When you sit down in readiness to watch a piece of epic theatre, the air in the room feels different. One or two hour plays leave you space to live your life, but once you’ve committed to five, six or 10 hours on the trot, there is little else you can do that day but be in the theatre.
I’ve always found a sense of comradeship in the moments before these shows begin: we’re all in this for the long haul so it better be worth it.
It frequently is. Taking on the task of creating theatre that stretches through the better part of a day is no mean feat.The stakes are high and artists want to get it right. Some of my favourite theatre experiences have been watching these epic shows where everything else melts away.
It was in the steadily building delusion of Nature Theatre of Oklahoma’s Life & Times that I saw the first four parts and 10 hours of what will eventually be a 10-part, 24-hour work. Standing for an ovation at the end, we looked at the faces of artists who clearly just wanted to go home and sleep.
It was watching Angels in America at Belvoir that made me realise playwright Tony Kushner wrote each of his six acts slightly too short to maintain the dramatic tension. We were aching for each interval to end to get back into the theatre.
And it was seeing Ivo van Hove’s six-hour, interval-less Roman Tragedies at Adelaide festival that made it impossible to imagine these Shakespearean plays staged outside a continuous trilogy – or in any language other than Dutch.
Endurance performance can take on a certain mythology. I haven’t seen Elevator Repair Service’s eight-hour Gatz or Robert Lepage’s nine-hour Lipsynch, but I can repeat the breathless reviews of excitement I’ve heard about them, and the searing pans from those who went and found them overblown.
Epic theatre is sometimes seen as a gimmick but the pressure it puts on artists means it’s rarely that simple. On one level, the stories can be bigger and take us to places shorter plays cannot. At their best though, these shows can also be an exploration of time, of what it means to share space, and of the unique demands theatre puts on a performer’s body and mind.
In Melbourne in 2013, I saw Taylor Mac perform 90 minutes of what will eventually become his epic work A 24-Decade History of Popular Music. Mac has now started showing three-hour versions of the work ahead of the day-long show next year. An artist figuring out his craft and how best to perform these songs, yes, but also akin to an athlete training to run a marathon.
I’m always excited by the possibility of epic theatre, but one new announcement has me especially thrilled. The Rabble are one of my favourite companies for their explorations of gender and for destroying pre-conceived notions of how theatre should operate. The work of theirs I’ve seen exists on a short time-scale, hour-long shows that punch the air out of you before you’re expelled from the theatre and forced to recalibrate to the real word.
I have no idea what will happen when I give myself over to them for a 10-hour, 18-part retelling of James Joyce’s Ulysses (and with the show in development who knows when that could be), but I can’t wait to find out.
What is the longest show you have watched at the theatre and was it any good? Share your experiences in the comments below.
