Inhabit My Space

I have been reading Anne Bogart's And Then, You Act ostensibly as preparation for my MA but also because it is actually rather good. However, tonight I came across the following passage:

"If you supply a complete world with all the details, then the audience has nothing to do but accept the illusion and become passive" (76).

This comes from the chapter entitled “Magnetism” which examines how fantastic theatre contains empathy, entertainment, ritual, participation, spectacle, education, and alchemy.

This quote resonated with me whilst giving me some approval. I have realised that I usually provide very few of the details. My sets are usually sparse – particularly those for The Maids and The Winter's Tale – which allows the audience to exercise their imaginations to put their own localities onto the sets which they see.

This view of theatre also hints at a way to create productions using queer theory. Since the queer is often a space in the text – the space which is inhabited by those things which it is not polite or too dangerous to talk about – we can use this space on the stage. By dropping some hints that allow the audience to read queer in a production, we can stage things which some members of the audience may not normally be willing to confront. In this way we can subtly work against homophobia in the world rather than challenging it openly and thereby inciting resistance in the audience.