Contemporary Theatre Has Left the Theatre… “Houses” Made of Bricks, Sticks and Straw

Abstract

Like Elvis, much contemporary theatre seems to have “left the building”; a statement suggesting the architectural show is over and signalling a death of sorts, that of well-made drama in a well-constructed edifice. As the stable ground of theatrical representation is increasingly ungrounded, live and mediated performance ‘takes place’ elsewhere, reconfiguring theatre as both art form and built form. This paper expands a book chapter on the place of architecture in Contemporary European Theatre and Performance (Remshardt/Mancewicz, 2023), which is affected by spectacular events of the 21st century that invade the global imaginary, primarily via screened imagery of political upheaval, conflict, contamination, climate change, pandemics and the plight of those seeking refuge from these threats. Theatre, like contemporary civilisation, can no longer rely on a home that is safe and sound. By drawing on a cautionary fairytale of The Three Little Pigs, the paper reverse-engineers the story that privileges the value of building one’s house out of bricks rather than sticks and straw. Instead, it maintains that the environment housing theatre has moved from enduring standalone monuments of the 19th century to more experimental sites of the 20th century, to ephemeral and transitory locations of the early 21st century, in which deliberate homelessness reinforces the community itself as house.