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A Theatrical Dare for 2023.

by Kimberley Twiner

I dare you to make your theatre work radically theatrical.

I dare you to return to the roots of this dance.

I dare you to stop looking for new ideas.

I dare you to play fiercely with old ideas.

I dare you to imitate your themes.

I dare you to use your body first.

I dare you to study how text moves.

I dare you to learn how to scratch and dig.

I dare you to get dirty fingernails.

I dare you to perform as the elements do.

I dare you to burn your audience to the ground and then leave the stage, gently, as ash.

I dare you to swell my chest with a tsunami of pain.

I dare you to make yourself light; light that shines through a cloud; light that concentrates and blinds me; light created by a flickering candle.

I dare you to choose.

I dare you to decide that you are not smarter than your poetic body.

I dare you to let that body loose.

I dare you to spin it in the wilderness.

I dare you to wear a fawn-skin and run naked in the bush.

I dare you to take on the most difficult themes. Or the absolute stupidest.

I dare you to be nowhere in between.

I dare you to loosen your grip on perfection.

I dare you to throw a handful of seeds into the garden.

I dare you to dance the dance of anything but you.

I dare you to know that you are inescapable.

I dare you to run away from yourself.

I dare you to stand opposite the powerful person and dance the rudest dance.

I dare you to know why you look them in the eye.

I dare you to push and pull and eclose and travel.

I dare you to move towards energy.

I dare you to sit quiet.

I dare you to stand on your feet and walk across the bridge.

I dare you to remember that you burned that bridge down long ago.

I dare you to not be smart.

I dare you to turn up.

I dare you to search for the action, the drama, the movement.

I dare you to not care about the audience.

I dare you to follow the movement.

I dare you to put on the mask.

I dare you to dance in the mask.

I dare you to find one gesture.

I dare you to make one gesture sixty minutes long.

I dare you to question what rules are fake.

I dare you to make a show that goes for 62 minutes.

I dare you to spit.

I dare you to kick.

I dare you to tear it all down.

I dare you to stop buying marketing spin.

I dare you to dance the dance of The Work.

I dare you to value The Work.

I dare you to pummel The Work.

I dare you to organize.

I dare you to not laugh on stage.

I dare you to hold your character.

I dare you to do something or get off.

I dare you to not do screen acting on the stage.

I dare you to stamp your feet.

I dare you to truly imitate.

I dare you to be ugly.

I dare you to be seen in a way that is uncomfortable.

I dare you to find time for circles.

I dare you to trust the process.

I dare you to study, observe and imitate.

I dare you to see what is there.

I dare you to feel how good it is to wiggle your toes.

I dare you to kill the machine.

I dare you to find the action of the story.

I dare you to hold it loyally, not tightly.

I dare you to find the breath.

I dare you to consult an expert.

I dare you to not play every role.

I dare you to not do it for the money.

I dare you to never try to get rich from this.

I dare you to dare and dare and dare and dare.

I dare you to strive for unity of recognition.

I dare you to avoid sterile theory.

I dare you to resist stylization.

I dare you to not fear the empty space.

I dare you let the audience find the meaning.

I dare you to dance.

I dare you to ask the story what IT wants.

I dare you to stop treating space as it is dead.

I dare you to perform for a Muse.

I dare you to perform to a God.

I dare you to perform with a Fury.

I dare you to know that living art will always transcend your theory.

I dare you to traverse technique.

I dare you to believe there is a technique necessary to theatre.

I dare you to think that it is easier than you think.

I dare you to not be abstract.

I dare you to show, tell, play a story.

I dare you to think that your art already exists. All you have to do is find it.

I dare you to climb on it. Jump on it. Wrestle with it. Laugh at it. Cry with it. Stroke it. Tickle it. Coax the art to join you.

I dare you to use technique to let the art know that it is safe to come out.

I dare you to dance a wild dance with it once it is out.

I dare you to plagiarize nature.

I dare you to plagiarize human nature.

I dare you to plagiarize human wilderness.

I dare you to be ancient.

I dare you to reject the contemporary.

I dare you to surprise us by doing the obvious.

I dare you to never tell me about your theme.

I dare you to play me your theme.

I dare you never to explain.

I dare you to not stare off into the distance.

I dare you to never fake your eye contact.

I dare you to not do physical theatre in a room designed for stand up comedy.

I dare you to stop making your space small.

I dare you to refine the art of gesture.

I dare you to learn the difference between tempo and rhythm.

I dare you to hold that you are a character but a character is not you.

I dare your theatre to have as many rhythms as the ocean.

I dare you to know that within one process there are at least a hundred different shows.

I dare you to reject success and failure.

I dare you to band together.

I dare you to make art that could never be justified in a grant.

I dare you to make the dumbest piece of shit.

I dare you to be a citizen not a child.

I dare you to write a manifesto.

I dare you to not expect strangers to turn up to your show.

I dare you to be healthily skeptical of the Producer.

I dare you to remember to never force a smile.

I dare you to get a Director.

I dare you to make ensemble shows.

I dare you to all stick your bums in the air and toot gloriously.

I dare you to stop staring at yourself.

I dare you to dance yellow and orange.

I dare you to share the surplus.

I dare you to make unsafe art.

I dare you to be alert to opportunity but be wary of someone convincing you that an opportunity is the only opportunity.

I dare you to be vivid, prolific, old, naughty and radically radical.

I dare you to be stupid in your wisdom, supernatural in your grotesquery, naive in your jest and boundless in your imitations.