All the stage's a world

Maria Oshodi was one of 50 women selected for the arts community’s Cultural Leadership Programme’s Women to Watch 2010 initiative which celebrates the achievements women have accomplished culturally and creatively. Her work, as Annie Makoff discovers, is a hotchpotch of tactile audience experiences and abstract theatricals

Forget everything you think you know about theatre. Forget the traditional “passive” audience experience where the fourth wall is stubbornly fixed in place: the curtain ascends, the performance begins, the actors recall their lines, sticking rigidly to the script.

Instead, step into the world of the experimental and the participatory: the boundary-pushing experience of the new, the modern, and the ultra contemporary.

Enter Maria Oshodi, Artistic Director and CEO of Extant, the UK’s first performing arts company managed and produced by visually impaired acting professionals.

“All theatre is created for the stage,” Maria says. “But the traditional concept of ‘the stage’ is not what we should be looking at in the 21st century. It’s also not conducive to the experience of visual impairment, so you shift it to encompass 360 degrees – to take in all your surroundings – and that becomes your stage.”

What is particularly striking when comparing naturalistic with experiential is the notion of reality. The traditional set-up of theatre doesn’t need an audience in order to be real. An audience may be a vital part of the experience, but with or without, the play format remains unchanged. Yet Extant’s performances rely explicitly on the observer – they cannot exist without them. In such a way, the audience, as willing participants become the performance.

“The dramatic action takes place within the audience,” Maria says. “It is always shifting. The action responds to them as they respond to it.”

Contemporary theatre in its purest form is by no means new. Performing artists and avant-garde theatre companies have been creating experiential theatre for decades. Yet what is uniquely different about Extant’s performances is the approach to disability in a political and social sense.

Maria explains: “The work we produce at Extant is largely informed by the experience of disability with a particular focus on visual impairment. We explore how the concept of ‘access’ can influence and shape creativity.”

Obscurity (2009), Extant’s first outdoor performance commissioned by Greenwich and Docklands International Festival, plays with the concept of “access” whilst exploring the science and mythology of water.

Three visually impaired performers and two visually impaired musicians playing violas stand within a soundscape. The musicians guide the audience as they “flow” around the space, circling a tent. As they stop, the actors speak in turn, recounting water-themed fables from around the world.

At intervals, the audience is directed to an emerging sketch by visual artist Sally Booth which illustrates the fables. Audience members are asked to describe the drawing to the actors, after which the musicians start up again, with the audience in tow.

At the climax of the piece, the tent in the middle is unveiled, revealing well-known blind musician Baluji Shrivastav, playing the sitar.

Sometimes performed in the rain (a happy coincidence given the theme), the use of sign language interpreters, along with the use of music and space, creates a wholly meaningful experience for everyone who engages with the piece.

Yet for Maria, performances like Obscurity are much more than theatre. Refusing to pigeonhole Extant’s work to a particular artistic movement, Maria describes the performances as a “live art form”.  

Live Art, unlike a specific movement with set beliefs and agendas, describes an interdisciplinary approach which bridges the gap between different artistic disciplines such as visual art, dance, performance etc. As an expression of art, it is as diverse as it is vague.

Arguably one of Extant’s most breathtaking (and currently on-going) works to date, The Question (2009/2010) utilises the Live Art concept with open arms. It has everything: the tactile audience experience, the walk-through installation, the use of audio and live performers.

That’s the basics. But the work as a whole is like nothing ever done before.

Branded by The Guardian’s Naomi Alderman as her “standout theatre experience of the year”, the project took years of research and collaborations with Open University’s Computing Department, the Battersea Art Centre as well as with several visual artists and sound engineers.

Using a hand-held lotus-shaped “haptic device” which uses vibrations, force and motions to communicate with the user, individuals are guided through a pitch black space, fitted in specific areas with three-dimensional geometric shapes for the user to touch and explore. The lotus “opens” when an individual is near a “zone of interest”, and audio is automatically stimulated at this point. As they are guided through the space amid the occasional whispering actor, the participant listens through earphones to a narrative about a blind geometrist grappling with scientific and philosophical questions about tactility.

In essence, the project explores the individual’s experience of their senses without the use of sight. It uses robotics and infrared sensors to respond directly to each person. The piece is therefore highly personal, and, as Maria explains, “it becomes an individual experience rather than a collective one.”

Whilst future developments on The Question continue in the background, Maria and her Extant team are currently working on an act of an all together different kind. The as yet unnamed showcase is based around alternative cabaret and burlesque, focusing on erotica and visual impairment.

“I wanted to explore sexuality and the interference of disability,” Maria explains. “Although it’s light hearted, it is also very gentle and reflective. We’re going to be touring with this during 2011 so keep us in mind.”

And keep them in mind, we certainly will. With such an impressive portfolio of performances to date, it would be crazy to miss out on the next Big Question.

• Website: extant.org.uk. Website for The Question: thequestion.org.uk