We Always Arrive in the Theatre on Foot: A walk to the theatre in sixteen steps and eighteen footnotes

WE ALWAYS ARRIVE IN THE THEATRE ON FOOT is a writing collaboration between dancer and choreographer Martin Nachbar and performance maker and researcher Esther Pilkington. The text is the continuation of a dialogue the two started during a workshop that Martin gave as part of his research process for his forthcoming performance The Walk (which he is planning to realise in 2012). The walk through the city to the theatre is the focus of Martin's future performance and of this current discussion. In their essay, Martin and Esther re-trace some of the discussions and exercises from the workshop while at the same time aiming to move beyond this frame, both together, in the main body of the text, and individually in the footnotes. Considering the theatre as a building in the city, a building that is reached by walking, Martin and Esther explore the foot as a link between the outside of the city and the inside of the theatre. The walk to the gathering that is the theatre event blurs this distinction between inside and outside, between art and the everyday. How can the walk to the theatre become visible amongst all the other movements in the urban space? The walk to the theatre is here considered as something other than a means to get from A to B: it opens a space of transition and transformation between the everyday and the theatrical, it becomes a demonstration of and for the theatre on foot.