Students’ Ursa Major brings experimental theatre to bear

Tiana Buckley is a lover of original, immersive, experimental and applied drama. We've all sat in a theatre watching a play; tense in our seats, funereally quiet, all terrified of observing an actor slip up and having to bear witness to such grievous collective embarrassment. Not that the theatre isn't a wonderful experience – drama is a bedrock of the human artistic experience – but the codes and mores that govern its performance lean towards the staid and conservative, often disenfranchising those even slightly culturally unaware. Non-traditional drama tears down these rules and rebuilds the format in the guise of the creator's whim. Settings can be fluid, audience participation encouraged, a wrecking ball is taken to the fourth wall, scripts minimal, stage directions mutable. These aren't rules or guidelines or even suggestions – formal precepts do not exist – they are merely optional symptoms of a phantasmagorical whole, that being non-traditional drama.