Welcome to Thebes: Process and methodology of intercultural theatre

Community, purpose, context and an anchored presence in encountering difference – these are qualities stimulated by tikanga Māori frameworks as an approach to theatre. Viewpoints-based choreography contributes attention to time and space, playfulness, and ensemble connection. Both value the audience’s contribution as an integral part of the work through the immediacy of a real-time meeting. Together they provide a framework for setting up a dialogical performance environment in which a cast, drawn from all over India, are able to bring their traditions, psychologies, gestural languages and beliefs into the work. The choreographic approach allows extant text and body text an independence that is constantly negotiated, constantly changing and surprising. These frameworks hold a combination of the artistically fixed and the improvisationally free. Both encourage agency in all collaborators. These qualities make them powerful and repeatable tools for engagement with the present. They treat the audience as participating guests, moving their engagement from passive to active. The effect of this framing is performance that is filled with a sense of ‘alive-li-ness’ in an approach that is applicable in the Indian context.