The World beyond Words

Conundrum Corner: Aesthetics and Non-professional performers

Worried it won’t look good

Our first conundrum has been sent in by Samuel Erskine, Education Projects Manager at Sheffield Theatres:

I struggle with the notion of style/aesthetics, and the fear of things 'not looking good'. The fact that it is an applied theatre performance by participants is clear, but what can I do to develop the performance and production quality that doesn't push the participants too much, adding undue pressure that leads them to disengage with the project? There's a misconception I can't shake, that if the group can say their lines and know where to move that's ok- don't add anything else otherwise it might fall apart. So grand visions are often left behind and the drive to include actor training in a project goes to the back of my mind.

Thanks, Sam. This is a big one, probably worthy of a number of posts, but I'll endeavour to cover it in one. In essence there are two things to consider here. Firstly, what is the nature of this quandary (including why it is so prevalent), and secondly, what might be some practical steps to address the resulting issues. It's going to be a longish post I’m afraid, so if you want to jump to the practical steps click here.

The Aesthetic: Question or Dilemma.

THE ‘AESTHETIC QUESTION’ IS A CLASSIC DRAMA CONUNDRUM, though all too regularly articulated as a false dilemma. On the one side is the argument for authentic, unpolished work, full of thoughtful intention and lacking artifice (the socio-political). On the other is a call for beauty, mastery, transcendence, and professionalism (the aesthetic). One decries the opposite as superficial, hollow and elitist, whilst the other slates its supposed rival as worthy, joyless, and maladroit.

It is, of course, not a simple either/or question. The framing of this false dilemma owes much to a number of seemingly related theatre binaries that were used in the last century. Brook's distinction between Deadly vs Immediate theatre comes to mind. So does John McGrath's delineation of Bourgeois and Popular form, Grotowski's Rich and Poor theatre, and Welfare State International’s bifurcation of Court art and Folk art. And who could forget Brecht's distinction between Epic Realism and Dramatic Naturalism. Indeed, the chronic over-simplification of the latter in service of an easily digestible high school curriculum, bereft of historical context and nuance, has an enormous amount to answer for.

All of these distinctions have one thing in common: they articulate alternatives to the dominant aesthetic conventions of their time. The dominant in each case, driven by the commodification of theatre in the service of profit, underpinning the prevailing socio-political status quo. None of them, however, suggest abandoning aesthetic consideration altogether. Furthermore, a great number of the radical values and conventions proposed as alternatives to the historical dominant are now incorporated into general theatre practice.

A very similar dynamic developed in educational and participatory forms of drama. The focus on process within DIE, or the democratisation of purpose within Boal's concept of the 'spect-actor' were necessarily radical within their historical contexts, relying on a perception of EITHER deep meaning OR shallow beauty as a means to escape the gravitational pull of 'conventional' forms of theatre and drama work. The oft encountered reverse snobbery, viewing engagement with aesthetic communication as a betrayal of authenticity, is a mangled by-product of these initial struggles.

The World beyond the Word

Philosophically, 'the aesthetic' is a complex, multifaceted concept, the discussion of which is well beyond the scope of this post. But at the root, it refers to that which 'pertains to sensory perception' - what we see, hear, taste and feel - in essence our non-thinking value response to what we encounter in the world. It is the world beyond the word¹. A non-aesthetic performance is a contradiction in terms, only to be satisfied by an audience silently reading the words from a giant book on a stage. The spoken word on the stage, who says it, how it is said, the when and the where of the delivery, and in absence the words that could have been said, are transmitted via the aesthetic and therefore integral to the socio-political import of the performance. Thus, the decision is which aesthetic convention best suits the project not whether aesthetics are needed at all. How else do we create a place to best see the results of the process?

As the new millennium dawned it seemed as if the pendulum was swinging back the other way as texts and workshops referring to the place of aesthetics within applied theatre appeared to be on the rise². Augusto Boal captured some of this spirit in his 2006 book 'The Aesthetics of the Oppressed':

The first thing that a means of transport [i.e. the aesthetic] transports is itself: we can appreciate the beauty of a jet plane or of an old steam train, or an unusual word; but, to better understand them, we need to understand what they are carrying and who is sending them to us.

Notably, Boal restates and clarifies the core themes of his previous work in aesthetic terms, articulating synergies between the socio-political and acts of creativity. James Thompson's 2009 work 'Performance Affects' goes further in questioning narrowly instrumentalist theatre³ in favour of a pursuit of the 'beautiful'. At a pragmatic level he notes that creative choices cannot be taken for granted:

Some prison theatre in the UK, for example, favours a workshop style that focuses on a discussion of criminal behaviour, while some conflict settings demand attention to anything but the war. Much applied theatre in British schools has been closely integrated with the curriculum, while theatre projects in disaster zones have at times avoided any mention of educational objectives. None of these provide a right way to run applied theatre programmes, but all reveal certain aesthetic and political choices that need to be considered.

The book goes on to challenge the pursuance of 'effect' (outcomes, messages etc.) in favour of 'affect' (bodily responses, sensations, and aesthetic pleasure). Thompson posits that "joy, pleasure, awe, and astonishment" are no mere add on, by-product, or means to a socio-political end but an end in themselves. The aesthetic experience can, and should at the very least, exist in dynamic negotiation with the pursuit of meaning⁴.

It is important to note, however, that what we see in these moves to repatriate the aesthetic within socially engaged theatre work, is more a rebalancing of perception and priority rather than an innovation in itself. Brecht, despite his call to 'liquidate the aesthetic' also stated:

The grouping of the characters on the stage and the movement of the groups must be such that the necessary beauty is attained above all by the elegance with which the gestic material is presented and exposed to the insight of the audience.

Brecht (1948), Short Organon 66

There never was an abandonment of the aesthetic in radical, community or educational theatre. There was only a rejection of the dominant aesthetic norms of a particular time.

Genuine Fears and Status Anxieties

Why, then do we find ourselves still questioning the legitimacy of efforts to improve the aesthetics of community/applied performance? To refer back to Sam's message, he cites two specific concerns:

• Fear that the performance won't 'look good': audience expectation's will not be met leading to negative judgement.

• Fear that the pressure to 'perform' will result in the performance falling apart: attempting to meet the audience's expectations causing errors and/or insurmountable pressure leading to participants negatively judging themselves.

On face value, we can reframe these as an intention to consider the experience of both participants and audience. This is hardly radical nor insoluble. The use of the word 'fear', though no doubt just a turn of phrase in Sam's message, is useful in bringing our focus back to the facilitator themselves. Consideration of both audience and participants only becomes an issue (rather than a problem) when the facilitator is unable to resolve their own status insecurities, namely:

1. Anxiety regarding one's status as an artist /director - compromising, not making 'proper' theatre

2. Anxiety regarding one's status as an activist/educator/ facilitator - selling out, 'betraying' the participants

Whilst it is entirely possible to hold both sets of concerns at the same time, solutions can appear to be mutually exclusive. As described above, for a long time the orthodox position appeared to validate attending to facilitator anxiety, leaving artistic concerns a guilty secret. That said, more recently, those who have found themselves in this field out of the need for work/funding, rather than conviction, are increasingly using communities to service their own artist anxiety.

The Beautiful, the Good...

There is - isn't there always - another way of looking at this.

If we boil it down to the basics, our practice is essentially Storytelling. We work with people to create/identify stories and then find ways to tell them to other people. Storytelling, however, is one word not two and this is important. In Storytelling, there is no story unless there is someone to tell it to. There can be no told-to without something to tell. On occasion the tell-ers and the told-to (audience) may be the same people (even maybe the same person). But it is only Storytelling when something that was previously not-visible becomes visible in the act of telling.

In day to day life we often separate notions of the 'beautiful' - that which gives rise to sensory pleasure, from the 'good' - the right, just and virtuous. There's a long philosophical history why this is the case, but it wasn't always so. Hindu, Daoist, Confucian, and Yoruba traditions, among many others (inc. Ancient Greek Platonism), assert that true beauty always coincides with the highest good - that it is impossible to be thoroughly good and not be beautiful.

Placing the two propositions alongside one another might offer an inclusive resolution to the anxieties mentioned above:

IF, in the moment of telling,
the tale is indivisible from the way it is told ,
AND the good is indivisible from the beautiful,
THEN, the tell-er, the told-to and the quality of the tale itself
are mutually reliant on the beauty of the telling.

Or, to swap-in more theatre specific terms:

IF, in the moment of performing,
The play is indivisible from the way it is performed,
AND socio-political impact is indivisible from aesthetic impact,
THEN, the performers, the audience, and the socio-political intention of the play itself
are mutually reliant on the aesthetics of the performance.

Now, the logic is not necessarily watertight (for the sake of the post I've omitted some inferential brevity and clarity ). In the same breath though, it is not a particularly radical proposition. But what it does offer is a clear articulation of why the resolution of our professional status insecurities are likewise mutually interdependent.

We are not more artistic by denying the socio-political, and we are not better activists or educators by denying the aesthetic. In either case the denial of the other points to a desire to 'win', to hold a title, to prove to everyone, once and for all, we are a proper artist/director/activist/educator/ facilitator (delete as necessary). The hope being, perhaps, that once proven we will not be subject to professional status anxiety in the future. A hope, unfortunately, that will almost certainly not be fulfilled.

The practitioner who instead recognises the fundamental interrelatedness of content and form can be both artist and activist, director and facilitator, entertainer and educator, not with the reassurance of a final status, but with the motivation of infinite purpose. Aware that no achievement, past or future, is definitive, these are the practitioners who relish and grow in the challenge of the moment.

One final concern then remains, that of the pressure placed on participants to meet aesthetic standards. And for this, we need to expand our discussion of the beautiful and the good to include the true.

…and the True

The addition of Truth, to Beauty and Goodness, sometimes referred to as the transcendental trinity, again has ancient origins and spans multiple cultures. Associated as much with theology as with aesthetic and moral philosophy, arguments for and against the interdependence of truth, beauty, and the good are made and remade in each generation. There are limitless depths to explore here, but for our purposes skimming the surface will be enough!

Truth in this context refers to an unmediated quality, the essence of something. The degree to which an object, a song, or a poem corresponds to this essence is a measure of it's 'good'ness. And the sensory means by which this is successfully conveyed to a third party results in 'beauty'.

Adding this last component of this dynamic triad is going to help us traverse our final stepping stone: How can we pursue the aesthetic without placing our participants under 'Fame' school pressure⁵?

“ You want fame, well fame costs and this is where you start paying - in sweat!"

Now, I have no wish to deride Fame: The Movie, nor the TV series (a guilty pleasure of my mid-teens) and certainly not the New York High School of Performing Arts on which the film was based, but the 'sweat' in question is the price of a specific form of beauty, one that operates in the sphere of dominant aesthetic conventions.

These conventions - recognisable as 'proper' theatre - are designed to engage , what Richard Schechner (2003) calls, an 'accidental audience'. That is, anyone who walks in from the street to see the show, an audience who have no relationship with the performers or the subject of the performance. The aesthetic conventions reflect this, relying on recognisable markers of quality/goodness/beauty to hold an audience's attention long enough for the relevance of the 'truth' on offer to become apparent and deeper aesthetic connection to develop.

It is tempting to think the self-same conventions are necessary for a non-accidental or 'Integral' audience. However, beauty lies not in the aesthetic convention itself, but in its success in conveying truth. An integral audience, Schechner argues, attend because the event already holds special significance for them. This audience, who might be neighbours, service providers, classmates etc. are, in some way, already primed for the performance. They may or may not be open to the truths on offer but their familiarity with the performers or the subject (or both) means they have an interest/investment in what is to be told.

As a result, the aesthetic conventions required, are different, though no less important. The demonstration of technical mastery required to engage an accidental audience seems less relevant when the words uttered articulate something the integral audience has thought but never had the courage to say - no matter how faltering the delivery. Beauty, in this case, is created between the audience and the performers rather than delivered.

In short, an accidental audience comes “to see the show”
while the integral audience is “necessary to accomplish the work of the show.”

(Schechner, 2004)

This explains the uncomfortable situation we've no doubt all been in when a well-meaning funder or colleague from another department asks to come and see participant work. Grateful for their interest in the work we worry (professional status anxiety) that they won't get it. And they probably won't. It is not for them. Prendergast, Saxton & Kandill (2024) recount an occasion when a community piece on the theme of domestic violence was restaged at an academic conference to the bemusement of assembled scholars:

For that accidental audience, there was no aesthetic present. And yet for the integral audiences who first saw the work, there was an immediate recognition that promoted a powerful response both at a feeling and a thinking level.

It's important to note that the essential truth shared does not necessarily always lie in the content of the performance. There is another narrative implicit in the event itself.

I remember, some years ago, assessing a project led by a final year undergraduate student. They had been working with a group of Yr. 9 boys all of whom were in the permanent exclusion last chance saloon (I forget the exact educational terminology of the time).  I was the first marker, accompanied by the student’s supervisor and a university marketing officer. The rest of the audience were friends, family and, laudably, the entire senior management team of the school. The play itself was short and featured a somewhat convoluted crime story providing the cast ample opportunities to play hardened criminals and courageous detectives. The plot was only really discernible thanks to the use of projected scene headers and well-timed emotive music. At the end, as the uproarious applause died out and the performers dashed straight into the auditorium to see their friends, the marketing officer turned to me with a stupefied expression of 'What just happened?'. Before I could respond the school's head of drama interrupted to introduce me to the Headteacher. “Stunning” said the Headteacher “I'm so glad SMT were here to see this. Beautiful, really beautiful. [The student] did such great work with the boys.”

Now it would easy to dismiss these comments as politeness or faint praise ( 'A' for effort) but there was a sincere, almost emotional, quality to the teacher's voice. They meant it. What the teachers saw, and the marketing officer did not, was the barely contained excitement of the performers, proud to be taking the stage in the school auditorium. The self-control as they stood at the side of the stage waiting for their bit, their enjoyment in seeing someone else's bit get a laugh all spoke to the staff in a language my marketing colleague, an accidental audience, wasn't tuned into. The 'Acting' might have been awful, but the acting was great. The boys, perhaps for the first time, revealed themselves to the staff as actors in the social dramaturgy of the school - manifesting agency, contributing, creating, sharing.

Central to our purpose here is that this essential quality, whilst not necessarily evident in the content of the performance, was revealed in the aesthetic. The student had utilised artistic conventions - the scene headers, music, cast being visible when 'offstage' - to facilitate the affective/sensory impact of the participant's work.

Practical Suggestions

I warned you it was going to be a long post! Thanks for sticking with me so far. You'll be relieved to know we're finally at the practical bit.

If you've used the link to jump straight to this section here's a summary of what we've established:

• There never was an abandonment of the aesthetic in radical, community or educational theatre. There were only rejections of the dominant aesthetic norms at specific times.

• Professional status anxiety can trick us into thinking we must choose between socio-political and aesthetic efficacy when they are, in fact, mutually inclusive.

• Appropriate aesthetic choices are those that best communicate an essential truth to the specific, integral, audience that will be attending. These conventions may be significantly different to those required by an accidental audience attending mainstream theatre.

Preparing for Performance

Aside from some specific contexts, we are not in the business of training actors. Actor training involves learning how to bring life to other people's words, to other people's work and to do so in a way that is replicable, scalable, and sellable to an accidental audience. In many ways this is in direct contrast to what appears to be the type of project that Sam is talking about. In these situations the participants have created their own work, perhaps even based on their own stories, in their own words, for a performance that will probably only happen once.

We should be wary therefore of uncritically drawing on a standard repertoire of acting exercises. Unless we're running a long term course we will have neither the time nor participant buy in required for these exercises to have the desired impact. So if there is no specific need to explicitly teach acting skills, it is best to approach these indirectly via other means. Increasing performance confidence, for instance, covers a range of social skills transferable to other contexts and can be addressed within games and easy exercises. An ability to hold space, be in the moment and responsive to others , to control breath/tempo and play a simple action/intention is applicable to a whole range of situations and will improve performance far more than name-checking a load of acting concepts that never really sink in. Of course, there will be, from time to time, participants who express an interest in technique. In these cases we can easily weave in some 'tips and tricks' type concepts without 'steam rollering' other participants with a treatise on Meisner in the information age.

The Dichotomy of Control - your role as a director

How then do we maximise aesthetic impact when working with less experienced performers? Here we can draw on one of Stoic philosophy's old faithfuls - Epictetus' dichotomy of control⁶:

Some things are within our power, while others are not. Within our power are opinion, motivation, desire, aversion, and, in a word, whatever is of our own doing; not within our power are our body, our property, reputation, office, and, in a word, whatever is not of our own doing.

Also, not in our power is how much time a participant can spare to prepare for a performance nor what they are going to do on the day!

Obviously then our focus should be on what we can control, and it is here that our knowledge and skill as a theatre director really comes into play.

There are two broad areas that we can increase aesthetic impact without increasing participant's performance pressure:

• Engage the audience's aesthetic frame

• Embed clarity, allow complexity to emerge

Engage the audience's aesthetic frame

One advantage of an accidental audience is that they arrive anticipating an aesthetic experience. Unfortunately this is not always the case with an integral audience. Our invited audiences may attend out of duty, politeness, or even under sufferance. As a result, part of our work as a director is to establish an aesthetic dynamic that draws the audience in and makes it harder to sit back and let the performance wash over them. Just as the frame of a painting acts as a boundary to focus attention and exclude distraction, so the performance event requires framing both spatially and temporally.

Framing Space

It should be clear:

• Where the performance area begins and where it ends,

  • Consider tape on the floor, a thick rope, a rug, or other floor covering.

• What counts as onstage and offstage

  • How do we know a participant is part of the action or waiting their turn? Are they sat at the side, in a still image, or actually out of sight.

  • Where are the participants before the performance starts? Where do they go when it ends?

• What features of the space are to be included within the dramatic frame.

  • Is the person sat on the floor with a laptop in the action or controlling the slides/movement (pls use a table to one side where you can see the action!!!)

  • If using AV no one wants to see you switching between apps with your laptop wallpaper in the background, neither do they want to hear Spotify/YouTube adds as you try to switch between tracks. Do the work beforehand to make this seamless.

  • Likewise there is nothing like the sudden emotionless announcement of 'Bluetooth Connected' to snap an audience out of the moment. With a few exceptions personal Bluetooth speakers should be avoided in performance contexts. They are rarely powerful enough, offer a less than professional aesthetic and the connection is notoriously unreliable.

  • Is the door, window, sink, STI posters on the back wall to be seen as part of the narrative? They become the backdrop. The actors' bodies are seen in contrast to this space. It is likely that the audience will see more of the back wall than the actors. Note also that without a designated surface as the back of the playing space the back wall of the room becomes the vanishing point.

Framing Time

Choose conventions to demonstrate:

• When the performance begins and when it ends.

  • Consider pre-show music. This covers awkward silence for the audience, encourages conversation, and, if carefully selected, sets tone and arousal level

  • Use a set piece, choral speech or movement to begin and end the performance. This introduces the cast, shares the responsibility among performers. It could be the same thing repeated - the aim is to bookend the dramatic frame and create a sense of unity.

• The journey through themes, chunks, or scenes

  • Use scene change music (recorded or live) to signal the beginning and ends of scenes. This helps the audience break the action into cognisable chunks whilst maintaining energy and attention.

  • Projected, printed or narrated scene titles can serve a similar purpose.

  • If furniture or layout is to be changed between scenes use some type of simple choreography or convention in parallel with the previous two points. Again this maintains unity and keeps the audience in frame.

Emphasise clarity, allow complexity to emerge

There is often an entirely natural desire to reflect the depth and complexity of the material explored in the devising process. However, all too frequently, this results in an incomprehensible performance that then needs to be explained to the audience⁷. On the other hand, to ignore the nuance and contradictions of the material leads to performances that, whilst easy to follow, paint the participants in a simplistic or even naïve light.

One way I've found to avoid this becoming yet another dilemma, is to arrange performances in such a way that complexity emerges from the convergence of simpler components to produce a sum greater than its parts. In this way we allow each performer/participant to concentrate directly on what they are doing whilst we tap into our directing skills to create an environment that allows the audience to make connections. It is essentially a bottom-up approach to meaning. But to work, the audience need space to engage with the material - space that will be lost if they are struggling to work out what is going on. Clarity, then is the key.

Narrative

• It goes without saying the narrative/story should be clear, but it is also something easily taken for granted. Consider writing yourself a flow chart of scenes and focus on any conditionals - the bits that won't make sense if you didn't understand what happened in an earlier scene.

• Be deliberate in costume convention - you can so easily end up with one person coming in what they wear every session and someone else who has hand sewn a period accurate gown. Pay particular attention to how we might distinguish between characters.

• As above consider some form of narrative device (placards, narrator, scene headings etc.) to guide the audience through the action. This makes it easier for them to fill in any blanks that occur.

Blocking

• Think about how the layout of the performing space can be used to encourage participants to automatically stick to blocking conventions (use of diagonal, cheating focus downstage). This could be built into a stage space by taping abstract shapes on the floor for instance. The performer knows to stand on the green triangle for a particular scene without the audience being aware they are hitting a mark.

• Take responsibility for the placing of furniture. Anything placed flat on to the audience will draw performers into straight lines or standing in profile. Artfully placed blocks, chairs, table etc. can encourage texture and depth.

• Think very carefully about sight lines. Integral audiences will often tolerate not being able to see (particularly if they're there out of duty). Particular care should taken with an audience seated in rows on a flat floor. Realistically, very little will be scene beyond the fourth row. There are also very few stage configurations that accommodate long periods of action on the floor.

Montage and Juxtaposition

• Consider how music or projected images can be used to underscore participant work. For instance playing the Raiders of the Lost Ark theme while a participant shares a monologue about the struggle to find employment will say something very different to the audience than, say, projecting stock video of someone trying unsuccessfully to climb out of a gravel pit while the same monologue is read. The performer can then concentrate on the words whilst the audience will automatically infer meaning from the choice of media.

I'm going to stop here. There's so much more that can be added to the list. I've purposely left out consideration of the venue, timing of the performance, who is invited etc. - but this is already a very long post! As I said above - negotiating aesthetics is a big topic. I hope this has been useful, not so much in offering answers but focusing the mind on the questions we need to be asking ourselves. It would be really interesting to hear about any other go-to techniques anyone else has found useful in the comment section.

Thanks again to Sam for starting us off. Please see below for details on how to send your topic in to Conundrum Corner.

Sources:

Boal, A., Jackson, A. and Boal, A., 2006. The aesthetics of the oppressed. London: Routledge.

Brecht, B., Silberman, M. and Giles, S., 2015. Brecht on theatre. Third edition ed. Drama and performance studies. Translated by J. Davis, R. Fursland, V. Hill, K. Imbrigotta and J. Willett London New Dehli New York Sydney: Bloomsbury.
Epictetus and Waterfield, R., 2022. The complete works: handbook, discourses, and fragments. Chicago London: The University of Chicago Press.
Prendergast, M., Saxton, J. and Kandil, Y., 2024. Applied Theatre: International Case Studies and Challenges for Practice. Third edition ed. Bristol, Chicago: Intellect Ltd.
Schechner, R., 2003. Performance theory. Rev. and expanded ed. London: Routledge Classics.
Taliaferro, C., 2011. Aesthetics. Oxford: Oneworld.
Thompson, J., 2009. Performance affects: applied theatre and the end of effect. Paperback ed ed. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

1. Though the word itself in the sound of speech or the presentation and setting of the written is aesthetic.

2. I'm not entirely sure that there was ever a dip per se. The references were there if you looked for them. But only the most confident practitioners could be explicit in the face of the inverted snobbery mentioned above

3. The use of theatre as a purely educational, social or political tool rather than an end in itself.

4. I am simplifying both texts mentioned for concision and clarity and would recommend reading both to grasp the depth and breadth of Boal and Thompson's arguments.

5. In some contexts this may well be what some participants signed up for, though I don't think these are the types of group Sam is referring to.

6. You may be more familiar with the same sentiment in Reinhold Niebuhr's Serenity Prayer: God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference

7. Like the time your family came to see your Frantic Assembly inspired A level piece!