Activating Audiences: Steven Berkoff’s Strategies for Engaging and Enhancing the Imagination in Theatre - Extract
If what defines theatre is the engagement of the imagination of the audience, then how can theatre practitioners activate and enhance that engagement so that audiences move from passive spectators to active participants in the making of theatre?
Steven Berkoff in his adaptation of The Metamorphosis at London’s Roundhouse, in 1969. Image: Bryn Campbell/The Observer.
“If you give the audience a bit, they fill in... if you give a gesture even of an insect, they'll want to play. It’s a need in the audience to use the imagination.” - Steven Berkoff, on staging Kafka’s renowned Metamorphosis.
In this statement theatre director, actor and playwright Steven Berkoff illuminates perhaps the most fascinating aspect of theatre, and points out exactly what makes theatre such a potent form of human expression. It is the job of the theatre maker to act as a curator of the elements of theatre – voice, spoken text, light, sound, song, gesture, movement of the bodies which occupy the space in relation to each other. These components act, and interact, as codes of communication, synthesising to create an alchemy which will ignite the imagination of the audience who bring the story “to life”.
As Jacques Rancière posits in ‘The Emancipated Spectator’, there is no theatre without the imaginations of the people in the auditorium. Theatre becomes meaningful when it encounters its audience as active participants in the storytelling process. It engages audiences when it demands they use their imagination to make sense of what is on stage. Successful theatre can be defined as a multi-sensory experience that takes the audience on a journey of the imagination, provoking intrigue, discourse and an emotional response, while challenging the intellect to suspend disbelief and create meaning from what has been presented to them in the performance space.
Theatre asks its audience to assume two concurrent states at once: we must believe in the fictional action on stage, and remain aware of this illusion. We must invest in the narrative in order to make its meaning, and synthesise this meaning as spectators. The theatre maker will find the audience is ready and eager to suspend their disbelief. As Berkoff states, “its almost an involuntary act from the audience, the brain wishes to make sense and complete the story.” The imagination has to be hit with a pretty blunt instrument to stop it wanting to work and fill in the gaps - the audience are up for it, if you are.
Humans are inquisitive creatures and civilisation has been built on the sharing of experiences. The elements of theatre predate the proscenium arch and existed in the first human storytellings. The earliest communities explored and acted out the human identity through rituals which used a set of conventions and symbolic gestures with limited resources to provide for the expectations of the audience. Cave paintings, song, chant and epic poetry for example were all a means of developing culture and conjuring imagined scenes to understand ourselves as a people. The history of theatre is the history of humanity using its imagination as a tool for learning and teaching. Its DNA can be found in every human. It is not so much activating audiences, as activating the audience in all of us. Western theatre has strong roots in Ancient Greece where theatre was formalised into tragedy, comedy and satyr plays as part of religious festival. Humans have historically relied on the power of spectacle to elicit an emotional reaction from audiences. The spectacle of the pageant is the expression of the power and strength of a community which reinforces a sense of belonging and allegiance to those in a position of authority.
There is spectacle in theatre which exists to reinforce the tapestry of elements that engage an audience, as Aristotle highlights in his six elements of drama. Despite the fact that audiences are aware that what they are watching in a theatrical context is a simulation and not reality, the opulent set design, sensational effects and startling appearances invite a kind of mental elevation, a state of awe. Nineteenth century theatre realism emerged as a revolt against theatrical artifice defending its right to be a serious literary genre not just a spectacle of entertainment. Realism drama aimed to create an illusion of reality on stage through the text, performance style and set design to enhance the suspension of disbelief in audiences.
So far I have spoken about theatre, but really there are ‘theatres’ - theatres of audiences different expectations, taste and desires, and by virtue of their demand all deserve a place in the world of theatre. That said, theatre is so much more than spectacle to satisfy an audience or a mirror in which to reflect reality. The Greeks understood the power of theatre to enrich and develop the minds of a community when they made participation mandatory either as an actor or a spectator in the city-state’s many festivals. The Chorus served to formulate, express and comment on the moral issues that were raised in the action taking place before the audience. The ‘théatron’ referred to the architectural structure in which theatre took place, as well as the people who used it - like the term ‘church’. There is a distinction between the venue in which theatre takes place and the theatre that happens in the matter between the ears of each member of the audience. The real ‘theatre’ is the human activity not the building. Its craft is combining its elements in their most effective proportions to fire up the imagination of the audience who bring meaning to the theatre. If what defines theatre is the engagement of the imagination of the audience, then how can theatre practitioners activate and enhance that engagement so that audiences move from passive spectators to active participants in the making of theatre?
Effective practice can be distilled down to the fundamental elements involving voice and gesture and they have evolved both in delivery and interpretation over time. There are a series of theatre techniques that have the power to engage and change minds that only require a performing body and an audience. Rancière tells us the spectator will be emancipated from passive spectatorship when they are confronted with “something strange which stands as an enigma and demands that they investigate the reason for its strangeness.” Humans do not need the spectacle of costume and staging to engage in theatre, or an aesthetically realistic representation of life on stage to suspend disbelief. Theatre need only intrigue and challenge an audience so that they play the game of theatre and create meaning from its non-realistic, symbolic representation of a story. As Berkoff tells us, “the audience love to use the theatre as a means to imagination not as a means of representation.”
This essay is a peeling back of the unnecessary gristle of theatre to reveal the potency of its techniques to engage and enhance the imagination, and its power to draw in audiences to think critically about the world they inhabit. I look to Steven Berkoff who combined heightened gesture and voice, improvisation and direct address and used the physical body as a substitute for set and props, to create truly inventive and thought provoking theatre. Berkoff eradicated the preconceptions about what defines theatre to answer only the question of how to express the text visually so that it captivates the imagination of the audience.
The focus of my research has been to locate Berkoff’s strategies for engaging the imagination through his development as a theatre director. I closely investigate what his influences are in forming these strategies, and examine his rich vocabulary of movement in specific examples of two adaptations of Franz Kafka novels, The Trial and Metamorphosis. Reading the writings of Berkoff, as well as books, academic journals and criticism on theatre by other practitioners, professors and writers inform a great deal of my research. Recordings of Berkoff’s productions, along with YouTube videos, have been integral to my visual analysis, not least due to the closures of theatres during the Covid-19 pandemic preventing me from seeing live theatre. A background in theatre making as an actor provides me with fundamental knowledge and understanding of stage craft, and the belief that these techniques are successful in engaging audiences, having witnessed their effects firsthand.
In Act One, I identify the theatrical influences which shaped Berkoff’s techniques, and in Act Two I isolate the use of these techniques in his own practice and their effects on the imagination. In doing so I initiate a conversation about the potential of theatre to demand more than passive spectatorship from its audience. My intention is to encourage theatre makers to hone an economy of gesture and movement techniques which serve as codes of communication that stimulate the imagination of audiences.
We have inherited a misunderstanding about the function of theatre and are in danger of engaging in an art form that has so much potential beyond superficial entertainment. Theatre can be an oil well of understanding of human identity and communication that brings together the imaginations of people. My research reveals the human imagination will flourish confronted with absurd and symbolic theatre and does not require a naturalist aesthetic to suspend disbelief. It demonstrates the virtues of minimal stage design which can create a more personalised experience for audiences who fill in the gaps with imagery from their own lived experience. It highlights the universality of physical theatre which transcends verbal boundaries and uses human movement and gesture to express meaning.
Berkoff, and the practitioners who influenced his theatrical style, were all in their own way bringing theatre back to its roots. Today, as theatre venues struggle to survive, it is more urgent than ever that we remember the actor and the audience is the only life-support system theatre needs. As Peter Brook so aptly put it, “I can take any empty space and call it a bare stage. A man walks across this empty space, whilst someone else is watching him, and this is all that is needed for an act of theatre to be engaged.”
This is an extract from my dissertation written as part of my degree in BA Culture, Criticism and Curation at Central Saint Martins. To download the full essay click here.
