Footsbarn: from a Tribal ‘Macbeth’ to an Intercultural ‘Dream’

Abstract

In the first issue of NTQ, in February 1985, we included a feature on the Footsbarn company, tracing their work from its origins in a Cornish commune in the early ‘seventies to their development of a highly distinctive performing style, strong in physicality, visual imagery, and knockabout humour. By then, this was establishing the group's international reputation – and winning them audiences as much through word-of-mouth in out-of-the-way rural communities as on the festival circuit, where they achieved a more conventional critical acclaim. The compiler of that feature, Geraldine Cousin, here provides an update, complementing a company interview conducted in July 1991 with a personal response to the most recent of Footsbarn's regular encounters with Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream. Geraldine Cousin, who teaches in the Joint School of Theatre Studies at the University of Warwick, is the author of Churchill the Playwright for Methuen, and has also published articles on Shakespeare in performance, Stanislavsky, and Brecht.