Raising the stakes of live performance

Is it a bit odd that watching someone opening a champagne bottle in Simon Stephens’ Wastwater at the Royal Court last weekend was one of the tensest moments I’ve witnessed on stage? It wasn’t because the man doing it was bad and it all went horribly wrong, it was because it could all so easily have gone horribly wrong. It’s one of those moments in the theatre when your awareness of its liveness becomes so heightened it’s almost unbearable – and it’s great, isn’t it?

It’s difficult because, when you’re a performer, having to do something that can’t really be rehearsed to perfection is possibly one of the most terrifying things. I directed a play once that required the cooking of food, on a gas stove, on stage. I was terrified, he was terrified and the audience was probably terrified. There was so much at stake in that moment; in fact, I think we can go as far to say that the whole performance was at stake. If the gas had run out, if the stove or the lighter had failed to co-operate then the illusion would have been ruined. But when it worked, and luckily it always did, then the illusion was made that much better.

I say illusion, and yet I know that isn’t quite the correct word to use. Because we are always aware what we are watching is a performance and not real life, we aren’t tricked. In fact most of us are judging the thing on the very qualities that make it a performance. Even when we do get wholly immersed into the world on stage, there will always be a rustling/coughing audience member to pull us back out. So what is it that makes a champagne opening/gas stove lighting moment so special?

It’s the unpredictability, it’s the normality, it’s the sudden awareness that there is a real functioning object before you. But above all that, it’s the knowledge that this is happening in real time. That these events playing out in front of you are inhabiting the same time as you sat in the audience watching, that this is an entirely unrepeatable moment. If ever there was an argument for the aura of a work of theatre, my champagne moment may well be it.