Street theatre
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Street theatre is a form of theatrical performance and presentation in outdoor public spaces without a specific paying audience. These spaces can be anywhere, including shopping centres, car parks, recreational reserves and street corners. They are especially seen in outdoor spaces where there are large numbers of people. The actors who perform street theatre range from buskers to organised theatre companies or groups that want to experiment with performance spaces, or to promote their mainstream work.
Sometimes performers are commissioned, especially for street festivals, children's shows or parades, but more often street theatre performers are unpaid or gather some income through the dropping of a coin in a hat by the audience.
The logistics of doing street theatre necessitate simple costumes and props, and generally there is little or no amplification of sound, with actors depending on their natural vocal and physical ability. This issue with sound has meant that physical theatre, including dance, mime and slapstick, is a very popular genre in an outdoor setting. The performances need to be highly visible, loud and simple to follow in order to attract a crowd.
Street theatre should be distinguished from other more formal outdoor theatrical performances, such as performances in a park or garden, where there is a discrete space set aside (or roped off) and a ticketed audience.
In some cases, street theatre performers have to get a licence or specific permission through local or state governments, in order to perform.
Street theatre is arguably the oldest form of theatre in existence: most mainstream entertainment mediums can be traced back to origins in street performing, including religious passion plays and many other forms. More recently performers who, a hundred years ago, would have made their living working in variety theatres, music halls and in vaudeville, now often perform professionally in the many well-known street performance areas throughout the world.
One of the most interesting points about modern street theatre is its unique sociopolitical place. People who might not have ever been to, or been able to afford to go to, the "legitimate" theatre can watch a street show. By virtue of where the shows take place, their audience is made up of anyone and everyone who wants to watch. If an audience member can not afford it, then it is free.
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[edit] Reasons for Staging Work On the Street
Different practitioners will have different motivations for using the street as a space for performance. For some it is simply because they're work is not accepted by the mainstream channels, and for others it is because they have taken a clear decision to do so. This may be socially, politically and/or artistically motivated.
A paying "theatre-going" public, is considered by many as to not be representative of the public to whom a group or practitioner is trying to communicate, and so performing to literally, the man on the street, may be considered a more democratic form of dissemination.
Many contemporary street theatre practitioners have studied extensively pre-existing street and popular theatre traditions, such as Carnival, Commedia Dell'Arte etc. and wish to present them in a situation close to their original context.
Whatever the reason for choosing the street, the street is a place with a different set of possibilities than the conventional theatre space. Sue Gill of Welfare State International argues that a street theatre performance is not a lesser form than an indoor performance, nor is it simply taking what you do on stage and placing it outdoors, but a form with an energy and an integrity of its own.[1]
Many companies are politically motivated and use street theatre to combine performance with protest. This has occurred through the Guerrilla theatre of San Francisco Mime Troupe[2], The Living Theatre or the carnivalesque parades of Bread and Puppet Theatre.
[edit] Notes
- ^ Coult, Tony; Kershaw, Baz, eds (1983). Engineers of the Imagination: The Welfare State Handbook. Methuen. ISBN 0413528006. http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=oPkCAAAAMAAJ&q=engineers+of+the+imagination&dq=engineers+of+the+imagination&pgis=1.
- ^ Doyle, Michael William (2001). Imagine Nation: The American Counterculture of the '60s and '70s. Routeledge. ISBN 0415930405. http://www.diggers.org/guerrilla_theater.htm.
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- Busker Central - Street performer reference site
- Street Theatre and Other Outdoor Performance Online Book (preview only) Street Theatre and Other Outdoor Performance By Bim Mason Published by Routledge, 1992 ISBN 0415070503, 9780415070508
- Straattheater.Net a website about streettheatre in the Netherlands and Belgium (also in English)
