What is theatre capable of? Simon Stone at TEDxSydney

Summary

Simon Stone (in a TEDxSydney talk) demonstrates theatre’s “first principles” by showing how meaning can be generated from an almost empty environment: an empty stage, a performer’s presence, and an audience’s attention. He then explores how theatre transforms through controllable variables—lighting (amount, color, direction, and darkness), scale (single actor vs. many), blocking and proximity (passing and eye contact), sound (volume, music, soundscape), and context (a normal conversation, romantic underscore, avant-garde ambience, party music).

The examples show that theatre can repurpose ordinary actions and dialogue into dramatic events, revealing theatre as a flexible system where time, space, and sensory design actively shape what the audience “understands.”

Artistic techniques / creative processes shown

• “Bare stage” principle

  • Starts with an empty stage and proves that space + a performer’s action + audience attention can constitute theatre.

• Actor-based demonstration of presence and framing

  • Multiple “camera-like” variations using stage positioning and implied focus: walking, lying, facing different directions, speaking directly to the audience.
  • Micro-action as theatre: the actor recounting breakfast becomes the performance material.

• Lighting design experimentation

  • Lighting at different intensities/areas:
    • half the stage, a quarter of the stage, only the person, only the face, only the lips
  • Lighting from different angles:
    • one side vs. the other side
    • from the wings (implied side/front source)
  • Color contrast:
    • actor in one color, stage in another
  • Total darkness:
    • actor still delivering dialogue while the stage/environment is unlit

• Blocking and interaction choreography

  • Passing: two performers cross paths and escalate the interaction through eye contact, smiles, looking back over shoulders, pausing, and one speaking.
  • Scale-up of the same moment:
    • the conversation becomes less clear/barely audible with 63 people on stage.

• Sound design and musical scoring as dramaturgy

  • Volume control: raising/lowering the clarity of dialogue in a crowded audio field.
  • Soundscape substitution:
    • romantic underscore music
    • avant-garde buzzy feedback noises
    • party/dance music (with raised voices)
  • Context layering: a “talk” while a separate conversation occurs in the background, showing how audio streams compete and coexist.

• Use of performative realism mixed with theatrical abstraction

  • Ordinary dialogue (“Two poached eggs and a slice of toast…”) and gestures (kisses, smiles) are treated as theatrical “engines.”

• Performance beats and endpoints

  • Blackout as a structural punctuation point (followed by laughter/applause).

Creators / contributors featured

• Simon Stone (speaker)
• Peter Brook (referenced; author of The Empty Space)
• Unnamed Actor(s) (performed during lighting/solo demonstrations)
• Ewan (character/performer in scripted conversation)
• Anita (character/performer in scripted conversation)
• TEDxSydney audience members (implied through “laughter,” applause, and the “63 people on stage” scenario)
• Unspecified additional Speaker (brief embedded talk segment about “mango” and kids)