Impossible Theatres

A publication imagining 20 Impossible Theatres - cultural buildings based on the imagination of 40+ artists, architects, engineers and AI. Each designed to foster emotional, social, physical, spiritual and/or environmental wellbeing and provide their communities with a rich, creative, connected life.

The Impossible theatres in the book attempt to move away from strictly economic, transactional relationships. Instead it imagines what kind of building we could build that provide us with shared spaces that foster emotional, social, physical, spiritual and/or environmental wellbeing. They are not intended to be architectural blueprints but instead as blueprints of cultural possibilities.

Consider them a menu of possibilities, a way of thinking about shared, cultural spaces and the value and values they bring to our communities and societies.

Publication Date: Summer 2024

Core collaborators: Kristjana S Williams STUDIO, Nicky Gibson, Eleanor Turney

Role: Lead Artist

Location: global

Commissioner:  Therme and FITS festival

ArtForm: Publication - text, collage art, AI imagery

“The purpose of art is to lay bare the questions that have been hidden by the answers”

— James Baldwin

Changing Theatres

Theatre, the sector I love and has given me such a rich, varied an interesting career, finds itself in an increasingly difficult place at the moment. The world is changing and theatre is struggling to reevaluate how to live by their ideals and values and finding fresh and relevant ways to serve their communities while also dealing with a potent mix of funding cuts, ever growing costs and dwindling audiences.

Theatre makers are chronically underpaid while theatre buildings and companies are stretched beyond functioning. The models are broken and conversations about change are everywhere.

Impossible Theatres is a love letter to theatres and an imaginative look at its (im)possible futures. This is not an exercise in trying to create blueprints for actual theatres nor creating mere flights of fancy, but rather a series of prisms to look at theatre and gain a fresh perspective on the future of theatres and the role of art and creativity in our societies.

The process wanted to do two things:

Create radical new Theatre Buildings
What happens if I apply my theatre maker’s sensibility, process and creative methodologies to create imaginative future theatres? Can they function as a prism to build visions of future creative worlds? Can it lay bare what features that need to be preserved or developed in the future?
Make Artificial Intelligence part of the the creative team.
Theatre making is a collective process - a kind of human Aggregated Intelligence. In this case, next to the human creatives, I wanted to explore what it would mean for different AIs to function as part of the creative team. Not replace the human artistry but as a tool to make imaginary jumps.

How do we dream with machines?

The process has led to a very specific kind of World Building. Each theatre represent an archetypes of the kind of cultural gathering spaces humans need to live full, meaningful and healthy lives. Together they create a vision of how theatres can be spaces where connections to nature, others, ideas, stories, our communities and most of all each. They uncover fundamental human needs - these theatres are not buildings for individual pursuits of luxury but offer something that is foundational to healthy communities and should be accessible to all.

This publication is the end of a process of artistic exploration. Breaking new ground requires new ways of looking, feeling and being. The creative process is a mode of investigation that is very different to data-driven analysis and scientific approaches, but it is equally rigorous and especially useful when one needs to build new connections and imaginative leaps.