In considering the role of photography in performance and in developing my own piece of site-specific work informed by the mediation of photography between subject and site, the photographic darkroom has become a space and an image of great interest. My site-specific performance brings the audience into the photographer’s darkroom, where they are asked to engage and interact with the processes and mechanics of the setting, and consider the way in which the development and subsequent forgetting of a photograph could be seen as an extended metaphor for the construction and gradual disuse of the Grandstand site. The photographic darkroom, for me, has become a space which is central to my performance. Therefore, I was interested to conduct research into other contemporary and (ideally) performance-based impressions of the photographic darkroom, which might prove useful in the continued development of my site-specific performance.

The image of the darkroom appears to be a readily-used one. My research into performances which engaged with the idea of the photographic darkroom led me to understand the varying understandings of the darkroom’s function and use within a wider theatrical context, and has led me to identify four different ways in which the darkroom is used within theatrical art:

1. The darkroom as a performance setting – the darkroom in its literal sense and form;
2. The ‘dark room’ – a place of little or no light, or a place of dark, gothic potential;
3. The darkroom as a catalyst space of creative potential and experimentation; and,
4. The darkroom as a static archival space.

Considering the research I have conducted in the course of writing this article, the performance artworks I have considered can roughly be filed into one of the four above categories.

Many performance works which concern themselves with photography and the photographic form use the darkroom as a ready-made image, setting narratives about photography within the darkroom to manage expectations and to play on the ever-present thematic link between the two. Martha Jurksaitis locates her performance Revelation in a Dark Room as “situated in a photographic darkroom” (Jurksaitis, 2012), with the image of the red light used as a shorthand for ‘photography’ as a theme but also as a lighting technique: “The audience were invited in while the red darkroom safelight was on, but once they were all in and the door closed, the light went off and the piece began in pitch blackness.” (Jurksaitis, 2012). Metro-Boulot-Dodo’s 2002-3 production, Blownup, focusses on the narrative between photographer and muse, inviting the audience to “enter the darkroom as [they] expose the very private world of photography” (Metro-Boulot-Dodo, n.d.). Similarly to Jurksaitis, the company present the darkroom as many would expect to see it, bathed in a red light or lit by camera flash (Metro-Boulot-Dodo, 2008). The performance also suggests the surrounding scientific narrative of the darkroom space, playing on the dualistic photographic and narratological meetings of the word ‘development’ in marketing material: “In the dark room developments occur” (BBC Lincolnshire, 2002); a “chemical soaked fusion” (Metro-Boulot-Dodo, n.d.).

The darkroom is often used in its literal sense: a ‘dark room’, a space with little or no natural or artificial light, and the distinction that this impression engages with, between light and darkness, often leads a darkly gothic surrounding narrative. The Crispin Spaeth Dance Group’s performance, Dark Room, is performed “in a lightless room for a small audience equipped with night vision apparatus” (Novek, 2006), and the night-vision goggles – an almost exclusively militaristic gadget – introduce an element of violence into the concept of the darkened space. The Dark Room, by the Black Swan State Theatre Company and written by Angela Betzien, aligns the title with the “dark and dangerous territory” (Black Swan State Theatre Company, 2009) of the play’s setting, and the space itself appears to disturbingly isolate and separate the characters and their stories, even when in close proximity to one another: “the three narratives end up in the same room, all in their own time and space” (Locke, 2009). The claustrophobia and lightlessness of the darkroom is emphasised to varying effect, and the image of the darkroom is used to infer gothic ideas of blackness, darkness or isolation.

Within the wider theatre industry, the darkroom space is often emphasised as one of creative potential and experimentation, and as a catalyst for creative development. Body Narrative’s Collective’s choreographer, Julia Carr, identifies how “a dark room to her was always a ‘creative place for imagination’ – much like a theatre” (Spontaneous, 2013). The wide number of open-space programmes named ‘Dark Room’, which provide a stage for new and untested material, are a testament to the understanding within the theatrical world of the darkroom as a space for breakthrough and development. Battersea Arts Centre’s The Darkroom is “a retreat/laboratory environment” (Jubb, n.d.) within “a unique development programme for devising theatre companies” (Jubb, n.d.). Similarly, The Dark Room at the Cleveland Public Theatre is marketed as “a venue to workshop plays, novels, poems, or any other written work in a supportive, yet critical environment” (Cleveland Public Theatre, 2014) and as “a place where writers take center [sic] stage and their work has a chance to grow” (Cleveland Public Theatre, 2014). The idea of a “safe space for artists from all different fields, all different genres, all different styles” (New Light Theatre Project, 2013) is common to many programmes presenting new work across the world, as is the idea of work “developed in the Darkroom” (New Light Theatre Project, 2013). Within Body Narratives Collective’s work Dark Room: The Realm of Symbols, Science and Memories, the theatre black box and the dark room are aligned as “blank canvasses and magic is created, light is added” (Sumar, 2013), in which the theatre is used as “photographic studio and dark room to reveal the process of creating photographic images as a performance medium” (Roundhouse, n.d.). Martha Jurksaitis’ work also touches on the idea of creative potential in noting that “the French word for film developer is ‘revelateur’, which means something that reveals” (Jurksaitis, 2012), suggesting the darkroom’s potentiality to reveal ideas or breakthroughs to the creator.

Finally, the idea of the darkroom as a space almost frozen in time or held in stasis is another that some pieces of contemporary performance confront. Ellen Carr’s The Darkroom is the story of “an old man whose only way of remembering things is to write them down and order them in his shed, the darkroom” (Hutton, 2012 – quotation reformatted), in which the darkroom becomes an archival space of memory outside the realm of time. Similarly, Body Narratives Collective approaches the darkroom as a temporally static space, asking the audience: “what if there was no beginning and no end; no linear progression through time.” (Body Narratives Collective, 2013). It approaches performance like a photograph, foregoing ideas of linear narrative and focussing on the static and the captured, and going so far to create photographs as part of their performance: “These long exposure photographs reveal the traces that remain from light dance pathways. Is this how you remember the dance? Is this what you saw?” (Body Narratives Collective, 2012).

Within contemporary theatre, the image of the darkroom stands for many interlinked but distinct ideas. Ideas of darkness, gothic potential, creative potential, experimentation, catalyst, archival and staticness are all bound up within the familiar, red-tinted aesthetic of the photographer’s hideaway. The widespread use of the darkroom as an image and title within theatre betrays a strongly-rooted thematic link between the theatre space and the photography space, between the theatre and the darkroom. Performance and photography share a number of themes which cannot be dismissed as entirely disaffective of one another. Creative forms influence and inform one another, and the theatre-photography link is no different. The black box theatre is the actor’s darkroom, and the photographic lab is the photographer’s stage.

 

Performances cited

Black Swan State Theatre Company/Angela Betzien: The Dark Room (2009)

Body Narratives Collective: Dark Room (2012-13)

Crispin Spaeth Dance Group: Dark Room (2006)

Martha Jurksaitis: Revelation in a Dark Room (2012)

Metro-Boulot-Dodo: Blownup (2002-3)

William Bock: Dark Room (2013)

 

References

BBC Lincolnshire (2002) BBC – Lincolnshire Stage – On stage. [online] Lincoln: BBC. Available from: http://www.bbc.co.uk/lincolnshire/stage/theatre_whats_on.shtml [Accessed 22 March 2014].

Black Swan State Theatre Company (2009) The Dark Room by Angela Betzien. [online] Perth, Australia: Black Swan State Theatre Company. Available from: https://www.bsstc.com.au/about/archive/2009/the-dark-room/ [Accessed 23 March 2014].

Body Narratives Collective (2013) Performance Projects. [online] Vancouver, Canada: Body Narratives Collective. Available from: http://bodynarrativescollective.wordpress.com/projects/ [Accessed 22 March 2014].

Body Narratives Collective (2012) Dark Room (Preview). [online video] Available from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enxD4TkBXHU [Accessed 22 March 2014].

Body Narratives Collective (2013) Dark Room Promo Sept 2013. [online video] Available from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BvK3tMwsEDg [ Accessed 22 March 2014].

Body Narratives Collective [Production still from Dark Room: The Realm of Symbols, Science and Memories] 2013 [image online] Available from: http://vanvantage.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Light-Dance-2.jpg. [Accessed 24 March 2014].

Cleveland Public Theatre (2014) The Dark Room. [online] Cleveland, U.S.A.: Cleveland Public Theatre. Available from: http://www.cptonline.org/theater-show.php?id=44 [Accessed 23 March 2014].

Hutton, D. (2012) Theatre Reviews: “The Darkroom” by Ellen Carr. [online] Available from: http://dan-hutton.co.uk/2012/08/18/the-darkroom-by-ellen-carr/ [Accessed 23 March 2014].

Jubb, D. (n.d.) What is the Darkroom? [online] London: Battersea Arts Centre. Available from: http://www.darkroomtheatre.com/What-is-Darkroom/ [Accessed 22 March 2014].

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Locke, A. (2009) Review: The Dark Room | Black Swan State Theatre Company. [online] Perth, Australia: Australian Stage. Available from: http://www.australianstage.com.au/reviews/perth/the-dark-room–black-swan-state-theatre-company-2518.html [Accessed 23 March 2014].

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Metro-Boulot-Dodo [Production still from Blownup] n.d. [image online] Available from: http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5207/5222937999_2e0db20c78.jpg. [Accessed 22 March 2014].

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Spontaneous, C. (2013) A Union of Disciplines and Minds: The Body Narratives Collective and Their Upcoming Production, Dark Room. [online] Vancouver, Canada: Vandocument. Available from: http://vandocument.com/2013/11/a-union-of-disciplines-and-minds-the-body-narratives-collective-and-their-upcoming-production-dark-room/ [Accessed 22 March 2014].

Sumar, F. (2013) E=MC2 IN THE DARK ROOM. [online] Vancouver, Canada: Roundhouse Community Arts & Recreation Centre. Available from: http://roundhouse.ca/emc2-dark-room/ [Accessed 22 March 2014].