This academic year we have welcomed two 3rd year Theatre students to the Theatre Collection. They have each been researching in the archives in order to create an original script. This latest blog is by Keir, who has been inspired by the work of artist, performer, artistic director, and self-proclaimed ‘Art Gangster’ and mischief maker, Ian Smith.
As my placement with the Theatre Collection has progressed, my research has begun to take a more focused and creative direction. Building on the archival work I began in the first month, I’ve now started developing a clowning script inspired by Ian Smith’s darkly comic piece Christopher Chappell Kill to Live.
Smith’s work, subtitled ‘A Project Exploring Credibility of Cult Dogma’ was devised during his Expressive Arts course when he was a student at Brighton Polytechnic, so it’s a very early example of him working out his own practice of subverting genres. It was presented as a live pseudo-documentary with slides and music; the audience sat in the gallery as if they were the jury and Smith playing a murderer (Chappell). Smith used anecdotes based on composites of real events to maintain the premise of credibility even though the character was completely fictitious. The Ian Smith Archive contains evidence of his preparatory work, such as slides, documentary style notes and a project sketchbook, but there is no dramatic script as such. Smith’s characters relied on improvisation and his work emerges in equal parts surreal, subversive, and satirical. It struck me immediately as a compelling foundation for creative reinterpretation.
Using the different archival aspects of Smith’s 1980s performance, I chose to approach his work through the lens of clowning. This has meant embracing exaggeration, physicality, and the absurd in order to explore the piece’s darker themes of violence, disillusionment, and fanaticism in a way that is both playful and unsettling. The central character, now reimagined as Christopher Gigglegrave, blends Smith’s interest in cult leader charisma with my invented grotesque clown logic. This has allowed me to draw from traditional clown archetypes while responding to the specific tone and themes in Smith’s work.
Working with the archive has been more than a source of inspiration, it has become a dialogue. I’ve found myself questioning how to ‘respond’ to the material rather than replicate it. For instance, how do you adapt the rhythm and tone of Smith’s writing for a modern clowning context? How can archival materials be used to trigger moments of physical comedy, or inform the tempo and structure of a scene?
This process has also made me consider how the clown can act as a vehicle for confronting uncomfortable truths. In the world of Christopher Gigglegrave, laughter and violence sit side-by-side; a tension I’ve leaned into through both the writing and proposed performance style. The clown’s naivety and conviction allow space to explore dangerous ideas without endorsing them, using humour to create critical distance.
As my script continued to evolve, I became excited to keep mining the archive for ideas – whether it’s a throwaway line in a performance note, a stage direction that sparks an image, or an old flyer that suggests a tone. The placement has shown me how archival work can be a catalyst for new performance-making, not just a source of information, but a playground of possibility.