Still, addicts are never taken too seriously, so a less emotional justification is in order here. The reason I think installations just work better with the audiences today, has obviously a lot to do with the overall way we gather information nowadays: piece by piece, always interrupted by our own crazy mind trips. People do not believe or respect stories like they used to and I personally think it is a good thing to doubt everything. But I do not talk about anti-narrative theater here as I am not sure there could ever exist a thing like that, after all, something is a narrative if it tells a story and even if the story told is not linear or the same for all the spectators, there is almost always a story taking its shape in viewers heads – that is just the way humans are used to receive life, as stories. Thinking about the installations I have seen over the past few months, one of them was all about personal stories of policemen – Lola Arias/Stefan Kaegi “Soko São Paulo” - and the other was a collection of previously told stories - “Deconstraction 07” by Needcompany. But the way stories got told – every spectator chose its own way and order to hear the fragments of stories and thus had a chance to be the author of a great narrative – was exactly like life around us.
Other reason I like that, is the weakening of a power actors have over the audience. I see it as a process of liberating the spectator from the chains of being a passive watcher and becoming an equal partner it should be. Of course, all the installations I have seen so far are only on half way in that aspect: allowing people to choose the order of the narrative but do not give them an opportunity to alter it, yet. “Mightysociety5” by Eric de Vroedt I saw few days ago in Groningen (The Netherlands) was no exception. Here they had eight small rooms built in a theater and the audience could wonder around them, step inside and take a seat for a small performance if they wanted, or just peak through the windows of all those little apartments of young lonely people. I did not step into any of the rooms as there was enough to see and told in the corridors between the cubicals or looking through the windows and the only thing I really missed was that actors did not notice the audience, carrying the fourth wall with them. As I said, the installations I have seen are all somewhere in the middle of the process of allowing the audience to become an equal partner and I am more than sure that eventually they get over the fear of letting go of the control and invite spectators to start playing with them. There is a possibility of course that this new theater would be a bit too much but no real addict stops before it has tasted the pure thing and overdose is just a feared possible price to pay for an ultimate trip.
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