Inspiration Exchange: The value of sitting opposite

Over the years, alongside our end-on seated-audience theatre work, Third Angel has returned to the exploration of a mode of performance built on conversation, or interview, with individual audience members. Performance in as much as you know more about what's going to happen than they do. Their interaction is what makes the work. Making the performance involves making the space in which the audience member is allowed, encouraged, to be creative. A space in which they feel comfortable enough to think about things, talk about things that at, say, 10 o'clock that morning, they hadn't thought about for days, weeks, years. A space in which, at the end of it, they feel comfortable enough to say of what they have given you, ‘Yes, that's fine, I'm happy for you to share that with other people.’ This paper explores the individual contributions and responses to Third Angel's Inspiration Exchange. It documents the specific mechanism of the project in order to interrogate the form of conversational exchange, story-gathering, “one-to-one” performance, and the contexts in which this work has been presented.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13528165.2013.807162