Premiering at London’s Royal Court Theatre in 1982, Caryl Churchill’s Top Girls adopted a non-linear structure that does not unravel tensions until the end of the play in order to argue against a feminism that re-imagines women as patriarchs, alternatively calling for a more collective movement. In her script, Churchill argues a philosophy as an oppositional force and is thus making the argument of her performance a prescription or perhaps even a “threat” as asserted by Michelene Wandor.

“Of course the woman playwright does not personally stand up and make a speech in her own voice, putting her own views and convictions, but she engages with something which is unconsciously felt as a far greater threat: she provides a text and meanings which others must follow. In her own voice, refracted through the dialogue and structure of the play, she communicates to her audience. She also controls the voice of others. She gives the performers words they must speak.” (Wandor 86)

Seen as a threat, theatre of opposition in my view accomplishes very little and could be considered fighting fire with fire. While this theatre of opposition may be “in-your-face”, it operates primarily off of spectacle and does not necessarily function properly in a diverse society’s space. Alternatively, I would stage Act Three of Caryl Churchill’s Top Girls beyond a feminist critique as a vehicle for social change in a democratic society.

In my conception of space for the staging of this particular scene in Top Girls I adopt the view of David Osipovich that “a theatrical performance is a particular kind of interaction between performers and observers (actors and audience members) in a shared physical space”. Thus, my desire is to transcend the ontological primacy of the script written by Churchill in order to stage the musical as what I will term a “flashmob theatre”. My intention in the construction of this space is to digress from the theatrical performance as interpretation, referred to by Osipovich as “the literary theory of theatrical performance”, and towards theatre that is not only “in-your-face” but also “in-your-space”—an “in-your-face-and-space” theatre.

The premise of a flashmob is the sudden assemblage of a group of people in a public space to perform an act and then disperse. Flashmobs can be dances, musical protests, or even a suspension of reality.

Flashmobs become truly both “in-your-face” and “in-your-space” by toying with the ideas of performativity and what Osipovich argues are the very essentials of theatrical performance.

“…theatrical performances cannot exist without (1) at lease one performer and at least one observer in the same space and at the same time, (2) a pretense on the part of the performer that the interaction between performer and observer is somehow other than what it actually is, and (3) an awareness on the part of the observer that the pretense is occurring.” (Osipovich 465)

The flashmob is intended to operate almost entirely sans pretense. As such, performers do not necessarily know much of anything about their audience and fellow performers nor how they will react. Perhaps the audience, caught off guard, will merely see rather than observe; ‘observe’ denotes registering the act as in any way significant whereas ‘see’ denotes that which is merely visually discerned (hence the etymological and grammatical difference between ‘seen’ and ‘scene’). Alternatively, the audience may even respond by joining in the act thus blurring the line between performer and observer. For many flashmob performers, particularly engaging in some sort of a more political flashmob, the interaction between performer and observer in both real time and real space is by necessity nothing other than what is and in fact quite real as an act of dissent or protest. What makes the flashmob ultimately fit within the realm of what Osipovich argues is a theatrical performance is that “an awareness on the part of the observer of the pretense”, or for the flashmob the pretense of no pretensions, does indeed occur when the audience discerns the act as being performed. Yet, flashmob performers are not merely performers in the sense that “all the world is a stage” precisely because of this antithetical pretense of no pretensions. In the absence of pretension, the rhetoric of the theatrical performance I have chosen to stage will operate as a statement rather than assertion. In so doing, my belief is that in a truly democratic society we make political statements, fashion statements, artistic statements—rather that artistic assertions, fashion assertions, or political assertions. Staging the act in this way I create a work of Rhetoric, understood as the art of effectual discourse, rather than a work of rhetoric, understood as bombastic display of dictation. In their observation or participation or even lack thereof, the audience become active participants in the performers’ discourse instead of complacent consumers. The work therefore fashions a truly democratic society.

In the re-working of this scene there is intentionally little to do with what makes up the script of Act Three of Top Girls because I am producing a new type of theatre, “In-Your-Face-and-Space”, rather than a performative interpretation. The premise of this type of theatre I have created imagines audience, performer and producer completely equal in the creative process and thus in a democratic space. In a democratic space the audience and performers exercise just as much productive freedom in the discourse as the producer’s script. Imagining Act Three of Top Girls in this way, the role of the script becomes quite peculiar. How might this flashmob theatrical performance be any different than improvisational theatre? To address this concern I would choose to situate the performers as reality-actors that can perform on their own as they wish and even in direct response to audience. Therefore, similar to early Shakespearian theatre, each reality-actor has their role from the script and can choose to employ, expand or deviate from the script. However, “In-Your-Face-and-Space” theatrical performance places the “performers” in the same space as “observers” who can blur the boundaries of audience and perform amongst the reality-actors. Performing amongst the reality-actors, the audience members have not, however, totally transgressed from audience to performer, as they are merely acting in the sense that (again) “all the world is a stage”. The actual place this space might be constructed in would be, like flash mobs, in a public space in which the performers and audience act among each other. While the script supposes the act takes place within a home in such a way that actors come and go both in and out of the home as well as in and out of the home as a whole. I would therefore choose to create a public parallel to the home in a tube station. The tube station would provide the type of space that allows audience and performer a public space in which they might leave the immediate space of the underground station or remove themselves completely by taking the tube to another station and thus another space.

Just as the space of this production has been constructed as a democratic space, so too is the casting. Performers are not assigned nor may they prescribe gender, class, culture or age. The performers must remain completely neutral. As such, the arguments made by these characters as human beings and take on the form of broader philosophical arguments instead of merely political critiques. To technically accomplish this neutrality all performers would be dressed in hooded cloaks that concealed facial features. The cloaks would be bright nylon material so as to disable the audience from making any sense of the performers’ cloaks. These cloaks would conceal any visible indication of gender, class, or culture. Concealed beneath the cloaks would be shoes custom made for each performer to be of the same height of the tallest performer, further concealing the aforementioned as well as age. To complete each performer’s neutrality all speech would be filtered through an auto-tune device (that would also bleep out names and any indicators of relation such as “Auntie”) that would allow the performers to convey emotion still without compromising their neutrality.

The audience, having not been cast neutral, allows the discourse of the scene to move beyond philosophical quandary. Because of this crucial role of the audience to engage with the drama the same sort of blurring of performance that occurs in traditional flashmobs in which the audience may not be exactly sure the significance of what is going on and will thus react among the performers or, as particularly the case with musical dance flash mobs, be encouraged to simply take part in the performance. This then poses the greatest technical challenge to the performance: how do we engage the audience on a stage equal to the producers and performers? This proves to be a particularly difficult challenge in an urban underground station in which the public performs according to social standard to mind one’s own business and remain relatively anonymous. My solution to this would be for the performer to directly address individuals of the audience, acknowledging their presence and extending the invitation to participate in the discourse. Perhaps holding up queues or obstructing the functioning of the underground lines could even provoke this. Neutrality would again not be compromised here, as the cloak would be tailored such that the performers had very little visibility thus disabling them to discern any markers of identity of the audience. If the audience were to decide to directly engage with the performers, all of the identity the performers disguise would be juxtaposed against audience. How certain individuals “act” in this shared space would be an integral part of the performance. Perhaps a man may support, or a feminist protest, what would otherwise be a feminist.

The intentional ambiguity, uncertainty and lack of pretension (aside from that of not having any pretenses) create a flashmob theatrical performance that incorporates what Osipovich refers to as “theatrical co-presence” that makes a statement by creating “an alternative reality out of their co-presence” (Osipovich 469). The stakes of the scene are in turn raised as what is “real” and “performance” becomes increasingly more complex and the direction of action in the scene unknown. Perhaps the performance will be shut down or maybe the performance will be prolonged. The statement produced by this performance is thus truly democratic for all parties involved and becomes a statement about not only the themes explored in Caryl Churchill’s script but also a statement on democracy.