It grew out of some shared frustrations and desires:

a frustration with a lack of creative thinking in writing about theatre
a desire to consider theatre as an ongoing process, and to write from within that process
a frustration with the hierarchies of theatre-maker, critic and audience
a desire for better communication

We talked about this at Devoted and Disgruntled, February 2012, at a session called by Maddy: “What new dialogue can we set up between people who write about theatre and people who make it?”

In March 2012, we created the Dialogue website as a place to record developments in our thinking. It was inspired by many things:

- an essay on the New York website Culturebot, on the New Criticism, which contains a manifesto for “critical horizontalism”, arguing that: “The writer’s response is the continuation of a dialogue initiated by the artist.”

- an essay by Andrew Haydon on “embedded” criticism,

- and a dare to theatre-makers by Daniel Bye.

Currently on our website you can find our manifesto, a timeline with information about and links to all our activities to date, and a record of our most recent large-scale project. We hope you enjoy finding out about our work, and if you have any questions, provocations or challenges for us, we would love to hear from you.

Maddy and Jake
maddy[at]welcometodialogue.com
jake[at]welcometodialogue.com