The Theatre of Mistakes

Abstract

More than five years ago, a group of young English artists formed a workshop in London under the direction of Anthony Howell. This group, eventually to be known as the Theatre of Mistakes, uses improvisational exercises—strictly controlled by formal structure—to develop performances.Howell concedes that he was influenced in particular by an exercise of the Living Theatre, used in Paradise Now, in which one person performed an action and another copied it. The interaction was far more interesting to Howell than anything the traditional theatre could offer. And he also felt that this exercise was more significant than the “histrionics” of the Living Theatre because it implied a new means of working in a group to create performance art.For the next two years, such concepts as repetition of each other's actions were used as the basis for exercises for the group, and performances were built from chosen exercises.