Epic theatre on a tiny budget? It can be done

Large-scale projects such as Nic Green's Trilogy and the video works of Gob Squad prove that a lack of funds shouldn't stop you thinking big
Nakedly euphoric … Nic Green's Trilogy PR

For all the fragile beauty and haunting presence of intimate, miniature encounters, sometimes I just like things big. Sometimes I want big spaces crowded with people. I want shows that last three hours. I want to see enormous ideas and whole chunks of the world squeezed on stage. I want bright lights and loud music and the collective euphoria of being a witness to something epic, something special, something important happening in front of you. I want a big group dance number. I want things to almost get out of hand. And by the end, I want the stage to be a ruin, strewn with the remnants of the impossibly brilliant thing that just happened all over it.

Yet for understandable reasons, work on this scale is often solely the domain of those with money and status to afford big stages, big casts and spectacular budgets. A grand scale like that brings too many risks for experiments by little known artists that don't have the broad popular appeal of Dirty Dancing or Jude Law. Which is a shame, as a big canvas can and should be a place for exploration and discovery, for artists and audiences alike.

How do you, then, create work on this deliriously grand scale without the financial clout of Priscilla Queen of the Desert or the stage space of the National?

Nic Green's Trilogy offers one solution. Trilogy is an ambitious, articulate celebration of women and the female body. Made over two years in three different parts, bound together by Nic Green's own fierce presence, the show features music, dancing, historical re-enactment, live address and pre-recorded video. At its most nakedly euphoric moment, it has the stage flooded with a joyously diverse collection of local women.

Requiring a different group of up to 100 local women for each performance, Trilogy is no small feat, and events like the Brighton festival's failed participatory project last year demonstrate the risk involved. Yet Green's passion and her genuine spirit of collaboration with the women that take part have meant that she has been inundated with participants every time that section of the show has been performed. It's going to be in London next week, and then in Edinburgh this summer. It is undoubtedly worth making a note in your diary to see how theatre can ­operate on a grand scale with minimal resources.

Similarly, the brilliant Gob Squad conjure the epic through the participation of ordinary people. But whereas Trilogy focuses on the generosity of spirit of this temporary community of women coming together to perform, Gob Squad use the whole world (or as much of it as they can find) as their canvas, and everyone in it as a potential participant.

In both Super Night Shot and Saving the World, seen recently at Spill, a small group of performers appear on the streets with digital video cameras. They have a specific task to fulfill: making a show in only an hour, or telling the story of the world in a day. Through the urgency of the context and the enthusiasm of the performers, something quite incredible is conjured. Passers-by become characters, they dance, they talk, they become heroes or saviours before disappearing off again into the real world. Sitting in the dark in front of a series of video screens, this still feels like one of the most impossible, beautiful, courageous and epic theatrical experiences you can imagine.