The use of public environment as alternative auditoria and ‘mixed economy’ participation to create new writing which originates from, and is rooted in, a community’s history, culture, and people

This presentation/research contends that a localist and grassroots approach is the most effective way of empowering wider access to the arts. It argues for an increased emphasis on performance in local spaces rather than in mainstream auditoria. The Newham Plays series have marked out a distinct territory by making a virtue of the absence of elements most commonly associated with conventional theatre spaces, e.g., a stage, scenery, lighting, seating.

My research contends that non-institutionalized theatre in community, site specific and localized environments can offer a greater resistance/indifference to commodification or mass reproduction than mainstream or commercial performance. It is precisely the evanescence of this kind of theatre, its ephemerality, that provides or proves its own justification or meaning, without the need to validate itself by entering the ‘economy of reproduction’ (Phelan 1993).

In an increasingly digitally-saturated world, where advances in technology are negating the need for face-to-face human contact, the ‘analogue’ experience of a small group of people in a non-corporate, localized setting, watching a play, on a bare stage, or on a farm or adventure playground, with just a few props, some indicative costumes, becomes almost an act of subversion, and suggests more than a hint of an oppositional stance towards the big-budget, lavish dramas pumped out on an alarmingly regular, if hugely popular, basis by the streaming giants.