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The Hindu : Her initial training as a set designer may have taught Louise Ann Wilson the art of modelling spaces around ideas and themes. In the years since, however, her passion and skill have tended in the opposite direction: creating theatre using the energies of pre-existing spaces.

For Louise, a site-specific theatre practitioner who has been working on a soon-to-be staged production in Bangalore by Little Jasmine Theatre, every space has its own story to be told. “It’s about scratching beneath the surface to find the hidden depths of a space. When you dig deep enough, you find a rich, full essence. Each place has its own language, its own voice, and it becomes another character, a collaborator in the piece,” says the designer who co-founded Wilson+Wilson in 1997.

Of course, the definition of site varies andWilson+Wilson’s projects have ranged from an exploration of two 19th century terraced houses in Huddersfield to a four-mile journey through the Mulgrave Woods on the Yorkshire coastline, to a bus-tram-and-foot journey through the city of Sheffield. “‘Mapping The Edge’ encompassed the city of Sheffield and the audience was often unsure of what was real and what was part of the piece,” says Louise, explaining that some of the best moments of the play occurred when the city’s inhabitants interacted with the piece in unintended ways, such as when two punks happened to cross paths with two actors dressed as World War II soldiers, creating a montage for the audience.

Whatever the dimensions of the site, the focus of site-specific theatre always stays on the contiguous relationship between actors, audience and the space. “If you have a seated audience, they can easily switch off. There is a particular relationship barrier between actors and audience in any kind of stage and auditorium setup. But here, the audience occupy the same space, they can touch the actors, hear them breathe.”

Moreover, site-specific theatre also attracts audiences…More