Rotozaza’s physical theatre Life Affirming Joyride plays at the Bullion Room. Maureen McManus speaks to Ant Hampton about spontaneous theatre, barriers and power. Life affirming joyride anyone?

Yeah, right, like that’s going to happen in a run-down theatre space at the back of the Hackney Empire. Sure, all these bohemian types with their winter underwear seriously in conflict with their hipster jeans know a good place to go.

Taking a chance we followed them to the Bullion Room, out the back of the Hackney Empire for an alternative theatre festival brazenly called Life Affirming Joyride Vol.1. By the time we got there to collect our tickets, the organisers were turning people away. It was the second of the three nights. Had word of mouth gone out, could it be a good sign?

The Bullion Room is an infrequently used space, capacious, and dilapidated, the seats look like rejects from the main theatre, yet the space exudes atmosphere, and is filled with a grungy-chic crowd, talking about acting jobs, and publishing ventures, and wearing the most impossible combinations. Combinations that is in the underwear sense, one couldn’t help noticing, as winter underwear and tights fought for attention under low-cut jeans. And the theme continued on stage where underwear featured in three of the five shows.

Rotozaza is a daring physical/alternative theatre company, whose co-creator Ant Hampton is the festival’s organiser. His partner is Silvia Mercuriali who acts in this and the forthcoming work. Their show called Getting out of Calais, 3am or A makes B wet while C watches blurs the boundaries between rehearsed and improvised theatre. Dressed only in underwear, throwing water over each other, the three actors played with the audience’s sympathies. Hampton said, “That’s what we are trying to do, so that you are constantly having to guess in one moment you think it’s rehearsed and the next you think it’s spontaneous.”

The rest of the show, which was made up of five acts in total was equally inventive. The Highs and Lows of Owning Your Own Home showcased three older actors (John Ringham, Godfrey Jackman and Patrick Driver) having a lot of fun with the writing of Glen Neath. This was the first part of a new play, which made me want to see more. And then underwear again in The Superheroes, a marvellous tale of domestic anxiety, farcically unleashed by actors Peter Arnold and Greg McLaren.

The Riot group opened the second part with Whitewashed, New England, 1675, where the use of a commentator with a microphone experimented with the notion of witnessing disaster. The humour and physicality of the evening climaxed in a fabulous piece called,

Life affirming joyride anyone? Yeah, right, like that’s going to happen in a run-down theatre space at the back of the Hackney Empire. Sure, all these bohemian types with their winter underwear seriously in conflict with their hipster jeans know a good place to go.

Taking a chance we followed them to the Bullion Room, out the back of the Hackney Empire for an alternative theatre festival brazenly called Life Affirming Joyride Vol.1. By the time we got there to collect our tickets, the organisers were turning people away. It was the second of the three nights. Had word of mouth gone out, could it be a good sign?

The Bullion Room is an infrequently used space, capacious, and dilapidated, the seats look like rejects from the main theatre, yet the space exudes atmosphere, and is filled with a grungy-chic crowd, talking about acting jobs, and publishing ventures, and wearing the most impossible combinations. Combinations that is in the underwear sense, one couldn’t help noticing, as winter underwear and tights fought for attention under low-cut jeans. And the theme continued on stage where underwear featured in three of the five shows.

Rotozaza is a daring physical/alternative theatre company, whose co-creator Ant Hampton is the festival’s organiser. His partner is Silvia Mercuriali who acts in this and the forthcoming work. Their show called Getting out of Calais, 3am or A makes B wet while C watches blurs the boundaries between rehearsed and improvised theatre. Dressed only in underwear, throwing water over each other, the three actors played with the audience’s sympathies. Hampton said, “That’s what we are trying to do, so that you are constantly having to guess in one moment you think it’s rehearsed and the next you think it’s spontaneous.”

The rest of the show, which was made up of five acts in total was equally inventive. The Highs and Lows of Owning Your Own Home showcased three older actors (John Ringham, Godfrey Jackman and Patrick Driver) having a lot of fun with the writing of Glen Neath. This was the first part of a new play, which made me want to see more. And then underwear again in The Superheroes, a marvellous tale of domestic anxiety, farcically unleashed by actors Peter Arnold and Greg McLaren.

The Riot group opened the second part with Whitewashed, New England, 1675, where the use of a commentator with a microphone experimented with the notion of witnessing disaster. The humour and physicality of the evening climaxed in a fabulous piece called, Naïve Dance Masterclass by Matt Rudkin. This self-parodying theatrical treat, with the added fun of a fantastic hula-dancing doll left the audience elevated.

It really had been what it claimed, a joyride.
Afterwards I talked to Ant Hampton, eager to find out more about Rotozaza’s new show, Five in the Morning, which will soon begin a three-week run at the Bullion Room.

Tell me about the idea behind Rotozaza?
It comes on the back of three and a half years work on a particular way of making theatre, which started with Bloke. I thought if I gave an unrehearsed actor a list of instructions that you get him to agree to follow, in advance, the performer doesn’t know anything about the show but as long as they do what they are told everything will go to plan.

Why?
What’s fascinating is to see on stage a thing that develops in front of your eyes. The actor is discovering everything the same time as you. It absolutely depends for its existence on aliveness.
The performer is an audience member the same time as being an actor - breaking down that barrier?

Rather than barriers, often I see it in terms of power, I feel a lot of theatre dominates the audience, and the audience want to be dominated, whereas this sets up an equal relationship where the sympathy is high with the person on stage because they know the situation is like this.

Describe one of your shows?
ROMCOM is played with guest performers, they don’t need to be actors. We give them headphones, where they repeat the text they hear. One voice for action and a voice for movement. The text is written by Glen Neath. I wrote the actions, strategy, sound and lights. For ROMCOM we have a video with the lights and the sound and music for the show and the two ipods for the performances so we start them all together, then we sit down and watch it.

Tell me about the new show you are directing?
Five in the Morning has three people (actors, Greg McLaren, Silvia Mercuriali and Melanie Wilson) in swimming costumes, in this strange aquaworld. There are voices telling them what to do that everyone hears - the audience as well - and the quality is as if they just walked on stage and they’ve agreed to do what they’re told to do, but there’s a very mysterious feel to it, you’re constantly wondering are they rehearsed or not. The action flicks from there to very complete, very random, intensely worked theatrical images.

For example?
For example a Chinese vendor in the street illegally selling little radio controlled cars, being watched by the pope and a bunch of bodyguards in the background and he turns into an acrobat figure performing for the pope. By flicking the scenes from one to the other we try and identify two completely different ways of reading a show and particularly what happens to an audience when you are flicking between them. So the pool is where your presence in the room is very important and you have to ask yourself what you are doing watching. Within that there’s the fact that you are wondering whether or not they’re rehearsed. In a lot of our work a sort of parallel metaphor starts rising to the surface, the part of ourselves that is rehearsed and the part that is spontaneous. Are we not actually in some way completely pre-recorded? Is what we do and say really that spontaneous or not?

It’s strange how it works?
The fact that the actors are going through the same thing with the audience means these darker scenes stand as a sort of escape from this exhausting predicament.
Rotozaza worked a lot abroad, how are you finding London?
ROMCOM has had a lot of success internationally and from that we managed to set up contact for the other shows. We do different language shows, for example in Portuguese and Italian. Because of the strategies involved we can just translate and re-record. We are doing ROMCOM in Argentina at the end of March.

Why the Bullion Room?
In the hope that it might become a proper home for east London’s alternative theatre makers. It’s pretty embarrassing to have a situation in London that there is only one house for that kind of work - the BAC.

Five in the Morning will run at the Bullion Room behind the Hackney Empire from February 23 to March 12.
Hackney Empire Bullion Room Theatre
Wilton Way
London, E8 1BH
www.hackneyempire.co.uk
www.rotozaza.co.uk