Thanks to Lucy Ellinson for initiating the One Minute Manifesto phenomenon.

Standing here in the Forest Fringe I can’t help feeling that I’ll be preaching to the converted tonight, but that said, here we go…

My manifesto is aimed at theatre makers.

Now is the time for us to take ourselves less seriously. Breathe out. Let it go. Laugh at ourselves.

I’m the worst offender.

I was once heard saying with no irony “I’m a very serious person”.

I fiercely defend my patch, my company, my work, my ‘practice’ – Its a learned response.

It started in earnest at university. The constant jibes at my silly course that must just be messing around – even though we clocked up 40 hour weeks compared to the 6 of my friend studying geology. I imagine the ‘clowning classes’ didn’t help me to make my case.

More recently the endless meetings with Business Link advisors and the like, wanting a sensible business plan, a viable (meaning financially viable) business, laughing in my face about the concept of performing to less people in a night than you have performers in the cast.

No wonder I feel the need to be serious about my work. Its hard work, its my life, and I believe in it.

But now is the time to stop trying to do things the right way. Let’s stop aping the big guys. As Andy Field said at Shift Happens about technology – as artists we shouldn’t follow the rules about how the new tools are used, we should find new ways, and if we can we should break the internet.

We’ve seen big business fail, banks fall, now’s the time for our brand of collaborative innovation. What’s so wrong about a Ministry of Fun? Let’s get ready to lead the way, but not because we’ve learned how to wear a business suit and deliver financial forecasts, but because we know how to work together well, to have fun, to think differently, and to make beautiful things with just ourselves and our voices.

“Interesting article Lyn.

I think its great that this type of work is proliferating to the extent that BAC is holding a high profile festival of one-to-one performance.

Making work for small audience numbers myself (with http://theotherwayworks.co.uk), I am frequently required to make the case not just for my own work but the form as a whole. I am often told that this work is not financially viable (which of course it isn’t in a traditional bums-on-seats model, but aren’t there other forms of value?), and people accuse us of pandering to the current obsession with individualised experience rather than critiquing it. So I’m excited to see a wider pool of theatre makers experimenting with this form, bringing their own styles to it.

But with this proliferation comes a large diversity in the types of work marketed under the banner of ‘one-on-one’. Not a bad thing per se, but is there a danger of everyone jumping on the bandwagon just because its the buzzword of the moment? We’ve seen this with ‘site-specific’ theatre – people using the term to add excitement to what is essentially a play staged traditionally just in a building that isn’t a theatre.

In terms of Lyn’s final points around the rules of engagement. Nailing these is the job of the theatre maker. Much like the crafting of a good story or the synthesis of design elements in a traditional production, thinking through the audience role, instructional styles and the rules of engagement are key parts of making a one-to-one theatre production. If the audience don’t understand how they are supposed to behave, then it is the responsibility of the artist to improve how they contextualise the experience for the audience (unless the artist’s express desire is to unsettle the audience for some particular reason).

We certainly haven’t perfected this ourselves, but we do strive to learn from our experiences with audiences. We’ve discovered that to get the playful, interactive audience that we desire, we need to set them free from embarrassment and fear by providing clear guidance and plenty of reassurance and encouragement. We’ve found that far from ruining the surprises as we feared, it allows the audience to engage on a deeper level with the experience, and to get beyond ‘am I doing this right?’”