Acts of creative vandalism? Plane performance deconstruct the canon

Turner, Jane C. (2007) Acts of creative vandalism? Plane performance deconstruct the canon. New theatre quarterly, 23 (3). pp. 208-218. ISSN 1474-0613

File not available for download.

Abstract

In this article Jane Turner explores the trilogy of works titled Re-placing Texts, together with Epilogue, devised and performed by the innovative group Plane Performance, now in its tenth year. The trilogy – Three Degrees of Frost, SET and Round-about – are rewritings of Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard, David Lean's film Brief Encounter, and Rogers and Hammerstein's film musical, Carousel. The article examines the strategies adopted by the company as acts of ‘creative vandalism’, both in terms of current understandings of theatre practice and in terms of their treatment of the original texts. Jane Turner argues that the dramatic texts have become ossified by cultural usage and that the radical stance taken by the company allows for a counter-cultural position to re-emerge.