Company name: Optik
Founders: Barry Edwards, Paul Bown, Adrian Rawlins, Heather Ackroyd, Clive Bell, Marjie Underwood
Established: 1980
Reason: To make and tour new work
Current status: Continues as Optik (post-1988) and is engaged in new theatre projects with artists and performers still under the direction of Barry Edwards
Policy: To experiment, to entertain, to provoke
Structure: Limited company and registered charity with a Board of Directors and Trustees. Artistic policy led by an Artistic Director.
Based: (1980 – 1986) Based in Stoke on Trent. (1986 – onwards) West London.
Funding: Mix of self-funding, Arts Council, Regional Arts Associations, British Council, Enterprise funding, Research Councils, sponsorship and revenue.
Performance venues: 1980 – 1988: UK touring venues (Midland Group Nottingham, Green Room Manchester, Trinity Arts and other small-scale touring venues) and London (Oval House, Jacksons Lane, Cockpit). 1993 onwards: national and international tours.
Audiences: Mix of student and general public
Company work and process: The theatre making process in the period 1980 – 88 was based on the interplay between image, sound, action, expression and humour to liberate the spatial narrative and produce a distinctive brand of visual and aural theatre. The narrative was based on moments of tension or absurdity linked together by multi-layered collages of imagery, music, song and action guided by what Bunuel called ‘the logic of desire’. These ‘moments’ were structured around crucial props with minimal dialogue a la Buster Keaton.
Optik’s work in this period never amounted to a direct statement – it aimed at a more complex and emotional appeal, what one reviewer called ‘a way of mind’.
Personal appraisal & thoughts:
‘Barry Edwards: The work of Optik in the period 1980 – 88 was above all great fun to make. Not led by dialogue or heavily back-storied characters. The performances were often absurd, wholly improbable but always unpredictable and extremely funny. There were lots of props, songs, strange costumes and esoteric references to Godard, Beaumarchais, and whatever other bits we could unearth from an old book or a story that caught our attention. Nothing epic every happened, no great statements were ever made but a sense of humans cherishing the mundane rituals of the everyday, even (or especially) when surrounded by the total absence of logic or reason.’
Reviews:
One Spectacle
‘A fishing expedition, accompanied by wildly exaggerated rural sounds and culminating with a pipe-smoking fisherman standing draped in a camouflage net, touches the heights of provocative lunacy. It’s good to welcome a new group who show such inventiveness and control – they underline once again the age-old message that non-verbal forms of theatre, so often regarded with suspicion in this country, can yield very distinct insights and pleasures.’ (Malcolm Hay, Time Out)
Second Spectacle
‘Somehow we are taken through Grecian gardens, one-eyed Nazi deviants and barbershop choruses to a fag-smoking Indian native at a desert petrol station. It’s very funny, unpredictable and highly imaginative and the comic timing is spot on.’(Mich Binns, Event Magazine)
‘The Arts Workshop played host to a theatre company Optik who performed Second Spectacle to a small but delighted audience, showing a superb sense of comic timing and expression. The play opened with a floor virtually bare of props, to the sound of a bizarre version of ‘Where Has My Little Dog Gone?’ This was followed by the appearance, one by one, of the three young performers dressed in striking costumes of nineteenth century white underwear with black boots or pumps and spats. They proceeded to recite strange formulae to each other, followed by an odd song, after which, with the aid of an illuminated box, they disappeared.’ (Cornelia Davies, Newbury News)
Short Sighted
‘There are images of extreme beauty and sheer lunacy – the moments build layer on layer as though two jigsaws had been shattered, then lovingly reassembled to form one. Optik excel at such moments, where the visual and aural experiences meld and boundaries dissolve.’ (Stella Hall, Performance Magazine)
A Short Tour of Ancient Sights
‘Into a landscape of bulbous white sculpture, mostly phallic, or reminiscent of the orifices down which people disappear in Bosch paintings, marches a Victorian lady with notebook in one hand and brolly in the other – Miss Amelia Edwards (Heather Ackroyd) is fastidiously documenting the ruins of Egypt. Optik excel at creating a surreal environment for their bizarre humour from which they examine reality. Their strength, appropriately enough, is in visual illusion. It was an unforgettable glimpse of the iconographics that are locked in the pyramids beneath Amelia Edwards’ feet, the images of past collective memory and of the subconscious which Optik manage to bring to the surface in their work. I look forward to seeing more of this.’ (Charlotte Keatley, Performance Magazine)
Productions:
| PRODUCTION NAME | VENUES | DATES |
|---|---|---|
| One Spectacle Director: Barry Edwards Music: Clive Bell Cast: Heather Ackroyd, Paul Bown, Adrian Rawlins, Marjie Underwood | Jacksons Lane, London and toured UK venues | 1981-82 |
| Second Spectacle Director: Barry Edwards Design: Cornelia Parker Music: Clive Bell Cast: Heather Ackroyd, Paul Bown, Adrian Rawlins, Marjie Underwood | Jacksons Lane, London and toured UK venues | 1982 |
| Short Sighted Director: Barry Edwards Design: Cornelia Parker Music: Clive Bell Cast: Heather Ackroyd, Paul Bown, Adrian Rawlins, Marjie Underwood | Cockpit Theatre, London and toured UK venues | 1982 |
| A Short Tour of Ancient Sights Director: Barry Edwards Design: Cornelia Parker Music: Clive Bell Cast: Heather Ackroyd, Martin Brett, Sally Gulley, Marjie Underwood | Green Room, Manchester and toured UK venues | 1983 |
| Stranded Director: Barry Edwards Text: Lou Glandfield Design: Nenagh Watson Music: Clive Bell Cast: Patrick Driver, Sue Eves, John Freeman, Clare Grehan | Oval House, London and toured UK venues | 1985-6 through to 1988/9 |
Interviewee reference: Barry Edwards
Links:
Optik
Existing archive material: Barry Edwards
Continuing work: The performance style and process cited here (One Spectacle to Stranded) concluded in 1988/9 with Edwards’ work on the Frank Chickens show Club Monkey. From 1991 onwards, Barry Edwards took the artistic practice of Optik in a different direction, though with clear links to the earlier work. The touring emphasis changed too, shifting to Europe and in particular Central and Eastern Europe with tours to Poland, Czech Republic, Serbia Bulgaria, and the former East Germany. From 2000 – 2004, the company began a series of experiments with digital technologies, including live sound and video processing, that also toured (Sao Paulo, Montreal). Since 2008, Optik has been acting as a production company in support of new writing and other experimental theatre projects.
Bibliography:
Published material by Edwards, mainly relating to Optik’s work post 1993:
Optik Live Sound and Performance by Barry Edwards and Ben Jarlett in Body Waves Sound Waves (Macmillan 2006)
Practices of Virtual Embodiment and Interactivity by Barry Edwards and Ben Jarlett Performance and Technology (Macmillan 2006)
[Gives an account of the differences between the 1980s Optik style and the work that followed – particularly in sound processing]
‘A tele-presence experiment: Optik in Sao Paulo and London’ by Barry Edwards in Body, Space and Technology, e-Journal Vol 1 No 2 2001 (www.bstjournal.com)
Performing Presence by Barry Edwards in Consciousness Reframed (Intellect Books 1999, pp 191 – 196)
‘Observing the Unpredictable: extracts from the notebooks of Barry Edwards’ by Barry Edwards in Dance Theatre Journal London, Volume 13 No.1 Summer 1996 pp 40 – 41
Acknowledgements: This page was written and constructed by Barry Edwards (co-founder Optik) and Xi-mali Kadeena-Guscoth. November 2013
The creation of this page was supported by the National Lottery through the Heritage Lotter Fund.