It always begins with a question. A provocation.
Q: Can we change the way we make theatre in the future?
A: Standby….
Offstage by Emergency Shelter—the training and research platform of Emergency Stairs—is a long-term research and experimental project. It seeks to understand, engage in dialogue with, and challenge the systems under which we make art. In Offstage 1.0, Emergency Shelter reimagined offstage roles as characters. In Offstage 2.0, the entire creation process was opened up to our audiences and the performance was staged behind closed doors, with no audience.
In Offstage 3.0, we will continue to question the value of theatre.
The value of theatre tends to be measured by models that are: quantitative instead of qualitative, product-centric instead of process-centric, short-term instead of long-term, and market-oriented instead of focusing on artistic development. However, we believe that this is unsatisfactory since the long-term process of artistic development is not for an absolute quantitative end.
Let’s question Stage on the stage, and provoke Theatre in the theatre.