STREET ARTISTS IN EUROPE - Fondazione Fitzcarraldo

Street Artists in Europe
And that is where the transformation comes in: the aim is not to portray public or social reality,
even if to challenge it, or to present a different use from the ‘subjects’ of the creative process.
Thus the audience might be shown not a different reality, but a different view of reality that is
hidden or not yet readable.
4. Specific forms of writing
Dramatic art, staging, performance, writing … What terms can be used to describe the work of
the street artist without having to fall back on traditional theatre? The word ‘writing’ seems
inappropriate since it clearly comes from the theatre and its relationship with the text. According
to Philippe Chaudoir, the term writing will be used in reference to a dominant model, the
conventional theatre model. In fact, it should be made clear that this is scenographic writing.
Street theatre does not usually involve writing in the sense of meaningful words and text written
before the work is staged. The writing entails manipulating the space, dialogue with the urban
setting, body language, etc. The real work companies do on actors and the creation of characters
and history must not be overlooked. How can that work be reconciled with the absence of a
text?
Street theatre, because of its close relationship with the public, only exists at the moment it is
being performed and actors must to some extent be able to improvise in order to respond to any
situation. Thus meaning is conveyed not just by text but through a whole range of expression.
‘Writing’ must be understood in its broad sense: bodies, postures, gestures, space, images and
sounds as well as words. Producing street theatre involves multimedia writing (which can be
expressed through various channels of communication: voice, sound and gesture). In situ, street
theatre also has to be written for the urban setting, the street or square where it is to be
performed. It must be set in a 360-degree landscape that is largely created by the performance
itself. Some people prefer the term ‘dramatic art’, which embraces these and other aspects 103 .
Alongside the various forms of street art they offer and their special relationship with the public,
street arts practitioners have built up a whole range of skills and know-how previously
unexplored or unused in live shows. In the early years, creators often acquired new skills in an
attempt to escape from the conventional, from performance, from the ‘straitjacket’ and their
financial constraints. Little by little, certain teams built up a stock of knowledge acquired from
their continuous study of:
• urban spaces as public space;
• the relationship with various audiences, including those who were not part of
mainstream culture;
• non-hierarchical use of borrowings from the various forms of live performance;
• mixed languages and variety of writing;
• artistic choices expressed in ‘unexpected juxtapositions’ and ‘unusual combinations’;
• different strategies for different places, audiences, projects 104 .
103 Gonon, Anne, op. cit.
104 Dapporto, Elena, Aims analysed in Ressources et limites dans une perspective de développement, Matisse –
UMR CNRS 8595, Université de Paris 1, January 2000.
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PE 375.307