What is theory? What is philosophy?The cultural influence of the BiblePractising Ideas: Approaches to Theory - Seminar

Dr Louise Douse

University of Bedfordshire 2

Write down questions you have from this mornings lecture

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What is theory? What is philosophy?

What is your aim in [the performing arts]? – To

[show] the fly the way out of the fly-bottle.

Practitioners/Companies

• Random Dance

• Atomos

• Forced Entertainment

• Bloody Mess

• Marina Abramovic

• Balkan Erotic Epic

• Bertolt Brecht

• Mother Courage

• Matthew Bourne

• Swan LakeUniversity of Bedfordshire 5

What are the philosophies/ ideas/ beliefs of the practitioners/companies?

How does this inform the work that they make?

Theories

• Marxism

• Semiotic theory

• Queer theory

• Neuroscience

• Gender studies

• How can these theories be applied to an interpretation of the work?

University of Bedfordshire 6

The cultural influence of the Bible

Stream-of-consciousness writing task

• Keep your hand moving. (Don’t pause to reread the line you have just written. That’s stalling and trying to get control of what you’re saying.)

• Don’t cross out. (That is editing as you write. Even if you write something you didn’t mean to write, leave it.)

• Don’t worry about spelling, punctuation, grammar. (Don’t even care about staying within the margins and lines on the page.)

• Lose control.

• Don’t think. Don’t get logical.

• Go for the jugular. (If something comes up in your writing that is scary or naked, dive right into it. It probably has lots of energy.)

(Goldberg, 2005, pp. 10-11)University of Bedfordshire 8