Kantor in Cardiff (Wales, UK, 1976) – the impact on a young theatre maker: subsequent performance amidst detritus, clutter and errant objects. Presentation in the Cricoteka (Centre for the Art and Documentation of Tadeusz Kantor), Krakow, Poland

Gough, Richard (2016) Kantor in Cardiff (Wales, UK, 1976) – the impact on a young theatre maker: subsequent performance amidst detritus, clutter and errant objects. Presentation in the Cricoteka (Centre for the Art and Documentation of Tadeusz Kantor), Krakow, Poland. In: Kantor in Cardiff (Wales, UK, 1976) – the impact on a young theatre maker: subsequent performance amidst detritus, clutter and errant objects., Cricoteka (Centre for the Art and Documentation of Tadeusz Kantor), Krakow, Poland.

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Abstract / Summary

Richard Gough, Artistic Director of the Centre for Performance Research, Editor of the bi-monthly Journal Performance Research, Professor of Theatre & Performance at Falmouth University and this year’s recipient of the Stanislaw Witkacy Prize, talks about the impact Tadeusz Kantor and the Cricot 2 made on him as he began his professional career in experimental theatre and his subsequent 40 year obsession with ‘bad props’, forlorn objects, ghostly presence and the haunting of the recycled.

In 1976, due to fortuitous opportunity, Kantor and Cricot 2 presented Dead Class in Cardiff, Wales, UK. This was in between their much-acclaimed visit to Edinburgh and their premiere in London. Kantor’s work was unknown in Wales except to one man and Cricot 2 came to Cardiff due to several chance encounters in Persepolis, Iran. This serendipitous programming of the Dead Class in Cardiff will be explained but most of all the formative impact, series of influences and life-long resonance it had on a ‘novice’ theatre maker will be explored.

In an extensive lecture/performance Gough gave entitled Thirty Objects to aid a Forgetting he confided the following:

“I was drawn to objects that seemed to emerge into daylight from dusty attics, mouldy sheds, damp garages and most of all, junk shops. I liked the patina, the sense of use and purpose, the scars and markings of an object well used, of functionality and distress; objects abandoned, discarded, rejected and forlorn. Struggling to assimilate Grotowski, Artaud and Brook the writings and work of Duchamp, Magritte and Kantor perhaps held greater force. I liked to find objects, I liked found objects, I liked to find the action that went with the object and defined the found; I was inspired to liberate them from their moribund existence.”

This performative and highly illustrated talk will further explore objects, desire, memory, and theatre.

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