Theatricality and the Construction of ‘Skill’

Abstract

This article offers a counterpoint to recent proposals to renew contemporary British theatre through a ‘turn to the crafts’, in which emphasis is placed on the capacity of all artists to reflect on and reimagine the structures in which they are embedded, just as artisans find themselves thinking through the material with which they work. These proposals understate the extent to which theatre is distinguished from other art forms by the degree to which the framing of actions before an audience holds any such synthesis of the material and the conceptual at bay, however slightly. In the contemporary moment, theatre’s most distinctive function might be to provide a space where ideas of skill are isolated and constructed, not merely executed. This argument is developed by highlighting the role that theatricality already plays in recent (and otherwise more general) theories of skill. For Richard Sennett, theatrical encounters are paradigmatic of the way in which collaborative social relations depend upon participants recognising the distinct, codified skills of others. In contrast, Tim Ingold’s anti-theatrical prejudice is born of a desire to refuse the need for such abstraction and codification, in favour of reviving a ‘dwelling perspective’. To recognise, instead, that theatrical works are inevitably interventions within an inhabited environment, as well as interventions in it, suggests that Ingold’s ‘dwelling perspective’ is always-already compromised and commodified. This analysis provides the context for an interpretation of Secret Theatre’s 2014-15 devised performance A Series of Increasingly Impossible Acts, to assess the extent to which the collaborative reskilling that explicitly informed the show’s production was carried over (and was intended to be carried over) into its reception by audiences. The conclusion draws on Michael Fried to suggest that an ambivalence towards ‘the crafts’ in recent British theatrical culture is indicative of an ongoing ambivalence towards modernism.