Street Theatre and the Production of Postindustrial Space: Working Memories by David Calder

Abstract

Reviewed by: Street Theatre and the Production of Postindustrial Space: Working Memories by David Calder Sunita Nigam STREET THEATRE AND THE PRODUCTION OF POSTINDUSTRIAL SPACE: WORKING MEMORIES. By David Calder. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2019; pp. 216. In France, towns and cities hollowed out by industrialization have used street theatre, or theatre that converts existing spaces into spaces of performance, to transform former factories into cultural centers, commemorate industrial heritage, reanimate urban spaces, generate jobs, and reinvigorate local economies. In Street Theatre and the Production of Postindustrial Space: Working Memories, David Calder demonstrates how street theatre companies across France concern themselves with the relationship between their theatrical labor and the industrial labor they are replacing. Calder’s argument is that contemporary French street theatre works to make sense of and participate in urban and economic change. He studies examples of street theatre that illuminate what he calls the “after but not over” of the postindustrial, or the persistence of industrial effects, practices, and logics in a so-called postindustrial age (19). By meditating on the palimpsestic histories of labor that characterize places, Calder reveals street theatre to be a powerful force for thinking through relationships between past and present forms of work. In the introduction, Calder introduces the concept of “working memory,” which he uses to describe the ways in which a site, through its aesthetics, practices, and narratives, evokes the histories of the labor that has occurred within it. In its embodied and aesthetic animations of localities, street theatre can strengthen, fabricate, or erase the interconnectedness of these labor histories. While working memory is not a nationally specific concept, Calder contends that, in France, its privileged artistic form is street theatre. Across five densely detailed case studies, he deploys performance analysis and theatre historiography to examine how contemporary French street theatre, although sometimes involved in anti-establishment critique, can also work in collaboration with developers or municipal governments to rebrand rural and urban places for tourism and investment. Chapter 1, “Theatre in Ruins: Street and Theatre at the End of Fordism,” documents the rise of street theatre in France through the 1970s and ’80s. This period marked the collapse of Fordism and the end of post–World War II economic growth, but it was also imbued with the spirit of radical transformation epitomized by the events of May 1968. In this chapter, Calder takes up two performances: 1) Théâtre de l’Unité’s 2CV Théâtre (1977–97), which converted a post–WWII 2CV car (a symbol, Calder highlights, of French postwar modernization, rural development, and mass accessibility to an elite experience) into a tiny theatre with only two auditorium seats; and 2) Générik Vapeur’s Bivouac (1988–present), in which blue-painted men herd empty oil drums in a charivari-like procession through public spaces in an “explosion of music and noise” (43). These performances engage in different ways with the byproducts of industry. While Bivouac presents a critique of the negligence involved in the global disposal of poisonous industrial waste, 2CV Théâtre attempts to make sense of reconfigured relations between the elite and the masses in the aftermath of Fordist-Taylorist modernity. These performances show that the industrial past is not yet over—through the persistence of its byproducts, waste, and ruins, it continues to pollute the present. The following chapters examine street theatre companies that, willingly or not, have become embedded in ongoing redevelopment projects. In chapter 2, “Reincorporation: Putting the Countryside Back to Work,” Calder examines how the logic of the creative city, which uses art and culture (often following the departure of heavy industry) to stimulate local economies, encroaches onto the countryside as well. He considers the conversion of a former leather camera case wholesaler named Photosacs, which operated from 1961 to 1987 in the small town of Corbigny, into a street theatre production center and arts venue called La Trans-verse in 2011. Metalovoice, one of the companies that has visited the venue, is shown to reincorporate into its performances the industrial labors of La Transverse’s former factory workers. Similarly, in Au travail (At Work / To Work), performers paste massive sketches of former Photosacs employees onto the facade...