oracular theatre — SophieChapman

Oracular Theatre

Oracular Theatre was an immersive installation set in the ‘Cool Zone’ of 2020. A series of variable stages situated in a disused high street TSB bank and a roleplay psychodrama of sorts. Minimal props, projections, stories and sound reflected and refracted through the maze-like building amongst office debris, fading fluorescent lights and ceiling mould.

It was a series of physical props, moving image works and a role play method/kit ‘low-fi sci-fi’ which has 8 storylines and atmospheres, 16 characters, a series of video call backdrops and a workshop process for players/participants without any experience of either improv or role play.

“We do not realize the power we have to become artists and actors in our own right, and we allow others to define out worlds for us. When properly utilized, games have the potential to shock an audience out of this mindset.”

— Michaela Joffe, from Videogames of the Oppressed

Oracular Theatre is possibly best likened to a puzzle game i.e. a set of parameters and an invitation tosuspend a certain amount of reality to play. Informed by Live Action Role Play, improvisation and absurdist theatre it can both invite an audience or player into physical or virtual space provoking the social imaginary through vernacular co-storytelling - inviting divergent, embodied takes in response to the material - with sometimes uncanny, sometimes meta, sometimes poignant connections to the present.

“Side trips and reversals are precisely what minds stuck in forward gear most need”

— Ursula K. Le Guin,
in The Wanderer

The ‘oracular’ refers to something obscure, prophetic or prognostic, cryptic or puzzling — a kind of anticipatory vision that may hold warning, insight or conjecture. This work developed in the wake of the surreal, tumultuous and tragic now tangles visual phenomena, atmospheric clues and elements of narrative from everyday life with others which are far more speculative but possibly located in our not too distant futures.

The 2m rule, bunkers for the super rich, hotels repurposed as shelters, essential work/ers, 50% unemployment, Amazon warehouses designed to ‘disappear’ into the landscape or drones that can tell what you're watching on Netflix, Menwith Hill’s polygons gathering secret intelligence from the sky or warnings in theme parks to ‘scream inside your hearts’ to avoid the spread of germs… the list is constantly growing and evolving...

Oracular Theatre is both a fictional and real occupation of the present, with others.

An embodied mode of storytelling
that embraces happenstance and utilises abstracted forms relative to the complex systems that define political reality.

Play as a method of critique.

With thanks to:
Craven Arts (Skipton), Arts Council England and Craven Council. Fresh Perspective (workshop hosts) and Low-Fi Sci-Fi players. Samra Mayanja (voice acting) and Andrew Walker (3D CGI). Bella Milroy (closed captions) and Kieran Ryan (voice narration of audio descriptions) Images by: Jules Lister.

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