AUTOTEATRO
The Autoteatro series, which began in 2007 with Rotozaza's 'Etiquette', explores a new kind of performance, whereby audience members perform the piece themselves, for each other. Participants are given instructions, often (but not exclusively) via headphones for what to do, and sometimes for what to say. By simply following these instructions, something starts to happen: some kind of an event begins to unfold. Not to be confused with gaming (or ‘game show’-like improvisation), Autoteatro does not ask audience members to be clever or inventive. It simply frames and celebrates our slightly differing, often clumsy and always unique responses to simple instructions, and uses them to build narrative and event.
In Autoteatro,
• there is no actual 'audience' beyond the participants themselves
• the structure is automatic: there are no actors or human input during the work other than their own. An Autoteatro work is a 'trigger' for a subsequently self-generating performance.
A brief history of Autoteatro...
For Rotozaza's third work in 1999, Ant Hampton and Sam Britton (alias Isambard Khroustaliov) created a show called BLOKE for a decidedly non-extrovert friend they wanted to see on stage. To get around the problem of him worrying about the job - or responsibility - of being an actor, they said 'just do whatever you're told, try hard, and don't worry if you mess it up'. And so in responding to a list of pre-recorded instructions, their friend gave a performance suffused with a kind of honesty they’d rarely seen on stage, embracing error and clumsiness, and transforming the audience from passive specatator to a more active role: discovering everything at the same time as he was.
In 2003, Ant created a second piece using instructions to unrehearsed guest performers (Romcom, with Glen Neath), and shortly afterwards initiated a research project into this way of creating performance. Following that, Ant and Silvia (as Rotozaza) created four works (Doublethink, Ooff, Punta Dois, Five in the Morning), which applied the strategy in different ways.
The idea for Etiquette came soon after BLOKE and work began on it in 2001, but it wasn't until 2007 that the piece was finally able to develop. After 8 years of the guest performers in their shows (amateurs, professionals and total first-timers) consistently telling them how fascinating an experience it was to 'relinquish' responsibility in a performative situation, Ant and Silvia finally engineered Etiquette to be the means by which an audience could experience this themselves.
Since 2009 Ant and Silvia have worked independently to create, alongside other projects, the Autoteatro works listed above.
photo candice cellier
