Suspect Culture's Home(page)
Hello everyone. So we have some kinda crappy rehearsal times, but I know we can all deal with that. Thank you to Alice for going and sorting that out... On another note, I went to Suspect Culture's website the other day and started looking at how they view themselves. If you have not visited the site yet, please please please do! There are reviews of past shows, explanations of what's coming up, and past shows, a description of the company.... they have even posted emails and notes from workshops that follow a play through the process - remind you of something fellow bloggers??? I read some of the entries for Lament and I am going to go look at some others.
Some quotes from the website that might spark some instances of genius: they have a "unique style of high quality original work that is accessible to the widest possible audience" We have been talking about how much we want to alienate the audience because we have often felt alienated when reading the scripts or watching the videos. How can we create this sense of alienation and also appeal to everyone in the audience? I am thinking that we may be reading into this alienation a bit too much and perhaps a lot of it is due to the fact that we have never seen a live performance. I don't know if Dan has any thoughts on this....
"A sense of internationalism is fundamental to the company's identity" we have definitely talked about this. I think that while there may be some lines that we want to be understood by the audience, I did like Dan's comment about keeping some of the good lines to ourselves. Do we find the line about forgetting where you are born important because it will get the audience to think or because we spent a lot of time talking ourselves about where we were born, etc. Maybe it is more important for us to know the line is there than for the audience?
Some of their upcoming shows deal with "attitudes towards love in a world of internet chat rooms, life coaches, and matching agencies" - to be honest I don't think I am even going to go into this one now because this blog would last forever, but clearly this quote deals so much with all that we have been discussing. Just substitute "home" for "love"....I'm sure you can see the connection.
Anyway, if you do get a chance to go onto their site and have a look around it would be very helpful. I think they also have some stuff on their use of media and it is talked about a lot along with music in the email/minutes entries. Have fun exploring! see you all on Monday.
Lauren Abend
posted by danrebellato at 4:46 pm
1 Comments:
Does Dan have thoughts about this? Sure.
a. I agree that alienating the audience for its own sake is pointless. I think they believe that complex, 'artistic' theatre is capable of getting a wide audience - that the traditional methods of 'popular theatre' are not the only way of appealing broadly.
b. Their internationalism is important, though remember that for them this actually means working touring internationally, working with directors and actors in other countries, and so on. You genuinely are an international group but the international touring is not something we can aspire to. Obviously. This relates to the 'popular audience' question. They are a touring company (usually) and the question of popularity also refers to a kind of 'outreach' and maybe should not be confused with the formal qualities of the work. I wouldn't want this word to trigger an abandonment of the seriousness and visual subtlety and creative complexity of the work you've been doing.
But I agree with you. It's a very useful site and a good refresher in case you feel overfamiliar with the work.
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