Quarantine’s Summer. Autumn. Winter. Spring. was a major international performance event, staged at the Old Granada Studios, Manchester, on 26 March and 2 & 3 April 2016. It comprised four pieces of work developed over a two-year period.
“Whilst each show was originally performed separately, together they constitute a sustained enquiry into the performance of ‘life’ – individual and collective, conceived through the passing of ‘seasons’ – and the ‘life’ made manifest in and through performance. As such, Summer. Autumn. Winter. Spring. might be understood to be a single work investigating how the lived experience of everyday lives might be brought to the stage through the logic of presentation rather than representation; by ordinary people occupying the space of theatrical performance rather than seeing their lives being performed by others.
At the same time, the quartet might be seen as much an enquiry into the nature of theatrical performance as it is into the performance of ordinary people and everyday life.
By continually investigating the ways in which the theatrical frame conditions and mediates the modes of appearance of those who appear within it, it resists recourse to any naïve logic of performer presence through repeatedly insisting on interrogating the representational effects of the theatrical apparatus.” – Adrian Kear
This symposium, drawing on contributions from the Quarantine creative team (Richard Gregory/Simon Banham), performers (Leentje Van de Cruys/Dr Cristina Delgado-García) and spectators (Dr Joslin McKinney/Professor Adrian Kear), seeks to examine how the work functioned from a variety of perspectives, and to re-stage some of its essential questions:
• How does the structure of the dramaturgy organise the idea of a life/lives lived through performance?
• In what ways is the ‘liveness’ of the theatre event integral to its composition?
• To what extent do the performers appear as themselves, and how do they experience themselves performing?
• How does the scenography construct and draw attention to the specific nature of the theatrical event and extended relational modes of encounter?
• What are the ways in which spectators are invited to participate in the work, and to what extent do they experience themselves as its co-creators?
The human life that’s here: A Symposium investigating Quarantine’s Quartet
The Foundry studio, Department of Theatre Film and Television Studies, Aberystwyth University.
Thursday 29th September
18:00 – 19:30 – Professor Adrian Kear ‘Staging the People’
Friday 30th September
09:30 – 11:00 – Creative team presentations + questions / Richard Gregory, Simon Banham.
11.15 – 12:45 – Performer presentations + questions / Dr Cristina Delgado Garcia, Leentje Van de Cruys
13:30 – 15:00 – Spectators presentations + questions / Professor Adrian Kear, Dr Joslin McKinney
