I’m slowly starting to think about what I’m going to do after my master’s, and, putting my boredom with academia aside for the moment, ‘Dr Matt Goodsell’ has a certain ring to it. I’m still very interested in cinema, the ontology of the photographic image, and the contingent, but I’m becoming increasingly interested in how these things interplay with other art forms, like theatre. It seems that live theatre is based on the contingent, the live, so does it have its version of the punctum? With this in mind, and still letting my thesis rest, I went to a few ctp shows this morning.

They weren’t earth shattering, like the one I went to last night. They were okay on the aesthetic level. But at the last one something unusual happened. The audience had to stand on rostras (plinths or podiums). I knew this already, as I’d been warned, and indeed I’d been told beforehand I could still come in. but what got me rather angry was announcement made before the audience entered the space: ‘If anyone doesn’t want to stand on a rostra, please don’t come in..except for matt.’

Something about this really ticks me off. It’s the fact that it was announced in such a fashion. I’d been singled out in an effort to make a manifestly inaccessible performance appear inclusive. Frankly I was angry, and just a little insulted. I didn’t want to be an exception; nor did I want to see a show which was innately uninclusive. I was also upset by the manner by which it was announced. Their rather half-assed effort to accommodate me aside. I wanted no part of something so overtly and vehemently discriminatorily. In short, they could stuff their show, and thus I left.