KATHLEEN IRWIN
THINKING OUTSIDE THE BLACK BOX

By Christopher DiRaddo

Kathleen Irwin had been in professional practice for 15 years when she decided something was no longer working for her. “I was getting frustrated with the theatre scene in Ottawa and my role as a designer.” The limits of the proscenium stage with its audience stuck in their chairs had begun to stifle her, so she set out to discover new ways to express herself. Her explorations brought her to Europe where site specific work was just beginning. “Any stale old thoughts I had developed in 15 years of proscenium practice were shaken to their very foundation,” she says of that time more than 10 years ago. “It was so fresh and so exciting for me that I knew this was going to affect my practice and it has since I returned.”
 

The Weyburn Project, Set design by Kathleen Irwin, a 2002 Knowhere production. © Mark Morton

Site specific work, in which the non-traditional space a work is presented becomes elemental to the production, has forever changed her relationship to the craft. It has challenged her on many different levels and deepened her relationship with the audience. “That very simple triangulation that happens between space, performer and audience is essential.” So much so that a great number of audiences who usually don’t go to the theatre find themselves coming to see, and interact with Irwin’s work. “As soon as you take the practice out of the proscenium stage, or out of the high institutions where theatre usually is, and take it to these other buildings, you have people who are intrigued and want to come for a variety of reasons.”
 
Among her many site specific projects, Irwin created The Weyburn Project in 2002 with several other artists. The project involved setting up shop in an abandoned mental hospital in the small town of Weyburn, Saskatchewan. Over the course of five months the artists developed the project with the help of some of the local townspeople: archivists, retired staff, and family members of former patients. “I realized that a really strong element in what was going on was in the relationship between the space and the community surrounding it.”
 

“That very simple triangulation that happens between space, performer and audience is essential.”

When it finally came time to present the work, Irwin found that there was already an audience that had been developed, one that had a vested interest in the final outcome. “When these people came to the performance they were bringing with them all their past stories and they were there to see if they were being represented in a way they thought was important. When you do this you immediately have an audience that is involved prior to the event.” Irwin believes this type of interaction with the public is vital. “You’re immediately locating your audience in a whole new area of the population and this is really important considering that the population is becoming increasingly urbanized and there are fewer and fewer opportunities for so called ‘high culture’ to be available to smaller communities.”
 
Through her academic work, Irwin has been able to present the results of these projects to conferences around the world and inform people about the effects of engaging with new, and often underrepresented publics. “The interesting element of site specific performance that engages local communities is that it is far more able to be political and investigate so-called political issues on a local scale that mirror global problems as well... A butterfly bats its wings on the other side of the world and it is felt in Weyburn, Saskatchewan. These very local events mirror global movements in a way that binds us all together.”
 
She also believes that site specific work is something that should be taken up by more artists who are looking for work. “We have so many non-institutionalized artists and so few institutions that are actually able to hire them that engaging artists and engaging communities that don’t have access to institutions is vital.” 

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