Theatre of the Unimpressed by Jordan Tannahill (review)

I’m embarrassed to confess that there are a disproportionately high number of days when I wonder why I study an art form that has disappointed me more times than it’s inspired me. It wasn’t Hamlet’s ghost or Nora’s slamming of the door that hooked me into becoming a performance artist-scholar, but rather, it was the smeared clown makeup of Forced Entertainment and Annie Sprinkle’s spectacular cervix. Forced Entertainment’s penchant for a theatrical representation in a perpetual state of imperfection (often on the verge of collapse) motivated me to stop trying to mask my stage fright and instead rebel against the Darwinian audition process in my undergraduate program by underscoring my trembling limbs and shaky vocals. The ingenuity of Annie Sprinkle to transform her role as a porn star into a performance artist inspired me to recast my own world-weary body and its scars into a resource for live performance. According to Jordan Tannahill’s Theatre of the Unimpressed, it is performances like hers that embrace risk and failure and challenge the status quo that will be instrumental in keeping English-language theatre vital.

Theatre of the Unimpressed came out of Tannahill’s disenchantment with theatre and the growing apathy felt by many of his peers towards the industry. He was driven by a desire to research the factors responsible for making much contemporary live performance boring and to come up with an inventory of necessary ingredients that breathe vitality into performance. The first few chapters of the text are styled like a rant, albeit a sanguine and humorous one, peppered with Tannahill’s sassy imagery. Part of his research was comprised of interviews with one hundred individuals, including theatre critics and practitioners, arts patrons, and people who have never felt the desire to frequent the theatre. Admitting that the findings of his informal poll could never be considered conclusive or objective, Tannahill instead uses this anecdotal evidence as a way to begin contemplating what he calls English-language theatre’s “crisis of the mundane.” Referring to the banal staging of Museum Theatre as “the killing and stuffing of once-mighty plays into theatrical taxidermy,” Tannahill casts blame for this theatre of the unimpressed on the industry’s attachment towards the well-made play, its obsession with perfection and polish, and its refraining from risk and upending mainstream expectations.

Subsequent chapters outline experimental performance examples drawn from Tannahill’s observations, which he argues may be a cure for theatre’s current state of purgatory. To support his thesis, Tannahill offers colorful descriptions of the “dark-horse theatre” he promotes. Some of the exemplars are mined from projects that he collaborated on with a range of likeminded peers from the close-knit Canadian experimental theatre community to which he belongs. Others are events he has experienced as an audience member that include recognized British and European companies, such as Forced Entertainment, Gob Squad, and Ontroerend Goed. Despite his biting critique leveled towards the canonical and well-made plays, Tannahill hasn’t given up on their efficacious potential, nor is he suggesting that they be abolished from theatre programming. Rather, he offers models of inventive productions of classics like Death of a Salesman, that show that even a well-made play and classic can be revitialized if it incorporates more complexity, nuance, and contemporary context. Accordingly, a vital theatre experience encompasses “impulse and mystery in place of reason and structure” and has a liveliness that invites the possibility of transcendence.

Bold choices that subvert the unexpected, that reveal new meanings and provoke questions are among the hallmarks of what Tannahill refers to as the Theatre of Failure, an aesthetic he describes in more detail near the conclusion of the book. Performances that mine “the spectre of failure as a primary aesthetic and conceptual departure point” are increasingly becoming a trendy form in twenty-first century experimental performance. Tannahill’s understanding of the Theatre of Failure is credited to scholars such as Sara Jane Bailes and Jack...