Saurus invades the Greenwich and Docklands Festival last month.
Theatre, it is often suggested, can be a transformative experience. But if it takes place behind closed doors and requires a ticket for entry, its transforming possibilities are limited to those with the money - and confidence - to gain entry. However welcoming theatres might try to be, and however many access schemes they put in place, the door to the theatre that looks like an entrance to some will feel like an intimidating barrier to others.
But when theatre isn't hidden away out of sight and out of mind, and instead spills out on to the streets, it can be truly transformative - not just making us feel differently about ourselves, but also about the everyday landscape we inhabit. Public spaces - particularly in the city - seldom feel genuinely public. Dawdle in the wrong place and you suddenly find yourself being eyed suspiciously and moved on. When Lone Twin recently created Spiral in the Barbican estate, they had barely set out on their weeklong journey before they were stopped by the police, who considered that two men armed with a tool kit and a wonky table must be up to no good. It took Lone Twin some time to persuade the police that they were neither burglars nor planning to set up a stall and sell things, but artists. It was not a concept familiar to the coppers.
The tradition of hiding theatre away behind closed doors is one that only stretches back 400 years or so, which is why I love the increasing determination to stake a claim to public spaces. I'm not thinking here of the yearly glut of dull Shakespeare in rain-sodden parks, but more the kind of performances that recently took place in Canary Wharf as part of the Greenwich and Docklands Festival. There is something rather wonderful about seeing a space that is normally the preserve of men in suits being invaded by families, just as there was something subversive about that Elephant dancing down the Mall and allowing us to imagine a London without cars and with streets full of carnival. Events such as Dancing City reclaim urban space for us and restore an intimacy in our relationship with the city.
Theatre on the streets is no longer a lone juggler in a windy shopping mall, something to be glanced at on the way to make your next purchase. The Streets of Brighton regularly attracts bigger audiences than the rest of the Brighton Festival events put together. In a couple of weeks, the National Theatre starts its annual outdoor season (an excellent programme this year); later in the summer, the Scoop begins its brilliant season of free open-air theatre (despite being hit by Grants for the Arts cuts); then there is the Stockton International Riverside Festival to look forward to, although sadly I never make it there because of Edinburgh.
What characterises all this work - which varies in scale enormously - is that it is outside and entirely free. It makes a political statement by merely being there. It reminds us that the streets belong to us and that we can play and dream in them as well as work and shop. What's more, it is the toughest audience that any theatre-maker will ever face. With no walls and no exit door to negotiate, audiences can simply get up and leave whenever they like, and they will do so as soon as the performance ceases to hold their attention. Looked at from this point of view, it makes me wonder whether maybe the walls of theatre buildings are not designed to keep the riff-raff out, but are a cunning plot to keep audiences locked in, docile and sitting quietly in their seats.
