Full Born Teeth
A Protest
by Whit Flint

Theatre must be an exacting knife of what we encounter as humans. What lives both outside our doors and in. not just what is in the ether and the soil. But what’s in the walls. And several layers beneath the skin. Not just what can be seen. But what hurts to feel. The present. Now. 

It can’t merely be a presentation. Or a piece of idolatry we place behind museum glass. The pageantry of intellect is a corrosion that allows for dull images. Fuck the tweed blazers and flowing scarves. Tear the expectation to smithereens. 

It must be a living organism. A beast. Full teeth born, blistering fingers, sweat-drenched jagged edges. It must be piercingly loud, blood-soaked mouths - in its use of its power. It’s voice. 

No pulled punches. No tricks and gestures. No mind for appropriate or palatable. All are hindrances. When we are sitting in comfort and avoiding challenging introspection we create spaces of paralysis. 

It can’t be a playful pat. And a cute plucking of strings. It must be injected into our cultural veins for it to take shape and effect our bloodstream. A screeching bit of feedback and a sprawling dark symphony. 

When the synagogue of a theatre - that darkened space, where strangers’ heartbeats sync and a shared experience finds its electrical current - can function as an operating room rather than a lobby…then can the transcendent symbiotic metamorphosis of actor and audience begin. Where we can remove the pleasantries and get to the silver tongue of it all.

"When i go to the theatre, I like to be frightened and shocked. I like to be unsettled. I don’t want to be congratulated or flattered. I like to have my head kicked in or my heart broken. And to be changed on a violently visceral level." - Simon Stephens

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