Utp Essay

How did the Underground Theatre Project company explore the ways in
which audiences could 'observe reality' in their Sarah Kane Season?
The Underground Theatre Project are a company who stemmed from a desire to
immerse audiences in an 'absolute reality'. Our aim is to target drama, english and art
students in the London area to explore and get actively involved in our performances,
whether they be plays, small scale musicals, poetry pieces or art exhibitions. We want
to break down the boundaries of theatre, change the age-old traditions of audiences
sitting in their seats as inactive observers of art, and encourage them to get involved
in our shows and experience how real they can feel. I am the co-ordinator of the
company, and my role throughout the planning of our most recent 'Sarah Kane
Season' was to oversee the groups development and create the overall concept for
'4.48 Psychosis'.
As a new emerging company we wanted to start our season with a bang. Our
discussions quickly honed in on the controversial playwright Sarah Kane, who
tragically took her own life after writing only five plays. Though she was initially
dismissed by critics, we felt that her plays were gritty and fragmented enough for us
to be able to piece together a theatrical experience, rather than a straight play.
We chose to name our season '4.48 Psychosis' for two reasons; firstly, we felt
that we could really work with the idea of audiences experiencing some form of
'psychosis' themselves, perhaps allowing them to become lost in a world of thoughts
and feelings, surrounded by broken pieces of text and movement.
Secondly, 4.48 Psychosis was Kane's final play, as she took her life before it was ever
performed. It has been criticised as a 'triumph of self-absorption of her own
subjectivity' (Sierz, 2003). However, it is of my opinion that possibly Kane did not
intend for the piece to be appreciated as a 'play'. If playwriting was her way of
expressing herself then perhaps it was intended as her suicide note and nothing more.
I wanted to honour the potential of this being the case, what could be more real for an
audience member to experience than a personal suicide note?
The next point of call in our quest for audiences to explore reality was to decide
on a location for our season. Jacob, our designer held a brainstorming session about
what comes to mind when we think of London. Phone boxes, Buckingham Palace, The
London Eye and various other landmarks were suggested before we began discussing
the underground system. After some research we realised there are miles of unused
tube tunnels and came across The Vault's underneath Waterloo Station, which are
frequently used as performance spaces.
As we had been acting under the name 'Shadow Game' until this point, it was
during this session we settled on the name of our company as The Underground
Theatre Project. Not only because we now knew our base would actually be
underground, but also because we knew we wanted to produce hard-hitting and gritty
productions.
Knowing that we would be producing this season as an immersion project, we
quickly decided that the other two plays we would produce would be; Blasted, her first
play, and Crave, a play which was at first performed under a pseudonym to avoid
preconceptions, as we felt that they were her most personal pieces after 4.48
Psychosis. With this knowledge I set about creating a website (Appendix B) that would
link with the social media sites (Appendix C) Jamie had set up to target the savvy
student industry. Additionally, Jamie produced our logo (Appendix A), which would
serve as an obvious link to our underground location.
With our design, our mission statement, and our plays decided, I began working
on the concept for our title play. After reading through 4.48 Psychosis I picked up on
12 small sections that I felt exhibited the inner-psyche of someone battling with
mental health. During my research I came across Kanes perspective on theatre, 'I
keep coming back in the hope that someone in a darkened room somewhere will show
me an image that burns itself into my mind.' (Kane, 1998), which inspired me to
create a series of rooms in the tunnels that audiences could explore freely. I wanted
our company to be the ones to create images that would burn into audiences minds.
Wanting to play further on the number motifs throughout the piece, our director,
Jazmin, suggested that we play our production at 4.48pm every day. This was
discussed at length, but our finance manager, Nick, concluded that it would be too
specific of a time and we would lose our student target market. Not wanting to fully
let go of the idea though, I drew out a design (Appendix D) for our production which
includes a large clock at the entrance frozen on the time 4.48 and decided the running
time of the production would be exactly 1 hour 12 minutes, bringing us to 5:00, the
time Kane claims her psychosis ends. Additionally, I created a simple trailer (Appendix
E) which reveals absolutely nothing about the play other than the number pattern we
see on p.5. The trailer itself is 1 minute 12 seconds long, as attention to detail is
pinnacle to us creating an observable alternate reality.
One very interesting section that I felt we could really play with was the page
and a half of laban efforts that are listed, 'flash flicker slash burn wring press dab
slash' etc. This allowed me to incorporate dance into our production. I came up with
the idea of an improvised laban efforts room which audience members would
participate in every night, giving them the feeling that the show could not have gone
on without them. I also designed a karaoke room inspired by the line, 'I sing without
hope on the boundary', again involving audience members each night and
encouraging them to let go of their inhibitions and personal boundaries.
Every element of our process during this project has been approached with the
idea of creating a real experience at the forefront. In the future we would look into
creating realism in musicals such as 'Next To Normal' or 'Title Of Show', produce art
exhibitions and find ways of creating immersive worlds using poetry, such as that of
Sylvia Plath.
We want our audience members to feel special, and at The Underground Theatre
Project we hope they will leave with questions and thoughts about what they've just
been involved in, prompting them to come back and explore more of the worlds we
create for them.
Bibliography
Kane, S. (1998) The only thing I remember is...
Kane, S. (2000) 4. 48 psychosis. 1st edn. London: Methuen Drama
Sierz, A. (2003) IN-YER-FACE THEATRE. Available at:
http://www.inyerfacetheatre.com/archive7.html (Accessed: 24 May 2015

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How did the Underground Theatre Project company explore the ways in

which audiences could 'observe reality' in their Sarah Kane Season?

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