Interplay, Interaction and the space that they create. A battlefield for war?

Interplay? What do I mean by this term. ‘Inter’ the space connecting, and ‘play’ a mode of action. Thus Interplay could be described as a space connecting a mode of action?

Interaction could then be defined as the space connecting action.

If performance is a space that connects both performer and audience, because they exist within a shared space within an act, then interplay suggests a malleable connection between action and performance, as play is a dynamic action that relies on both parties to be active or engaged.

Engagement suggests that both parties have an ability to inform an event or shared experience; if I am engaging in the act of war, I have the ability to affect the others in my troupe who are also engaging in the act of war. The army advances over the threshold onto the battlefield and meets the other army on the other side, and the act of war is carried out with a quantifiable outcome, a death toll.


Both audience and performers are engaging in the act of a theatrical event, both are on opposite sides of the battlefield, the theatrical space, and when they meet the act of performance happens, yet is there a quantifiable outcome? Perhaps this is in a sense of a review, but this heavily relies on opinion. In the case of The Dreamers of Inishdara at the Jermyn Street Theatre (2007), three reviews credited the play with two, three and four stars. Who was correct? If performative engagement is not quantifiable, then we cannot be purely talking about the physical presence of the actor and performance, a physical being. Instead a connection that is not physical; a metaphysical connection? A force or an energy?

A war cannot exist without at least two sides, me and my enemy, as theatre can not exist without two sides, the audience and performer. Yet clearly the sides can be blurred, terrorist groups and guerrilla warfare changes the dynamics of the encroaching army, as performance art, ideas of performativity and any other mode of theatre that displaces the ideas of proscenium arch (end on theatre) changes the dynamics of the actor performer relationship.

Does interplay have any musical connotations? Luckily I have walked home to a house of musicians. One suggested that an interplay is to have two melodies play over each other, they could be said to interplay, another then said that is called a harmony. Which is could propose an interesting definition for the actor audience relationship?