Common Wealth Theatre: Our Glass House

Common Wealth Theatre: Our Glass House

Common Wealth Theatre: Our Glass House

Common Wealth produces site-specific theatre that ‘places the audience at the centre of their work’, claiming that ‘theatre should be a memorable event and give you that feeling of being at a gig, of being part of something’. Standing in a freezing cold, largely empty pub car-park on the outskirts of Bradford on a grey Saturday afternoon (wondering if I have come to the right place), I certainly felt the need to be part of something memorable.

At 2pm exactly, the directors arrive and an audience emerges from the cars dotted around us. We are then (all twenty-two of us, including two uniformed community police officers) walked down into a housing estate whose streets are eerily deserted. Eventually, we are told that the house is up on the right (number thirty-five, with the red door) and that we will be allowed in one pair at a time – ‘Oh, and please remember to wipe your feet as you enter.’ Once inside, we wander through the rooms as we wish: there is no central performance to spectate, no need to be in any particular part of the house at any particular moment – we can simply ‘explore the house and choose our own journeys’.

I wander through the living rooms, the kitchen, a bedroom, bathroom, a child’s room, a back room. Five adults (four women, one man) inhabit a room each – and it is here that their stories begin. A young boy moves silently from room to room, listening, observing – at times detached, in his own world, at other times variously connected to, or implicated by, the stories being told.

Our Glass House comprises three sections. First, the characters share their reasons for staying in a relationship that has turned abusive (but where affection remains – a hope that the difficulties might, somehow, be resolved). Next comes fear – lonely, isolated individuals overshadowed by the constant threat of violence and abuse. Finally, the characters find ways of breaking free of the house and the relationships it has accommodated. At the play’s end, the audience stands outside in the garden (it is bitterly cold), watching the characters make their escapes out of the building and into another world (which, in this weather, seems as inhospitable as the one they are leaving).

The performance is a fragmented collection of monologues and choreographed movement sequences (at times powerfully underscored by a mix of recorded music and sounds performed by the actors). Though the play begins with memories (of relationships, once close and loving, now sour and violent), as I wander through the house it is a present atmosphere of oppression and intimidation that I am most aware of. These are characters made vulnerable, fragile even – and I catch snippets of dialogue, a few words, the throb of music pulsating from the bedroom where a teenage girl (surrounded by pornographic images) struts in front of a full-length mirror before mounting a vertical pole in the middle of the room. Just a short time later I will stand in the corner of the bathroom watching her, first standing over the bath contemplating suicide, then having her head held under the water by a jealous boyfriend.

Our Glass House invites us to create our own experience and to leave with our ‘own version and understanding of domestic abuse’. The play tackles a complex and challenging issue – and takes this into the heart of a non-theatre community that has (to judge from feedback given in the post-show discussion) come to receive it with a sense of ownership. It is a courageous production that makes no effort to hide the pain and suffering that lies at its heart. There is also great (almost naïve) beauty here: we can occupy the same space as these victims, watch and listen to them, yet are able also to admire their dignity and humanity – so it is not, ultimately, their victimhood that comes to define them, but their capacity for overcoming and redefining their circumstances.

www.commonwealththeatre.co.uk