Street theatre - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Street theatre is a form of theatrical

Theatre

Theatre is a collaborative form of fine art that uses live performers to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music or dance...

performance

Performance

A performance, in performing arts, generally comprises an event in which a performer or group of performers behave in a particular way for another group of people, the audience. Choral music and ballet are examples. Usually the performers participate in rehearsals beforehand. Afterwards audience...

and presentation in outdoor public space

Public space

A public space is a social space such as a town square that is open and accessible to all, regardless of gender, race, ethnicity, age or socio-economic level. One of the earliest examples of public spaces are commons. For example, no fees or paid tickets are required for entry, nor are the entrants...

s without a specific paying audience. These spaces can be anywhere, including shopping centres

Shopping mall

A shopping mall, shopping centre, shopping arcade, shopping precinct or simply mall is one or more buildings forming a complex of shops representing merchandisers, with interconnecting walkways enabling visitors to easily walk from unit to unit, along with a parking area — a modern, indoor version...

, car parks

Parking lot

A parking lot , also known as car lot, is a cleared area that is intended for parking vehicles. Usually, the term refers to a dedicated area that has been provided with a durable or semi-durable surface....

, recreational reserves and street corners. They are especially seen in outdoor spaces where there are large numbers of people. The actors who perform street theatre range from busker

Busking

Street performance or busking is the practice of performing in public places, for gratuities, which are generally in the form of money and edibles...

s to organised theatre companies or groups that want to experiment with performance spaces, or to promote their mainstream work.

Sometimes performers are commissioned, especially for street festival

Festival

A festival or gala is an event, usually and ordinarily staged by a local community, which centers on and celebrates some unique aspect of that community and the Festival....

s, children's shows or parade

Parade

A parade is a procession of people, usually organized along a street, often in costume, and often accompanied by marching bands, floats or sometimes large balloons. Parades are held for a wide range of reasons, but are usually celebrations of some kind...

s, but more often street theatre performers are unpaid or gather some income through the dropping of a coin in a hat by the audience.

The logistics of doing street theatre necessitate simple costume

Costume

The term costume can refer to wardrobe and dress in general, or to the distinctive style of dress of a particular people, class, or period. Costume may also refer to the artistic arrangement of accessories in a picture, statue, poem, or play, appropriate to the time, place, or other circumstances...

s and prop

Theatrical property

A theatrical property, commonly referred to as a prop, is an object used on stage by actors to further the plot or story line of a theatrical production. Smaller props are referred to as "hand props". Larger props may also be set decoration, such as a chair or table. The difference between a set...

s, and generally there is little or no amplification

Electronic amplifier

An electronic amplifier is a device for increasing the power of a signal.It does this by taking energy from a power supply and controlling the output to match the input signal shape but with a larger amplitude...

of sound, with actors depending on their natural vocal

Human voice

The human voice consists of sound made by a human being using the vocal folds for talking, singing, laughing, crying, screaming, etc. Its frequency ranges from about 60 to 7000 Hz. The human voice is specifically that part of human sound production in which the vocal folds are the primary...

and physical ability. This issue with sound has meant that physical theatre

Physical theatre

Physical theatre is used to describe any mode of performance that pursues storytelling or drama through primarily and secondarily physical and mental means. There are several quite distinct but indistinct traditions of performance which all describe themselves using the term "physical theatre",...

, including dance, mime

Mime artist

A mime artist is someone who uses mime as a theatrical medium or as a performance art, involving miming, or the acting out a story through body motions, without use of speech. In earlier times, in English, such a performer was referred to as a mummer...

and slapstick

Slapstick

Slapstick is a type of comedy involving exaggerated violence and activities which may exceed the boundaries of common sense.- Origins :The phrase comes from the batacchio or bataccio — called the 'slap stick' in English — a club-like object composed of two wooden slats used in Commedia dell'arte...

, is a very popular genre in an outdoor setting. The performances need to be highly visible, loud and simple to follow in order to attract a crowd.

Street theatre should be distinguished from other more formal outdoor theatrical performances, such as performances in a park or garden, where there is a discrete space set aside (or rope

Rope

A rope is a length of fibres, twisted or braided together to improve strength for pulling and connecting. It has tensile strength but is too flexible to provide compressive strength...

d off) and a ticketed

Ticket (admission)

A ticket is a voucher that indicates that one has paid for admission to an event or establishment such as a theatre, movie theater, amusement park, zoo, museum, concert, or other attraction, or permission to travel on a vehicle such as an airliner, train, bus, or boat, typically because one has...

audience.

In some cases, street theatre performers have to get a licence or specific permission through local

Local government

Local government refers collectively to administrative authorities over areas that are smaller than a state.The term is used to contrast with offices at nation-state level, which are referred to as the central government, national government, or federal government...

or state government

Government

Government refers to the legislators, administrators, and arbitrators in the administrative bureaucracy who control a state at a given time, and to the system of government by which they are organized...

s in order to perform. Many performers travel internationally to certain locations of note.

Street theatre is arguably the oldest form of theatre in existence: most mainstream entertainment mediums can be traced back to origins in street performing, including religious passion plays and many other forms. More recently performers who, a hundred years ago, would have made their living working in variety theatres, music hall

Music hall

Music Hall is a type of British theatrical entertainment which was popular between 1850 and 1960. The term can refer to:# A particular form of variety entertainment involving a mixture of popular song, comedy and speciality acts...

s and in vaudeville

Vaudeville

Vaudeville was a theatrical genre of variety entertainment in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s. Each performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill...

, now often perform professionally in the many well-known street performance areas throughout the world. Notable performers that began their careers as street theater performers include Robin Williams

Robin Williams

Robin McLaurin Williams is an American actor and comedian. Rising to fame with his role as the alien Mork in the TV series Mork and Mindy, and later stand-up comedy work, Williams has performed in many feature films since 1980. He won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance...

, David Bowie

David Bowie

David Bowie is an English musician, actor, record producer and arranger. A major figure for over four decades in the world of popular music, Bowie is widely regarded as an innovator, particularly for his work in the 1970s...

, Jewel

Jewel (singer)

Jewel Kilcher , professionally known as Jewel, is an American singer-songwriter, guitarist, producer, actress and poet...

and Harry Anderson

Harry Anderson

Harry Laverne Anderson is an American actor and magician.-Early life:Born in Newport, Rhode Island, Anderson was a street magician before becoming an actor.-Career:...

.

One of the most interesting points about modern street theatre is its unique sociopolitical place. People who might not have ever been to, or been able to afford to go to, the "legitimate" theatre can watch a street show. By virtue of where the shows take place, their audience is made up of anyone and everyone who wants to watch. If an audience member can not afford it, then it is free.

Reasons for staging work on the street

Different practitioners will have different motivations for using the street as a space for performance. For some it is simply because their work is not accepted by the mainstream channels, and for others it is because they have taken a clear decision to do so. This may be socially, politically and/or artistically motivated.

New performers such as multimedia artist Caeser Pink and his group of performers known as The Imperial Orgy used performance art for social activism as in a piece titled Our Daily Bread that brought performers onto the streets of the New York's financial district to ceremoniously lay loaves of Wonder Bread along the sidewalks, each with advertisement from Satan offering to buy people's souls in exchange for all the material possessions one can obtain by dedicating their lives to working a corporate job that leaves little time for spirituality. The performance caused an uproar when police were called out and bomb sniffing dogs were brought in to inspect the loaves of bread for explosives.

A paying "theatre-going" public, is considered by many as to not be representative of the public to whom a group or practitioner is trying to communicate, and so performing to literally, the man on the street, may be considered a more democratic form of dissemination.

Many contemporary street theatre practitioners have extensively studied pre-existing street and popular theatre traditions, such as Carnival

Carnival

Carnaval is a festive season which occurs immediately before Lent; the main events are usually during February. Carnaval typically involves a public celebration or parade combining some elements of a circus, mask and public street party...

, commedia dell'arte

Commedia dell'arte

Commedia dell'arte is a form of theatre characterized by masked "types" which began in Italy in the 16th century, and was responsible for the advent of the actress and improvised performances based on sketches or scenarios. The closest translation of the name is "comedy of craft"; it is shortened...

etc. and wish to present them in a situation close to their original context.

Whatever the reason for choosing the street, the street is a place with a different set of possibilities than the conventional theatre space. Sue Gill of Welfare State International

Welfare State International

Welfare State International were an influential performance group based in the UK and founded in 1968 by John Fox and Sue Gill. Fox was, and remains, a vociferous proponent of 'celebratory theatre' and an anarchic, energetic and imaginative approach to creating theatre. In 2006 they felt the...

argues that a street theatre performance is not a lesser form than an indoor performance, nor is it simply taking what you do on stage and placing it outdoors, but a form with an energy and an integrity of its own.

Many companies are politically motivated and use street theatre to combine performance with protest. This has occurred through the Guerrilla theatre

Guerrilla theatre

Guerrilla theatre, or Guerrilla Performance, is a term coined in 1965 within the San Francisco Mime Troupe to describe its performances, that in spirit of the Che Guevara writings from which the term guerrilla is taken, were committed to "revolutionary sociopolitical change." The group...

of San Francisco Mime Troupe

San Francisco Mime Troupe

The San Francisco Mime Troupe is a theatre of political satire which performs free shows in various parks in the San Francisco Bay Area and around California. The Troupe does not, however, perform silent mime, but each year creates an original musical comedy that combines aspects of Commedia...

, The Living Theatre

The Living Theatre

The Living Theatre is an American theatre company founded in 1947 and based in New York City. It is the oldest experimental theatre group still existing in the U.S...

, the carnivalesque parades of Bread and Puppet Theatre, and the work of Ashesh Malla

Ashesh Malla

Ashesh Malla is a renowned playwright and a theatre director of Nepal. He is also the pioneer of street theatre in Nepal. He is the Director of Sarwanam Theatre Group, Nepal's leading theatre group, founded in 1982.-External links:...

and the Sarwanam Theatre Group of Nepal

Nepal

Nepal , officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal, is a landlocked sovereign state located in South Asia. It is located in the Himalayas and bordered to the north by the People's Republic of China, and to the south, east, and west by the Republic of India...

.

A character-based street theatre which developed in the 1960s and 1970's was developed by groups like Lumiere and Son, John Bull Puncture Repair Kit, Exploded Eye and Natural Theatre Company. The performances are unannounced and use immaculately turned out characters who act out a pre-arranged scenario, looking beautiful or surreal or simply just involving passers by in conversation. They did not seek to trick in a Candid Camera way, but rather invited the audience to pretend along with them. No amount of planning or rehearsal can dictate what will happen.

A typical example would be Natural Theatre's Pink Suitcase scenario. A number of smartly dressed people carrying bright pink suitcases enter a set of streets or buildings. They search for and miss their companions. In their search they get on buses, hail cabs, end up in shop windows etc. By the time they meet up at a pre-arranged spot(with the help of passers-by) perceptions of the area have changed and shopping has ceased for at least a few moments. The humour is universal and this piece has been seen in nearly seventy countries. It is usually performed by four or five actors, but has been done with twenty five.

External links

Street Theatre and Other Outdoor Performance Online Book (preview only) Street Theatre and Other Outdoor Performance By Bim Mason Published by Routledge, 1992 ISBN 0415070503, 9780415070508

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

Reasons for staging work on the street

See also

Further reading

External links