Farms, libraries and adventure playground spaces for Orwell, Hardie, Carroll and Fry: James Martin Charlton's site-responsive productions of James Kenworth's plays in Newham
Conference paper
Charlton, J. 2023. Farms, libraries and adventure playground spaces for Orwell, Hardie, Carroll and Fry: James Martin Charlton's site-responsive productions of James Kenworth's plays in Newham. Performing Space 2023 - Argolida. Nafplio, Greece 07 - 09 Jul 2023
Type | Conference paper |
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Title | Farms, libraries and adventure playground spaces for Orwell, Hardie, Carroll and Fry: James Martin Charlton's site-responsive productions of James Kenworth's plays in Newham |
Authors | Charlton, J. |
Abstract | Since 2014, I have directed a series of site-specific plays by James Kenworth in East London's Newham borough, funded by The Royal Docks Trust. Each production was staged at a non-theatre site. Charlton's role as a director was to facilitate productions that respond to the site's possibilities and uncover congruencies between the site and the text's content. My process is site-responsive, using Wilkie's taxonomy of site-based theatre; it involves exploring the site, allowing its form to meld with the story and text of the performance, and creating a deep synergy between site and text to create a unique meaning. The productions were Revolution Farm (2014), A Splotch of Red: Keir Hardie in West Ham (2016), Alice in Canning Town (2019), and Elizabeth Fry: The Angel of Prisons (2022). Revolution Farm was a promenade production at an inner-city farm. A Splotch of Red toured community halls and libraries, while Alice in Canning Town was a promenade production over a vast children's playground. Elizabeth Fry was staged in a library space that aligned with the play's prison settings. This paper offers a case study of my practice in staging these plays in these environments, drawing on public and critical reactions and theories of site-specific, community, and immersive theatre. I argue that as a director, it is my job to imaginatively excavate and collaborate with the sites to reveal a production which has always potentially been there, awaiting discovery. In this way, these sites become the site of a rough magic, which a responsiveness to space and its ever-existing potential as theatre can reveal. |
Keywords | theatre; performing space; site specific; direction; Newham |
Sustainable Development Goals | 9 Industry, innovation and infrastructure |
Middlesex University Theme | Creativity, Culture & Enterprise |
Conference | Performing Space 2023 - Argolida |
Publication process dates | |
Accepted | 08 Jul 2023 |
Completed | 08 Jul 2023 |
Deposited | 25 Sep 2023 |
Output status | Published |
Related Output | |
Is supplemented by | https://vimeo.com/user25782135 |
Language | English |
https://repository.mdx.ac.uk/item/906zy
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