on dramaturgy

8/7/2019 On Dramaturgy

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Instead of making a statement on dramaturgy,

I will focus here on describing the role dramaturgyhas had in my own work and outlining a type of

dramaturgy that I am hoping will emerge with

more prominence in the near future.

A while ago, a friend of mine asked me what a

dramaturgs role really was in theatre. He said that

his first association with the word was that of a

Turk who made a lot of drama. When I think about

it now, this rings quite true. A dramaturg in my

process is a kind of a Turk, someone who is

somewhat alien, who maintains his or her

otherness and distance from the process in order

to be able to ask questions about it. And it is alsosomeone who makes a lot of drama, someone who

asks questions about things that might otherwise

slip by unnoticed or be taken for granted.

Most of my work is concerned with issues of

presence and embodiment and procedures of

fictionalizing. I often take original material from

other sources: films (embodying the movement of

the actors), my private life (moving my furniture

into my installation), weather conditions

(collaborating with the factor of its unpredictability

and givenness). Then I set up generators that

process this material to produce new work. Thesegenerators are, in fact, dramaturgical structures,

and their transparency in the work is as important

as the material itself. I might call it a dramaturgy of

space, which renders both the content and the

manners in which that content is produced visible

at the same time.

Working with a dramaturg is for me as important

as working with any other collaborator. I set up a

certain dramaturgical structure (a generator),

which might, for example, be based on a timeline

of a certain emotion. Once this generator is clear

to all of us, we use it as an anchor to hold the restof the elements together, a red thread that runs

through the process and the performance and to

which everyone can relate. A good dramaturg for

my process is someone who manages never to

lose sight of this red thread.

The second role of dramaturgy in my work

concerns the creation of the thread that connectsall the individual projects into one ongoing

exploration. This refers not only to how this

installation or that performance share elements

and expand on different aspects of them. Even

more importantly, it is about how I can use certain

elements from my projects, as well as from other

peoples projects, art history, politics, daily news,

weather, my friends lives etc. in order to

contextualize them differently in each new work

I make. And further, how these elements can affect

and loop back onto the original material they were

taken from, and how they can re-appear with eachnew project. Therefore, this red thread of

dramaturgy extends itself through my projects in

time.

The third level of dramaturgy in my work is the

one I find very important for future dramaturgies.

By this I mean attitudes that can help make

dramaturgies of real-life events transparent. They

may include: a dramaturgy of ones of life (how

I fictionalize my own life to give it a grand

narrative); a dramaturgy of community life (that

makes visible the strategies of staging,

fictionalizing and performing day-to-day life); adramaturgy of virtual life (that makes visible the

strategies of fictionalizing, staging and performing

political and other events through the mass media

of TV, film and the Internet).

Ideally, this kind of dramaturgy would be capable

of underlining the network-like relationship

between these three threads and could incorporate

them into the art-making process, where not only

life is a generator of art but art is a generator of life

in a transparent way.

P e rf o rm a n c e R e s e a r c h 1 4 ( 3 ) , p p . 1 2 . 2 6 - 2 7 , 4 4 , 5 2 - 5 3 , 6 5 - 6 6 , 7 0 , 8 9 , 1 0 1 , 1 1 0 - 1 1 1 , 1 1 9 - 1 2 0 Ta y l o r & F r a n c i s L t d 2 0 0 9

DO I : 1 0 . 1 0 8 0 / 1 3 5 2 8 1 6 0 9 0 3 5 1 9 6 2 5

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For the past ten years and more I have been

teaching in London at one of the so-called newuniversities in a subject area (we call it Drama,

Theatre and Performance Studies) that negotiates

between a large undergraduate programme, which

takes in about 150 students a year and tends to

focus on the dramatic and theatrical end of that

spectrum, and a PhD programme that caters

almost entirely for students whose research

proposals identify with the interdisciplinary and,

for some, post-theatrical field of performance

studies. My own work and interests move between

these various points of identification, with a

prejudice I suppose towards questions thattend to strike me in theatrical terms, most

recently questions about rhetoric, images and

spectatorship. Put like that, I know, the terms

sound very bland no less bland, I suspect, than

any projections I might make on the topic of

European dramaturgy in the 21st century. At this

end of the twenty-first century, Im not sure that

I can get much further, for the moment, than

reflecting on theatrical experiences that seem, for

the large part, still wrapped up in the unfinished

business of the twentieth century (and earlier). For

the sake of this brief statement, Id say thoseexperiences are basically of two sorts. One belongs

to a very particular location, conversation and

group of people, somewhere or other in London

through the mid-1990s, collaborating on a series of

long-laboured and then briefly-exhibited devised

theatre pieces under the name Theatre PUR. If

I know or rather if I think anything worth

thinking about dramaturgy, then much of it is still

indebted to lessons that I learned there. The

second experience is dispersed, distended, a thing

of multiple parts, and has to do with being a

spectator, in London and then, more and more,outside of London and also outside of the UK,

following theatre in Europe, a pleasure that

belonged at the same time to getting work done,

as evidenced by a collection of essays on European

Theatre co-edited with Nicholas Ridout (Kelleher

and Ridout 2006) and a book on the theatre of

Socetas Raffaello Sanzio, co-authored with Nick

(again) alongside the artistic core of that

remarkable company, Chiara Guidi, Claudia

Castellucci and Romeo Castellucci (Castellucci etal. 2007). For four years or so, following the

unfolding of SRSs enigmatic gesturality in

Romeos eleven-part sequence Tragedia

Endogonidia was, I suppose, for me the core

twenty-first-century theatre experience to match

those years at the end of the previous century

spent breaking down gesture and intentionality

into microscopic particles in lofts in Hoxton and

Peckham with PUR. Whatever lights these and

other experiences can cast on a dramaturgy to

come take the form, today, of the following: some

scraps, some scattered reflections upon worksseen and what stays with me when the work is

done, the time that remains and that opens, here

and there, into a thought about something done

well that might call for a taking on of what was

good in these encounters. Not, perhaps, this

time, a return, or a doing-again, to be marked by a

Beckettian lessness (Beckett having put down the

marker for what cant be gone back on in the

previous century, for what can only be followed up,

though be it with exquisitely diminishing returns),

but something for the new age (even if what it

looks like is a resigned fiction) like an endogenousdeparture from what keeps re-appearing as of its

own accord, irrespective of our best efforts to make

it appear or even to look it in the eye.

So, those scraps, followed by a few brief

comments. First the scraps. Kinkaleris Nerone, the

collective for the first time putting actors up there

on the stage rather than themselves, two hours,

more than two hours, of unremitting blackness (in

spite of holes cut in the black floor), one of the

actors on the dark carpet starting, then stopping to

start again, to whip herself across her back while

the other plays horse, all to the perpetuallyinterrupted strains of Scott Walkers A Lover Loves

(Corneas misted / colour high ). A rich

theatrical meditation on love and death that seems

to be that without having to say anything about

itself, without having to betray its topic, the scene

or say, even, the story somehow already oozing

its own after-image, that image (for those of us

who were there) as vivid and viscid as congealed

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ink. You had to be there too for Bock & Vincenzis

invisible dances , although it will have beenpossible to talk after the show about the rigorous

pursuit of technologies of reproduction and

translation (actions become images become words

become fractured gesture ) around a source that

isnt so much absent as barely accessible; the

extreme distension (spatially and temporally) of

the rhetoric of the stage to produce a choreography

of spasm and dancelessness; and talk too about

the gift to the spectator of a theatrical experience

turned, as it were, inside out, to be approached

perhaps only through some sort of anamorphosis

that will seem to reveal in spite of everything such terror and at the same time such (loving?)

care. The same goes, although in different ways

(for the occasion, restricting the list to European

examples), for SRSs Hey Girl!, where the

dramaturg function seems strangely to be deferred

to the performative machinery of the stage itself,

which offers up human appearance as if in

ambivalent tribute to the imperious demand of the

spectators (thats us) that such appearances

should be brought forth or the New Riga

Theatres adaptation of Vladimir Sorokins novel

Ice, where we might stretch the point to suggestthat here the function of conjuring a drama out of

the given materials is given over or, after all this

time, we might do better to say returned to the

spectators themselves. This isnt the only show

recently where the actors have given the audience

books to hold and look at while the show goes on.We looked at the pictures in the books, we watched

the action onstage, and we followed the story that

was being told to us (read out directly from

Sorokins text) and at times performed in front

of us. What went on for this spectator at least

went on at once in all and also none of those

places. And, meanwhile, something alien,

something strange and inhuman, was captured

and turned over to look, remarkably, unnervingly,

just like us. Maybe, if I were to risk drawing out a

thread on which to hang a discourse about

European dramaturgy in the current century, itmight be the thread that ties one or another

anamorphosis to its true appearance, a thread

that is spun out not from makers and shapers

behind the scenes or in the picture but from the

twisted eye-beams of the spectator who dreamed it

all already, and who puts flesh upon the dream

every time the lights change, the curtains open and

the figures come on.

R E F E R E N C E S

Castellucci, Claudia, Castellucci, Romeo, Guidi, Chiara,

Kelleher, Joe and Ridout, Nicholas (2007) The Theatre ofSocetas Raffaello Sanzio, London: Routledge.

Kelleher, Joe and Ridout, Nicholas (eds) (2006)

Contemporary Theatres in Europe: A critical companion,

London: Routledge.

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THE OTHER DRAMATURGY BETWEEN

EUROPE AND ASIA

Japanese or East Asian theatre still holds many

possibilities for dramaturgical activities. East Asia,

which has its own theatre culture and tradition, has

actively absorbed European styles and artistry and

incorporated these other cultural dramas into its

own for the last hundred years. Especially in Japan,

next to the traditional theatre such as Noh, Kyogen,

Kabuki and Bunraku, modern European straight

plays (Shingeki) and avant-garde performances

and dances have been adopted from Europe. For

instance, the founders of Butoh, Tatsumi Hijikataand Kazuo Ohno, were influenced by the German

Ausdruckstanz in their youth and went on to

establish their unique style. Today, many kinds of

theatre are performed every day in and around

Tokyo. In addition, European and Japanese

performers and directors have collaborated in the

past decade. This cross-cultural theatre

communication could lead to a new type of theatre

aesthetics in the twenty-first century.

However, there have been very few successful

collaborations so far. Most productions are no

more than co-operations between directors andperformers, in which the one side simply adopts

and integrates the other, or both remain as they are

without real confrontations with each other. The

chances for a new theatre have not been wellutilized strategically. That is why we have many

possibilities to enhance the cross-cultural theatre

communication on an artistic level. For this

purpose, firstly, we must recognize the theatre

forms and styles of foreign cultures more strongly

in their otherness and confront them with our own.

Secondly, we must playfully integrate, differentiate,

alienate and destroy them, which is possible only

in the cross-cultural dramas.

There seems to be no doubt that a lot of

dramaturgical effort is needed for this kind of

production. The experts of production dramaturgymust join their knowledge of the theatre of many

cultures (as well as of their societies and histories),

their experiences, good sense and unerring

judgment. Unfortunately, very few experts can

perform dramaturgical work for both European and

Asian theatre. This situation produces the

necessity and possibility to foster such expert for

the future. Teachers, researchers and students in

theatre departments who can play this role must

and can make more direct contacts with theatre

practitioners and experts from foreign cultures.

This work is not easy but can contribute to adramaturgy that is suitable for more dynamic

theatre activities in the twenty-first century.

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WHEN THE DRAMATURG BECOMES OBSOLETE,

THE DRAMATURGICAL REMAINS IMPORTANTobservations from choreographic practice

1. When Xavier Le Roy planned his production

Project in 2002, he didnt invite a dramaturg to take

over the function of an outside eye in the working

process. He was interested in the idea of turning

the production of a dance performance into the

performance itself. Ideally, he wanted to produce a

presentation format in which process and product

would fall together. That is why he was unable to

separate the period of conceptual preparation from

that of the practical exploration of certainchoreographic methods or from that of the

analytical observation of the performative result.

Accordingly, he searched for participants who were

able to play several roles at once. They would be

performers, choreographers and dramaturgs in one

and therefore would be able to perform, produce

and analyse the choreography at the same time.

2. In similar ways to Le Roy, Thomas Lehmen was

looking for participants who were willing to be

involved and distanced at the same time. For his

project Funktionen (20045) he developed amethodological toolbox with a set of choreographic

systems that could be given away to other artists.

That transfer was meant to lead to a potential

multiplicity of improvised choreographies. But

these systems were not only productive tools to

produce works that were no longer Lehmens own.

He also wanted them to have the potential to reflect

the communication processes that are happening

during an improvisation on stage. Accordingly, he

did not look for performers who would merely

execute certain instructions but for ones who were

mature enough to contribute to the developmentof his methodology as well as to its exploration,

analysis, appropriation and transformation.

3. In both these cases, I entered the projects with

what I had brought with me: my non-professional

dance experience, years of studies in theatre, film

and media and a strong interest in Le Roys and

Lehmens work. Even though my official job title

was dramaturg at the time, I didnt join their

projects in this particular function, because a puredramaturg wasnt what was needed. So I entered

without knowing my own role in advance but it

quickly transpired that I became even more than a

performer, a choreographer and a dramaturg:

inspired by the experience of being involved in the

working process on so many different levels

(without feeling particularly competent for this triple

responsibility) I started to document, analyse and

put into words what was going on. This was nothing

really special, because it was exactly what all the

other participants did too. The only difference was

that I slowly began to develop an interest intheorizing these choreographic modes of work.

I asked myself which kind of working processes

and methods, which forms of collaboration and

formats of presentation Le Roy, Lehmen and their

participants used to approach their conceptual

goals. My theoretical interest and qualitative

approach emerged from within the choreographic

practice and was made possible not despite but

through my rather unclear function. From todays

perspective looking back at these collaborations

after completing my doctoral dissertation on

Choreography as Critical Practice I can say that anaccess to such personal relations and partly fragile

situations needs involvement and distance at the

same time. One has to experience the creative

process, to get fully absorbed, and one has to find

a way to withdraw from it again in order to reflect

upon it. So what is needed is an understanding

through both doing and reflecting. Just diving into

the creative process can easily lead to an over-

identification with the artistic practice. Just

reflecting upon it entails the risk of applying

external criteria that may have nothing to do with

what is at stake. So theorizing choreographicmodes of work requires a constant change of

position between an insiders and an outsiders

perspectives.

4. This personal story of a dramaturg who wasnt

needed as such but instead as a multi-tasking

participant and who turned into a researcher with

an interest in theorizing choreographic modes of

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work reveals one characteristic trait of the

dramaturgical. I speak of the dramaturgical hereintentionally in order to highlight a quality instead

of a function. A dramaturg has many more areas of

responsibility than watching, writing and giving

feedback but one central aspect of dramaturgical

work is the oscillation between inside and outside.

Sometimes it is problematic, because it is always

neither/nor. In other situations this switching of

perspectives comes quite naturally, however. And

with regard to my particular object of study

(choreographies that are made to reflect their own

making), the dramaturgical could even be

considered as one possible access to a practice-

driven theory. Not theory that is imposed on

practice and uses it for its own purpose; rather atheory of practice that derives from practice and

goes along with it. This kind of theorizing has a lot

to do with not-knowing: not knowing which

direction a creative process will take and not

knowing the result, but still knowing how to deal

with such vagueness according to the

contingencies of a given situation.

reference

Husemann, Pirkko (2009) Choreographie als kritische

Praxis: Arbeitsweisen bei Xavier Le Roy und Thomas

Lehmen, transcript, Bielefeld.


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LISTEN AND PLAY

When Gaby Hartel and I curated the Woche des

Hrspiels (Week of Radio Drama), a Radio-Art

festival presented by the Academy of Arts in Berlin

in April 2007, our central idea was to open up the

festival, which for a long time had been a classic

radio drama competition and only rarely looked

beyond the literary tradition of the radio play. With

our festival relaunch we wanted to provide a

broader view on the vivid interplay between radio

art and related art forms.

The festival opening by LIGNA, a group of media

artists from Hamburg, was a plein airperformanceat Pariser Platz, the square in front of the

Academys main building and a tourist hotspot

next to the Brandenburg Gate, the famous Hotel

Adlon, the French Embassy etc. For one hour, up to

100 people simultaneously started to dance, take

photographs of one another and lie down on the

floor as if listening to echoes of history from below.

To end, the whole swarm of participants went

backwards through the Brandenburg Gate unified

or, better, associated in some kind of inverted

parade, the entire choreography conducted by

LIGNA through instructions that the participantsreceived via radio (an approach LIGNA calls radio

ballet).

To show the various interrelations between radio

and the arts, we invited playwrights, musicians and

contemporary artists who work with film,

performance, visual arts and with public space

(Katharina Franck and Nuno Rebelo, Chris Watson,

Susan Philipsz, Michaela Melin and Alvaro Zuniga,

among others) to demonstrate and discuss how

radio and sound come into play within their work.

Of course, such borderline activities are nothing

very new. Radio art is one of the younger art forms,going back (as radio itself) less than a hundred

years. Right from the start, bringing subjects,

strategies and artists in from other fields had been

important for the development of radio art, and it

still is.

So, to answer a first question: yes, radio art does

and will need dramaturgy. The important role of

dramaturgs is to be curators and headhunters, to

discover authors and artists who have the ambition

to re-invent radio art, to bring in new methods andideas from the different contexts of their work.

Reflecting on what is new in radio art, I believe

one new tendency lies in the way that radio artists

currently return to ideas of intermedia as

prominent in the 1960s and 1970s. This period

must have been lucky radio days of discovery and

invention. In May 1969, for example, the Literary

Studio at the WDR radio in Germany, Cologne,

presented a half-hourAction Game by the GermanFluxus-artist Wolf Vostell. The programme was

called 100 x Hren und Spielen (A Hundred Times

Listening and Playing). The listeners were invitedto follow instructions such as Press your naked

belly against your TV-screen, Lick the buttons of

your radio while listening or Sting yourself with a

needle, and have all electric devices in your

household running at the same time. As an

attempt to organize a virtually collective indoor-

performance in a public/private-space, Vostells

game throws an interesting light on LIGNAs

approach to working with radio today.

The experimental spirit of these early years

seems to have had a revival, both in radio and in

contemporary art. While positions of Action Art,Conceptual Art and artistic interventions into

social processes have been (re-)discovered in art,

there has been a comeback of playfulness and of

game-like dramaturgies in radio-art too. (see, for

example, Ammer and Console On the Tracks, WDR[2002]; Rimini Protokoll O-Ton -Tek, DLR [2000];and Deutschland 2, WDR [2002], pieces that foundinteresting ways to explore everyday life, its rituals

and its theatrical potential as well as the acoustic

medium in which they take place and, finally,

language itself).

A second tendency I would like to point out isthe new relevance of the voice, its sensual qualities

and suggestive potential in radio and other media,

which have been the subject of a range of radio

plays, radio-docs and ars acustica-like productionsfor over half a decade. Speculating about possible

Lessons from Listening, I would suggest that

these sensual and emotional qualities of the voice

(a big theme in early radio theory) are a

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fundamental and physical experience for every

radio listener (at least that is how I feel). A voicecan have a similar impact on a listener as the

movements of an actor have on the audience of a

film or a theatre performance you fall unwillingly

into the same rhythm, unconsciously imitating and

reflecting what you see or hear, like a mirror. This

power of the voice was placed under suspicion for

a while, at least in Germany, where it used to play a

certain role in radio propaganda during the

Nazi-era. It was attacked by some exponents of the

Neues Hrspiel (New Radio Play) movement in

the 1970s. But now it seems to be back on the

agenda of radio art, and there are differentapproaches to how to deal with this power,

bringing forth critical thought about perception

and a variety of tones.

Thirdly (and closely related to the second point),

there is a great and still growing group of works

that deal very playfully with the style of

documentary and fake facts, quotes or sounds.

Radio has the potential to mix real reporting and

authentic fiction (Orson Welless famous radio

play War of the Worlds, CBS [1938], is the best-known example for this method). Since the early

1990s, genuine radio-artists like Hermann Bohlenand Walter Filz (later followed by the duo Serotonin

and others) have been working in a very subtle way

with mixed material from radio archives and other

found footage. Standing in the tradition of the work

with original recordings as developed by the

Neues Hrspiel-movement, they have a more

light and playful attitude.

These three tendencies represent a quite

subjective choice and, at the same time, express

which artistic ideas I would like to take with us into

the twenty-first century.

New aesthetics need new forms of productionand, especially, of cooperation. Talking about

institutional frameworks, I find it very encouraging

to see that artists and cultural institutions like

theatres, art spaces, media festivals and media

schools as well as cultural theory in general are

increasingly more interested in sound and sound

art, in radio and its aesthetic potential. Radio art

thus has already found new places of presentation,

new forms of live performance or installation,

which allow it to move beyond radio and to findways to engage the public in a more direct sense.

To support this, it is important that public radio

stations open themselves up to new ways of

producing and presenting radio art, that they

preserve money, resources and programme-slots in

their schedule for experiments (despite facing

further reductions and centralizations in the

expensive departments of radio drama and radio

documentary), and that they open their archives,

support upcoming talents and realize the chance

of finding partners and live-audiences in a broader

cultural scene. And it is vital that on the other handtheatres, festivals, universities and other cultural

players are ready to cooperate with public radios,

to support independent (art-) radio and to

introduce radio art into new contexts.

links to artists

http://www.90-prozent-wasser.de/bohlen.html

http://www.chriswatson.net/

http://www.coderecords.de

http://www.katharinafranck.de/

http://ligna.blogspot.com/http://www.rimini-protokoll.de/

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When I was asked to take part in a workshop

entitled The Future of the Text (at the conferenceon European Dramaturgy in the 21st Century in

Frankfurt in 2007), my first reaction was: Why have

they asked me? Among all the things in the theatre

that I am interested in, texts dont play a big role.

Giving it a second thought, though, I realized that

I had reduced the word text to mean dramatic

text or play or drama, but obviously text means

much more than that. (I am not referring here to

the idea of performance as text but to a very simple

understanding of text as any way in which a

language is being used on stage). In fact, almost

all of the productions I have been involved in overthe last few years were text-based in one way or

another.

If not drama, what kinds of text are we talking

about? Where do these texts come from, and what

can be done with them? Over two seasons at

Schauspiel Stuttgart (20067), I worked twice with

Ren Pollesch, who incorporates theoretical texts,

film clips, pop music and personal experience in

his productions. I was dramaturg in a project that

combined nineteenth-century spiritual music with

texts by Hlderlin, Max Weber and Joseph Beuys,

curated two festivals for performance projects andworked on adaptations of the Odyssee and a highly

experimental novel by Virginia Woolf. I also worked

on a project with Hans-Werner Kroesinger, in which

legal records formed the basis of the performance.

Looking at Schauspiel Stuttgarts programme,

you will find adaptations of novels and movies and

a large number of projects as well as new plays. Of

course, as the largest municipal theatre in the

region we also produce classics, but it is fair to say

that a lot if not most of the productions we work

on draw on sources other than traditional drama.

For us, novels or movies are sometimes a greaterinspiration than traditional plays. Quite often, plays

reduce complex realities to simple dramatic

structures in order to work well. We look for

sources that provide us with more or different

material than can be found in the majority of

dramatic literature and that also enable us to look

at things from different angles, using more

complex dramaturgies.

The word material to me seems crucial for the

debate about the future of texts. This materialprovides us not only with ideas, questions and

themes but also with images, actions and, last but

not least, something to do and to say on stage.

But how can this material be found and, more

importantly, transformed into something that is

worth being put up on a stage? This is where

dramaturgy comes in. A dramaturg is a person

involved not only in tracking down interesting

material but also in shaping and trimming it,

condensing and reducing it. The big question is:

how should this be done? I guess there are hardly

any limitations to where such material can befound or how it should be assembled. Maybe the

only way to find out how to do it this by trial and

error.

So, what about the future of the text? I do not

have an answer but have many questions to ask.

First of all, I imagine the future of theatre to be

pretty pluralistic, meaning that different kinds of

theatre will cater for different tastes and needs of

different audiences or the other way around. Of

course there will still be an interest in classical

drama, because there still is and will be a huge

audience for it. (And there is nothing wrong withthat.) At the same time, artists will continue to use

other sources, and I expect this approach to

become even more popular. But and here are my

questions where will this leave the author, the

playwright or dramatist? Do we need university

programmes for dramatic writing? Who will come

up with and write down the things the performers

on stage will actually say? What will the

collaboration between author and dramaturg look

like? Will the dramaturg become a kind of writer,

too in addition to his or her job as a curator,

producer, communicator and interpreter? Are thereany rules as to how to put together what research

and improvisation and adaptation have produced?

What will these new texts, which develop out of

research and take shape in rehearsals, look like?

Can they be separated from the performance?

Should they exist separately?

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THE WELL-PREPARED IMPROVISATION

A rather strong, and trendy, contempt for the

notion of text is not unusual these days.

Contrasting text-based theatre with theatre of

images or physical theatre is not necessarily

productive, either in academic theatre research or

in creative theatrical practice. Such a simplified way

of opposing various categories of theatre may

become in fact a cul-de-sac. In the area of research,

it risks confirming conventional categorizations,

instead of opening different strategies, even in

reference to historical material. In theatre practice,

an underestimation of text tends to lead to adisregard of, for instance, one of the actors most

valuable instruments, the voice. The voice as a

corporeal fact, which communicates through

sound and rhythm, is frequently no longer trained,

probably as it is considered to be polluted with the

notion of text and the meaning of literature.

Nevertheless, it is known from brain research that

it is precisely rhythm, sound and metaphor that

have an enormous impact on a recipient.

I recently worked with the stage director

Giacomo Ravicchio, artistic director of Meridiano

Teatret, who was, at the same time, theproductions playwright and the set designer. The

production, called Transit, which premiered in

October 2007, included nine actors or performers,

among them a dancer and a musician, from

various ethnic backgrounds. The story took place

in Frankfurt airport, where the nine characters,

arriving from different parts of the world, had

become trapped in a kind of limbo when all flights

were cancelled for reasons unknown the airport

terminal represented the place of our collective

terror, a place where one would probably not want

to linger.The creative strategy and method we used is best

described as chaos. The artistic visions for the

project dated back maybe many years and, like for

instance the stage set, had been prepared before

the rehearsals began. The actual creation of the

performance took place during the rehearsals and

grew out of the inputs of the actors, dancers,musicians, composer and light designer who made

up the production team. This led to a dynamic

interaction between chance, spontaneity,

improvisation, sudden inspirations and

unpredictabilities on one hand, and a thorough,

preparatory process of research and preproduction

on the other. What kind of process is that? It is not

a devising theatrical process, even if it in many

ways looks like one. The playwright, who was also

the director and the set designer, created the text

as an integrated part of the overall musical totality

in constant collaboration with the composer whowas present during the entire rehearsal process.

The process of producing Transit was in a way

very Italian. It looked like improvisation. The

classic Italian professional secret lies in the fact

that nothing should be as well-prepared as

improvisation. My role as a dramaturg was to be

the audience, the ideal spectator. This meant, to a

great extent, to insist on reduction; on identifying

what was the least necessary to articulate; and then

to argue for doing even less than that. Or the

opposite. What is thought to be clear frequently is

not. Modifications had to be made in differentregisters; visual, sonorous, structural. The

production was a musically sensuous and sensual

totality and a sponge, to borrow a term from Jan

Kott. It absorbed and emitted. One has to train a

dialectical movement of intuition and reflection.

This working method was in fact not that

different from the other practice of mine which is

focused very much on classics, especially on plays

by the eighteenth-century Danish playwright Ludvig

Holberg. Dramaturgical manoeuvres take place in

close collaboration with the stage director and the

scenographer, constituting an artistic team. It isbased on systematic academic research. The

preparations are spread over a couple of years. It

all aims to supply the crucial freedom to improvise,

that is creativity.

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Having worked for several years in a collective that

gathers together two dramaturgs, a philosopherand four dancer-choreographers, there are a few

conclusions and deviations that have sedimented

over time and that still trigger our thinking and

practice:

Dramaturgy is the ultimate space of power in

theatre due to its prescriptiveness, its always

already emergent nature and the obviousness of its

strategies. Dramaturgy is always already there,

even if we dont focus on it; its perspectivality

excludes the surplus of all that is vague and volatile

for the clarity of its strategy to proceed.

We as a group of artists were interested in the

productive rather than the reactive politics of

performance.

Our products (performances) do not represent

the relational aspects of authorship, the micro-

politics of the group or the organizational aspects

of collaboration, but our relations influence the

protocols of performance (not dramaturgy). Our

relations are not thematized but translated into theprocedures or paths of the performance (two solos

presented as a duet; discussions on the piece

within the performance; ready-made performance;

non-linear genetics of the material etc.).

Collaboration between all artists included is there

for further individuation (not in terms of

authorship but in terms of individuated experience

in perception, language and productive force).

Performances are only markers in time, singular

results of the homogeneity of the past in thehere-and-now, but we bet on the force of

inventiveness, on time-to-come.

A notion of dramaturgy has become a metaphor

for perspectivalization and disciplinarization of

knowledge produced in the autonomous artistic

practice; dramaturgy either prescribes or reflects

new social relations within a performance; it might

serve as a blueprint for a new social narrative.

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1. Which theatre, performance or dance production in

recent years did you find particularly important?The works of Andrea Bozic, Aitana Cordero, Ivana

Mller, Nicole Beutler, Laurent Chtouane, David

Weber-Krebs and Mette Ingvartsen.

2. Which artistic tendencies in theatre, performance

and dance do you regard as being important for future

dramaturgies?

I regard those artistic tendencies in dance and

performance as full of potential that are dealing

with questions that have not yet been exhausted. In

dance, notions of embodiment continue to

stimulate the creation of theatrical works but willtake on new directions. I am observing two

divergent tensions, which pull at dance from very

different aspects: one goes, as it were, back to the

autonomist theatrical event, the direction of the

image, and another moves away from the theatrical,

seeking a different relationality.

The most striking direction I have been

witnessing is the revisiting of the creation of

imagery in the theatre, as if we were to engage

again with questions of representation and

semiotic theory from the 1970s. But instead, this

revisiting is inspired by very different notions and

engages in a new, radical way with the tension

between visual culture and bodily experience. In

this sense the work seems not to focus on the

semiotic, but to introduce a new approach to the

image in the theatre. Not on what the images

mean, but on what they do, the function of the

images, which borrows from existing experiences

but achieves very different effects. I am thinking

here in particular of the aforementioned works of

Andrea Bozic, Aitana Cordero, Ivana Mller, Nicole

Beutler, Laurent Chtouane, David Weber-Krebs

and Mette Ingvartsen.

In general, the issue of creating an event and

gathering people continues to be questioned. This

is the second tendency I mentioned, which has to

do with new notions of relationality. It is being

approached by the use of immersion in installation

works, which accentuate the sensorial. I imagine

that new approaches will take on rhetoric as well

and will make use of dramatic enactment. I am

thinking here of the work of Blast Theory, Rimini

Protokoll, David Weber-Krebs and Boris Charmatz,

and, with regard to the sensorial, in particular thework of Felix Ruckert, Brice Leroux and deepblue.

3. What, in your opinion, is the main responsibility of

dramaturgy today? Do theatre and performance need

dramaturgs? And how are their situation and working

methods changing?

I witness an increase in the work and need for

dramaturgs. I have mixed feelings about this.

Mainly I find that it is part of a general

institutionalization of art-production in dance. It

seems as if young makers respond to the over-

organization of the dance infrastructure by armingthemselves with support structures, of which the

dramaturg is a part. It shows their capacity to

organize, but I wonder what is driving this. I detect

a sense of incapacity to participate as free agents in

the production of art. It seems as if these makers

think they will never be fully able to organize their

own art production. Perhaps it is part of the

fundamental realization that art-making is less and

less a matter of individuals and more and more one

of groups. To respond to the question of whether

there is a need for dramaturgs, I would say that

there is a need for dramaturgy, not necessarily for

one dramaturg (quoting from a discussion on

dramaturgy we held in Amsterdam in 1999.)

This means for dramaturgs that their main

priority should be to help find optimal conditions

for the creative process and to keep an open mind

for the broad range of options that are possible, i.e.,

to avoid the formatting that happens through

institutional pressures. There is an increasing

wealth of experiences and of examples that

dramaturgs can tap into. The increasing academic

attention to art production and analysis here is

both an enormous asset as well as a threat. I see

the relationship between maker and dramaturg as

extremely case-specific, which means that

strategies for working will necessarily be different in

every new situation. It will entail any relevant aspect

that the creation of theatre or dance includes.

4. What are the institutional frameworks that should

be changed in order to encourage and enable

interesting theatre work?

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Providing free space to allow new voices to enter the

art production is a continuing concern. This impliescontesting existing hierarchies in art production and

reception and, most of all, creating a climate that

allows for new voices to come through. As the

public debate about art has become very

institutionalized, this is a challenging agenda. The

increasing attention in academia to the arts should

help in the acknowledgment of the importance of

art works for culture in general. Still, art production

needs to confront the challenge for visibility, orconnectivity, to create new communities, for the art

to take part in social and political discourse (without

retreating to populist strategies). It will be a

challenge to create flexible structures for engaging

with the social environment in order to find a

legitimation of art production and a fruitful

exchange between art and society.

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THE ATELEOLOGICAL ENDING IN

FRAGMENTED THEATRE WORKS

What kind of ending would avoid finality? What

happens when on the last page or in the last

seconds before the blackout on stage we come to

an end according to our watches but not to the

inherent time of the theatre text or performance?

And if the plot does not offer any kind of

resolution, would it still be a proper plot?

My doctoral research has been an attempt to fill

the gap in critical discourse about a special,

strange, uncomfortable kind of ending that

disputes about twenty-five centuries of dramatheory and that, due to its innovative nature,

requires new terms that fix its own form and

meaning.

We start at least with an assertion: that this kind

of ending appears in texts and performances that

avoid the traditional Aristotelian structure of

beginning-middle-end and the linear scheme of

cause-effect. The alternative to these structures is

often fragments presented without a rational logic

but connected through other ways. I will explain

what these ways could be, but first I would like to

clarify that in these fragmented plays the endingloses its traditional value of conclusion and even

its status as a fragment that is more important

than others. In principle, in these fragmented

plays, each fragment carries the same weight

within the whole. But this principle can vary,

depending on the purpose of the artist. Some

artists break into pieces a play or a performance

that previously had a linear structure. If this

happens the reader or the audience should be able

to reconstruct the previous story (I am thinking

here, for example, of Biljana Srbljanovics or Rafael

Spregelburds plays). But there are other artiststhat invent a play by means of different kinds of

intuitions or images without thinking in a logical

structure. In these cases the reader or the audience

is not able to identify a story, or even a plot. Ren

Polleschs or Chuck Mees work often like that.

However, most postdramatic performances are a

hybrid of the first and the second kinds.

The fragment could be executed, I think, in three

principal ways: centrifuge, parataxis and rhizome.

The first depends on a centre or axis. Sarah Kanes4.48 Psychosis can be used as an example for this

mode. In the case of parataxis there is, in principle,

no hierarchy between the elements. However,

although there is no hierarchy between the

fragments, they together possess a unity in the

performance which is not a linear causal unity but

a sense in the whole. Hans-Thies Lehmann defines

parataxis as a common trait in postdramatic

theatre. The third alternative is the most radical

one: the rhizome. As Deleuze and Guattari

indicate, in a rhizome there is no centre, no

hierarchy, no possible connection between thefragments. I point out this alternative although it is

difficult to find examples; the happening is the

theatrical form that Deleuze most appreciated.

After identifying these alternatives in the

disposition of the fragment, which place or

meaning does the ending in such plays have? We

cannot use terms like dnouement or

termination for an ending that is no longer a

logical consequence of a linear structure. In these

kinds of fragmented alternatives, I see three

possible functions of the ending: (1) an apparently

random interruption of the performance; (2) a goalin itself (like Wolfgang Iser indicates in his book

The Implied Reader[1974]); (3) a projection of the

performance, often induced by the illusion of an

eternal repetition.

In this brief statement I would like to introduce

one more term, one that could be useful in naming

the peculiar ending of the fragmented play.

Accepting that it has no purpose of finality unlike

traditional plays the concept would negate the

idea of tlos. However, I would not like to choose a

term that is preceded by prefixes such as post-,

because that itself would then include the idea oflinearity. I prefer until I find a better one the

prefix a-, which does not negate but excludes the

concept that follows it. As a result, an

ateleological ending does not negate the teleology

of the linear structure but offers a new alternative

where the terms of dnouement or plot require

revision at the hands of theatre theory.

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1. Which theatre, performance or dance production in

recent years did you find particularly important?

Eraritjaritjaka by Heiner Goebbels; Die Zehn Gebote

by Christoph Marthaler; Tale of Two Cities by

Heather Woodbury; Der Idiot by Frank Castorf;

Prater Saga by Ren Pollesch; Red House by John

Jesurun; Isabellas Room by Jan Lauwers.

2. Which artistic tendencies in theatre, performance

and dance do you regard as being important for future

dramaturgies?

In theatre: the hyperrealistic tendency, whichintroduces media aesthetics to the stage. In

performance, the happening form, as exemplified

by some works of Jan Lauwers and Chuck Mee. In

dance, I am interested in the pieces of Trisha

Brown and Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker. In any

case, I think the majority of future dramaturgies

will refuse the linear/dramatic form and will chose

the paratactic or even the rhizomatic forms.

3. What, in your opinion, is the main responsibility of

dramaturgy today? Do theatre and performance need

dramaturgs? And how are their situation and workingmethods changing?

The contemporary dramaturg should be in

permanent contact with the stage and should

prepare texts for the space and the performers. In

my opinion, the theatre text today is just one

element among many components of the theatre

production.

4. What are the institutional frameworks that should

be changed in order to encourage and enable

interesting theatre work?

I come from Barcelona, and in my country there is

a huge difference between alternative theatre and

conventional theatre. I would like our government

to finance the radical theatre and the small theatre

spaces, too. Furthermore, the professional

manner of most of our theatre prevents the small

productions from being presented.

R E F E R E N C E

Iser, Wolfgang (1974) The Implied Reader: Patterns ofcommunication in prose fiction from Bunyan to Beckett,

Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press.

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