Theatre-Rites

FAQs

• What is the background of the Artistic Director?
• How did your Artistic Director’s interest in Puppetry begin?
• You describe your Research & Development weeks as Play weeks – what do you mean by Play?
• Describe Theatre-Rites’ process for creating a piece of theatre
• How do you choose practitioners?
• How do Objects and Sites influence your work?
• Who is your audience?
• How can I work with you?
• Do you accept applications for work experience or placements in the office?
• Do you accept unsolicited CV’s?
• Can I come and talk to someone about my dissertation?

What is the background of the Artistic Director?

After graduating I worked as an actress before realising that I wanted to be a creator of theatre. Nurturing my ability to make puppets and masks this exciting time connected me with a variety of peer practitioners including Stephen Tiplady; object animator of Indefinite Articles, Rufus Norris; director, Jenny Sealy; Artistic Director of Graeae, Phelim McDermott of Improbable and various visual artists involved with the work of Puppetworks (a large-scale outdoor performance company in the style of Welfare State). In 1989 I received an Arts Council Bursary for the extension of puppetry skills and furthered my training with the Czech Puppet Company Drak and David Glass, and spent 3 months studying the Arts of Southern India. In 1997 I received a distinction for my MA in Contemporary Theatre Practice at Essex University in which I combined a study of psychoanalytical thought with my views on the power of the puppet.

Throughout this period I became a specialist puppetry director and worked with David Farr, Complicite, RSC, The National Theatre and Tara Arts amongst many others.

It was through working as a puppetry specialist with PopUp Theatre that I met Penny Bernand.

Sue Buckmaster is a fourth generation theatre practitioner. For further information on her fascinating history please read her interview with Donald Hutera.

How did your Artistic Director’s interest in Puppetry begin?

My father was a professional puppeteer, who performed a traditional marionette cabaret around holiday camps, hotels and workingmen’s clubs. So my initial training came from that family apprenticeship.

I love the way the puppet art form brings together many approaches ranging from direct performance to construction, visual art and movement. It also has strong heritage across cultures. It can be both truly accessible and highly conceptual with a power beyond language. I had music, making and performing in my blood so puppetry was an ideal art form for me to continue my artistic discovery.

My work is driven from a psychological understanding of our existence. I see the puppet or an imbued object as an opportunity for self-recognition. It offers the chance for the audience to look at an imitation of their own human predicament, whether literally, figuratively or abstractly, enabling them towards self-realization. Placing puppets/objects alongside actors on stage is very powerful. This juxtaposition of the fake with the real helps us see our reality more clearly.

I thoroughly enjoy this when it seems to reach both adults and children, both trying to share the process together.

It is the triadic nature of the art form that particularly interests me. The relationship between the manipulator and their object and the object’s relationship to the audience. I am interested in how much we can find out about the psychology of the actor’s character on stage by how he or she handles or projects their emotions through their props/important objects. It is as though they are representations of the actor’s inner psyche, taking on their alter ego and repressed desires.

I prefer to work with abstracted puppet forms, often enjoying how a group of objects can be brought together to momentarily form a figurative shape, only to re-create itself and re-form its sense of self. I believe that these abstracted, less illustrative forms are more open to the varying projected beliefs of the audience and connect to our celebration of our own abilities of survival and re-invention in the bigger picture of evolution and natural, political and emotional change.

Puppets and object play are also very funny. They are full of nonsense and parody. I adore watching a spirit of play being triggered off in people by the very nature of them being able to hide behind something.

The puppet for me now is ANYTHING that I can manipulate. An object, a projected image, a space or an actor. So the specifics of puppet theatre become less important and yet for me lie at the heart of everything I create.

You describe your Research & Development weeks as Play weeks – what do you mean by Play?

Once the object or site has been selected and the creative team chosen, we find a suitable space and we get together and play, in whatever way those people tend to play. It cannot be prescribed because the play is literally created by those taking part. It is my job as the director to select a good object, find the right dynamic of people and provide a promising and secure play space. As the playing emerges, my own personal process is to help everyone involved to stay open to exchange, recognise when they are blocking ideas and to allow room for new ideas to come. To find or help them find the right games. For some time it is important not to edit or limit the play. There can be up 3 intensive playweeks to develop each show. As the process moves towards rehearsal it then becomes important to select the ideas that seem to resonate with the majority of the group and which seem to have a psychological connection, however intangible at this stage.

Describe Theatre-Rites’ process for creating a piece of theatre

After our Play weeks, it is throughout the rehearsal period that the full content of the show emerges. The narrative forms itself, and the ending often reveals itself at a very late stage. The process is both scary and exciting and discovering with others is at its heart. Hopefully each audience member discovers something new for themselves too when watching or experiencing the show.

I am fascinated by how the content of a theatre piece can emerge from a group of practitioners’ projections onto a chosen object, site or concept. For Theatre-Rites, each artist, whether as a maker, composer or actor, responds to an object, and a disparate collection of responses are gathered by myself. Then the similarities and differences are worked through using improvisation and play until a psychology of those differences and similarities appears. And thus the narrative of that piece of work emerges. The story appears last, respecting the many different cultural, artistic and emotional journeys that led us to it.

This process is hard to describe or even write about!

How do you choose practitioners?

It is important for me to select those practitioners who wish to look at the space between themselves and others, who want to reflect on ways of discovering the same or different answers to one question.

Cultural, emotional and artistic exchange is at the root of the work. I am happy to talk to any actor or artist who feels drawn to this way of working. I hold group auditions for actors, which provide a safe and playful environment. I am interested in those who have not necessarily created work for children before (and therefore are not fixed in their idea of what it should be!) but who like to create work by being childlike.

Theatre-Rites is interested in celebrating, analysing and challenging the differences and similarities between people from all backgrounds. We are interested in collaborating with different types of artists, whether they have had a culturally-specific traditional training, or whether they strive to blend an eclectic mix of artistic and cultural experiences. We are interested in working with artists who have direct experience of being a parent or those whose only experience is being a child themselves. In order to truly play we have to keep reinventing the rules so everyone can feel included.

How do Objects and Sites influence your work?

We have always either decided a site or been offered one. e.g. we chose a hospital for our 2005 production of Hospitalworks, and were offered a mill, which became our 1998 production Millworks. Site-specific performances derive from the objects and textures we find in the building.

Theatre pieces are created by playing with a material until it forms itself into something, e.g.. The Lost and Moated Land was created with visual artist Sophia Clist by obsessing about what could come out of a cone shape and Catch Your Breath, was inspired by the materials used for a tent. In One Ear was a sculptural response to a cultural object brought by one of the performers, a Kurdish daf drum.

Choosing the object as the driving force usually dictates the materials and making process. We have never worked with a theatre designer and all our site-specific shows have been co-created with installation artists, who with the creative team respond to a site together.

We are interested in the transformative property of an object material or place. Just as much as the process is about playing with each other as people, the chosen object is also fully played with so its “promise” is found. Its many potentials, its ability to be fixed or rigid, multiple or singular, its power. These are allowed to be seen and experienced. They are as important as the actors.

It is the way that we have discovered what the materials can do which often becomes the content of the performance. For example, we are interested in actually showing the creation of a puppet, environment or mathematic sculptural form in front of the audience’s eyes. The creation and the dilemmas and joys of the creation process become the story, as opposed to just showing the end product.

Who is your audience?

Theatre-Rites embraces both the adult and the child in the same audience and therefore is highly suitable for parents and children, or teachers and pupils to experience together.

We believe that children should be offered theatre that is as intelligent and as aesthetically appealing as the best theatre for adult audiences. But Theatre-Rites creates work for ANYONE who wants to come and see it. No one is excluded; young children, grandparents, single adults, audience members of all ages or cultural identity are welcome. The work is not language driven and therefore works on different levels, removing the limits of age and language.

How can I work with you?

If you are interested in working through play and exploring the space between your ideas and others then please let us know. We require a high expertise in your chosen field but we do not require experience of children’s theatre or the theatre process in general.

We are interested in receiving your CVs and any other records of your work. It is also great to be told of opportunities to experience your work - advance warning always helps!

We welcome interest from actors, makers, composers, digital artists etc as well as observers and assistant directors or academics and, practitioners from, as yet, unrelated art forms which will help us to keep challenging the boundaries of what makes good theatre and will stir the imagination of adults and children together.

Do you accept applications for work experience or placements in the office?

Unfortunately not. Theatre-Rites is a small team and we do not have the capacity to accommodate people on work experience or placements.

Do you accept unsolicited CV’s?

We are always happy to receive CV’s via email [cv@theatre-rites.co.uk] or by post.

Can I come and talk to someone about my dissertation?

We receive so many requests for support with studies that we are unable to help on an individual basis. Please read Sue Buckmaster’s FAQ’s for help on our creative process. Donald Hutera’s interview with Sue may be interesting to you in terms of her creative background.