For the last month we, the Senior Management Group of Bradford Cathedral, have been fine tuning the high-level vision document (read here) that was offered to the congregation and wider community with whom we have been listening and discerning at Pentecost. The process leading to this point has been long, intentional and in-depth. We have met with various groups of people from all levels of engagement and investment asking questions of perceived values and repeating patterns in the long history of the Cathedral. Some common threads became evident in our many discussions, positive and negative. The two main, negative stories that were told again and again were a narrative of scarcity and a narrative of being ‘passed by’/overlooked. Both need, I believe, hearing, tending to and transforming.
The narrative of scarcity can lead to two opposite outcomes: one is towards risk aversion, the other is the embrace of innovative use of resources. The narrative of being passed by can also lead towards two different options: the first is towards a lack of motivation, the alternative, to disregard the fear of judgement as no one is watching anyway. These dynamics will now, no doubt, be played out as we enter the next phase. We will need to reflect together on how we navigate between the two options and we respond to these named stories that we tell ourselves.
These narratives and their possible futures, mixed with the ongoing reflections about the way in which a cathedral engages in the cultural life of a 21st century, intercultural, UK city at a time of great social upheaval and change, have caused me to return to an old friend; Peter Brook’s, ‘The Empty Space’.
For long time readers of this blog you will know of my love for this book. Search for Peter Brook in the bar at the top and read over my reflections on ‘Theatre Church’ from way back in 2011 as I shaped my BA dissertation thesis on creative Christian communities. You can track how the theory behind my theatre making pre-2009 transitioned into my emerging Church leadership post 2012. You will see how I cited Brook’s writing on the power of theatre and its need for reform to continue to shape culture to explore how the Church too might reform to continue to also shape our culture.
For this month’s reflections, then, I turn to ‘The Empty Space’ and ask: how might we, at Bradford Cathedral, avoid ‘Deadly Mission’ and, instead, ensure we look always to ‘Holy Mission’?
Those two titles do not come from nowhere and are not my invention. Peter Brook begins his book by describing and exploring what he terms, ‘Deadly Theatre’. Yes, he does, at the simple level mean ‘bad theatre’ but what, in his mind, makes it ‘bad’? The whole chapter is a slow but achingly profound attack on commercialisation and capitalism at work in the 1960s. It is the way in which finance and economic need kills off risk in favour of secure ‘success’ and a return on investment. At times of scarcity, the money to pay for time to explore and develop meaningful and beautiful work becomes more contested and financiers want to limit the risk by ensuring that they’re able to make the books balance. This requires, therefore, a proven way to know what will attract the audience who will pay for the product put on sale and cover the cost of development. Art becomes a product to sell rather than a vehicle for re-enchantment and social transformation.
Deadliness always brings us back to repetition: the deadly director uses old formulae, old methods, old jokes, old effects… A deadly director is a director who brings no challenge to the conditioned reflexes that every department must contain.
Peter Brook, The Empty Space (London: Penguin Books, 1990) p.44
When money is tight there is little room to experiment. As part of our developing strategy at the Cathedral we have had to express an aim to be financially sustainable. It’s not the main headline but it is significant. We cannot do any of the exciting things we feel called to do if we cannot keep the lights on and the staff paid. This can lead, if we are not careful, however, to turn to that deadliness that, in the long run doesn’t excite or sustain the engagement of the ‘audience’ we long to inspire.
Lev Dodin, a brilliant director of the 20th century wrote about how his unsupported theatre company was enabled to create the inspiring work they did.
Failure… leads to quite artistic things, because if you are not afraid of failure you can try, you can experiment, you can search for new ways, whereas when you are afraid of failure you wouldn’t do it, you would do it the way you did it yesterday…
Lev Dodin in conversation with Robin Thornber at the Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester, 23rd April 1994, Michael Stronin (tr.), cited in Maria Delgado and Paul Heritage (eds.), In Contact With The Gods?: Directors Talk Theatre (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996) p74
Bradford Cathedral has a history of being an embodiment of that Yorkshire spirit of ‘make do and mend.’ Whether it is the pioneering way of recycling old bricks to reshape the building, evolving it for a new context, or using wool sacks to protect the tower against shelling during the civil war. We have never been an asset rich, or even a financially rich cathedral. We may never be a glitzy place with historic reserves on which to rely, but we have always shown ourselves, like the beautiful people of Bradford, as resilient survivors. Our history is a tale of scarcity, but we have chosen, at some key moments, to be innovative and creative with what we have.
I want our contributions to City of Culture to not be safe, secure and risk light. I do not believe that there is, at this time, such a thing. The tribute bands and the franchise installations that do the rounds across the various cathedrals are just as risky financially as well as reputationally, I personally believe, and so if we are going to take risks let’s do it properly and aim for something that doesn’t pretend to be lively but is actually full of life and connects an audience with something transcendent.
…the notion that the stage is a place where the invisible can appear has a deep hold on our thoughts.
Brook, The Empty Space, p.47
This is how the chapter on Holy Theatre begins. It is what I spoke to the gathered artists at the Outdoor Arts UK Conference earlier in the year. We can, at the Cathedral, return to being the place where the Invisible appears, because the rest of our culture has lost its confidence in the Invisible. Our worship, our concerts, our envisioned co-productions should all be shaped by our pursuit to be embodiments of that Invisible Truth to which we commit our lives. Brook describes the work of Jerzy Grotowski, who I also have reflected on previously (read here).
The theatre, he believes, cannot be an end in itself… the theatre is a vehicle, a means of self-study, self-exploration, a possibility of salvation… the act of performance is an act of sacrifice, of sacrificing what most men [sic] prefer to hide – this sacrifice is his gift to the spectator.
Brook, The Empty Space, p.66-67
I see, in our vision at Bradford Cathedral, an opportunity to be an exciting workshop for the re-enchantment of the cultural life of Bradford and, in time, the UK and the world. We have expressed our ambitious aims to be reaching out to the world and encouraging experiences within our space of encounter with the Holy Truth. This is not just aesthetic beauty of the well performed choral music for which we strive or the excellent engagement with heritage and history that we wish to continue to develop but to be a place where new expressions will be forged giving people fresh insights into who they were created to be.
Interestingly, Peter Brook discusses Coventry Cathedral situated in the City of Culture 2021/2.
In Coventry, for instance, a new cathedral has been built, according to the best recipe for achieving a noble result. Honest, sincere artists, the ‘best’, have been grouped together to make a civilised stab at celebrating God and Man and Culture and Life through the collective act. So there is a new building, fine ideas, beautiful glass work – only the ritual is threadbare. Those Ancient and Modern hymns, charming perhaps in a little country church, those numbers on the wall, those dog collars and the lessons – they are sadly inadequate here. The new place cries out for a new ceremony, but of course it is the new ceremony that should have come first.
Brook, The Empty Space, p.50-51
I have ambitions to create within the historic space of the Cathedral an expectation that whoever comes in, for whatever reason, may be struck by the Invisible-Made-Visible. It is this incarnational mission that requires little speech but an enactment of intentional ritual and experience, a public spectacle of true sacrifice that all society yearns for in their deepest being, that will make us more accessible, more visible and more sustainable as we seek to weave Jesus into the rich fabric of the city and beyond. It is this striving towards Holy and not Deadly worship and mission that, I believe, will change the narrative of the Cathedral, Bradford and the world.