Brave new
WOI'
Steve Cramer talks to TEAM and Highway Diner, two hot young companies in contemporary theatre, and finds them politically optimistic and fearless about asking the audience questions.
22 THE LIST 1/ Nov 1 Dec 7005)
erhaps it was a kind ol’ collective guilt that led to the avoidance of big political discussion in the theatre through the 80s
and 90s. Certainly. it one suggested a revival of
political theatre to the majority ol~ theatre
workers at this time. they would look at you as il‘
you‘d just suggested they should join you in a menage a trois with their mum. Immediately. the old cliches would be spluttered out: they didn't want to be preachy. it was up to the audience to make up its mind about their work and so on. But as so many theatre practitioners retreated into desperate PoMo gestures ol~ nihilism and despair. looking to subjectivities and interiorities to save them from the world out there. the militant right advanced with little questioning from the arts. and reached its self—interested apotheosis in the current climate of multinational
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DOWN Tile You USED STKEE'T
Team’s 1000 Natural Shocks (left)
and Give Up! Start Over! (below right). Highway Diner’s site specific work (above and above right)
political control and colonial adventurism.
It‘s been left to the new generation of theatre workers to interrogate our current political climate. These inspiring young people have the courage to question both political and aesthetic assumptions that have remained long unchallenged. The result is something unseen for a generation. a genuine optimism about people‘s capacity to act against the forces that oppress them. be it the diet of drivel led us by the mass media. or the mechanics of political oppression.
Two companies. entirely made up ol‘ artists in their 20s. exemplify this spirit. New York’s 'l‘liAM. a collaborative company who attained a Fringe First with (Jive Up.’ Starr ()W’I'.’ In the Dar/(cs! of 'Iimt's I Think ({let'lIUl’d Nixon. and were highly praised by critics for an astonishing piece on media mind control at the last Fringe.