Theatre pieces that dare to be different

It’s probably James Wilkes of Belt Up Theatre that comes closest to summing it up best.

“I think what we’re doing is asking questions – about what theatre is, what does it do, what it means. By asking those questions and trying to dicsover the answer, it feels like everything’s up for grabs,” says Wilkes.

His company, Belt Up, has had the most staggering reviews in its short history. It joins Upstart Theatre and Told By An Idiot as three companies in Yorkshire next week who are presenting work that may be rewarding for an audience, but is also challenging.

Belt Up began when a group of students at York University came together in 2008 when directors Dominic J Allen, Jethro Compton, James Wilkes and Alexander Wright began working together.

Wilkes says: “We stumbled into making work in this way entirely by accident. We were doing a production of Metamorphosis in a black box studio theatre at the university and we built a set that seemed to just grow and grow. Then at one point we looked around and realised that we had filled the space and didn’t really have anywhere for the audience to go. We decide to take advantage of that.”

The audience became part of the set – a device which is now Belt Up’s trademark and the result was a production that won the company a truckload of awards at the National Student Drama Festival in Scarborough. It followed this by taking a production to Edinburgh, where it won five-star reviews and the Edinburgh International Festival Award. It has since become the York theatre’s company in residence and continues to make work in the city. This weekend it debuts its new show, its own version of John Gay’s The Beggars’ Opera, as part of the theatre’s TakeOver Festival. Even though it is being presented on the proscenium arch stage of the theatre, Wilkes promises a typical Belt Up show. “It sometimes takes our audiences a little time to engage with the process. A lot of people when they hear that our work is participational think that it isn’t for them, but if they let themselves go we find audiences really respond,” says Wilkes.

Another company hoping the audience leaves its inihibitions at the door is Upstart. The company is run by Tom Mansfield and James Blakey, currently assistant directors at West Yorkshire Playhouse.

The two directors are putting the final touches to a bold new theatre experiment that opens in Bradford next Thursday. Mansfield describes the work as a “live theatre game”. Audiences – or agents, or players as the two directors think of them as – do not simply watch a piece of theatre passively, they are actively involved in the action.

“This sort of work has been going on underground for a while now in theatre, the fact that it is becoming mainstream I think reflects the fact that the way we think about theatre is up for grabs,” he says. “Everything is tailored and personalised, why not a piece of theatre?”

One of the pioneers of the sort of theatre that broke out of the confines of what was expected is Told by An Idiot. The company is coming to West Yorkshire Playhouse next week, where assistant director Justin Audibert will run workshops. Audibert was an assistant director at the West Yorkshire Playhouse two years ago, and has since gone on to work at the RSC.

Audibert says: “With this kind of theatre, an audience just has to be open-minded. In terms of what we are giving the audience, it is hugely entertaining and anarchic.

“But that doesn’t mean it is theatre created without thought or reason. Just because it appears to be anarchic that doesn’t mean it’s mindless in any way. Audiences are demanding more and getting better at taking risks with what they see – because ultimately that can be very rewarding.”

Unmissable experiences

The Beggar’s Opera: Belt Up theatre company brings a ska-singing Maggie Thatcher, an all-singing all-dancing reinterpretation of the birth of the coalition. York Theatre Royal, to March 26. 01904 623568.

And The Horse You Rode in On: Inspired by Hitchcock and Dario Fo, a dark, disturbing and funny show. West Yorkshire Playhouse, March 29 to April 2. 0113 2137700.

The Falling Sickness: Cast as agents of The Syndicate, a multinational, the players undertake a perilous mission and are taken to the heart of a deadly conspiracy. Theatre in the Mill, Bradford, March 31 to April 2. 01274 233200.