ABSTRACT
This oddly worded question has recently been posed by a five-year enquiry launched by the London International Festival of Theatre, an event which has played a prominent part in exposing London audiences to various flavours and forms of theatrical experience from Europe and beyond. On reflection, I hear what is being avoided in this question: it does not want to ask: ‘What is theatre?’ or even ‘What can be theatre?’ It is not interested in definitions or classifications or in annexing to the theatrical whatever vaguely resembles it. Instead, it appears to be hinting at an altogether different set of future possibilities. So, to rephrase, what might theatre be? To ask what theatre might be resonates as a plaintive request that it become different from what it is. To ask what theatre might be is to suggest that theatre as it actually appears does not yet answer to an imagined collective need for a certain experience of theatre. It is a plea for the reimagination of the future of being together differently, of the stubborn communitarian impulse that is at the heart of the theatrical ‘project’. To ask what theatre might be – a question that assumes a public address – is thus a question that demands the gathering together of impossibly disparate responses, a minimum form of assembly, as its guiding rationale.
