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Can the 'landscape' theatre aesthetics proposed by Gertrude Stein find a home within the context of a narrative-based theatre form?

This performance project explored, using Stein's influential essay 'Plays' as its starting point, the notion of the 'landscape' play, with particular attention to Stein's conception of performance texts and spectatorship.

The aim of the performance was to create space for the kind of spectator-performance relationship she hypothesises, where the spectator may 'rest untroubled' in the piece, but within the context of a performance which (unlike the works of Stein herself) has a single, linear story to tell. The making of this piece was a collaborative process of exploration and negotiation between linear and non-linear styles of performance and text.

A large part of this process involved looking at the dialogue form of traditional dramatic theatre and how its function of progressive development of character and plot may be re-distributed amongst other aspects of the production in a piece where text takes a new role in a non-hierarchical whole, yet narrative is still retained.

 

 

 

Final performances were held in week 8 of the summer term 2012/13.