From deconstructing the social conventions of a night at the theatre, to exposing the silent sponsors lurking behind a theatre’s facades, Rosa Postlethwaite’s witty debut hour draws on her own personal experiences, as well as conversations with others about, working in the arts industry.
As she steps into the role of Master of Ceremonies performing an in-house announcement, a thank-you to the sponsors and a warm-up act, Rosa interrogates familiar theatre rituals and the changing relationship between a spokesperson and their institution.
Unpicking paternal attitudes towards “hard to reach” communities, welcoming the audience to “their” theatre, and behaving on the edge of acceptability, Rosa’s role as Master of Ceremonies shines a spotlight on the conversations that happen within our theatres, but not on our stages. As it tours across the UK, each performance of Composed will respond to the theatre’s building, and its audiences, to create site responsive work to reflect the arts venues it visits and to ask if bullying and harassment has become normalised on and off stage.
Rosa Postlethwaite is a performance artist, dramaturg and producer. On the boundary of theatre and live art, her shows use performance to respond to the systems of oppression that shape everyday life. Her early work took place in non-traditional performance spaces and in all her projects, whether they are in social clubs, theatres or workshop studios, she places attention on the specific cultural significance of where she and the audience are at.
Rosa Postlethwaite said “In 2016 I started hosting and producing PUG a performance club night in Newcastle. In this new position, as a spokesperson, I found myself using familiar hosting patter. I thought about how by hosting these performances, I was perpetuating the same old power dynamics and the alluring feeling of belonging to something bigger than myself. I thought about how I could, on a small scale, hide behind the name of organisation.
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I decided to make a show about small actions carried out by people “doing their jobs”, that exposed how exclusion and gatekeeping happens in cultural industries. The Master of Ceremonies is a vehicle for me to explore cycles of behaviour. Through this figure I interrogate both my personal identity, the privileges it affords me, and power of the impersonal, institutional voice. Driving the action, and unravelling the strength of my created persona, is myown resistance to responding to everyday micro-aggressions in a reasonable, measured and composed way.”
