A total eclipse of the art

One play staged in the dark and another performed without its main character? Hardly visual feasts, you might think. But that's not the point - this year's Festival of Visual Theatre is meant to make the audience look and think harder

When Primitive Science decided to stage its production for this year's British Festival of Visual Theatre entirely in the dark, the idea seemed both titillating and absurd. This was a company renowned for its haunting and poetic visual imagery - a company, moreover, that stunned audiences last year with its painterly evocation of Brueghel's Icarus Falling. So what did it mean by denying punters their usual feast for the eyes, in a room so pitch black they had to be led in holding on to each other's shoulders. Was this truly theatrical - especially in a festival that declared itself a celebration of what you could see?

When Primitive Science decided to stage its production for this year's British Festival of Visual Theatre entirely in the dark, the idea seemed both titillating and absurd. This was a company renowned for its haunting and poetic visual imagery - a company, moreover, that stunned audiences last year with its painterly evocation of Brueghel's Icarus Falling. So what did it mean by denying punters their usual feast for the eyes, in a room so pitch black they had to be led in holding on to each other's shoulders. Was this truly theatrical - especially in a festival that declared itself a celebration of what you could see?

It was almost as puzzling as director Edward Kemp's decision to present a play revolving around a single character with one striking omission - the actor playing that character. Kemp, Toby Jones, and Jane Heather have already attracted a following with their play Wanted Man, and now, with The Cutting Room, they have collaborated on the story of a disastrous summer in Jones's life. In 1998 he was trying to find a home in Notting Hill, as well as attempting to appear in the film of the same name. Unfortunately house ownership and celluloid fame eluded him, so the work is more about his absence from both Notting Hills than his presence.

Life seemed to be imitating art rather too cynically when Jones told Kemp that he wouldn't be able to appear in this work about his non-appearance because he had been summoned to a filming session abroad. Kemp concedes that the sane option is that "if the person [ie Jones] is not available, don't do the show", but he was intrigued by the idea of "how to animate a performance space without a performer", and the result is a work in progress, where the audience members are encouraged to imagine the leading man for themselves.

Two very different productions, two very different styles. But there is a significant interconnecting theme: the invisible in these performances is not merely as important as the visible, it is more so. Superficially it seems a strange point to make at a festival of visual theatre, even in the vast theatrical laboratory that constitutes the BAC. But it also gets to the heart of what defines theatre, and in a culture where the dazzling visual language of film seems constantly to trump the restrictions of the stage, these companies are issuing a necessary wake-up call to audiences by deliberately shifting the focus from the outer to the inner eye.

Tom Morris, artistic director at the BAC, argues that too many people perceive theatre in rigid terms, which leads to undue emphasis on the stage as a platform for our literary heritage. He also notes the increasing trend towards plays adopting a realism that would be better served by TV and film. "Both views ignore what theatre is," he declares. "Theatre is a meeting between a public and a private group, and what is important is the imaginative play that takes place between these two groups of people."

Morris is denouncing neither texts nor realism outright. His objection is to the moment when the audience member becomes totally passive, and theatre becomes dictatorial rather than interactive. He cites the prologue to Henry V where the Chorus urges the audience to: "Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts/ Into a thousand parts divide one man... Think, when we talk of horses, that you see them/ Printing their proud hoof i'the receiving earth." The speech operates at two levels - it seems to be apologising for the technological limits of theatre. But in reality it is exhorting the audience to recognise the power of the pictures that words can paint, turning the crowd from spectators into participators: "For 'tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings."

It was probably the Symbolists who took this essential aspect of theatre to its greatest extreme in the 1890s. Their attempts to find a deeper spiritual truth through art led to a dramatic style which focused on awakening the audience member's intuitive powers of imagination and association: sets became more symbol-based, and music and verse were employed. Pierre Quillard, who created the play The Girl With The Severed Hands, wrote a letter to La Revue d'Art dramatique, which was published under the heading: "On the absolute pointlessness of accurate staging." He decried naturalistic staging as a barrier to the mind's eye, and announced: "The word creates the setting and everything else."

The Symbolists were, unfortunately, far better in theory than in practice. Paul Fort, the young poet who took it upon himself to stage several Symbolist works, had a tedious tendency towards pretension and productions that did not finish until two o'clock in the morning. But despite his own questionable achievements, he represented a vital break from Naturalism, ending the late-19th-century tyranny of pedantic historical detail in the backdrop and costumes. Through redefining theatre, he emphasised its founding principles: the stage was not a mirror, it was a potent playground for images and ideas.

On today's theatrical scene, it is notable that the most respected and exciting theatre companies are those who approach their productions with precisely this attitude. For every failed and literal attempt to resurrect a film - Brief Encounter, The Seven Year Itch, the Jerry Hall version of The Graduate - there is an electrifying production by Theatre de Complicite, Told by an Idiot, or Primitive Science. Kemp's company, The Table Show, is increasingly marking itself out as a group pushing at the boundaries of how to ensnare audiences' imaginations. For this latest work, Jones's voice will feed into the audience member's ear via a Walkman, while each individual walks around a giant map designed by Heather, "tracing" his route at the same time as being drawn into his story.

"In a sense what we've done is made the audience the performer," Kemp explains. Bos Temple-Morris, one of the founders of Primitive Science, also comments on how their extreme take of removing all visual props turned the audience into the show. "By challenging the contract of theatre, 'We work, you sit and watch', we get a far better reaction," he says.

The similarity between Kemp's and Temple-Morris's observations is striking. Their focus on the invisible seems to be an animating factor in the excitement of live performance. The cynical attitude might be: "If the invisible is so important, why go to the theatre at all? Why not read a book?" The reply: "Don't forget the importance of the game in the theatre. Perhaps until you've sat in the dark in a crowd, giggling and mystified, feeling your mind desperately trying to work out what everyone else is doing, while trying not to make a fool of yourself, you haven't realised the importance of the group experience."

The return from invisible to visible theatre should consist of a heightened awareness, and an active search for those companies that work on providing slip-routes to the imagination. In order to maintain the astonishing statistic that more people in this country go to the theatre than attend football matches, something has to be done to redress perceptions so that theatre can be seen as exciting a live experience as that first beery goal.

British Festival of Visual Theatre till 21 Oct. Primitive Science has already played. 'The Cutting Room' is on from 19-21 Oct, BAC, London (0207-223 2223)