Theatre of Ruins

This work refers to a ‘Theatre of Ruins’, a phrase coined by Edward Bond in response to Samuel Beckett’s ‘Theatre of the Absurd’. Working collaboratively with Laura Hopes, we explored this concept as a catalyst for the discovery of new theories of the Sublime and the Anthropocene within the ‘ruins’ of Dublin 8, the area where we live and continue to develop our theatre practice.

From Lippard’s ideas around the ‘local’ and Massey’s ‘multiple trajectories’, we build on a performance experimentation practice whose methodologies begin with Meyerhold and Grotowski but then draw strongly on Bojan Jablanovec’s (Via Negativa, Slovenia) theatre research methodologies, centralising theatre as a medium of communication rather than aestheticization, and with continued support from Asst. Professor Sarah Jane Scaife, a Beckett scholar whose research and practice focuses on the relationship with the audience and the importance of female voices.

Our own trajectory foregrounded the impossibility of representation of ‘the ruins’, a theme that resonates strongly with Sublime concepts of the ineffable, but also the hyper objectivity of grasping the Anthropocene. It led us to discard any representative geographical symbols or scenography of place and reasserted the ethical problematics of speaking ‘on behalf’ of others, often depicted within conventional theatrical stereotypes. We realised the primacy of our own encounters with place, and the agency of the ‘ruins’ themselves to speak through our dramaturgy.

The project has potential to unfold through different iterations. We have currently staged Ruins in a black box rehearsal space on three separate screens, using focussed stage lighting to create different atmospheres. We have also created a combined film, which incorporates an opening spoken triptych which was used in the vestibule of the exhibition space in Cambridge. We are interested in how theatre and theatre-going conventions create a dynamism and tension between audience and performers.