- "I don't like the self-important committee style of assembly theatre in general. I don't like turning over designs to so-called button-pushers to push the button when someone says 'go', and run the play while they're texting or playing crossword puzzles. I want a small group of people cutting their veins open to make something on the stage that, if it doesn't happen just right, all of humanity dies. I want that. I want that small group operating as one sentient holy God putting on a play. And I want people who text during a show to kill themselves with rusty metal baseball bats."
Reclamation Manifesto
By Tom Miller
1. The foundation of the deepest theatre is story-telling.
2. Story-telling is the foundation of culture.
3. Culture allows humanity to live and thrive on Earth in ways and places that he would otherwise not be able to do so.
4. Without Culture, as a species, we cannot survive.
5. Therefore, theatre is no less than the survival of the species.
6. As theatre relies ever-more on technology and spectacle to attract funding and audiences, it simultaneously sells itself out by alienating our humanness. It extracts itself from its core value; the mission of illuminating our deepest selves and our world, of sharing stories from many cultures, or bonding together in our commonalities in a shared experience which provokes thoughts, inspirations, ideas that move us and strengthen our understanding of what it means to be human.
7. Theatre will undergo a ‘Great Divide’.
a. The über-Show (Prohibitive Ticket Prices, Reliance of Spectacle, Integration with High Technology such as Digital Projection, interactive interface, animatronics, digital actors, holographic imagery.) The actor will be the smallest gear in the machine. The corporate committee will adjust the events of the production for the greatest return of capital gain. The art will consume itself in its own self-indulgence. The stories will be Spiderman-meets-Cirque-De-Solei, Rock-n-Roll retrospectives with the living old members of bands performing with their projected holographic dead lead singers, theatrical versions of Jerry Bruckheimer films. It will be a sick ocean of bleak morals, short-attention-span-theatre, explosions, planetarium lighting—like shiny bits of foil which distract the bird yet do him no great service.
b. The unter-Show, or The Theatre of Reclamation (People will awaken to the reality that they have been absorbed into a commercial bubble of seduction and control. We will look to see each other’s faces in reality instead of buried in the screens, Google-Glasses, and ear-pieces of devices and smart phones and electronic interfaces. There will be the reclamation of the soul, of our tormented environment, of ever-rarified intimacy, meditation, the skill of focus, of the willingness to ‘get the most out of art by giving to it’. There will be the investment of deep attention and respect to gain the rewards of the well-constructed story. People will leave their watches, their texting, their hypno-chains of technology behind and return to the intimate theatre of small houses, salons, and found spaces. Together, they will take journeys of the internal collective minds. They will talk to each other about their experiences over a glass of wine beneath the stars a rule-breaking moment with a true tobacco cigarette (or perhaps a different kind of cigarette) made from the leaves of a local organic farmer.
8. Those in column a. will tire of being bullshitted-by-committee and gradually move to column b. where they will be welcomed home with open arms.
9. Stories will be told in all the forms, from the classical to the absurd, from the tragic to the comedic, from the mythological to the fantastical, and the actor will tell the story, the minds of the audience will make the magic, and the lighting, music, scenery, and costumes will be the work of an intimate dedicated few who commit themselves only to the whole of the play as one soul working in tandem, not disparate detached groups whose collaborative roles are dictated by a caucus of bourgeois snoots. There will be the technology of the shadow puppet, the marionette, the lost arts of pantomime and clowning, dance, music performed with instruments made of wood and strings instead of circuitry and auto-tune.
10. Reclamation Theatre will be much like a return to the telling of great stories around a small fire, thus there will be a renaissance of true culture, and thus our species will survive and prosper in peace.
By Tom Miller
1. The foundation of the deepest theatre is story-telling.
2. Story-telling is the foundation of culture.
3. Culture allows humanity to live and thrive on Earth in ways and places that he would otherwise not be able to do so.
4. Without Culture, as a species, we cannot survive.
5. Therefore, theatre is no less than the survival of the species.
6. As theatre relies ever-more on technology and spectacle to attract funding and audiences, it simultaneously sells itself out by alienating our humanness. It extracts itself from its core value; the mission of illuminating our deepest selves and our world, of sharing stories from many cultures, or bonding together in our commonalities in a shared experience which provokes thoughts, inspirations, ideas that move us and strengthen our understanding of what it means to be human.
7. Theatre will undergo a ‘Great Divide’.
a. The über-Show (Prohibitive Ticket Prices, Reliance of Spectacle, Integration with High Technology such as Digital Projection, interactive interface, animatronics, digital actors, holographic imagery.) The actor will be the smallest gear in the machine. The corporate committee will adjust the events of the production for the greatest return of capital gain. The art will consume itself in its own self-indulgence. The stories will be Spiderman-meets-Cirque-De-Solei, Rock-n-Roll retrospectives with the living old members of bands performing with their projected holographic dead lead singers, theatrical versions of Jerry Bruckheimer films. It will be a sick ocean of bleak morals, short-attention-span-theatre, explosions, planetarium lighting—like shiny bits of foil which distract the bird yet do him no great service.
b. The unter-Show, or The Theatre of Reclamation (People will awaken to the reality that they have been absorbed into a commercial bubble of seduction and control. We will look to see each other’s faces in reality instead of buried in the screens, Google-Glasses, and ear-pieces of devices and smart phones and electronic interfaces. There will be the reclamation of the soul, of our tormented environment, of ever-rarified intimacy, meditation, the skill of focus, of the willingness to ‘get the most out of art by giving to it’. There will be the investment of deep attention and respect to gain the rewards of the well-constructed story. People will leave their watches, their texting, their hypno-chains of technology behind and return to the intimate theatre of small houses, salons, and found spaces. Together, they will take journeys of the internal collective minds. They will talk to each other about their experiences over a glass of wine beneath the stars a rule-breaking moment with a true tobacco cigarette (or perhaps a different kind of cigarette) made from the leaves of a local organic farmer.
8. Those in column a. will tire of being bullshitted-by-committee and gradually move to column b. where they will be welcomed home with open arms.
9. Stories will be told in all the forms, from the classical to the absurd, from the tragic to the comedic, from the mythological to the fantastical, and the actor will tell the story, the minds of the audience will make the magic, and the lighting, music, scenery, and costumes will be the work of an intimate dedicated few who commit themselves only to the whole of the play as one soul working in tandem, not disparate detached groups whose collaborative roles are dictated by a caucus of bourgeois snoots. There will be the technology of the shadow puppet, the marionette, the lost arts of pantomime and clowning, dance, music performed with instruments made of wood and strings instead of circuitry and auto-tune.
10. Reclamation Theatre will be much like a return to the telling of great stories around a small fire, thus there will be a renaissance of true culture, and thus our species will survive and prosper in peace.
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