Lessons learnt in other people's classrooms

Abstract

Third Angel was a theatre company born out of interdisciplinary practice, and created by theatre graduates Rachael Walton and myself, who then trained as teacher and film-maker, respectively. Without identifying it as interdisciplinary, what we were interested in from the outset was collaboration. Drawing on the expertise and experience of a varied group of practitioners, our stated aim was to make something none of us would have made on our own. Something more than the sum of its parts. Our unstated (at the time) aim was to demonstrate that theatre was more than plays. We were interested in cross-art form work – ‘multi-media’ was the in phrase at the time; when an idea reminded us of a film or novel, it seemed worth pursuing; if it reminded us of a piece of theatre we had seen, it would often get forgotten about. This chapter reflects on two decades of collaboration between Third Angel and a number of scientists and specialists from other disciplines. These collaborations produced projects in theatre, live art, film, video, and participation, which were presented throughout the UK and internationally. We did not specifically set out to make interdisciplinary work: we followed our curiosity and discovered that ethos as we travelled. We were believers in the value of serendipity in a devising process, and recognised that we did not know what we did not know. We were always interested in collaborating with people with different approaches, born out of different experiences to our own. When we wanted to learn more about a subject, we approached people who knew more than us and, always fascinated by other people’s workshops and studios, we asked if we could go and visit them in the place they worked. We began to value spending time, literally and metaphorically, in other people’s classrooms