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COLLEGE LIFE
Photograph by Guy Bell (www.gbphotos.com)
participate as the characters. While there, he
spent time with another group of scientists
who gave him a pair of shoes that would alter
the lighting level on the stage as he walked
across it, and they showed him how they
could project a ‘virtual goldfish’ into his hands
and pass it from person to person.
Whilst impressed, the shoes were ultimately
‘ok’, the virtual goldfish was simply weird, and
the video game remains in production. But, as
for many of us, technology was an obsession
and it was the focus of discussion for much of
the lecture, whether through David Hockney’s
iPad drawings that were recently exhibited
at the Royal Academy of Arts, the acoustics
of the Greek amphitheatre that allowed a
chorus to play to thousands of people, or
the technological ingenuity of theatre groups
such as Filter, Complicité and Cirque du Soleil.
Yet throughout his use of these examples, he
insisted, ‘it’s not about the technology.’ He
was enthralled by the vibrant colour schemes
of Hockney’s drawings, not their electronic
canvas, and likewise in the theatre he held
that technology exists only to enhance or
subtly augment what is physically present on
the stage.
Sir Michael suggested that theatre currently
enjoys something of a ‘golden age’, that
it’s cool again. A new generation of daring
young playwrights are now dominating the
scene, international theatres like the Barbican
allow us to learn from the artistic approaches
of other cultures, and 2012 saw the global
success of Danny Boyle’s Olympics opening
ceremony. Last year was a record breaking
one for theatres across London as box office
sales eclipsed £14 million. But this would not
last, he warned, and gadgetry will feel even
more expensive in a recession. So what will
become of theatre as the economic situation
worsens?
The audience were asked to consider a range
of possibilities and directions in which theatre
could go. Will we gather our audiences
through social media? Will genres be ‘pushed
together to cuddle each other from the
cold’? Will the audience’s interaction with the
theatre’s physical space become so significant
as to render the actor secondary? Will it overdepend
on celebrity, and become ‘frankly
too embarrassing to watch’? Will it be faster,
borrowing on the speed of rap and urban
artists such as Jay Z and Debbie Tucker Green?
Or will it be slower? Will the theatre be a
place for measured reflection, a church; as Jez
Butterworth says, ‘a place in which we evoke
anxieties and deal with them together’?
This lecture offered no definitive answers, but
did invite a number of questions that took
us deep into a discussion focussed not only
on what theatre might become, but of what
it is to us now. Before taking questions from
an audience that was positively bursting to
engage, Sir Michael marked the beginning of
his Professorial tenure with an invitation to
the University of Oxford ‘to become a major
international arts institution’. I’m sure that the
students in the audience have been invigorated
by this rallying call and cannot wait to fully
welcome Sir Michael when he begins his work
with them over the coming year. n
Joe Murphy (2009, English) graduated from
Catz last Trinity Term and has taken up his
post as this year’s University Drama Officer, a
position created by the Cameron Mackintosh
Drama Fund.
ST CATHERINE’S COLLEGE 2012/7