In Good Company: Quarantine

When I last interviewed Richard Gregory – artistic director of Manchester-based Quarantine – he said, "Most theatre bores me silly, and I don’t go very often." It was fair to say he had a point. "That was a bit harsh wasn’t it?" he admits, "what a curmudgeon!"

He confesses to still being a curmudgeon but is clearly passionate about theatre’s possibilities, and reels off a list of artists and companies he particularly admires – one of them being Forced Entertainment. Although the two couldn’t be more different in terms of artistic content, Quarantine and Forced Entertainment have a commonality in that they create a sort of ‘anti-theatre,’ a theatre that rejects the usual signifiers – character, narrative and dramatic structure.

"I see theatre as a pretty broad church," says Gregory, "that has always embraced all kinds of twists and turns of form and the invention of responses to particular time, context and situation. I think there's room for it all but we seem pretty hung up in Britain on talking about what is and what isn't art or theatre or whatever, which is a bit tiring as a debate. I don't really mind how people label what we do – we call it theatre because that's the tradition it comes from.’

Quarantine have been making and touring original work for the past 16 years. There have been solo journeys in the dark (Something a Taxi Driver Said), a performance inviting one audience to watch another (See-Saw), and an ‘event with dancing,’ staged in one of the cheerfully grubby function rooms of Sasha’s Hotel (Darren & Susan, starring gay dancer Darren Pritchard and his cleaner mum, Susan).

Part of Quarantine’s ethos involves ‘a quiet commitment to making intimate with reality.’ This extends to the use of non-professional performers. The company has worked with soldiers, chefs, florists, families, children, pensioners... and rabbits (Old People, Children and Animals). Quarantine productions are usually born of lengthy research with its participants. So what does working with ordinary people bring to the party? Gregory: "Essentially it's about not being terribly interested in representation on stage. It's both an aesthetic and a political choice. I enjoy hearing people speak for themselves and I respond to the human clumsiness and natural grace that can come when someone isn't trapped by a particular approach or training. Lots of the people who seem to really respond to what we do rarely go to the theatre."

Decades before the flash mob was The Happening – a live art event presented in a spirit of spontaneity. There’s an element of this in Quarantine’s work. Which brings us to latest show Summer., the first part of an ambitious quartet. Autumn., Winter. and Spring. will follow, with all four pieces being presented as a marathon event in 2016. Summer. features another non-professional cast, with stage performers responding to questions and instructions they’ve never heard before. "It's less about randomness than liveness," says Gregory. "The overall structure of the show will remain pretty much the same at each performance but, as the piece is made out of instructions and tasks that its performers respond to live, inevitably the content will keep on changing. We're interested in seeing what happens when people respond in the present: those moments of decision and uncertainty – the choices that could go in all kinds of directions.’"

The poster for 2005's Grace featured a Lidl shopping bag, majestically blowing along an empty beach. Visually, it's a perfect crystallization of the Quarantine world view: beauty can be found in the most ordinary of places.