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What is Visual Theatre? Movement is the central organizing principle in visual theatre. Performers communicate information, relationships and emotions primarily through movement such as traditional mime, various forms of dance, sign language, gesture, or the circus arts. Other visual theatre choices include puppetry and masks. Visual theatre is not necessarily silent or non-verbal. It may contain spoken word, music, or other sound. It may also contain multimedia elements such as video or projections. However, the essential meaning of any visual theatre piece transpires through its visual vernacular. Other reflections on physical and visual theatre. Physical theatre (or living theatre) exists at the intersection
of the performing arts. It draws on traditions that are universal
and blends techniques, styles and themes across a spectrum of
theatre, movement, and gestural art. Theatre is
a physical and visual medium, but the play's not always the thing.
There is a strand of theatre - the physical and the visual -
that speaks a completely different language from the traditional
well made play and spans theatre, puppetry, dance and visual
arts. This work uses the language of gesture, an area of theatre
that in the past was dubbed mime and thought of as entirely silent.
Nowadays such pieces frequently include spoken text, but the
body speaks as eloquently as the voice, and one of the great
strengths of this form is that it can often mine the emotions
that fall in the silences between words. Much of this work is
devised not scripted, and although many of the UK companies working
in this area have been influenced by European traditions, increasing
numbers of young companies are developing their own distinct
and excitingly high voltage styles. (This) work is about taking risks, aesthetically and physically,
about breaking down the barriers between dance, theatre and personal
politics and, above all, communicating ideas and feelings clearly
and unpretentiously. It is determined to be radical yet accessible,
and to take its work to as wide an audience as possible… The
focus of the creative approach is on reinvesting dance with meaning,
particularly where this has been lost through formalized techniques… (The)
work inherently questions the traditional aesthetics and forms
which pervade both modern and classical dance, and attempts to
push beyond the values they reflect to enable discussion of wider
and more complex issues.
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