that will dramatically
tell a story. In the tradition of street theatre best practice,
employing techniques that communicate directly with the audience,
we aim to be responsive to the environment and to the moment.
Albatross is the first production by Environmental Theatre Unlimited.
Environmental Theatre
The term environmental theatre was employed by Richard Schechner
in 1968 to describe the work of the Performance Group. His theories
of Environmental Theatre are described in a paper published in 1968
“Six Axioms of Environmental Theatre” in which he expressed
theories developed through an intensive period of experimentation
with his Performance Group in New York. (The Performance Group subsequently
became The Wooster Group). His aim was to develop a performance
theory that would embrace the entire range of theatrical events
along a continuum that would include at either extreme, “a
traditional production of Hamlet and a march on the Pentagon”.
The Environmental Theatre of Richard Schechner developed from his
experimentations with the use of theatrical space. He aimed to break
down theatrical conventions, staging his theatrical events in a
way that included the audience. Much of Schechner’s theory
of Environmental Theatre is particularly applicable to theatre designed
to be played in an outdoor context. Street Theatre must have a site-specific
element and because of the dynamic relationship with the environment
in which it is played. Typically the space entered by the theatrical
event is a non-purpose built space and only becomes an arena by
the focussing function of the audience. Audiences of daytime performances,
in natural light, are clearly visible. A street theatre performer
cannot ignore the presence of the audience.
The term environmental has gained another recognised meaning since
1968 and now refers to an awareness of the fragility of the world
in which we live.
Environmental Theatre Unlimited was set up by Michael Lister to
develop outdoor theatre. Michael Lister is also one of the directors
of Avanti Display, a company he set up with co-director Bill Palmer
in 1983. For twenty years Avanti Display created street theatre
to tour both nationally and internationally.
Avanti Display developed large-scale site-specific performances,
in recent years.
Most notably this has included site-specific work on the National
Theatre on London’s south bank and on Manchester Town Hall
for the opening of the x-traxs Festival of 2000
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