ACT 00165: The Gesture of Citation
Performed at The Walker Arts Centre (2012) Performa 13 (2013) and The Artes Mundi 6 Awards (2015)
Are you an artist with a foot in activism, a community organiser, or a small business owner?Are you someone who questions the status quo?Are you interested in uncovering structures of power and exclusion?Are you the exception and the rule?
Cast with activists, educators and artists dedicated to social change and justice, this work defines its pedagogy through 4 core principles:
- That the final play structure shall be co-authored
- That multiple actors can interchange the same role(s)
- That the (non) actors contemporary life experiences will be inserted as interruptions into the play script.
- That any member of the cast or audience can interrupt the plays narrative and speak their own truth.
Where does power reside in the room? Who gets to speak, and who is silenced? Which facets of a narrative will come to light?
Within Brechts play , the rule implies a legal language or a directive, while the exception evokes being ungovernable or searching for an alternative to either the state or the free market. Together, they act as both a statement, that the rule cannot exist without the exception, and a question, as to what a state of exception might be.
As part of the exhibition, artists Mirza and Butler join community members to interpret The Exception and the Rule, Bertolt Brecht’s 1929 play that recounts a tale of corruption, exploitation, and injustice—a tale with compelling parallels to today’s culture. Through this and other “learning plays,” Brecht attempted to promote revolution and make theater explicitly political by revealing its mechanics, breaking down divisions between actors and audience, and making both into active participants.
IMPLICATED THEATRE
2011-2015
Instigated by artists from no.w.here and working with theatre director Frances Rifkin, the experimental workshops explore the relationships between political speech and action; the self and the collective; and voice and silence. Through establishing close relationships with migrant rights groups and unions, Implicated Theatre creates theatrical interventions inspired by real-life struggles and highlights issues of social justice.
Implicated Theatre have collectively created an ethical stage a shared space to explore the ghosts of migration, history and politics. Initially focusing on the personal, Implicated Theatre has developed relationships and techniques that support investigations into the everyday conflicts and grand historical narratives that shape its participants lives.
What happens when we try to take ownership of our own voices? Where are we when we are in silence? What does it mean to speak out? As the logic of capital increasingly governs our lives, how can we imagine and create a space which challenges the profit-driven motives of the neo-liberal discourses we inhabit and perpetuate? We are implicated, and so are you.