Maketank
Housed in a former retail space on Paris Street, Maketank is a creative hub for contemporary performance practice with community and artist development at the heart of its mission. We spoke to Director and Founder Olya Petrakova…
What do you do?
Maketank is a creative hub for contemporary performance practice. The term ‘contemporary performance’ is used to describe hybrid performance works at the intersection of various disciplines such as experimental theatre, dance, music composition, live art, visual art, performance poetry, puppetry, expanded film and video, performance art, without adhering strictly to any one field of practice. We are particularly passionate about performances that take risk by shattering assumptions and build a movement, a community.
As an incubator for future performance work, we provide creative studio and dedicated rehearsal spaces, mentorship, a place to make props, costumes and other elements of scenography, as well as to host meet-up events, skill-sharing workshops and classes. Additionally, we run an internship programme to help people get started in the arts sector.
Performance of On Leaving the House by Valerie McCann. Photo by Jack Honeysett.
Maketank can also be seen as a laid-back place for performance artists to make a mess, to play with time, to have a cup of tea or a glass of wine over impassioned or witty exchanges about the future performance ecology in Exeter. Building a community of like-minded people is the backbone of Maketank’s mission. We seek to make a place for new ideas to emerge among a group of curious, passionate and adventuresome individuals who are willing to share and exchange. Last year, we held our first Exeter Performance in Conversation (EPIC) forum on the topic of Performing Arts Incubators with guest artist Jessica Hanna (Bootleg Theatre, Los Angeles), and we plan to continue with this platform featuring guest speakers. We want to cover such subjects as risk, impact, politics, environment, etc.
In addition to community gatherings and performance incubation, Maketank periodically hosts daring and provocative performances and exhibitions. Some past events include: Catherine Cartwright’s ‘Brave New World’ exhibit (part of the Urgency Commission by University of Exeter’s Arts & Culture), questioning the impact of facial recognition on freedom of assembly; Company of Wolves’ Achilles, a fusion of storytelling, dance and song, tackling the tumultuous themes of grief and vengeance; and Circle Tale’s ambient installation based on a collaborative tale generated through the playing of the unique storytelling game prototyped by the company.
How did you get started?
As a project, Maketank fits with the way in which I’ve worked as an artist for the last 15 years: spearheading performing arts community networks, initiating neighbourhood re-animation programs, transforming urban and rural disused spaces into cultural hubs or places for happenings, producing diverse events, festivals and conferences, and staging visual and sonic theatrical productions.
Maketank started as a six-month pilot project in January 2019, but the idea came a year earlier as a response to the lack of a dedicated making space for contemporary performance in Exeter. We researched what provision and spaces had been in Exeter previously and interviewed as many of those involved as we could. Additionally, I helped Theatre Alibi’s Artistic Director Nikki Sved with some of the ‘What’s Next’ forum on theatre in Exeter in July 2018, and it was clear from that meeting that a new space was truly needed. From there, it was a long and tenacious effort to secure our first location. Maketank has since grown to become an ongoing experiment aimed at turning disused retail spaces in the city into making spaces for daring and boundary-pushing performances and art installations. We want to encourage our city and communities to think about how the High Street can be used differently. Shopping is great – it’s essential – but so are art and culture. If the High Street is economically unsustainable, as some posit – and that’s still a big if – what might our city centres look like if they became sites for local, national and international artistic incubation? How might Exeter benefit from makers developing new performances in the city centre that then premiere here and tour nationally or internationally? Additionally, how might we bring the University and other institutions into more conversation with the city centre? And what would be the benefit of that – for everyone? Last autumn, for instance, we collaborated with the University of Exeter MA Creativity: Innovation and Business Strategy students and staff to develop and remodel Maketank’s new space DeK (formerly the Sweat and Stretch Gym) into a set of studios for co-working, rehearsals, and performances. The DeK is now beginning to bear fruit - watch a short film here.
Maketank has been made possible with the help of essential collaborators: Charlotte Evans (a graduate of the University of Exeter’s Drama department), Bryan Brown (actor, director, and Drama lecturer at the University, and my partner in ARTEL, the American Russian Theatre Ensemble Laboratory), Bérengère Ariaudo De Castelli (a seasoned theatre administrator with a great resume and passion for daring work who is currently serving as Maketank’s General Manager), and a group of wonderful supporters and interns. We hope through our dedication and perseverance, Maketank will grow into a permanent sustainable artist-led creative lab.
Who do you work with and why?
Again, Maketank’s ethos comes from my philosophy for professional theatre practice. Working as a theatre director naturally means working with creative people, such as actors, designers, composers, choreographers, but when I work with them, I also think closely of the audience. I believe that in performance it is very important to work in relation to the audience from the moment the idea of a project comes to mind. Who is my audience? How will they become part of the event? Where will they enter, stand, sit, move? What do they see, hear, smell, touch or even taste? Making theatre is about creating a microcosm, and the effectiveness of this endeavour rests on painstakingly forging connections between people and spaces, objects, light, colours, sounds, etc.
This ethos is embedded in how we work at Maketank: we want to support artists of various disciplines within Greater Exeter to be creatively ambitious with their work and encourage them to utilise our spaces to experiment with their artistic practice, to test out new ideas, dare to be radical in their approaches to art and performance, but always have the audience at the centre of the work to build a community, a following.
Following on from this, we are currently working with these organisations and artists to build a robust model for art and cultural practice in the city centre and/or to encourage interdisciplinary risk-taking in performance that cares for and entices audiences to experience and feedback into the work:
University of Exeter’s Drama Department, MA Creativity, Arts & Culture, and Student Start Up
Jemima Cooper / PigNose Productions
We are always looking for more allies, comrades, compatriots, provocateurs, and volunteers to build and support a shared vision of artistic practices and cultures.
What’s been the best moment for Maketank so far?
It’s impossible to pick one moment but the last few months have been pivotal.
We just celebrated a one-year birthday with a fantastic community party that included a leap year ritual, an international piñata contest, and heaps of inspiring conversations about the future of Exeter’s creative scene.
Maketank’s first birthday, featuring a Piñata ritual in the recently decorated black box theatre space. Photo by Wendy Cheng Zhang.
Two days before that we premiered our first Performance Incubation Program (PIP) project, ‘On Leaving the House’, by Valerie McCann. Val is a phenomenal performer from the USA whom I’ve known for 18 years. She created a powerful live art choreographic piece that layered and combined her own history of bodily struggles (a history of replacement surgeries) with the lives and writings of three American artists from the last 200 years. The performance used three spaces in Maketank in simple but evocative ways and was the christening of the DeK as well as PIP. We couldn’t have asked for a better artist or performance to do this.
Not long before these events we had the pleasure of hosting Ira Brand’s Ways to Submit, presented by Scare the Horses. More than simply being a space for another organisation to use, the Maketank team joined forces with the amazing artist/builder Volkhardt Müller (artistic director of TOPOS, an artist-led studio in Exeter) and the virtuoso duo Joe Hancock and Kerrie Seymour (Burn the Curtain), who took care of lighting/sound/projection and audience participation, to support and deliver the outstanding curatorial practice of Paula Crutchlow (Scare the Horses). This kind of community support, working in tandem around insanely busy schedules and impossibly limited resources, to share joyfully in the presentation of work we all believe in is the spirit of Maketank. Fifty wooden crates were transformed into seating platforms, a large film screen was sourced and mounted, lighting rigged ad hoc, bar set up, and voila: Maketank was turned into a buzzing vibrant performance venue! The show was completely sold out, so we started a waiting list and managed to accommodate everyone. Ways to Submit invited the audience into a fantasy, a game, a dialogue, a performance, and… a fight. This experience left many craving more provocative and daring work to be shared in Exeter.
And the buzz is continuing... mid-March will be an exciting time for more new work.
What does the next year look like for you?
Maketank is currently entering the next phase of progression by applying for funding to run professional performance incubation programs. The idea of development is at the heart of Maketank’s mission, and our goal is to make those programs intergenerational, multidisciplinary and innovative. Emphasis on an intergenerational approach we believe will enrich artists’ processes with myriad perspectives from their peer network, by welcoming differences in age and in stages of careers. The current trend to frame programs as serving ‘emerging’ or ‘mid-career’ artists leaves many people puzzled, as there are many artists who do not consider themselves either. Maketank wants to appeal to people who want to make work and take risks, full stop.
When it comes to multidisciplinarity, we are interested in incubating work that happens at the cross-sections of various disciplines, embracing collaborative practices and opening space in rehearsals for input from a rich pool of experts in Exeter, such as scientists, technology specialists, social entrepreneurs, academics, etc. We are also keen on continuing EPIC (Exeter Performance in Conversation), our forum for critical conversations that I mentioned earlier, by holding a space for peer networks to cultivate and self-organise.
Name one thing that would make your life easier as an artist or arts organiser.
For Exeter to embrace its creative spirit. One way to do this might be to invest more into physical (not only digital) visibility for cultural and artistic spaces in the city, both in the form of buildings that are centrally located (i.e. performance venues, galleries, artist-led social enterprises), and in the form of visual displays (kiosks, tabloids, dedicated windows). In the most simple way, Exeter needs a very centrally positioned ticket kiosk, visible on the main thoroughfare, to sell tickets for all its artistic and cultural venues like Cygnet, Exeter Phoenix, Barnfield, Northcott, RAMM, and so forth, to promote shows, exhibitions, classes, educational programs. Perhaps a small colourful pop-up kiosk can be utilised to create greater visibility and promotion. Something to mull over at Maketank.
In what ways are you helping to put Exeter on the cultural map, nationally or internationally?
Maketank sees Exeter as a place that supports making. In turn, we see Maketank as a meeting point between local and visiting artists, local audiences, University of Exeter and Exeter College academics and staff, and various cultural institutions, such as RAMM, Literature Works, and so forth. This melting pot of talents and curious minds will inevitably produce some exciting projects to be shared nationally and internationally. We hope that our Performance Incubation Program (PIP) can further galvanise local forces to create notable touring productions of promise, and that this program will help put Exeter on the cultural map as a place to be for creatives.
What if..?
Through my academic and practical work (including the various activities of my theatre company ARTEL), I have established connections in North America, Russia, France, Netherlands, Denmark, Poland and other parts of Europe. These connections will serve our ambition to build a truly international incubation space, one that reflects multiple perspectives of performance, art and culture. Exeter Culture can help Maketank by continuing to champion and defend the need for a multi-disciplinary, multicultural, intergenerational artist-led incubation network and physical space in the centre of the city.
Additionally, Exeter Culture can help Maketank in the development of commissioning programs that connect with Exeter’s new UNESCO’s City of Literature status. We just presented our first international PIP, Valerie McCann’s ‘On Leaving the House’, which was a profound response to the life and work of Alice James, Susan Sontag and Clarice Lispector, particularly her novel The Passion According to G.H. Moreover, our own work with ARTEL has always been rooted in adapting and transforming literature into a visceral live performance experience. Developing clearer structures for sponsorship and audience base for this kind of work would not only allow more performance to be created, but for audiences to be enticed to read works they might not otherwise consider, and for writers to ponder how their words can be transformed into live events.
How do we find out more?
Like us on Facebook: @MaketankExeter
Follow us on Twitter: @MaketankExeter