Joel Stanley Discuss the impact of interactive theatre on the social interactions of its audience Introduction In this dissertation,

I will examine the unique characteristics of interactive theatre in particular the confluence of play, interactivity and spectacle (or its close relative, participation) and ask how and to what extent they impact the audience and their social interactions, both within and beyond the performance space. I will focus my analysis on two specific contexts, namely Ladder to the Moons interactive plays for older people in care homes and hospitals, and the Burning Man festival in Nevada, USA, which incorporates various interactive art forms and functions as a Temporary Autonomous Zone within the larger social fabric (a highly developed Western society). I will trace interactive theatres relationship to what Schechner calls orthodox, mainstream theater (Schechner, 1994, p. xix), as well as to other modes of performance and interaction, such as games and play. I will analyse the main principles of interactive theatre, especially the creation of a distinct play-world or temenos through the use of roles, rules and a heightened sense of reality.

I will claim that the positive effects of interactive theatre depend on the notion of the extraordinary, which allows participants to explore scenarios and identities they may not be able to access in normal life. By analysing the work of Ladder to the Moon and its relationship to recent developments in treating dementia, I will show why this is particularly useful in interactive theatre with, by and for older people in care settings. I will go onto explore the paradox inherent in attempts to make the effects of interactive theatre more permanent, when the genre itself depends so much on temporaneity and the extraordinary. I will suggest some solutions to this paradox using the example of Burning Man and its techniques of creating a distinct

Joel Stanley environment and play-world, but also of looking to identify and retain its transcendent values after the event. I will show how the concepts of self-consuming spectacle and Hakim Beys Temporary Autonmous Zone provide potential tools for transitioning from one-off communitas to a more durable community, ultimately transcending the particular circumstances of the original interactive theatre event and practicing its social interactions in the longer term.

Literature and Practice Review In tracing the development of interactive forms within modern Western theatre, I refer to ideas, practices and theories of staging and dramaturgy as pioneered by twentieth century practitioners such as Artaud, Meyerhold and Grotowski. From the many works available on this subject, the two I have chosen to use are Antonin Artauds The Theatre and Its Double and Robert Gordons comparative survey of major dramatic approaches, The Purpose of Playing: Modern Acting Theories in Perspective.

This dissertation uses as a major conceptual framework the discourse of performance studies, an approach that places theatre within its social context and alongside a wide variety of everyday instances of performance, from popular entertainments to legal processes. Richard Schechner has articulated and developed this approach in numerous works, among which I draw particularly on Performance Theory and Environmental Theater.

Joel Stanley This latter work is also an example of writing on interactive theatre itself. The other such work I build on is Gary Izzos practical guide to making interactive theatre, The Art of Play: The New Genre of Interactive Theatre.

There also exist a variety of works on the specific contexts of work with elders on the one hand and Burning Man on the other. I use these journal and newspaper articles, and internet resources to examine the particular uses and potentials of interactive theatre, and construct a deeper overall context for my enquiry.

Towards the end of this dissertation, as I turn my attention to issues of longterm benefit and lasting impact, I introduce a further conceptual framework through the writings of the anarchist theorist Hakim Bey, which are widely accessible on the internet.

Methodologies My primary sources for this dissertation are largely theatre practice carried out by others, which I observed and participated in, and then assessed by further qualitative research. As my topic is interactive theatre, the very concepts of pure spectatorship and the objective researcher, who stands outside the practice looking in, are called into question. At the Acton Care Home performance of Ladder to the Moons A Very Greek Romance (2008), I had been invited to observe but was in the room, affecting those around me and inevitably interacting with them. This was true both during the performance, such as when a resident turned from the stage area to ask me where I was from, and after the play had finished, when I asked questions of the care staff and residents, and was very much part of the social interactions in the transition back to

Joel Stanley normal life. There are often visitors and residents relatives present at Ladder to the Moon performances, and Chris Gage, the companys Artistic Director, had invited me to be there, so I was not so much an intruder as part of a regular Ladder play. Nevertheless, I acknowledge my influence and do not claim that my research can be entirely objective.

This is even truer of my first-hand research at Burning Man. At the 2008 festival, when I was intentionally researching and gathering material for this dissertation, I was also aware of my non-academic reasons for being there, having attended in 2002, 2003, 2005 and 2006, and received what I felt to be great personal benefit. My experience at all five events has affected the substance and style of my research, just as my full participation as an attendee has heavily influenced the nature of that experience.

There were however occasions on which I was able to stand further away from the work in both contexts, in order to unpick its construction and gather qualitative data in a more detached way, especially by formal interview and questionnaire. I prepared a series of questions to ask Gage at his home, audio-recording and transcribing the interview, and designed a paper-based survey (Appendix) which I distributed to participants at Burning Man 2008. I chose to conduct this latter research in Burning Mans central meeting place, Center Camp, through which the broad cross-section of the festivals diverse population pass at some point. Nevertheless, there are a number of participants who do not spend much time in Center Camp. As my intention was to analyse as fully as possible the models of social interaction propagated by Burning Man and its interactive theatre, I gave out a number of surveys

Joel Stanley away from Center Camp, as and when I met individuals who agreed to fill them in, and sent some to attendees I contacted afterwards, via Burning Man email groups. I have no guarantee that my research is fully representative, but my attempts to reach a range of participants, as well as its qualitative nature, should ensure its value in addressing the concerns of this dissertation. In general, the results of this research have informed my conclusions, even when I have not quoted directly from the completed questionnaires.

I also acknowledge an absence of hard data and evaluation, particularly in relation to Ladder to the Moons work. In the absence of costly longitudinal studies, it is extremely difficult to quantify the lasting effect of any theatrical event or series of events. It is for this reason that I take mainly a theoretical approach, working within the discourse of performance studies, and construct my argument from a tapestry of diverse subjective viewpoints. At the same time, I have consolidated and underpinned my findings with quantitative research (the Burning Man Census) carried out by the Burning Man Organization at and immediately after previous Burning Man festivals.

Terminology There is a wide diversity of practices and forms that could be included under the category interactive theatre, but my main interest here is to explore the interactive plays and theatrical events that bring together a combination of spectacle, narrative, and interactivity or participation. By this, I mean events where the guests present are simultaneously spectators and co-creators of a fictional theatrical world. I sometimes use the word guests in order not to privilege either of these roles, yet still to distinguish between the creators of the theatrical structures that facilitate co-creation

Joel Stanley (i.e. members of the initial ensemble) and those who co-create through participation in the event. As Gary Izzo writes, there is a distinction between an interactive theatre events actors and its audience, but it is one of preparation and perspective: with our image of play as a circle, the audience players face inward and the actors face outward (Izzo, 1997, p. 16). During the performance itself, both groups are players together. Thus: the term audience seems inappropriate for interactive theatre. It implies a group of aloof watchers. The word literally means those assembled to hear. I prefer to refer to the audience as guests. What else would you call someone you invite into your private space? (Ibid.) It is important to mention, however, that in order to avoid confusion, I do not use the word guests in this way when writing specifically about Ladder to the Moons theatre work in care homes and hospitals. This is because the company enters these places as visitors, so in a way both groups are guests, one in the fictional world of the theatre and the other in the space (often a home) itself. I therefore use other terms to distinguish between Ladders company members and their target audience, as outlined later in this section.

What of the distinction between participation and interaction? According to Izzo, in participatory theatre [] there is a fixed outcome to the story [] arrived at through a finite number of scenes that must be presented in a certain order, one after the other and the audience participant responds or reacts to the production but does not alter it (pp. 22-23, Izzos italics). In interactive theatre, on the other hand, the participant cocreates the scene with the actor, but on the actors terms, and within the general goals of the performance (p. 26). While it is true that the word participation can imply a more localised and circumscribed role, in which audience members are

Joel Stanley invited to take part in something that has already been prepared or fixed and does not belong to them, the continuum is clearly quite fluid. There is a great deal of preparation and rehearsal that goes into interactive theatre, even by Izzos definition, and arguably, with participation, the audience or guest always has the power to alter the production. Gage defines interactive theatre as Theatre in which characters have direct, two-way, meaningful conversations with their audience (Interactive Theatre Makers Facebook group). The difference then between interactivity and participation is one of degree, hinging on questions of what is meaningful, how open the text (or dramatic score) is, whether guests and actors are in character or being themselves, and what constitutes altering the production.

I also sometimes refer to environmental theater, as described by Schechner (Schechner, 1994, pp. ix-li). Like the terms promenade and site-specific, the name emphasises space over personal interaction. Nonetheless, it is a useful and related genre, and broadens the idea of what guests are interacting with. In other words, social interactions in interactive theatre may stretch as far as anything found in the performance space, including the performance space itself: An environmental performance is one in which all the elements or parts making up the performance are recognized as alive. To be alive is to change, develop, transform; to have needs and desires; even, potentially, to acquire, and use consciousness (p. x).

There are, in addition, a number of terms related to the specific contexts of Ladder to the Moon and Burning Man that require definition. Ladder to the Moon conducts work in both hospitals where there are patients and care homes where there are residents. I do sometimes use these terms but I also follow Chris Gage in

Joel Stanley referring to older people (Gage, 2008), thereby including the whole of Ladder to the Moons primary target audience. On a further practical note, Ladder to the Moon is at times throughout this dissertation shortened to Ladder.

Burning Mans participants are, by their own conventions, referred to as Burners. Burning Man itself is a term with numerous meanings, referring diversely to an actual instance of the festival (Are you going to Burning Man?), the festival in the abstract (Burning Man has changed my life) or the organisation that puts the festival on (I spoke to Burning Man about the ticket situation). Burners sometimes call an actual instance of the festival the Burn, which can also refer to the climactic event that takes place on the penultimate night of the week-long festival, namely the burning of the 40-foot wood, metal and neon figure (the Man) that presides over the festival from its physical centre. The Playa is at once the deserts dusty surface (I got Playa all over my shoes), the general environment of the festival (What happens on the Playa, stays on the Playa) and the open space spreading out from the festivals streets (Theres a lot of beautiful art way out on the Playa this year). While all this can be confusing to the outsider, it is worth noting that such insider terminology is characteristic of the construction of an alternative world. Throughout this dissertation, I endeavour to make these terms meaning clear by explanation and context.

Context the development of interactive theatre A note on theories of origin There is a line of thought, identified by Schechner as the Cambridge thesis (Schechner, 2003, p. 2), which understands Greek tragedy (and, by extension, much

Joel Stanley of Western theatre) as deriving from ancient Greek rites celebrated annually at the Festival of Dionysus (the Dithyramb) and even from an earlier Primal Ritual. Aristotle himself claims that tragedy arose out of the Dithyramb. It might seem that comedy is its springtime counterpart, a celebration of rebirth and equally rooted in ritual (p. 3). Thus it is tempting to imagine an origin for theatre, altogether more participatory and ritualistic than its modern day orthodoxies might suggest: Though they [these ritual roots of theatre] would have relied on certain people performing specific roles the priests or principal actors in the rite they were intended to work upon the participants, effecting some form of transformation. Aristotelian catharsis can be seen as the echo of that transformation, but via the spectacle of a tragic play, with the actors performing the role of initiating officers or surrogate priests, while the spectators become witnesses, rather than participants (Bermel, 2001, pp. 3334). (Stanley, 2008, p. 13) It is safe to say that such rituals have affected the course of Western theatre, insofar as someone like Antonin Artaud, who influenced the development of affective and therefore interactive theatrical forms, refers directly to the Orphic and Eluesinian Mysteries (Bermel, 2001, p. 33), and explicitly claims that theatre is only a reflection of magic and ritual (Artaud, transl. Corti, 1993, p. 70). In other words, the Greek rituals had an effect on theatre to the extent that they influenced Artauds and others theory and practice, and then the extent to which they influenced further development.

However, any grander claims of historical origin are unreliable, in that they lack evidence, and may not be particularly useful. For Schechner, Origin theories are irrelevant to understanding theater (Schechner, 2003, p. 7). Rather, and this is the line I mean to follow in placing interactive theatre in its contexts, Ritual is one of several activities related to theater. The others are play, games, sports, dance, and

Joel Stanley music (Ibid.). I, like Schechner, approach these not vertically, with the idea of a pristine antecedent in the distant past, but horizontally, asking what these related genres have in common, and understanding interactive theatre as a particularly mixed form. Sometimes rituals, games, sports, and the aesthetic genres (theater, dance, music) are merged so that it is impossible to call the activity by any one limiting name (Ibid.).

Interactive theatre and related forms Schechner, in Environmental Theater, describes a scale that can be used to elucidate interactive theatres place among related forms. It is a continuum of theatrical events [that] blends one form into the next, ranging from non-matrixed [open, unscripted] performances to orthodox mainstream theatre, from chance events and intermedia to the production of plays (Schechner, 1994, p. xix): Impure, life public events, demonstrations intermedia happenings Environmental theatre Pure, art orthodox theatre (Ibid.) Interactive theatre emphasises relationships over space. Depending on the production, it probably sits on this continuum somewhere around or just to the left of environmental theatre. Like Schechner, I include the whole scale in my definition of theatre; thus traditional distinctions between art and life no longer apply (Ibid.) and something like Burning Man is a legitimate subject for analysis.

Moreover, the specific genre of interactive theatre as defined earlier is itself in the middle of the scale, and therefore has relations on all sides. To interactive

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Joel Stanley theatres left are demonstrations and protests, in which demonstrators, opposing sides and/or police or army play roles, and follow certain conventions and rules, and in which spectacle is used to make a political point and/or display power; carnival and festival, in which normal relations are temporarily suspended and hierarchies symbolically inverted, and attendees are at once the spectators and part of the spectacle; sports and games, that use explicit rules to create an internal world, and orchestrate a conversation between the player and the spectator or supporter, the latter of whom is again given a new identity as part of a conglomerate group; and religious and shamanic ritual, attempting to effect or mark change in its initiates, again employing rites, roles and rules. Significantly for Ladder to the Moons work with older people in care settings, interactive theatre is also related to therapy, a topic that I will return to later in my discussion. As to the left of the continuum is life (rather than art), there are too many related categories and genres to catalogue fully. Nevertheless, I will return to some of these forms and their characteristics later in this dissertation.

To interactive theatres right is orthodox theatre. Here the audience watch a play, which tells a story, as though through a fourth wall, and there are few direct interactions between actor and spectator that are not conventionally circumscribed. Though the performers may feed off the energy of the audience and certainly hope to affect them emotionally, the spectators are not part of the fictional world but rather observers of a generally linear plot.

Another useful schema set out by Schechner is his categorisation of related transactions comprising the theatrical event. These are primarily Among

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Joel Stanley performers, Among members of the audience, and Between performers and audience (p. xxiii). In orthodox theatre, the first of these categories is foregrounded, rehearsed by the actors and attended to by the audience. The second is heavily prescribed by decorum and strict rules of behaviour: They [the audience] arrive more or less on time, they do not leave their seats except for intermission or at the end of the show, [and] they display approval or disapproval within well-regulated patterns of applause, silence, laughter, tears, and so on (Ibid.). The third category, as alluded to above, is also stable and traditional, with the action on stage evoking an empathic reaction in the audience which is not an imitation but a harmonic variation (p. xxiv). In turn the actors may be aware of, but do not acknowledge within the representational fiction of the play, the audiences receptivity. This may have an effect on their performance, but the interaction is more a side-product than a main focus. In fact, if the actor focuses too much on the nature and quality of his or her interaction with the audience rather than being in the moment, it can seriously detract from the quality of the performance and the illusion may be broken. In summary, Orthodox theater in the West uses a thin fraction of the enormous range of audience-performer interactions (Ibid.).

Twentieth century innovations and antecedents According to Schechner audience participation [has] appeared at this moment in Western theatre history, reintroducing methods that have been dormant since medieval times (p. 45). He sees this as counter-cultural: In society in general, and in entertainment in particular the movement is to self-contained, electronically processed, unresponsive systems closed systems on which the individual can have little effect (Ibid.). Schechner is writing before the rise of the internet, the video

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Joel Stanley game, virtual reality and the reality TV show. For Izzo, writing in 1997, interactivity in theatre is part of a general rise of interactive styles of entertainment, which reflects a need for the play element in todays culture (Izzo, 1997, p. 5). Regardless of the psychological and social causes, and its relationship to other cultural and artistic trends, it is clear that interactivity in theatre has become much more common through developments in the twentieth century.

The Russian director Vsevolod Meyerhold was one of a number of theatre practitioners to experiment with stylisation, and play with the relationship between the actor and spectator. It was this relationship that he placed at the centre of the theatrical event. Thus in 1914 he wrote in his journal, The Love of Three Oranges: The actor, having assimilated the authors conception via the director, stands face to face with the spectator (with director and author behind him), and freely reveals his soul to him, thus intensifying the fundamental theatrical relationship of performer and spectator (Braun, Edward, ed. and transl. (1969), Meyerhold on Theatre, London, Eyre Methuen, pp. 51-52, quoted in Gordon, 2006, p. 102). This dynamic may not, to quote Gage, be a two-way, meaningful conversation (my italics), but there is certainly a heightened consciousness of Schechners third category of theatrical transactions.

Interactive theatre also owes something to traditional street entertainment, which is, according to Izzo, usually participatory and can contain any or all the styles of variety, improvisation, storytelling, dialogue, music, pantomime, or scripted play and has its roots in the minstrelsy of the common player, who performed in the streets of Britain from the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries (Izzo, 1997, pp. 24-

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Joel Stanley 25). Meyerhold brought these techniques further into the established theatre by insisting that his actors were taught the physical skills of traditional street entertainers clowns, pantomime performers, minstrels, jugglers, and acrobats in order to interact spontaneously with an audience (Gordon, 2006, p. 104).

There is a further connection between Meyerhold and interactive theatre, through the commedia dellarte of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which was a major influence on Meyerholds work. Interactive theatre, which must communicate to its guests a clear and recognisable world to step into, shares with the commedia the improvisation of quintessential characters revolving around their idiosyncratic behavior and their reactions to circumstance (Izzo, 1997, p. 198).

Another influence on the development of interactive theatre was Antonin Artaud. As with Meyerhold, Artauds theatre was deliberately meant to affect the audience. It could reach beyond the boundaries of the drama and achieve a social purpose: I do believe theatre used in the highest and most difficult sense has the power to affect the appearance and structure of things (Artaud, transl. Corti, 1993, p. 60). In order to effect such a change, the theatre would have to impact the audience not only intellectually and emotionally, but bodily and spiritually. Theatre must speak a physical language, aimed at the senses and independent of speech (p. 27). Though the actor and the director were still very much the subject and the audience the object in need of wholesale exorcism (p. 18) Artaud took a step towards interactivity by experimenting with space, describing a form of theatre in which the audience is literally in the centre while the show takes place around them:

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Joel Stanley We intend to do away with stage and auditorium, replacing them by a kind of single, undivided locale without any partitions of any kind and this will beome the very scene of the action. Direct contact will be established between the audience and the show, between actors and audience, from the very fact that the audience is seated in the centre of the action, is encircled and furrowed by it. This encirclement comes from the shape of the house itself. (p. 74) In interactive theatre, where guests are actually part of the action, they can often move around the performance space at will, whereas Artauds audience members were seated in chairs which could swivel to face any part of the space. Nevertheless, Schechner somewhat echoes Artaud when he writes of environmental theatre: Once fixed seating and the automatic bifurcation of space are no longer preset, entirely new relationships are possible. Body contact can occur between performers and spectators; voice levels and acting intensities can be varied widely; a sense of shared experience can be engendered (Schechner, 1994, p. xxix).

Although he denied having read Artaud until 1964, Jerzy Grotowski took similar ideas and extended them further. He not only did away with the proscenium arch and the fourth wall but sought to promote the affective relationship between actor and spectator by actually casting audience in a specific, collective role within the performance (Gordon, 2006, p. 288). For example, in his production of Slowackis Kordian (1962) the audience doubled up as visitors to the mental hospital in which some of the plays action takes place, and sat around the beds of the patients, unsure of whether the psychiatrists will pounce on them and treat them as patients (p. 289). Similarly, in Apocalypsis cum Figuris (1968), the same space was shared by actors and spectators, suggesting the encounter between the Simpleton/Christ and his torturers was something that could take place at any point in the spectators journey through life. Gordon notes the increased responsibility and choice that this offers the

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Joel Stanley audience member: Each spectator was free to accept or reject the role assigned to him by the structure of the mise-en-scne, but, however he chose, he would have been responsible for deciding the nature of the spectatorship by being there either as a genuine witness or merely as a detached observer (Ibid.). If the theatrical transaction between performer and spectator is envisaged as a power relationship, Grotowskis innovations were a move towards granting the spectator greater autonomy and more control. Such a move may or may not have had an effect on the audiences awareness of their responsibility and autonomy outside the production space.

Schechners own theatre company, The Performance Group, effected an even greater shift in the balance of power when they offered audience members of their 1971 participatory play Commune the opportunity to stop the performance as a result of their actions. James Griffith, playing the role of Fearless, asked each night for fifteen members of the audience to enter the centre of the performance space and represent the villagers at My Lai, who were killed by American troops in the Vietnam War: Then James Griffiths (Fearless) takes off his shirt and says: I am taking off my shirt to signify that the performance is now stopped. You people have the following choices. First, you can come into the circle, and the performance will continue; second, you can go to anyone else in the room and ask them to take your place, and if they do, the performance will continue; third, you can stay where you are, and the performance will remain stopped; or fourth, you can go home, and the performance will continue in your absence. (Schechner, 1994, p. 49) The company make the rules but the chosen participants are addressed directly (out of character) and have the power to stop or facilitate the completion of the play. On one occasion, four members of the audience refused to step in or choose replacements, and the show remained stopped for more than three hours. Schechner

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Joel Stanley notes that the emotional state of the four objectors went from fear and anger to enjoyment and a feeling of empowerment: It seemed that for the first time in a long while they were the center of attention in a matter concerning their ability to make a decision. They were not in the spotlight because of some sudden accident or disease. There were no lawyers of doctors to serve as intermediaries. They were in control able to keep the play stopped or to license its resumption (p. 51).

Because he was more interested in such confrontations and the nature of meeting than he was in making theatre as an end in itself, Grotowski eventually turned to paratheater in which The structures of theatre were dissolved to permit an equal collaboration among participants, so that freer and more spontaneous investigations of the nature of human relationship might take place in a context of meeting rather than theatrical performance (Gordon, 2006, pp. 300-301). Between 1970 and 1975, a specially selected circle of participants were led by members of Grotowskis Laboratory Theatre in carefully planned forms of interaction, which allowed all to participate rather than maintain the distinction between actors and witnesses. Paratheatrical events took place in a wide range of settings, including outdoor locations and natural environments, and were intended to give participants a keener awareness of their own presence.

Grotowskis experiments with paratheatre stretched the boundaries of interactive theatre and were further to the left on Schechters continuum of theatrical events than interactive theatre experiences such as Ladder to the Moons. They expanded the realm of possibility for interactive theatre. Today interactive theatre is common in a wide range of contexts, from theme parks to site-specific and

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Joel Stanley promenade performances, to walkabout characters at corporate conferences and the phenomenon of ambient advertising, by which theatrical scenes are staged among (and with) the public in order to promote a product.

Ladder to the Moon Having outlined some of the context of interactive theatre, I now wish to turn my attention to Ladder to the Moon and the companys most recent production, A Very Greek Romance, in order to look specifically at its effect on the social interactions of its target audience.

Ladder to the Moon was founded in 2000 and inherited by current artistic director Chris Gage in 2005. According to its website, Ladder improves the quality of life for older people in care by creating high quality participatory performances (Ladder website, Home). A paragraph of Aims and Objectives is included in the companys trustees report and financial statements for the year ended 31 March 2007, and is a useful initial description of Ladders work: All Ladder to the Moon's work is highly interactive, involving the entire environment residents, staff, patients, and visitors. It is created through ongoing conversation with our audience, both in the development of the work and during the performance. This ensures an entertaining, and often transformative, experience for all involved. The work is bespoke and empowering - people can choose to engage directly, taking on roles and influencing the story, or they can sit back and enjoy the show. We work primarily with older people, focusing on those with mental health needs and neurological disabilities. We give an interactive experience that is totally out of the ordinary. (Ladder to the Moon, 2007, p. 4) In general, a team of two professional actors rehearse a Ladder production over one or two weeks before touring it to care homes and hospitals. The final interactive play lasts about an hour and tells a story according to Gage, it is always a love story as

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Joel Stanley thats the most resonant part and the place of the most shared experience (Gage, 2008) while casting older people in a variety of roles along the way, through interactions facilitated by the actors in character. They also usually feature moments of song and dance, which function as further opportunities for participation.

Ladders specific context and target audience bring the interactivity of the work more sharply into focus, because social interaction is already problematised an issue I discuss in more detail shortly. Ladder to the Moon challenge the notion that it is not possible to have meaningful interactions with older people living in care homes and hospitals, or old people with dementia. When Gage took over the company it was doing a vast range of work from fairly conventional youth theatre, young people putting on their own stories, through street theatre, through working in care with children and with older people exclusively in hospital settings (Gage, 2008), but he decided to hive off the other work and focus on working with older people in care settings. This was where he thought the greatest need is, and the greatest hunger for this kind of work (Ibid.). Ladders work takes on what is for Gage a serious and significant question in our society at the moment: What is it that so many of the older people end up in homes with a very low quality of life? (Ibid.)

A Very Greek Romance The production I saw, A Very Greek Romance, was an adaptation of Shakespeares Troilus and Cressida, taking place in the residents lounge of Acton Care Home for a group of about 20 older people, the majority of whom had dementia, plus four or five care staff and visitors. The audience sat around the edge of the room facing the action in the middle, though the actors also interacted in role with the older people when

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Joel Stanley they remained in their seats. Chris Gage had worked the original Shakespeare script down to the bare bones (Ibid.), to those parts necessary to communicate the central love story. The male actor played Troilus and the female actor played a servant, enabling her to take on a number of roles including, effectively, that of in-role facilitator. As a supposedly minor character she had more freedom than Troilus, so it was often her task to encourage the residents into the fictional world of the play. It is my contention that, by immersing in or simply being party to this world, Ladders audiences experienced a radical shift in social interactions, at least for the time of the performance and potentially after its conclusion.

Principles of interactive theatre Gary Izzo, in The Art of Play, attempts to define interactive theatre as a genre and delineate central principles for its creation. These principles provide a useful framework by which to analyse the specific methods and effects of Ladder to the Moons work. Because Ladders theatre is with older people in care settings, and taps into issues surrounding dementia and its effects, Izzos definition and principles are all the more pertinent.

For Izzo, interactive theatre is primarily the art of play. There is no simpler or more accurate definition. (Izzo, 1997, p. 5) That is, a heightened, enjoyable, exciting, alternative reality is created and, unlike in orthodox theatre, the audience is invited to step in and take full part. Play has the power to create a sense of community by offering us the mirror of human relationship and personal interaction (p. 6), and is something that is innate:

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Joel Stanley Only the absence of play is created. Our lack of awareness of play, or our inability to play, is a function of what we learn as we grow older. As our knowledge of the world around us grows, our connection to play is eclipsed by the pressures of finding our place within it. (p. 7) Play and thus interactive theatre is then an opportunity to live life for a while without the pressures of finding our place in the world.

This opportunity is created in a number of ways. Most importantly, the alternative reality, a distinct play area, must be demarcated and set apart, often physically as when play takes place in a theatre or an enclosed area, or when children play in a special place (the sides of a sandbox, the perimeter of a backyard, a section of woods, or the confines of a playroom or tree house (p. 9)) but always mentally, in the imagination, via new modes of interaction, new identities and roles, and heightened scenarios and registers of language. Izzo calls this separate world temenos, the Greek word for playground: It is a sacred spot cut off and hedged in from the ordinary world, a consecrated spot, a hallowed ground within which special rules obtain [...] Whether the rules within be of law, religion, contest, or make-believe, they are by definition sacred places, temporary worlds within the ordinary world, set apart for and dedicated to the performance of an act apart. (Ibid.) What are these special rules? They vary from play space to play space, from one interactive theatre production to the next. However, they generally give interactive theatre a sense of simplicity and reliability, in contrast to the ordinary world, with its subjectivity, uncertainty, and shades of meaning (p. 11). While they create the temenos and distinguish it from the outside, they also serve the purpose of play and enjoyment. That is not to say they need have a clear rationale; their very delightfulness may stem from their apparent nonsensicality and arbitrariness.

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Besides the rules, explicit or not, that are peculiar to the specific playground or production, there is a general secondary or fundamental rule, which enables the creation of all the others: that participants play along, saying yes to other players and the rules of the game. In terms of acting technique, this might be called accepting offers. As Chris Johnston explains, the character is perfectly entitled to say no [within the internal fiction of the play] but the actor is always saying yes to everything [to the parameters of that fiction] (Johnston, 2005, p. 141). Izzo illustrates the point: If one picks up a stick and says This is a sword, all others need to agree and accept that it is so, and it is so, and it remains so. Players can always add to the rules; one might say, Now this sword has the power to heal dead people. [] If when confronted [however], another player were to say, Thats not a magic sword at all, its just a stick, he would be denying the rules of play [] He is in danger of collapsing the play space [] (Izzo, 1997, pp. 11-12) Vitally, accepting offers both marks out the temenos (as somewhere other, fun, exciting) and validates the other players and their imaginative world. This has particular significance for Ladder to the Moon and work with older people with dementia, and is again a topic I will shortly return to in more detail.

The temenos is also demarcated by heightening that is, the subject of play always involves [] a situation larger than ordinary life. (p. 12) Stakes are higher, in that characters (not the players themselves) have more to gain or lose. The play world, with all it possibilities enable by the players ready acceptance, becomes a stage for constructive fantasy and wish fulfilment. And because each player is playing at being someone else (they are both not themselves and yet not-not themselves (Schechner, 1985, p.123) they can make believe at doing all kinds of dramatic acts

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Joel Stanley and put themselves in a wide range of situations that they might avoid at all costs in real life. The understanding that they are inside a play world is the the theatrical frame that Schechner describes as radically enabling: when [] imposed strongly it permits the enactment of aesthetic dramas, shows whose actions, like Oedipus poking out his own eyes, are extreme but recognized by everyone, including the performers, as a playing with rather than a real doing of. This playing with is not weak or false, it causes changes to both performers and spectators. (Schechner, 2003, p. 190)

In practical terms, to emphasise the heightening and entice guests into the theatrical world, Izzo recommends interactive theatre makers choose an extraordinary subject, which is on the one hand familiar to the audience (familiar to their imaginations or fantasy-life, enabling them to step in with a sense of what is expected of them i.e. the rules) and at the same time a subject that fires the imagination: periods of history in which life seems to have been lived to the fullest, ones filled with danger, excitement, discovery, and adventure (p. 42). In particular, the fictional world should not depict the present: The temenos is an escape from real life; there is no magic in being transported to where you already are. Its like saying to your child, Lets play homework. People are far too close to the stress and mundane concerns of the present for it to be an effective backdrop for interactive theatre. (Ibid.)

Once the play world extraordinary yet familiar to the life of the imagination has been established, guests can be offered or volunteer themselves to take on roles, which constitute the most basic aspect of interactive theatre and what makes

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Joel Stanley theatre interactive (p. 192). The act of offering a role can be referred to as endowing a guest. In an endowment, an actor relates in such a way as to define for them their identity and place in the created reality. Assumptions are made that imbue the guest with attributes befitting the action. (p. 194) These assumptions are really implicit (or sometimes explicit) invitations to play along in a particular way. The guest may accept or not; no role should be forced on anyone and, as a performer, asking people to accept who you claim to be means also accepting who they say they are.

What do roles do? They work within the extraordinary scenario to heighten the guests experience. In concert with other characters and roles they rearrange the social interactions of the group present, bringing relative strangers into contact with each other around shared experiences and new objectives, and shuffling real-world hierarchies. Izzo advises: Offer [guests] a higher dominance than your characters. Giving guests the upper hand makes them feel safe [] Putting them in control lessens [] uneasiness and inspires them to use their power. (p. 197) In other words, endowing guests with roles allows them to play with status, at least temporarily loosening ties to default identities. If the endowment is well chosen, well volunteered for or fortuitous, there may be a harmonious relationship between the guest and his or her character, perhaps playing to character strengths, tapping hidden talents or desires, or stretching that guest by going against type.

Effects of dementia I would now like to return to Ladder to the Moon and their work with older people in care settings, and explore how the above principles are used and shed light on the specific practice.

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When Gage became Ladders Artistic Director the company was already working with people with mental health needs (Gage, 2008) in one hospital in particular. To focus on and expand the work with older people with dementia was a deliberate move. In order to understand Ladders work and its impact on the social interactions of its target audience, it is important to understand something of how dementia affects its sufferers. According to Gage, For people with dementia [] long-term memories are often far stronger than their short-term memories. (Ibid.) Similarly, the psychologist Oliver James writes in the Saturday Guardian: people with dementia suffer from only one major disability: they do not store new information properly so their short-term memory is defective. (James, 2008) Thus, people with dementia frequently go back to old memories in order to make sense of otherwise incomprehensible situations. (Ibid.)

The most common way of treating dementia is currently anti-psychotic medication. When someone suffering from dementia talks about things, people and situations from their past, as if they are there in the room, they are often corrected. This, according to James, is a potentially harmful response. He comments: imagine how scary that must be and how aggressive you might become when your version of what is happening is challenged. (Ibid.) According to his analysis, this leads to innumerable instances of well-meaning relatives and professionals misinterpreting the person with dementia as suffering from delusions, rather than using the past to make sense of the present. (Ibid.) They are proscribed anti-psychotic drugs, the effects of which are calming. Yet the drugs also dope, befuddle and reduce communication (Ibid.).

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James advocates an alternative to the above approach. Specal (Specialised Early Care for Alzheimers) was developed by Penny Garner and bears certain striking similarities with Ladders approach, as well as interactive theatre in general. The basic technique of Specal, rather than medicating, is saying yes to (i.e. not contradicting) the reality invoked and inhabited by the person suffering from dementia. For example, James describes an early occasion of Garners caring for her own mother, Dorothy Johnson: One day, they were sitting together in a doctors waiting room when out of the blue Dorothy said, Has our flight been called yet? Garner was mystified and played for time. Her mother anxiously looked around and said, We dont want to miss it, wheres our hand luggage? Suddenly, Garner realised what was happening. Her mother had always loved air travel and Dorothy was making sense of this crowded waiting situation by assuming they were in a departure lounge. When Garner responded with All our luggage has been checked in, weve just got our handbags, her mother visibly relaxed. (Ibid.) According to Specals advocates, playing along rather than contradicting the reality of the past situation allows carers and those they care for to tap into the reality inhabited by the person with dementia, and thus discover genuine areas of enjoyment: a whole care plan could be built around the person with dementias past experiences of professional or social roles, or of enjoyable hobbies, enabling them to live a kind of happy Groundhog Day. (Ibid.) For example, by plugging into his old memories, one dementia sufferers wife discovered that he [her husband] loved Irish jigs. Thus they would spend all day talking about jigging, actually doing so and engaging in post-jig analysis. (Ibid.)

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Joel Stanley How does this relate to Ladder to the Moon and productions like A Very Greek Romance? It is important to note that the plays are performed with a wide range of older people, and their carers and visitors. Thus there are different levels and types of dementia in the room, as well as people who do not suffer from dementia. The fiction of the play functions as a vehicle in different ways for different people, meeting a range of needs, from entertainment to play to a form of therapy.

Common to all these purposes, a temenos is created, allowing play to take place. Even though many of the older people have defective short-term memory it is usually still clear that a Ladder production is extraordinary (something different) and playful. The smiles and laughter of visitors and care staff are an immediate indicator and raise the energy in the room [] People pick up on the positivity in the room, they look around and see smiling faces and that in turn causes them to smile. (Gage, 2008) This is the case even if, on a cognitive level, some of the older people arent understanding the cognitive sense of what is happening. Theres an emotional communication. (Ibid.) This was evident in A Very Greek Romance as the daughter of the woman chosen to play Cressida grinned broadly throughout and encouraged her mother at various points, mainly by her smiles and genuine happiness.

Gage also claims the heightened register and qualities of the Shakespearian language works in a similar way, communicating on a non-cognitive level through its innate emotional resonance (Ibid.). In any case, the subject matter of A Very Greek Romance was clearly heightened and distinct, not only from the day to day of the care home but also from the world of the residents long-term memories. Gage has observed that when the company does something period i.e. 1940s or 1950s, some

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Joel Stanley of the older people think its now and respond [] in quite a normalised way, so theres sometimes difficulty in signifying that this is play, that its theatre (Gage, 2008). This is more of a risk, given that the play is interactive, with residents forming part of its fictional world. In the context of dementia, however, normalisation, may not be so bad an outcome. By choosing Shakespeare and including songs from the 1940s and 1950s, both purposes were served: residents were offered an opportunity to play in the heightened world of Troilus and Cressida and were also validated in whatever their various orienting frameworks.

As Izzo recommends, endowments and situations, with a few small props and costumes, functioned as invitations to try on alternative roles and situations, and these were largely accepted in the playful spirit they were offered. For example, at one point in the play Troilus asked a resident if he could watch on from her tent. The resident, appearing to be fully in character, responded with humour: Oh no. I have someone here with me.

It is here, however, that Ladders double effect is clearest. There was no way of knowing for certain whether the woman in the above example was really responding in character, as play, or using old memories in order to make sense of otherwise incomprehensible situations (James, 2008), but by Ladders approach it does not much matter. The acceptance of offers that is so integral to interactive theatre validates individuals imaginary worlds as usual, but the significance of that validation is potentially much further reaching, confirming the residents in what may be for them the way they habitually make sense of the world. The effect on social

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Joel Stanley interaction is radical: depending on the usual approach of the care staff, this acceptance can change contradictions into affirmations, the default no into a yes.

Effects after the performance From the above analysis, it is evident that the impact of Ladder to the Moons interactive theatre stems as much from the experiences and reactions of those around the older people, as it does from the experiences and reactions of the older people themselves. Specifically, social interactions are shifted as carers, visitors and actors say yes to a wider range of behaviours and realities than usual. For at least the duration of the performance the sense of being in a temenos and especially the premise of watching and/or participating in a play gives carers and visitors permission to accept things they might otherwise reject. This then is one of the functions of narrative: narrative [] gives you a tool that says, This is for you as well. This is for you the staff, this is for everyone. Its what enables you to create a piece that works for people with full cognitive function and for people with dementia. Although the narrative doesnt necessarily mean anything in a cognitive way, it then facilitates the emotional journey that they do go on. (Gage, 2008)

Moreover, the presence of carers and relatives, not only as participants but also as witnesses, is vital to the issue of longer-term impact and how social interactions may be affected after the performance. As dementia hinders short-term memory, many of the older people are unlikely to remember consciously the atmosphere of play, acceptance, laughter and cooperation they experienced during the play. Gage comments, there are definitely times when you go back into the room ten minutes after and youre like, Were we ever here? Did anything actually happen?

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Joel Stanley (Ibid.) While he thinks that even if its only [] in that hour it is still immensely valuable, and equally youll often find a very different atmosphere in the room by the end than you will at the beginning (Ibid.), the longer-term effects of Ladders work depend largely on shifting the perceptions of the carers. As the older people take on roles and play with new identities, they not only get to experience the benefits of play and potentially access latent aspects of themselves, but also show others what they are capable of. For example, Gage tells of one incident at a previous performance of A Very Greek Romance where Lynn [the actress playing the servant] had taken out a letter for someone to read in the play and a member of staff went, Oh dont bother. He cant read. He cant speak. But Lynn [] persevered, and gave him time and space. And he read and spoke, the entire thing. (Ibid.) Referring to the episode of the woman who had someone here with her, Gage observes the work often resexualises the older people. It humanises them, and, he says, I hope changes the day to day dynamics between staff and residents. (Ibid.) The company is currently beginning to record more of its work using video and photography, to give carers and visitors a tool to invoke the past performance and reinforce peoples experiences, because for people with dementia, visual stimulus, photographs, are very useful to jog memory, to re-evidence that they have done something (Ibid.). Already, even without the visual artefacts, Gage finds care staff are talking about it to the residents [] and will go back to it and revisit it (Ibid.). This is even clearer in homes we have long-term relationships with, where a year on [they] will still be referring to Keith playing Romeo. Their perception of that individual has shifted. (Ibid.)

There are, however, issues and challenges involved in coming in and changing peoples perceptions of each other, especially in care settings. In the case of

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Joel Stanley the man who read the letter, despite the member of staff telling the actress that he couldnt even speak, the staff members got to feel quite humiliated after the end of that (Ibid.). So an issue within the work is that going in and raising the bar so far can cause people [i.e. carers] to be quite defensive about what happens (Ibid.). This is partly because the carer may take it as an affront to his or her normal approach. But is also to do with the paradox of trying to effect lasting change through a medium that depends on its very status as extraordinary and therefore temporary. If, as Schechner claims, the understanding of being inside a play world is radically enabling, what happens when it is time to leave the play world? As Izzo puts it: Each move we make in ordinary life, no matter how small, has a permanent effect upon us. The fact of that permanence is the basis for the fear in our lives. Once done, a thing cannot be undone, and, often, fear paralyzes action. Play-space is impermanent. We may undo or replay our experience over and over again. We can discover ourselves without the danger of loss. In play there need be no fear, and without it play experience is always a joyous event. (Izzo, 1997, p. 13) Thus, while players may return to the world of ordinary life changed in some way, negotiating the transition and establishing a regularised modus operandi that incorporates these gifts nearly always pose a great challenge. The challenge is this: it is impossible to live in the extraordinary every day, or surely it ceases to become extraordinary.

Within the work of Ladder to the Moon, de-roling has become an important part of the transition. At the end of the performance, the actors step out of role and reintroduce themselves by their real names. There is a period of what Schechner would call cooling down (Schechner, 1985, p. 125), during which residents and carers can chat about the performance to each other, speak to the actors and gradually return to

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Joel Stanley the ordinary world. Cakes and tea were wheeled in at the end of the performance I saw, smoothing the transition with a basic but pleasurable social activity. That the actors walk around asking residents or patients if they enjoyed the performance, and engaging with them as human beings without the addition of roles and characters, further signals that the performance was play. It facilitates the post-show conversation, because in those setting people arent going to necessarily turn to their neighbour and talk about it and it shows that the actor can be a normal person talking to one of the residents in a fairly normal, natural way (Gage, 2008).

As mentioned previously, there are care homes and hospitals with which Ladder to the Moon has an ongoing relationship, so experiencing the extraordinary can become a more regular event. Nevertheless, in general, Ladder has no guarantee or way of controlling what happens to the social interactions after the performers leave the room. This is even clearer in hospitals, that are themselves, at best, transitory communities (people are only there for a maximum of six months (Ibid.)). Thus the question remains: to what extent can an experience that is inherently extraordinary and counter-cultural be extended? By what means can it have a lasting effect on the ordinary?

Burning Man In order to explore these questions in more detail, I would now like to turn to Burning Man. According to Burning Mans organisers, their mission is to produce the annual event known as Burning Man and to guide, nurture and protect the more permanent community created by its culture (Burning Man website, Mission Statement). As will become clear, to create a culture and affect the world at large was not always a

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Joel Stanley conscious goal of those associated with the event. It has, however, become so. In fact, the example of Burning Man as evidenced in the public discourse of the events organisers, the research I carried out via questionnaire and census, and my own experience suggests the following: immersing the self in such a heightened and positively differentiated play-world, in which social interactions are transformed so thoroughly and compellingly, is usually sufficient stimulus for the individual to ask almost automatically how the experience can be extended and the transformation brought into his or her regular life.

Principal elements of Burning Man Burning Man, in and of itself, is not technically interactive theatre, yet it has much in common with what has been discussed in relation to the genre. While it needs to be experienced rather than described1, for the purposes of this dissertation, I will attempt to give an overview by describing its principles, values and features, especially drawing out its implications for the potential of interactive theatre and its effect on social interactions.

Burning Man is a week-long event that takes place in the Black Rock Desert, northern Nevada, every year in the last week of August. In recent years about 45,000 people have attended each event, though numbers are rising with each year. Participants come from different countries and range in age, though the majority (about 85%) are from the United States (eligible to vote in US elections) and the

Trying to explain what Burning Man is to someone who has never been to the event is a bit like trying to explain what a particular color looks like to someone who is blind [] you will find [] peripheral definitions of what the event is as a whole, but to truly understand this event, one must participate. (Burning Man website, What Is Burning Man? 33

Joel Stanley average age is 30 to 40 (Burning Man, 2007). 72% consider themselves to be white (Ibid.), disproportionately high for the demographic make-up of the United States but probably reflective of issues of social and economic disadvantage in the society at large.

Central to Burning Man is the principle of radical self-expression, which Burning Mans founder, Larry Harvey, describes as encouraging participants to commune with themselves and to regard their own reality, that essential inner portion of experience that makes them feel real, as if it were a vision or a gift, and then project this vision out onto the world. (Harvey, 2002) This is supported by a number of features, including the events open structure. This differentiates Burning Man from other festivals as well as from the default world (a common Burning Man expression for what others might call regular life), where the emphasis is often on consumption rather than co-creation. Rather than there be an official programme featuring acts, bands and celebrities, participants are invited to provide the substance of the event themselves, bringing whatever art, games, workshops, talks, performances or just about any type of event they have to offer. Like the theatre ensemble described by Izzo, those who provide Burning Mans extensive infrastructure (physical, medical, logistical, legal and so on largely volunteers with a core team of professionals) are effectively inviting others into a wide, open circle. Harvey describes this principle: We have never dictated the content of radical self-expression because only the individual can determine what his or her true gifts might be. [] We don't create the culture, they do, but we create the societal vessel that helps to contain this creative, interactive, utterly uncontrollable process that simply happens in human populations when people are able to relate to each other for any length of time. So we've created a social context (Ibid.)

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Joel Stanley This structure is replicated in almost countless instances inside Burning Man, as participation and interactivity are central to almost everything offered. Every smaller event in the wider container of Burning Man is effectively another societal vessel [] to contain a creative, interactive, [] uncontrollable process.

Besides (and in fact often the host of) the workshop, the performance and the event, another major means of radical self-expression and participation is the theme camp, crudely speaking a group of participants who camp together, collaborating to produce a public service or an expressive theme of some kind (Ibid.). According to Harvey, People began to create extensions of their living quarters that embodied some creative idea, some kind of art project that they were willing to share with everyone else; thus theme camps are essentially collective gifts, collaborative acts of self-expression that are given to a civic world (Ibid.). An example he gives of a very simple theme camp is Camp Fink, a tent which looked like a seedy sportsmans bar but featured an ancient Corona typewriter out in front with an endless spool of paper, and they invited you to rat out your friends (Ibid.). Thus it got really interactive, because everyone wanted to read what everybody else was saying! (Ibid.) There are too many and too wide a variety of theme camps to describe them comprehensibly, but in 2008, at Sukkat Shalom, the theme camp of which I was part, we had a 1:600 canvas map of Black Rock City (the temporary urban environment created by Burning Man) with art materials for passers-by to mark their own camps and memorable experiences.

Encouraging a similar interactivity, outside the space of theme camps, most often on the open Playa which stretches away from the main streets of Black Rock

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Joel Stanley City, are large scale works of art, created by both professional artists who have exhibited their work in legitimating venues, and who have devoted themselves over many years to their craft and calling (Van Rhey, 1999) and amateurs. No distinction is drawn between these groups; thus there is a radical equality that is missing from the commercial art world. The art is deliberately stripped of its normal marketplace context, is created within and for a community, and, within this community, [] is intended to be given away (Ibid.). Above all, it an art that is devoted to social connection (Ibid.). To this end, there is a consistent emphasis on interactivity and participation. The art of Burning Man can be touched, climbed inside, moved, explored, interacted with or, at its most participatory, requires an action on the part of participants to achieve completion (Ibid.).

An example of interactive art from the 2008 event was the Temple of Fortune. This was an open-fronted hut with sloping roofs and a small staircase leading inside to a back-wall, on which was painted a large image of a female face and, over this image, pencil-drawn a myriad world of images to do with morality, good and bad fortune, snakes, ladders, temptations, deities and devils. At the bottom of the back-wall was a wheel that participants could step up and spin, revealing a fortune or piece of advice (for example, my spin told me, If you cannot go up or down, try moving sideways). These messages could, of course, be received however the participant wished: humour, reflection, entertainment etc. The back-wall and wheel are shown in Fig. 1.

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Fig 1. The wheel took long enough to spin for the participant to examine the back-wall in detail and form a deeper relationship with the work of art, noticing details he or she had not before. Crucially, the work of art became a node for social interactions between Burners, who would gather at the entrance to the Temple, observe and encourage those spinning, and interact with one another as well as the piece. It is worth noting that the hut appeared both as a theatre, with curtains framing the backwall, and as a temple or shrine, pagoda-like in shape and elevated. Thus it hinted equally towards performance and entertainment on the one hand, and ritualistic contemplation and transformation on the other. This can be seen in Fig. 2.

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Fig. 2 As in the interactive theatre of Ladder to the Moon, participants meet each other in a new context, less hindered by default identities and histories. As takes place when a guest at an interactive theatre event is endowed with a role, participants are given a new motivation for interaction, a shift that prompts both more interaction than might otherwise take place between so-called strangers and interactions of a different type, potentially allowing latent characteristics to emerge. Many Burners consciously play with the persona they present to others via costumes and Playa names. A Playa name is an alias, a name a Burner goes by at Burning Man. According to Mike Osborne, one of the Burners I interviewed by questionnaire, and who goes by the Playa name of Tryp, Playa names are an important rite of passage for Burners:

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Choosing a Playa name has returned an important self-identification power to individuals that our culture has lost. I thought long and hard about finding a Playa name, until one of my camp mates said to me You sure are a trip, man. I immediately knew that was it, although I changed it slightly to Tryp, in honor of my favorite molecule, tryptamine. In other words, a Playa name can provide an opportunity to reinvent ones identity, exercising choice in the act of self-definition. In that people habitually relate to and see each other through the prism of names, it also has the potential to shift others perceptions of and therefore interactions with that individual. The costumes participants wear, often very lavish and usually homemade, work in a similar way, playing with surface appearance and facilitating both more frequent and new kinds of interaction. These may come in the form of compliments or, if the costume presents a character, interactions in role. For example, when in 2008 I painted myself from head to toe in green body paint, many people told me how much they liked it; when I dressed as a rabbi with whiskers and bunny ears (Fig. 3) they came to me as my bunny disciples.

There are also a number of important rules that mark Burning Man out as apart from the default world, support its distinctive values and heighten the experience, creating a temenos. These are both natural and man-made. The harsh conditions of the desert, where daytime temperatures reach 40 degrees centigrade, nightime temperatures drop below freezing and zero-visibility dust storms are a regular occurrence, inevitably heighten the stakes and have a profound effect on peoples interactions. Frequently neighbouring campers turn to each other for equipment or help. It is impossible to set up or run a camp in the conditions without pooling resources and cooperating. Seemingly strong bonds are created. As one

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Joel Stanley respondent to my questionnaire put it: Any adverse environment which humans experience together has a high likelihood of bringing a sense of community to those who experience it. This is directly comparable to the sense of communitas, defined as an essential though temporary enactment of community (Kuftinec, quoted in Kuppers, 2007, p. 36), that is created in an interactive theatre event through the experience of exhilaration and a heightened sense of reality.

Fig. 3 The most significant and far reaching of the man-made rules is a ban on all commerce. As the 2008 Burning Man Survival Guide puts it: You cannot buy or sell anything. Black Rock City is a place of sharing and free exchange within a gift economy. (Burning Man, 2008, p. 2) Although participants pay for their tickets to

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Joel Stanley the Burning Man, they must bring enough food and water to last the week, exercising the principle of radical self-reliance (p. 3). At the event, no workshop, massage, drink, performance, experience or work of art is bought or sold. Everything is given freely between fellow participants. This creates a sense of abundance, which in turn can lead to cooperation and mutual play rather than competition. To illustrate this distinction, Harvey quotes 19th Century economist Richard Jefferies The Absence of Design in Nature: The Prodigality of Nature and the Niggardliness of Man: There is no 'enough' in nature [] It is one vase prodigality. It is a feast. There is no economy, no saving, no penury, a golden shower of good things forever descending." (Harvey, 2002). He goes on to comment: Contrast this with the material economy of our world, in which each individual is compelled, in order to exist, to labor, to save and to compete with other people for control and possession of scarce resources. This is the iron law of economics in our world: the suberabundance of nature and the utter niggardliness of man. (Ibid.) Removing commodity transactions from the temenos connects people with that superabundance and tips the balance away from contest and towards representation: All play is either a contest for something or a representation of something. Contest play strives for winning or achieving [] In representation play, players strive to move beyond their ordinary selves so that they almost believe they actually are what they are portraying, but without wholly losing consciousness of ordinary reality (Izzo, 1997).

Thus the gift economy of Burning Man and the context of any performances or interactive art experiences that take place, stand out in blatant relief against the default backdrop of a highly developed capitalist society. Harvey contrasts Burning Man to Retail Entertainment Destinations or R.E.D.s. These typically combine

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Joel Stanley dining, shopping and entertainment attractions and are, in his words, the finest flower of our marketing system and its commodification of our lives (Harvey, 2002). Examples are Disney Land or the Strip in Las Vegas. These environments may well contain specially designed civic spaces in which performances, usually of short duration and often interactive, take place. However, the reason R.E.D.s create these faux civic spaces, and the reason they're filled with such apparently civilized amenities, is to cause consumers to linger in a retail environment (Ibid.). Harvey describes his experience in Las Vegas, interacting with the great speaking statue of Neptune at Caesar's Palace: It was set in a courtyard, and, in a weird kind of cartoon way it might have been Florence. It could have been a northern Italian hill town; a public square, a very civic setting. This robotic Neptune spoke to us for about 7 minutes, it attracted a large crowd, and then it stopped and everyone dispersed and where did they go? Right into all these shops that strategically surrounded it. And every one was a brand name high-end retail outlet selling goods at a 200% mark-up (Ibid.) The effect of this is to put a material value on the social interactions taking place through the interactive theatrical event. Their purpose is to sell commodity. It is possible to argue that this too is the purpose of commercial theatre, yet positive social benefit and entertainment can still result. Nevertheless, at Burning Man, and within many other interactive theatre performances, there is a more distinct separation between the events internal play-world and the world of commodity transactions. Buying and selling do not suddenly intrude on the temenos. In the case of, say, a Ladder performance, the care organisation will have settled the fee in advance (Acton Care Home paid 100 for the performance of A Very Greek Romance). Thus the simulation of monetary transactions, or any other kind of real-world interaction, can take place in the plays fictional world, and, paradoxically, it will feel authentic i.e. of

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Joel Stanley value in and of itself. This is in contrast to Harveys Las Vegas example, where the brevity of the performances and the same-space presence of commercial activity, combined with the sudden fragmentation and dispersal of any sense of a collective that may have been built during the performance undercut the social interactions that the theatre generates. It is not that commercial gain cannot come from an interactive theatre event that enhances its participants social interactions. Rather, what is vital is the emphasis placed on those interactions, the extent to which they are protected and ring-fenced within the performance space, and how they are managed when the performance disappears.

Self-consuming spectacle Earlier in this dissertation I noted the shift at the end of a Ladder performance, as actors de-role and the focus turns to the social interactions in the room. The walls of the temenos dissolve, but Ladder attempt to steward the energy, laughter and joy of the experience into the more normalised context. In removing costumes and speaking to the older people out of character, traditional distinctions between ensemble and audience blur to an even greater extent. Effectively, Schechners three categories of related transactions in the theatrical event, i.e. those between performers, those between audience members, and those between performers and audience, are subsumed in a simpler general category of social interactions. Spectacle and narrative recede into the background, existing principally as memory (conscious or subconscious) and energy, and these social interactions are foregrounded. How at Burning Man are the transitions back to the default world managed? I believe there is a similar shift in focus and foreground, which is evident from the story of Burning

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Joel Stanley Mans origins, the symbolism and effect of the burning of the Man, and theories expounded by Larry Harvey.

Burning Man started not as a large-scale event, with tickets, insurance and safety structures, but as a spontaneous gathering on a beach. In 1986 Harvey called a friend and said, let's build a man and burn him on the beach (Ibid.). He did this on impulse, not with any particular symbolism in mind but rather as radical-self expression, a response to some passionate prompting, some immediate vision [that] just had to be embodied in the world. (Ibid.) Harvey recounts: We built our man from scraps of wood, then called some friends and took it to the beach. We saturated it with gasoline and put a match to it, and within minutes our numbers doubled [to 20]. (Ibid.) Because people were attracted to the gathering and because Harvey and his friends were moved, they decided to repeat the event the following year at the same location, Baker Beach, San Francisco. The numbers grew and Burning Man became an annual event. In 1990, when 800 people attended, police banned the burning on the beach, but a compromise was reached allowing the statue to be assembled and elevated, BUT not burned on beach site (Burning Man website, Timeline). For the first time the man was burned in the Black Rock Desert, where Burning Man has taken place every year since.

Harvey tells this story of origins and identifies a process he calls I Am, We Are, It Is (Harvey, 2002). The process begins with radical self-expression: the feeling that your inmost vital self is real and that you can project a vision of this sense of your own being onto the surrounding world. (Ibid.) This stage is what Harvey calls I Am, effectively an act of resistance to the default world and its culture, as

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Joel Stanley most people just don't have the confidence anymore because they're too isolated; they're too passive. (Ibid.) Harvey himself listened to some passionate prompting, some immediate vision to build a man and burn him on the beach and decided to manifest it in the world. This initial projection of personal artistic vision can be seen as analogous to the primary act of theatrical creation. In terms of interactive theatre, it is the conception and development of the performance, to which the guests will later be invited.

In the case of Burning Mans development, others were quickly attracted to Harveys creation. They formed a semi-circle around it and, in time, brought their own performances and offerings (Ibid.). This is the second stage of the process: It proceeds, as in a theme camp, to a feeling that you are united with others, that you are linked in a bonded circle and that together you can share the same experience through an act of giving, because the value of a gift is in its flow not as you consume it, but as it consumes. And I'll call this, We Are. (Ibid.) Here Harvey emphasises the sense of togetherness, with each participant becoming an active contributor and creator. In interactive theatre, guests respond to spectacle, narrative interest (if there is a plot) and this apparent sense of I Am. As noted earlier, they become co-creators. Harvey claims this semi-circle that formed around his first burning effigy is still evident in Burning Man and its lay-out today: when I look at Black Rock City today, I notice that its curving streets are like that semi-circle of people so many years ago on Baker Beach. (Ibid.)

The third stage of the process is It Is, the feeling that somewhere outside this circle there exists some greater gift that everyone is joined together by as they

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Joel Stanley give to it (Ibid.). The sense of communitas inherent in We Are now transcends the circumstances, which are contingent upon those people at that time, and takes root in the shared values embodied by the event and its interactions. At the end of A Very Greek Romance, the actors model the forms of interaction they espouse and show they are not dependent on the performance that initially brought them about.

The burning of the Man, Burning Mans great central ritual, has different meanings for different people. It is a signifier with almost as many signifieds as there are Burners. However, it is possible to interpret the Burn as the culminating ceremony marking the transition from We Are to It Is, from the specific circumstances of the festival and the people present to the greater world around. Throughout the week, the 40-foot Man constitutes the festivals geographical centre, focal totem and orienting landmark. Burners climb inside its plinth, and meet and interact with others. It is also Burning Mans greatest spectacle and the biggest attraction for first-timers, some of whom arrive just for the weekend so as to see the Burn. It is however a selfconsuming spectacle. It disappears and the festival continues for one last celebratory day. The main event turns out to be the illusion of a main event: an initial motivating factor perhaps, but not actually the point of the gathering. Similarly, Chris Gage says spectacle is a lot about hooking people into the world [of the performance], so A Very Greek Romance starts with Tim [the lead actor] walking in with his pants and vest (Gage, 2008). But the performance moves on quickly, towards a more communal experience and ultimately a set of social interactions that look outward to the world of everyday life.

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Joel Stanley Temporary Autonomous Zones It is also significant that the physical spaces of both Burning Man and the Ladder performance I saw open to the outside world from the start. In A Very Greek Romance the door to the performance room was not shut. Carers and visitors arrived in the middle of the play or stood on the threshold to take a look, and participants were free to leave the performance space.2 At Burning Man, the street lay-out is deliberately not a circle, which can tend to be exclusive. Not intentionally, but when you are huddled with your friends, you turn your back on the world and it's hard to let the stranger in. So they tend to exclude the stranger. (Harvey, 2002) Instead, as Harvey explains, it is still the semi-circle of Baker Beach: We've told people: okay, you've got your tight little world of your mates and your friends, and you're bonded together that's like a lot of sub-cultures in our world but we've said don't close the circle. You cannot close the circle. You've got to leave it open so you can bridge out to a larger world, so that you can credit the world outside your circle with as much reality as you see in those around you. And, indeed, so that you can feel that the great world has the same reality, the same sense of inner reality that you feel in yourself. (Ibid.) Thus the model of the pristine, walled temenos is tweaked and, in fact, breached. For a limited period of time, a community forms and creates a heightened sense of reality at its centre, but its boundary remains porous, both welcoming outsiders in and inviting insiders to project outwards.

Burning Man, therefore, is a deliberate experiment in temporary community (Burning Man website, What Is Burning Man? Frequently Asked Questions). Equally, to the extent that interactive theatre has the potential to affect the world
2

At one point, one of the residents walked out of the room still holding a vital prop, a letter safeguarded for Troilus, and the actor had to follow him down the corridor to retrieve it. 47

Joel Stanley outside the performance, its temporaneity can be an advantage, generating a greater volume and quality of social interactions while indicating the need to bring them home.

The anarchist philosopher Hakim Bey celebrates what he calls the Temporary Autonomous Zone (TAZ) as superior to revolution, which is secretly nothing more than a vicious circle, because it allows people to stand for a moment on a bit of land ruled only by freedom, in intentional communities, whole mini-societies living consciously outside the law and determined to keep it up, even if only for a short but merry life. (Bey, 1991) Revolutions, writes Bey, match the expected curve, the consensus-approved trajectory: revolution, reaction, betrayal, the founding of a stronger and even more oppressive State the turning of the wheel, the return of history again and again to its highest form: jackboot on the face of humanity forever (Ibid.). The TAZ however, to which Burning Man and some forms of interactive theatre are closely related, is a kind of uprising or insurrection: History says the Revolution attains permanence, or at least duration, while the uprising is temporary. In this sense an uprising is like a peak experience as opposed to the standard of ordinary consciousness and experience. Like festivals, uprisings cannot happen every day otherwise they would not be nonordinary. But such moments of intensity give shape and meaning to the entirety of a life. The shaman returns you can't stay up on the roof forever but things have changed, shifts and integrations have occurred a difference is made. (Ibid.) Bey embraces the transience of the TAZ because it accords greater freedom to its inhabitants, who uproot and move on before the State and its authority can fully identify them, let alone shut them down. Significantly, the TAZ is also seen as festival, like the ancient concepts of jubilee and saturnalia, originating in an

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Joel Stanley intuition that certain events lie outside the scope of profane time, the measuring-rod of the State and of History. (Ibid. Beys italics)

The idea of the Temporary Autonomous Zone hints again at an important means of extending the effects of interactive theatre after the event itself. The TAZ, like interactive theatre performances or events like Burning Man, has a temporary but actual location in time and a temporary but actual location in space (Ibid.) However, according to Bey, it must also have location in the Web (Ibid. Beys italics). By Web Bey refers to not just the internet but rather to the alternate horizontal open structure of info-exchange, the non-hierarchic network that exists as part of the totality of all information and communication transfer (Ibid.). Effectively, the Web can partially bridge the gaps between one manifestation of the TAZ and the next. It is not a substitute for the TAZ itself. Rather: we must consider the Web primarily as a support system, capable of carrying information from one TAZ to another [...] But more than that: If the TAZ is a nomad camp, then the Web helps provide the epics, songs, genealogies and legends of the tribe; it provides the secret caravan routes and raiding trails which make up the flowlines of tribal economy; it even contains some of the very roads they will follow, some of the very dreams they will experience as signs and portents. (Ibid.) Thinking of Burning Man and Ladder to the Moon, I would say that the Web reminds participants of their shared experience (of the We Are) even as they attempt to keep its values alive (It Is) when the experience has passed. For Burners, these support systems come in a number of forms, many of which were mentioned by respondents to my questionnaire: monthly burner parties; performances of the Burner variety and looking at photos; the internet [including message boards] and [email] lists; the regionals (i.e. local clusters of Burners around the world) and mini-Burning

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Joel Stanley Man event[s]. For Ladder to the Moon, the Web includes things like using photography and video as an integrated part of every show, so that you can possibly reinforce peoples experiences. (Gage, 2008)

One step further than these support systems is Burners Without Borders, an organisation that exists not only as a way of keeping alive the ethos and community of Burning Man, but also as a way of bringing that ethos and community directly into the world in the form of face-to-face humanitarian aid and charity work. In such instances, and where Burners have seen their default lives begin to resemble more and more their lives on the Playa, the Temporary Autonomous Zone has become less temporary. The events effect on peoples social interactions has extended to nonBurning Man contexts and taken root in wherever those participants are found, potentially affecting those they come into contact with. These Burners may well have espoused those values before Burning Man, and they were certainly receptive to the experience. Nevertheless, in a city like San Francisco, where there is a high concentration of Burners, one can only guess at the effect Burning Man has had on the citys culture.

Conclusion What conclusions then is it possible to draw about interactive theatre and its effect on the social interactions of its audience?

First of all, interactive theatre developed as a genre as practitioners such as Meyerhold, Artaud and Grotowski introduced dramatic innovations that minimised the separation between stage and auditorium, and emphasised the direct relationship

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Joel Stanley between the actors and the audience, and eventually between the audience members themselves.

Interactive theatre is now employed by companies such as Ladder to the Moon as a means of both entertainment and transformation. Central to this type of theatre, as well as to other highly interactive theatrical and arts events such as Burning Man, is the concept of a distinct play-area, a temenos, in which special rules are observed, a heightened reality is experienced, and all participants practice saying yes and accepting offers. This allows the guests to access explore aspects of their personalities they might otherwise neglect, or that usually remain latent or hidden. It also allows participants to play with changing status, again experiencing a marked difference from ordinary life.

These principles can have an even greater effect in the context of work with older people, especially those with dementia. Because interactive theatre broadens the range of scenarios and situations to which many people in this case carers, visitors and actors are willing to say yes, the participants experience a rare opportunity to have their realities affirmed. Similarities with the approach of Specal Care, based on the idea of playing along with the mental reality of the older person, suggests this can be particularly therapeutic for sufferers of dementia. In all interactive theatre, but to a greater extent in work with sufferers of dementia, the extent to which social interactions are enhanced, both in the moment and the longer term, depend on the attitudes and perceptions of others. Work like Ladders has the potential to surprise friends, carers and family in its revelation refashioning of participants appearance and identity.

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Joel Stanley

There is a challenge, however, in attempting to integrate the extraordinary experience of an interactive theatre event back into everyday life. The transformative effects of interactive theatre are dependent on the events temporaneity, distinctiveness and playfulness, and its contrast with normality. The approaches of both Ladder to the Moon and Burning Man model ways of smoothing the transition, and maximising the extents to which its benefits can be brought back. These techniques include a cooling down period at the end of the interactive theatre event in which all participants (ensemble and guests) interact out of role.

Burning Man espouses many of the principles of interactive theatre, emphasising radical self-expression and participation, while reinforcing its temenos and the authenticity of its interactions through rules, such as the prohibition of commercial activity, and the natural environment in which it takes place. Participants experience an increased volume, range and quality of social interactions, facilitated by their creation of, cooperation around and engagement in art, costume, identity play and radical self-reliance.

Both Burning Man and, to a lesser extent, Ladder to the Moon, use selfconsuming spectacle i.e. spectacle, such as the burning of the Man, that is initially attractive and acts as the hook, drawing people in, but which eventually disappears, emphasising the importance not of the show but of the values evident throughout. This is the culminating transition into the final stage of the process defined by Larry Harvey as I Am - We Are - It Is, whereby participants go from radical selfexpression, through an experience of community, to the understanding that the values

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Joel Stanley of that community transcend the particular circumstances of the event. The physical lay-out of Burning Man, as well as Ladder performances, support this idea, retaining the sense of a temenos, but opening up to allow outsiders in and signal the importance of recontextualising the experience in the outside world.

Finally, interactive theatre can be likened to a Temporary Autonomous Zone, as described by Hakim Bey: a form of insurgency rather than revolution, moving quickly enough to maximise freedom and prevent stagnation. It is necessary to balance its temporaneity with the support structures of the Web, a means of transferring information and communication, and constructing a mythology and identity outside the actual manifestations of the event. In the best case scenarios participants form longer-term communities around shared values awoken through interactive theatre, and use those values to effect positive change and interact with new people and communities in the default world.

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Joel Stanley Bibliography Primary Sources Burning Man 2008, Nevada, USA Ladder to the Moon, A Very Greek Romance, Acton Care Home, London, 14 August 2008 Secondary Sources Artaud, Antonin, transl. Victor Corti (1993), The Theatre and Its Double, London, Calder Publications Bey, Hakim (1991), The Temporary Autonomous Zone, [Online] http://www.hermetic.com/bey/taz_cont.html, accessed 20/08/08 Bermel, Albert, Artauds Theatre of Cruelty, London, Methuen Blatner, Adam with Wiener, Daniel J. (2007), Interactive and Improvisational Drama: Varieties of Applied Theatre and Performance, Lincoln NE, iUniverse Burning Man (2007), Afterburn Report 2007: 2007 Census, [Online] http://afterburn.burningman.com/07/census/index.html, accessed 10/09/08 Burning Man (2008), 2008 Survival Guide, San Francisco Burning Man website, [Online] http://www.burningman.com, accessed 09/09/08 Gage, Chris (8 August 2008), interview with Joel Stanley Gage Chris, Interactive Theatre Makers, Facebook group [Online] http://www.new.facebook.com/group.php?gid=20146309293&ref=ts Gordon, Robert (2006), The Purpose of Playing, Ann Arbor, The University of Michigan Press Harvey, Larry (2002), Viva Las Xmas: A speech by Larry Harvey at the Cooper Union in New York City, April 25 2002, [Online] http://www.burningman.com/whatisburningman/lectures/viva.html, accessed 11/09/08 Izzo, Gary (1997), The Art of Play: The New Genre of Interactive Theatre, Portsmouth NH, Heinemann James, Oliver, My mother was back. The lights were on, Saturday Guardian, 2 August 2008 Kuppers, Petra (2007), Community Performance: An Introduction, Abingdon, Routledge

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Johnston, Chris (2005), House of Games: Making Theatre from Everyday Life, London, Nick Hern Books Ladder to the Moon, Ladder to the Moon: Interactive Theatre in Health and Care Settings Home, [Online] http://www.laddertothemoon.co.uk, accessed 16/08/08 Ladder to the Moon (2007), Ladder to the Moon Entertainment, Trustees report and financial statements, Year ended 31 March 2007, [Online] www.laddertothemoon.co.uk/Downloads/Ladder%20accounts%2022.11.07.pdf Schechner, Richard (1985), Between Theatre and Anthropology, Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press Schechner, Richard (1994), Environmental Theater, New York, Applause Schechner, Richard (2003), Performance Theory, Abingdon, Routledge Stanley, Joel (2008), Analyse the concept of theatre as therapeutic encounter as elaborated by Artaud, MA Essay, Goldsmiths, London Van Rhey, Darryl (1999), The Art of Burning Man an Illustrated Essay, [Online] http://www.burningman.com/art_of_burningman/index.html, accessed 12/09/08

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Joel Stanley Appendix (All questions on one page for the purposes of this appendix only) Burning Man Questionnaire 1. Name: 2. Playa name: 3. Age: 4. Sex: 5. How many times have you been to Burning Man? 6. When was your first Burning Man? 7. Why did you first come to Burning Man? 8. If this is not your first time, why do you come to Burning Man now? 9. How, if at all, has Burning Man changed you? By what means? 10. What is the relationship between your default life and (your experiences at, the way you are at) Burning Man? 11. What are the support systems, devices, means and structures that make up any gap between your default world and Burning Man, or between one Burning Man and the next? 12. If this is your first Burning Man, what do you make of it so far? How do you relate to it? 13. What, if anything, can Burning Man achieve in the world? 14. Is Burning Man a true community? Why? 15. If you have a Playa name, why? And why that name? 16. How does the art at Burning Man impact you? 17. Have you taken part in what you might call theatre at Burning Man? What was it and how did it affect you and others who experienced it?

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