The Theatre of Mistakes
Artists’ group The Theatre of Mistakes (1974-81) pioneered a structured performance art traversing architecture, choreography and poetry as well as visual art. They formed in London in the early 1970s from a series of open workshops at which instructional and games-based exercises were the focus. These came to inform The Street (1975), a performance with the residents and environment of Ascham Street in Kentish Town.
Fiona Templeton and Anthony Howell distilled the performance exercises into a publication, Elements of Performance Art (1976), arguably the first manifesto for performance art in the UK. A core group of six performers (Mickey Greenall, Glenys Johnson, Miranda Payne, Peter Stickland as well as Howell and Templeton) then agreed to produce contained and systematic works for a five-year duration.
The Theatre of Mistakes was a subject of a 2017 retrospective entitled "In Case There's a Reason: The Theatre of Mistakes" which ran from June 30 to August 6, 2017 at Raven Row in London. Reviews of the retrospective can be found here and here. For more on the retrospective, including images and video of workshops and performances, please visit the exhibition's page on Raven Row's website here.
