Process

Jeté! originated as the sustained independent project of Lara van Huyssteen and Belle Thurston for MA Advanced Theatre Practice at Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. Together with the fabulous Gabriella Curtis who joined the project as an MFA student, the three women formed the company Et al. Performance and created their first durational work. 

The original performance aim was to create a performance that uses scenography and performer practices to translate cinematic devices such as zooms, fast forwards, slow motion etc. from the screen to the stage. Through studio practice the group identified various scenographic ‘tools’ that were reoccurring in the rehearsal room including clowning, spectacle vs mundane, the commodity of the female ballet dancer, labour as performance, precision, the seen vs the unseen, reveal and duration. The company was excited by the potential of these findings and halfway through the process they attempted to perform the scenes they had developed as a five-hour durational performance to push the themes of duration and ‘labour as performance’ to the extreme. After this successful first attempt, they adapted the performance aim and continued their process with the aim to present their work as a 10-hour durational performance in September 2023.

Although the performance aim shifted, the original aim still held a presence in the work with the live performance presented as an adaptation of a 3-minute video which the company had made and used as the performance trailer. This extended the duration of the performance further than the 10 hours onstage, as the trailer was uploaded to the festival’s website three weeks ahead of the show. The trailer wasn’t required viewing to understand the performance, but those who had seen it would be able to guess which scenes in the trailer were the digital counterparts to what they were seeing onstage.

How can duration shift the spectator’s gaze?

In Lara ’s MA commentary essay she reflected on the use of queer dramaturgies in the performance, arguing that the performance was a ‘lip sync’ of the show’s trailer and functioned in non-chrononormative time due to the performers holding sole agency over their time management onstage. She believes this opened a queer temporality which gave the performers some flex over how their female bodies were viewed in relation (or not) to the core of the work. This followed on from Lara ’s trip to The Young Vic in May 2023 where she saw eight hours of The Second Woman (2023), a 24-hour durational performance starring Ruth Wilson. Lara was intrigued by the effect the durational aspect of the work had on how she viewed gender and gender performativity in the show, specifically the potential in durational work to dislodge the spectator’s gaze from the gender of a performer’s body. She was equally intrigued that the performance was able to send the audience into a binge-watching mode as this is something that she believed was exclusive to the screen (Instagram & Tik-Tok reels, YouTube shorts, streamers and television). Inspired by the repetitive nature of The Second Woman, Et al. started to explore repetition in their rehearsals, which became a key formatting tool for putting the 10-hour performance together. 

The final 10-hour performance

The performance existed of a main sequence which lasted 45-55 minutes, and repeated ten times. At the end of each sequence the performers would have a short ‘break’ onstage wherein they would perform a mundane task and gave the audience the opportunity to go to the bar before the start of the next sequence. Each sequence was unique in presentation and atmosphere, facilitated by changes in music, costume, audience response and the performers’ fluctuating levels of energy and adrenaline. Between sequences, there were surprise scenes including a spoof of Pink Panther (a treat for audience members who came in at 11am and saw the performers prepare the pink balloons which were used in those scenes) and an homage to Marilyn Monroe singing happy birthday for President Kennedy. This performance of Marilyn was a rare moment of live voice, heightened performativity and heightened gender performativity. This was the ‘a-ha’ moment for the creators - an antithesis to what the show is about to signal to the audience what the the show is really about. The performers had rehearsed various versions of the main sequence and the surprise scenes, but the full 10-hour version was performed for the first time on the day of the performance. The show ran exactly from 11am to 9pm thanks to meticulous planning, improvisation and watching the clock.

Audience

The energy in the theatre was joyful and suspenseful, with audience members urging themselves to stay longer than they had planned to see what the performers would do next. Most audience members saw roughly three hours of the performance and some stayed seven+ hours. One audience member remained in the theatre for the entire duration. Afterwards he expressed that his reason for staying was to test his own endurance as an audience member, emphasising how durational work is an experience that is shared between the performers and the audience.