Grand Union has invited Alice Theobald to be in residence for a 3-week period, culminating in a presentation of a new performative work on 8 August.
During her three week residency in The Bear Pit at Focal Point Gallery, Alice Theobald will be drawing from research on The Theatre of the Absurd, a term coined by critic Martin Esslin in a 1960 essay. The Theatre of the Absurd was a style of theatre associated with the work of a group of playwrights in the late 1950s which cohered with Albert Camus’ existentialist view that the human situation is essentially absurd in its struggle to find purpose and to control its fate.
Using Southend-On-Sea as a location to gather source material and inspiration, and The Bear Pit as a site for experimentation, process, and performance, the gallery will simultaneously become a space for production and ‘the production’ itself. Theobald will relish in this paradox which denies a sense of finality and an ‘end product’, at the same time as presenting and playing itself out as something staged and worthy of observation.
Plot will be eliminated through use of dislocated language, word-play, clichés and repetitions, allowing potential for a timeless, nonsense and circular quality to emerge—perhaps a bit like life itself.
Alice Theobald Residency
‘The Bear Pit’ at Focal Point Gallery
Friday 18 July – Saturday 8 August 2015
The Forum
Elmer Square
Southend-on-Sea
Essex
SS1 1NB
United Kingdom
Opening event:
Friday 18 July
6pm – late
Closing event, with presentation of a new performative work by Alice Theobald:
Saturday 8 August
6 – 8pm