Start of essay:

Sir Howard Panter (Founder of the Ambassador Theatre Group Ltd, Chairman of
Rambert Dance Company), Gilles Ste-Croix(co-founder of Cirque du Soleil), Joanna
Read (Principal of the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art LAMDA), James
Houghton (Director of the Drama Division of The Juilliard School, and Director of
New Yorks Signature Theatre Company), Tamara Rojo (English National Ballet
Artistic Director and Lead Principal Dancer) and Darcey Bussell (President of the
Royal Academy of Dance).
Q: What is theatre?
Performance is key to human experience. There is not one of us on this planet who
hasnt captivated an audience as a baby with our gurgles, squeaks and steps; nor is
there one of us who will fail to move an audience when our shell plays the central
role at the spectacle of our own funerals. The intervening period- regardless of its
length- is a series of scenes where the protagonist (as self) plays the lead in a tale
of joy, tragedy, comedy, farce and errors. The beautiful paradox however, is that in
life we are simultaneously the central-actor of our own narrative alongside being the
support for hundreds of other stories, and the spectator of millions- perhaps billions
more. All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players William
Shakespeare
[Sir Howard Panter] Theatre is a place where one group of people- on stage- tell
stories to another group of people who are sitting usually in an auditorium
usually in the dark listening to, and watching these stories.
[Gilles Ste-Croix] Since human beings started to gather in groups and communities,
they sensed the necessity to transmit their experiences and knowledgefundamentally- through storytelling. The transmission of these stories, through the
ages moved from shamanism to modern forms of art on and off stage.
Theatre is a tool that has existed for thousands of years. I imagine that from the
first moments people wanted to transmit their experiences of the hunt, or their
father and grandfather. It is both the wish and necessity of human beings to tell
stories.
[Joanna Read] Theatre is an art form that brings people together to celebrate,
challenge and provoke through the telling of stories.
Theatre is unique, you see transformation right in front of you- created in the
moment. In a book; you pick it up, put it down and it remains similarly with filmbut with theatre, what you witness in any given moment is unique and only you and
the audience will ever experience that.

[James Houghton] Theatre is a moment of intersection between people where

events collide or reveal conflict through storytelling. It is an art-form that always
has, and always will be, important and relevant.
I think we have an insatiable appetite to understand our relevance; in context of our
human relationships and our existence. Theatre is a moment where we stop our
lives long enough to reflect off each other. Ultimately, that leads to context whichin turns- gives perspective on life and circumstances.
[Darcey Bussell] Theatre is a sense of escape, it transforms you into a new space. It
can however, be many things. Theatre can be a source of intellectual learning,
inspiration, and can even reflect your life.
Theatre is live, and thats important. So much of our art is consumed through livestreams, through computers and so on and this misses that extraordinary
atmosphere, and sense of grounding and presence that theatre gives.
Q: Why has theatre become such an important art-form?
[Sir Howard Panter] In my imagination this goes back to the time when we lived in
caves. Im pretty convinced that two people, three people or one person sat on one
side of a fire, providing the lighting- while a lot of other people sat on the other side
of the cave or dwelling and from time immemorial stories were told by one or
several people, to a larger group of people. These stories may have been history,
myths or legend. they may even have been about religion or about grappling with
the seasons.
Stories have always been told by live human beings to other live human beings,
thats what makes it such an important and enduring form of art in my view.
Q: What is the role of the audience?
[Gilles Ste-Croix] People decide to buy a ticket, and come to be surprised, moved,
entertained, inspired or informed. It is the decision of a consumer to make these
steps- they could easily have stayed at home to watch TV.
Live performance with a live audience creates a bond which has existed for
thousands of years where a human being meets another, and tells a story.
I once remember going to listen to Pavarotti. I have listened to his music many
times at home on a beautiful sound system but seeing and hearing him sing live
moved me like its never moved me before. I received that performance like a gift.
Real theatre and real performance exists when you have a meeting of the performer
and the audience as receiver.
[Joanna Read] The audience are an active participant, theatre is a relationship
between the production and the audience- audiences are not just consuming

A piece of theatre is not complete until the audience is in the room. The work is
changed by the presence of an audience. When you are making work you see
rehearsals and so forth, but what the piece becomes when an audience joins the
process translates it to another stage.
Whether the audience know it or not, they are active in the process. They clarify
things, deny things, join with ideas and more.
[James Houghton] The audience are not passive consumers of theatre, it is a circular
relationship.
It is extremely important that an audience and a story become one. You often hear
people describe the experience of losing themselves in the story; I- personallywould call it finding yourself.
My guess would be that if you talk to the average audience member or artist, those
unique moments that keep us coming back to theatre are relatively rare; yet we
keep going. We want that moment where we get so immersed.. where all the people
in the audience and the production come together that is what resonates with us
for years to come.
You see this same principle in the fine-arts. Even in the darkest of subjects, art can
lift us somehow and reveal something deeply relevant about our human condition.
We are at a place where an entire generation has been introduced to the arts
through digital context and theatre is becoming new again. The notion of going into
a theatre a quiet small space with a bunch of real human beings sitting in a
three dimensional experience requiring attention? its so old, its new again!
Q: What makes a theatre production great?
[Gilles Ste-Croix] Even though we have been in the business for 30 years, the truth
is that the concept of what makes a show great is still very fragile.
We must also remember that often we are dealing with theatre which is based on
literature and can be the interpretation of a story. Very often I am deceived! If I have
read a book, I will create a visual in my mind of that story and often the
interpretation I am presented with does not match that.
We are going to launch a show in Montreal, called KURIOS Cabinet of Curiosities in
the Big Top. We have been working on the show for over 3 years but it all comes
down to the moment we put the show in front of a live audience to see their
reactions to we have perceived in our minds and as members of the production. We
need to see how the audience bond with a production, how they breathe with it.
Thats what creates the rhythm and determines whether something will become a
timeless piece.

We have created some productions that have become timeless and some that have
not made it that far. But in my mind I can think of so many works that have
existed for millennia. The works of Shakespeare, Molire, Wagner and so on they
touch and invoke things within us that are universal in their existence. They create
images in me that I can recognise myself, something that makes me sit back and
say, ah!
A baby in China, Europe or Canada recognises his mother and calls her Mummy!
this is something thats within us, its a collective memory. We have to see a show
as evoking these basic facets of humanity- both good and bad.
[Joanna Read] A great piece of theatre has relevance.. whether that is to the now
and the immediate concerns of an audience or whether its a greater universal
truth such as love or death or war.. This relevance is then brought alive by the
quality of the art how good the acting is and more.
[James Houghton] Theatre which becomes timeless digs into the human condition in
a way that goes beyond the given circumstances of that piece. Whether you see
West Side Story or Shakespeare examining the story of star-crossed lovers; you will
see an authentic and genuine human condition- the search for love.
When a story is told with authenticity and honestly; digging into the time and place
and human nature, you will create a piece of theatre that becomes timeless. Thats
true in work which is current, or in work that is set around a particular circumstance
or period.
Q: Does theatre have a role outside art in political, social and other struggles?
[Sir Howard Panter] Theatre goes in phases with regard its Political impact, and
sometimes is more at the forefront of social-change than other times. What it should
always do is enlighten the audience, and give them an experience which is different
to their lives when they came into the performance. Whether its your perception of
a human, social, environmental or any other issue whether its the lightest,
frothiest farce or the darkest piece of brutalist theatre it should in some way
change and involve the audiences view of the world in which they live.
----In his seminal book Theatre and Everyday Life, Professor Alan Read notes that
This something more of the image does not disconnect the experience of theatre
from its place of performance, nor from the everyday. Theatre remains bound by its
context precisely through the unique relationship images create between audience,
performer and everyday life. He adds that, To value theatre, is to value life, not to
escape from it. The everyday is at once the most habitual and demanding
dimension of life which theatre has most responsibility to. Theatre does not tease
people out of their everyday lives like other expressions of wish fulfilment but

reminds them who they are and what is worth living and changing in their lives
every day. (Theatre and Every Day Life, 1993)
The concept of everyday life here is critical. Human beings are cursed with the
knowledge of agency. We know without a shadow of a doubt that our immediate
experiences are limited simply to ourselves. In many philosophies this is even
manifest as the discussion of how one is trapped in the body- able to only
experience the substantive world which we have ingested through our limited
senses.
With this in mind, we quickly see the real power of theatre. Prof. Erin Hurley
describes how, Theatre allows for and offers vicarious experience: the experience
of someone else experiencing something We know that witnessing anothers
actions and emotional experiences can create the same neurological imprint as
doing or feeling them oneself. Joseph Roach provocatively recasts the history of
theatre in terms of the good of what he calls synthetic experience, a cognate to
vicarious experience. The theatre is a port of entry into anothers life and another
kind of living. (Theatre and Feeling, 2010)
Art is the medium by which we- as human beings- are able to relate to each other.
Art allows us to understand things that are more than ourselves, and imagine life
through the agency of others. Theatre- as perhaps the most human of all the artshas the profound ability to engage us immediately in the experience of someone
elses agency- at any point in time, at any place. It breaks down the loneliness of
being a self, and allows one to realise that not only are there others- but that the
self can be them too.
I regard the theatre as the greatest of all art forms wrote Oscar Wilde, the most
immediate way in which a human being can share with another the sense of what it
is to be a human being.

Q: What is theatres economic role?

[Sir Howard Panter] Every single independent tourist review that is written about
reasons why people should come to the UK and London starts with heritage/royalty
and then immediately moves on to theatre. Specifically theatre. not the arts,
not entertainment, not shopping, not restaurants the theatre.
Alongside the fact that theatre employs many people in many diverse and different
jobs, its also a great regenerator of town-centres. If you speak to any government
or local-government official that is trying to regenerate cities and towns further,
theatres are at the centre. From time to time I get interviewed by an unnamed
newspaper about the death of the West End. I always offer to take the journalist

around London in a taxi where I can show them boarded up shops, boarded up
offices, boarded up factories and boarded up pubs.
Funnily enough I cant find any boarded up theatres!
Theatre is growing globally, and people want it globally. How the work of theatre
develop will be a fascinating blend of cultures, its an incredible opportunity. We
currently have three proposals from Shanghai asking us to build, operate and
convert theatres as a central core-magnet to retail, residential and other
developments. This is alongside conversations we are having in Korea, Hong Kong
and more. Around the world, more theatres are being built now than at any other
time in history. Theatre will lose the London and New York concentration. Hamburg,
Vienna, Melbourne and Sydney are already great theatre cities. Hong Kong is
growing into a great theatre destination too. There is also a huge opportunity across
Canada and other territories. I see theatre essentially following an upward trajectory
in terms of number of cities and venues.
People worldwide now acknowledge theatre is good for society economically and
socially.
Theatre and performing arts are also hugely important to economies and
communities. The US Bureau of Economic Analysis showed that 3.2 percent of US
GDP (around US$ 504 billion) is attributable to arts and culture (compared with the
entire US travel and tourism industry, which accounts for 2.8 percent of GDP).
Alongside this,Americans for the Arts also showed that the arts and cultural
industries support over 5.4 million jobs in the US alone. This picture of economic
impact and significance is the same in country after country, around the world- and
doesnt even begin to include the intangible- the social capital brought to
communities as a result of the existence of arts.

Q: What is the role of aesthetic and beauty in theatre?

[Sir Howard Panter] The unique selling proposition of theatre is the fact that there
are live humans in a space, speaking to other live humans. Its not online, not in a
cinema, not on some tablet its there. As a member of the audience, you are in

the same space as the people who are- in the broadest sense of the word- telling
stories.
The very fact that humanity is at the absolute centre of theatre in tangible flesh and
blood terms means that there is intrinsic beauty in that art-form because the human
form, human voice and human ability to imagine stories (and their repercussions) is
the stuff of art!
[Gilles Ste-Croix] The aesthetic and beauty of theatre are very subjective.
Performance and theatre can take many forms. It may be a play on the street or- as
you saw during the early 19th century- a form of Opera where many forms of art
were gathered into a single performance. The aesthetic of the elements of a
performance when they are brought together depend on the culture of the people
receiving it and where the piece itself is performed.
Aesthetic is subjective of the people who want to transmit and also those who
receive.
When we play a Cirque du Soleil show I have people asking me, so you are
French Canadian born, you are producing a show for the USA, you dont use
language, you use jibberish words and music, and people simultaneously get and
dont get it because it plays at many levels. So how is it when you take the same
show to Japan? I often relate this back to what the people are as a country. I have
seen shows that make the people of Japan cry but the same show in USA or UK
would not make people cry it is a question of sensibility. Japanese people are very
sensitive to symbolism and many of our shows are built on the invocation of
symbolism. These images are free to be interpreted by whoever watches them.
The aesthetic and beauty of a piece of theatre lies almost completely in the eyes of
the person watching.
[Joanna Read] Theatre doesnt have to be beautiful. Some of the most fantastic and
thought-provoking pieces are ugly. There is an aesthetic in the staging and designwhich should enhance the stories or design of the production- but it doesnt have to
be beautiful.
[James Houghton] The notion of beauty in the theatre is- as in life- defined by the
perspective of the viewer. For me, beauty may be defined by other simplicities
stripping away all the white-noise of circumstances and just focussing on human
action. Thats where I find moments of beauty in theatre, where those absolutely
pristine quiet pin-drop moments occur where the audience, story and artist collide
in a moment of truth. These moments of beauty dig deep into an essence.
We each have our own personal aesthetic- but for me the simplicity of storytelling
and the collision of human events is where beauty and aesthetic occur in theatre.
Theatre always has, and always will be, important and relevant

Q: How does theatre relate to other art-forms?

[Sir Howard Panter] The cross-over between theatre and other art-forms can be
wonderful.
Outside my day job Im the chair of a company called Rambert which is perhaps
the leading contemporary dance company in the UK, which comes from a long
tradition going back to Diaghilev and so on; and these are all examples of musical
theatre with dance! Theres been a huge tradition of art-collaboration going back
centuries at least. You had Picasso doing back-cloths and Matisse doing costumes in
theatre.
Actors often say that their artistic and acting muscles are developed in theatre
wherever they end up performing, whether that be in film, TV or elsewhere. Theatre
is the place where you develop your real acting skills.
[Joanna Read] Theatre has always been a collaborative art form and has always
borrowed and robbed from other arts in order to do its job effectively. Theatre
captures and reflects the world and is always informed by the time and culture in
which the work is created. The stage, language and many other areas will be
informed by the culture of the time. The work of theatre can be a single-playwrights
voice or even a wider version of that. Theatre captures and reflects our lives back to
us. Every new play is telling the story of our lives and the next generation.
Q: What is the role of dance in theatre?
[Tamara Rojo] Dance, like music, is one of the most primitive of art-forms. From the
very beginning, we have danced for rain, we have danced for our Gods and we have
sacrificed things in dance form. It seems dance is the one universal language, the
one art-form that can be understood completely emotionally. You can of course,
intellectualise dance as much as you want- but its essence is that deep emotional
connection between the audience and the artist.
Dance is the perfect form of escapism for the audience. If you dont want to think,
and just want to feel- thats fine. Let me be clear, if you are a connoisseur and want
to analyse the dance, the period, the narrative and the context thats fine, you can
do that. Ballet can be as intellectual as any other art-form, but if you want to to go
into a theatre and just be overwhelmed by feelings in a way that otherwise you
would never be? then ballet is the art-form.
When the audience comes into the theatre, they disappear into the darkness with
the common understanding that they are there to feel something.
[Darcey Bussell] Dance is an international language; you dont have to translate it
to enable people to understand it.

A lot of people tell me how they dont understand dance because they dont know
what theyre looking at, they dont see a narrative. This does sort-of miss the point
of dance, which is that you need to enjoy the visual without trying to understand,
and just embrace how it makes you feel at that moment, and allow it to bring
thoughts and images to the forefront of your mind. Dance isnt a story that has to
have a conclusion, its more about how it makes you feel inside.
Q: What is the link between theatre and music?
[Sir Howard Panter] Music is generally acknowledged as one of the art-forms that
most directly connects with, and stirs, the human emotion. When in theatrewhether it be musical theatre, opera or any form of performance- when emotions
are heightened, music together with lyrics creates heightened emotions.
When you get goose-bumps up the back of your neck hearing a song from West Side
Story (as it were) its because the combination of the words, character and music
together create a heightened emotional experience.

With the exception of shows like Rent or The Book of Mormon, Broadway
musicals can seem far removed from current events and culture. But steeped
in hip-hop, Miranda bridged that gap and pushed boundaries further. He cast
people of color to play white historical figures, stressed womens
contributions to the founding of America and reminded us that many urgent
issues of Hamiltons time, like immigration, remain so today.
The songs as also one draw in the Hamilton play. One thing that really speaks
to the audience is music, especially hip-hop.

Music heightens the emotional experience of an audience!

[Gilles Ste-Croix] The performance or performer is dressed up with costumes that
create a period or style. The music comes as a layer of emotion to illustrate what
the artist was evoking.
Whether we talk of the human voice alone, or musical instruments the vibrations
carry within us and create a layer of emotion otherwise you are watching TV with
the sound off, and what can be more boring than that?
When the music is really deeply connected with the image, it brings another level of
engagement for the viewer.

Q: What does the next 25 years hold for theatre?

[Sir Howard Panter] I think the essential core of theatre. the unique selling
proposition of being there to see it, having to perform in a space will remain the
same. However what that core is saying and doing will depend on the message
and story of the artists of the future.
The activity of theatre has lasted for many thousands of years. As long as human
beings have the need to hear stories, and to tell stories, it will remain.
[Joanna Read] Were in very difficult times at the moment in terms of funding. This
does however mean that we tend to get better at what we do. The work gets
tougher, leaner and better.
I would hope however that regional-theatre funding improves in the future, and
were left with a secure theatre network.
[James Houghton] Theatre is ultimately about conflict between people and
circumstances you can wrap it in a different package and bow, but these
principles have remained the same for hundreds of years.
In the off-Broadway scene of the 1960s, you saw a trend of self-generating theatre
in store-fronts and unusual venues. They were still going after the essence of
theatre, but taking it everywhere. If you look today at the influence of technology in
theatre, we are now able to do some of the things we used to do by hand- but more
easily for example, throwing a light cue by computer rather than moving dimmers
by hand.
Technology gives us more tools to get to the core event, but ultimately the fierce
passion the artist has to reveal the story is what powers the theatre.