THE SPECIAL GUESTS
Submitted by Lucy Cassidy on Fri, 26/02/2010 - 16:00
I co-founded The Special Guests in 2002 and we worked as a company creating performances in theatres, galleries, nightclubs and beyond until February 2010.
The company was formed out of a shared desire to find new forms of theatre that were appropriate to the world we saw around us. Our work explored themes of personal identity, dressing up and disguise, cities, love lives (or lack of) and family ties. We were interested in questioning established theatrical structures and conventions, and sought to challenge as well as entertain audiences. During this time we also curated The Flaw Set a DIY cross art-form event that wove together live music, theatre and performance poetry – mixing music and theatre going audiences.
In our later work , we started to settle some of our concerns as we began to conceive of ‘theatre as event’. We were interested in merging the lines between what is real and not and in doing so reducing the audience’s space to position themselves as viewer so that our work became an experience. Our later pieces were sited specifically in more open or community space (The Telephone Game) and Something Got A Hold of Me) and the audience were positioned, re-positioned and implicated in the events as they unfolded.
We made our work collaboratively and democratically through discussion, research, improvisation and play and we toured nationally and to Europe. We were generously supported and funded by Arts Council England, Arnolfini, Bristol Old Vic amongst others.
For further information about the company see: www.thespecialguests.co.uk