SET - on watching Brief Encounter

MacKenzie, Neil (2001) SET - on watching Brief Encounter. UNSPECIFIED. (Unpublished)

Item Type:	Other
Additional Information:	SET is a small-scale theatre piece involving five performers attempting ironically to replicate the experience of watching the film Brief Encounter. Through a multi-layered process of self-reflection, the live performance resists any attempt by the audience to look through the signification of the stage to a coherent fictional signified, instead throwing the focus onto the (theatrical) signifying process, and the audience’s role in it. The absence of iconic signifiers from a fiction forces much of the emphasis on to the competence of the audience to imagine ‘accurately’, and the basis on which such an ‘imagined’ is founded. This process in turn mirrors the shift in emphasis from the material signifiers of the stage to their reception in the consciousness of the audience, and thus to their creative function in the construction of the performance text. SET continues the investigations of previous PaR projects, specifically After Oslo (1999) and Three Degrees of Frost (2000), relating to an examination of the problematic relationship between canonic text and theatrical performance. The choice of a film as text forces the investigation to include the relationship between film and theatre, and the experience of reading each offers its audience. Tour: 2001 University of Hull, Scarborough; 2002 Prema Arts Centre, Gloucestershire; Leeds Met University Studio Theatre; Greenroom, Manchester; Alsager Arts Centre, MMU; Nuffield Theatre, Lancaster; Bowen West Theatre, De Montfort University, Bedford; Hoxton Hall, London; Phoenix Arts Centre, Exeter; University of Bath; Arnolfini, Bristol; Split International Theatre Festival, Croatia. Funding: £5000 from ACE; £2000 development support from Greenroom; £1000 Croatian Airlines; £6,500 venue fees. Documentation: DVD; SET is cited in Post-Dramatic Theatre (Lehmann 2006); See also Turner, Jane (2007) ‘Acts of Creative Vandalism? Plane Performance Deconstruct the Canon’ NTQ 23:3); See also draft of Mackenzie ‘The Performer’s Predicament’ (proposed for STP, 2008).
Divisions:	Faculties > MMU Cheshire (Legacy)
URI:	https://e-space.mmu.ac.uk/id/eprint/82099

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