Forum Modernes Theater Schriftenreihe l Band 44 Katharina Pewny / Johan Callens / Jeroen Coppens (eds.) Dramaturgies in the New Millennium Relationality, Performativity and Potentiality Dramaturgies in the New Millennium Forum Modernes Theater Schriftenreihe l Band 44 begründet von Günter Ahrends (Bochum) herausgegeben von Christopher Balme (München) Katharina Pewny / Johan Callens / Jeroen Coppens (eds.) Dramaturgies in the New Millennium Relationality, Performativity and Potentiality Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über http: / / dnb.dnb.de abrufbar. Cover Picture: Alexander Calder - “Triple Gong, 1948” Picture Credit: Calder Foundation / Art Resource, New York © 2014 Calder Foundation / ARS, New York / SABAM, Brussels Published with the support of: The research conducted for this volume is part of the “Interuniversity Attraction Poles” programme financed by the Belgian government (BELSPO IAP7/ 01). © 2014 · Narr Francke Attempto Verlag GmbH + Co. KG Dischingerweg 5 · D-72070 Tübingen Das Werk einschließlich aller seiner Teile ist urheberrechtlich geschützt. Jede Verwertung außerhalb der engen Grenzen des Urheberrechtsgesetzes ist ohne Zustimmung des Verlages unzulässig und strafbar. Das gilt insbesondere für Vervielfältigungen, Übersetzungen, Mikroverfilmungen und die Einspeicherung und Verarbeitung in elektronischen Systemen. Gedruckt auf chlorfrei gebleichtem und säurefreiem Werkdruckpapier. Internet: http: / / www.narr.de E-Mail: info@narr.de Printed in Germany ISSN 0935-0012 ISBN 978-3-8233-6873-1 Table of Contents Jeroen Coppens, Katharina Pewny & Johan Callens Introducing Dramaturgies in the New Millennium . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Patrice Pavis Dramaturgy and Postdramaturgy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 I. Dramaturgy’s Shifting Conditions: Histories and Economics Evelyn Deutsch-Schreiner The Educators of the Theatre. Dramaturgy between Enlightenment and Counter-Enlightenment. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 Franziska Schößler & Hannah Speicher Relational Dramaturgies, Post-Fordian Work Structures and the East-West Discourse: The System Change of 1989 and the Theaterhaus Jena . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58 II. Dramaturgy’s Encounters: Generations, Constellations and Spatialisations Katharina Pewny Relational Dramaturgies as a Search for the Other Generation Beyond European Borders: Veronika Blumstein and Wunderbaum . . 79 Christel Stalpaert The Distributive Agency of Dramaturgical Labour and the Ethics of Instability: Becoming the Outside Body, Implicated in the Life of Others . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97 Cathy Turner & Stephen Hodge The International Festival and the City Space: The Dramaturgy of the Local . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111 6 Table of Contents Synne K. Behrndt Dramaturgy and the Facilitation of Encounters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130 III. Dramaturgy’s Potentialities: Perception, Movement and Difference Jeroen Coppens The In-Between of Visual Dramaturgy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147 Fanne Boland The Dramaturge: A Peripatetical Approach to the Dramaturgical Gestus of Walking Developed in Three Workshops and a Theatre Project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162 Kati Röttger Strategies of Peripety for a Dramaturgy of the Future. Transnational Challenges and Differences in Universal Teaching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179 Peter M. Boenisch Poetic Relations with the Real: Notes on the Actuality of Dramaturgy in the End Times . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200 Introducing Dramaturgies in the New Millennium Jeroen Coppens, Katharina Pewny & Johan Callens Writing about dramaturgy at the dawn of the new millennium poses various challenges that need to be addressed. Firstly, there is the broad field of contemporary theatre and performance practices that diversified immensely in the last fifteen years. It is next to impossible to consolidate these divergent arts practices into one unifying definition of dramaturgy. Traditionally, the dramaturgy of a performance most commonly refers to the composition of the play, its organisation in different scenes, and its aesthetic framework. Consequently, engaging with dramaturgy generally points to a critical reflection about the structure and composition of a play, mostly in function of a practical development of the performance through rehearsals. Recent evolutions in performance practices have not antiquated this broad definition of dramaturgy. But in an age where dramatic and postdramatic theatre forms mingle, where new media and theatre interweave in hybrid performances, and where the borders between the different Performing Arts (dance, theatre and performance) and the Fine Arts seem to blur, it is necessary to investigate the value and meaning of the concept of dramaturgy and to shed light on the changes that the activity of dramaturgy has seen in recent years. When theatre and performance practices diversify and evolve, so does dramaturgy. The present volume is therefore one in a series of publications by authors who testify to the lively discourse between theatre-makers and theoreticians. Dramaturges, academics and members of both fields create “polylogues” in and between these spheres. The Arbeitsgruppe Dramaturgie der Gesellschaft für Theaterwissenschaft, which was established by Evelyn Deutsch-Schreiner, Katharina Pewny and Peter M. Boenisch at the University of Amsterdam in 2008, is such a forum, and the ideas that have arisen within it constitute a solid foundation on which many of the contributions published in this volume are based. The inter-university research 8 Jeroen Coppens, Katharina Pewny & Johan Callens group THALIA: Interplay of Theatre, Literature & Media in Performance forms a connection between Ghent University and the Free University of Brussels with regard to questions relating to theatre and literary studies and also provide a central discursive context for “Dramaturgies in the New Millennium”. The editors Katharina Pewny, Johan Callens and Jeroen Coppens are members of this research association. A conference on the “Relational Aspects of Dramaturgy”, co-organised by the universities of Ghent and Brussels together with KASK (Royal Academy of Fine Arts Ghent) in March 2012, was the starting point for several of the issues explored in the contributions to this volume. “Relationality” is a term initiated by Nicolas Bourriaud in 2002 as a descriptive mode of the contemporary Fine Arts. Since then, the term has also been applied to the Performing Arts (see Behrndt and Pewny in the present volume) and it seemed a logical focus for the present grouping of reflections on current dramaturgy. Performativity and potentiality, which are also part of the volume’s title, already constitute more specific explorations of the question of relationality as aesthetic configurations of relationships. “Performativity” emphasises that dramaturgy is not a term for a specific set of practices, but a kaleidoscope of individual actions that are realised only by virtue of being executed. “Potentiality” further foregrounds the capacity of dramaturgy to constitute reality as performativity because it signifies a possibility that can become reality. All three terms - relationality, performativity and potentiality - enhance the processual nature of dramaturgy (in contrast to dramaturgy as a product). 1 Dramaturgical processes are characterised by precarious balancing acts, which the dramaturge Sandra Noeth has appositely referred to as “mobiles”. With reference to Jean-Paul Sartre’s metaphor of the “mobile”, which can realise a potentially endless possibility of combinations, Noeth argues that “the mobile proposes an operating field, a sphere of activity, a metalinguistic structure of single and singular elements that are attached to one another by visible or hidden [threads]: Reacting to, interacting with and influencing each other, it points out the dense, multilayered and [flawed] texture of a creation process - materials, ideas, gestures, movements, sounds, space and time, figures and narratives. At the same time, the mobile’s movement is directly linked to the outside” (Noeth 2010: 41). Dramaturgy, when seen as a mobile, provides stimuli for aesthetic relations that are realised momentarily. This image comprises phenomena 1 In her dissertation Fanne Boland (Univ. of Amsterdam) develops the idea of dramaturgy as process, with reference to an early text by the Flemish dramaturge Marianne Van Kerkhoven (1994). See Boland’s article in this volume (162-178). Introducing Dramaturgies in the New Millennium 9 such as temporality, mobility, relationality, processuality and potentiality, which are relevant to the articles in the present publication. “Dramaturgy as a mobile” is one of many images to appear in current discourses on dramaturgy and relied on in the articles of this volume. In the opening essay, “Dramaturgy and Postdramaturgy”, Patrice Pavis first summarises the classical concept of dramaturgical analysis and then systematically explores new dramaturgies and new dramaturgical concepts that emerged since the 1970s, i.e. the postmodern and postdramatic revolution in theatre practice. In this broadly scoped article, Pavis discusses amongst others devised theatre, educational dramaturgy, postnarrative dramaturgy, visual dramaturgy, dance dramaturgy and other forms of non-textual dramaturgies. Pavis argues that one of the main challenges to these new and diverse forms is to develop sustainable methods and underpin them in a postdramatic or performative dramaturgy. In light of this diversification (or to put it in Patrice Pavis’ own words: “the triumph and explosion of dramaturgy”), it is more appropriate to use the concept of dramaturgy in the plural: dramaturgies. Admittedly, this volume might read “better” carrying the title “Dramaturgy in the New Millennium”. However, the latter would imply a misplaced grandeur and unifying generalising logic that is absent in performance and dramaturgical practices of the last decade, and that the editors of this volume do not subscribe to. On the contrary, this book aims to open up the discussion about the heterogeneous future of dramaturgy as a concept and a practice by offering a sample of the new and interesting forms that dramaturgy assumes today, both in critical reflection and in practice. That future is diverse, disparate and heterogeneous. It is a future of dramaturgies. In Dramaturgy and Performance (2008) Catherine Turner and Synne Behrndt devote the last part of the book to new forms of dramaturgy in the twenty-first century, in the wake of the crisis in dramatic or mimetic representation of the twentieth century. A central idea in their argument is that dramaturgy seems to evolve into a dramaturgy of process: […] a dramaturgy that makes us aware of the mechanisms of communication and the artificial construction of imaginary (real) worlds, even while we are moved and engaged by them. (193) Turner and Behrndt convincingly show how new dramaturgies and performance practices have renegotiated their complex relationship with mimetic and narrative representation by foregrounding their own construction and “exploring the range of ways in which ‘reality’ can be produced, explored and understood” (188), thus introducing a level of self-reflectivity into the practice of dramaturgy. 10 Jeroen Coppens, Katharina Pewny & Johan Callens The volume as a whole sets out to take this idea of dramaturgy as process further. Of course, dramaturgy is a changeable process that is influenced by its social, political and economic contexts. Dramaturgy as a contextual process is discussed in two contributions to this volume. “The Educators of the Theatre. Dramaturgy between Enlightenment and Counter-Enlightenment” by Evelyn Deutsch-Schreiner points to the virtues and dangers of politicising the trope of dramaturgy by exploring the tie between dramaturgical practices, on the one hand, and the Enlightenment and Counter-Enlightenment, on the other. First, she traces dramaturgy’s liaison with the Enlightenment ideals of an autonomous subject and civic virtues by discussing the idea of the dramaturge as an educator. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing and Friedrich Schiller serve as two paradigmatic examples in that regard. At the same time, Deutsch-Schreiner explores the darker side of the Enlightenment and traces the practice of censorship since Lessing’s time, connecting it to dramaturgical practices in National Socialist Germany and the communist German Democratic Republic. Franziska Schößler and Hannah Speicher, for their part, investigate the connection between the economy, working conditions and dramaturgy as a process. In “Relational Dramaturgies, Post-Fordian Work Structures and the East-West Discourse: The System Change of 1989 and the Theaterhaus Jena” they focus on the labour relations in an East German theatre that transformed radically after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Schößler and Speicher argue that the abolition of the hierarchical structure and division of labour at the Theaterhaus Jena brought about a post-Fordian creativity that opened up a space within which to perform the cultural (and theatrical) difference between East and West Germany. Elsewhere, Catherine Turner and Synne Behrndt noticed another historical shift, as more and more dramaturgies emerge that focus on creating encounters between the performance and its public, between the object seen and the subject seeing. They argue that performances increasingly and “[…] deliberately engage with the present tense, the ‘now’ of live performance - [which is] less a matter of live presence than of live encounter” (202). Here, dramaturgy and performance become processes facilitating an encounter. This is an interesting new perspective, as it further opens up the discussion about dramaturgy with regard to ethics and the encounter with the Other. In “Relational Dramaturgies as a Search for the Other Generation Beyond European Borders: Veronika Blumstein and Wunderbaum”, Katharina Pewny investigates the dramaturgy of the search and dramaturgy as search, analysing performances of The Veronika Blumstein Group and Wunderbaum. Reenactment informs Introducing Dramaturgies in the New Millennium 11 this dramaturgical search for the Other, which is in essence an ethical and intergenerational one. Pewny specifically focuses on the performative search for another (lost) generation, arguing that the absence or the void that the search uncovers, is exactly what constitutes the ethical dimension of dramaturgy. Following suit, Christel Stalpaert elaborates the issue of ethics and dramaturgy by investigating how the dramaturge can become an outside body, implicated in the life of Others. In “The Distributive Agency of Dramaturgical Labour and the Ethics of Instability” she explores the notion of a dramaturgical constellation in order to understand the complex distribution of labour in contemporary production dramaturgy. Thus understood Meg Stuart’s Auf den Tisch! becomes a dramaturgical constellation in which choreographers, performers and spectators co-author and co-create an ethical encounter in wonder. This tendency towards ethical dramaturgies is also closely connected with what Turner and Behrndt in their Dramaturgy and Performance describe as a spatial turn. Here, “the space of the performance is conceived as a space that is shared with the audience, rather than separated from it” (195). An interesting development in this regard is the boom and bloom of location theatre and performances in urban environments. In these performances, the space becomes more than a decorative and conceptually well-chosen illustration of the narrative of the play, as the performance investigates the urban environment as a space of encounters. In their contribution, “The International Festival and the City Space. The Dramaturgy of the Local”, Cathy Turner and Stephen Hodge discuss their performative work with the artists’ collective Wrights & Sites, that probes the connection of dramaturgy to (local) space. Discussing some of the collective’s festival works in several cities, Turner and Hodge elaborate on dramaturgical constellations that manifest themselves in the materiality of urban environments. They argue that by introducing “foreign objects” into the space of the city, the artists’ collective achieves a dramaturgy that both shapes and is influenced by its urban environment, thus creating an open-ended reflection on the dramaturgy of the local. In her article “Dramaturgy and the Facilitation of Encounters”, Synne K. Behrndt further extends the idea of dramaturgy as an open-ended collaborative process. From her experience as a dramaturge, she looks for the parameters and conditions necessary to create a conceptual dramaturgical space for something to happen in an encounter with the other. At the same time, spectators become implicated participants, active agents in the encounter with the artwork. In this regard, she discusses amongst others Tino Sehgal, whose work explores dramaturgical strategies of dialogue, encounter and potential collision with otherness. 12 Jeroen Coppens, Katharina Pewny & Johan Callens Behrndt’s argument for dramaturgy as a process - distinct from dramaturgy as a fixed structuring principle with a clearly determined goal - is a further development of Turner and Berndt’s notion of an open dramaturgy, as raised in Dramaturgy and Performance. Indeed, open-ended dramaturgies facilitating a space of encounter for their public, in an openended viewing experience, seem to be one of the main characteristics of what Patrice Pavis calls postdramatic or performative dramaturgies. In this book’s last cluster of essays, featured under the heading “Dramaturgy’s Potentialities: Perception, Movement and Difference”, this idea is further illustrated in two different but convergent approaches that point to the politics of perception, collaboration and co-creation. “The In-Between of Visual Dramaturgy” by Jeroen Coppens focuses on visual dramaturgy as an open-ended process of sense-making and interpretive visuality that throws the spectators back on their own resources due to a lack of (narrative) grip. Elaborating this idea with Visual Studies’ methodologies, his analysis of Vincent Dunoyer’s The Princess Project focuses on how intermedial transmissions visually create an in-between space in which the spectator is challenged to see vision and dramaturgy taking place. This self-reflective tendency of open-ended dramaturgy is also central to Fanne Boland’s article, entitled “The Dramaturge: A Peripatetical Approach to the Dramaturgical Gestus of Walking Developed in Three Workshops and a Theatre Project.” Boland questions the function of the dramaturge, arguing for a practical and agile perspective instead of an essentialist one. In her analysis of two workshops devoted to the dramaturgical gestus of the walk, Boland connects the constant alternation of perspectives when walking in the city to the peripatetical in-between of seeing and acting which is essential in contemporary dramaturgies. These dramaturgies are process-oriented (as opposed to product-oriented), both in the creative phase and in the performance itself. The potentiality and relationality of dramaturgical teaching and learning processes is explored in the closing articles by Kati Röttger and Peter M. Boenisch, within the framework of contemporary historical reflections. Röttger poses the urgent question of didactical and pedagogical practices (as well as the theories that surround them) in view of teaching situations that bring together people from entirely different (cultural and artistic) backgrounds. She contextualises the study of dramaturgy within the Humanities - which are at present under threat - with reference to Jacques Rancière’s theorem of the “ignorant schoolmaster” who teaches that which he does not himself understand. Röttger also draws on Rancière’s topos of translation before finally describing, with a nod to Jean- Luc Nancy, future dramaturgies as “possibility spaces”. Introducing Dramaturgies in the New Millennium 13 Peter M. Boenisch, finally, develops an actuality of dramaturgy, which draws on the psychoanalytic concept of the real in the work of Slavoj Žižek. To this end, Boenisch’s “Dramaturgies in the End Times” establishes a connection between the aesthetic and other realities. He, too, draws on Rancière when underscoring the political and media-related conditioning of the sensual. The challenge for theatre, according to Boenisch, is to position itself and perception in relation to a world shaped by various media. Because dramaturgy organises perception, he joins Schiller in attributing to it the potential to have a liberating effect on Verhältnisse (conditions). Literature Noeth, Sandra. “Dramaturgy. Mobile of Ideas.” In: Scores No 0. The Skin of Movement. 2010. 36-47. Turner, Cathy & Behrndt, Synne. “Millennial Dramaturgies.” In: Dramaturgy and Performance. Basingstoke. Palgrave Macmillan. 2008. Dramaturgy and Postdramaturgy Patrice Pavis Today we witness both the triumph and the explosion of dramaturgy, not only dramaturgy in the sense of dramatic writing, but also of dramaturgical analysis, i.e. the reading and the preparatory work of the literary or artistic advisor of the director, sometimes called “dramaturge”. An overview of the state and of current methods of dramaturgy, as well as of the numerous types of specific dramaturgies, reveals a rich and varied, but also a confused and tormented landscape. 1. Classical Dramaturgical Analysis: Summary and Deepening 1.1. Grid of Analysis Since the Brechtian and post-Brechtian era, roughly since the 1950s in Europe, dramaturgical analysis has devised a rather sophisticated method of reading and interpreting plays; it has benefited from tools developed in the humanities. To do the analysis of a production of a play consists in identifying the choices of the mise en scène, and ascertaining whether the staging is achieved or not. It means - or should we say: it meant - to have recourse to the different disciplines of history, sociology, psychoanalysis, linguistics, semiology, etc. But it also means to impose upon the director a grid which she might find too limiting. Hence a certain crisis of dramaturgy, while contemporary dramaturgy is everywhere in a process of institutionalisation and constantly in search of new ways. Dramaturgy and Postdramaturgy 15 1.2. The Misunderstandings about Dramaturgy The misconceptions about dramaturgy are numerous: there are misunderstandings about the purpose of the analysis as well as about the role of the dramaturge. The original misunderstanding, we might almost say the original sin, of dramaturgy, remains. Is dramaturgy a poetics of the dramatic play and performance, or is it a limited and pragmatic technique to analyse a text in order to stage it in a concrete context? This misunderstanding is, by the way, productive, as it suggests that a general poetics and concrete analyses are in fact complementary. And indeed, is it possible to establish the general poetics of a work without being oneself anchored in history? And, inversely, could one perform the analysis of a text, without establishing it on a preexisting theory of composition of dramaturgy? 1.3. The History of Dramaturgy In order to judge the function of dramaturgy and of the method of dramaturgical analysis, one would have to give an overview of the history of theatre, to study how each historical period understands theatre and its analysis. We would have to jump from the classical poetics of the Greeks to the European classicism of the sixteenth and seventeenth century, to the textual and practical dramaturgy of a Diderot or a Lessing, then to the political dramaturgy of a Brecht or of a Piscator, and finally to the fragmented dramaturgies of our time. It remains to be seen if the postmodern and postdramatic forms are still dramaturgical and “dramaturgizable”, i.e. analysable with the tools of dramaturgy, and, if so, with which tools. 1.4. The Different Tasks of Dramaturgy To do so, we would have to agree on the tasks of dramaturgical activity, as these tasks vary considerably from one country or institution to the next, even if they have to do with the same trade. In Germany and in France, the dramaturge, at the director’s side, is in charge of the historical and political interpretation of the play; in the UK, the dramaturge helps with the promotion of new dramatic writing, or she takes part in the collective devising of the performance; in Belgium or the Netherlands, she would often be dealing with performative forms connected with visual arts, etc. A difference of name shows a radical difference of practice: the dramaturge is often connected with the practical work in collaboration with the director, while the literary or artistic advisor is in search of new 16 Patrice Pavis texts or is an expert in contemporary art. There is also the “facilitator”, who helps the amateurs or the participants in a community project to get organised. Rather than enumerating the different tasks of the director, which quickly amounts to setting up a normative list of activities, even if they seem infinitely diverse, we would be better off questioning the function of dramaturgical analysis in the course of history, or considering the mise en scène more than the director, the spectatorial (perceptive, intellectual, participating) function more than the spectator. If we want to understand the expression “dramaturgical analysis”, it might be useful to stress its difference from the “simple” individual reading, which is carried out with no aim at a subsequent staging. This sense of analysis refers to the reading of the text or to the way the spectator and even more so the performance analyst receives, interprets and describes the show, most of the time with words, thereby reconstructing the main principles of its composition. 2. Reading Grid and Dramaturgical Analysis 2.1. Relativity of Dramaturgical Reading Whether she is called literary advisor or production dramaturge, the collaborator of the director always finds herself confronted with the reading and the interpretation of texts. The question is if this reading claims to be academic and universal or if it only applies to a specific staging, in a given cultural and political context. This simple observation teaches the theoretician a lesson in modesty, as she finds out that any interpretation is limited and subject to immediate change. However serious the effort of objectivity may be on the part of the dramaturge, she would be naïve to believe in the objective and unchanging truth of the text. For theory also is always caught in a historical, relative and fleeting moment. This is obviously also the case for the diagram I devised for the analysis of contemporary French plays of the 1990s. Not all the mentioned notions of this chart are equally useful for the analysis of contemporary texts. The difficulty, or even the art, of interpretation, is to use the proper tools at the right moment. This grid of interpretation lends itself to a dramaturgical analysis where the main parameters of textual dramaturgy have been systematically assembled. It has not been put together in view of a particular mise en scène (putting on stage), but only of a possible “mise Dramaturgy and Postdramaturgy 17 en jeu” (putting into play or putting at stake). It is, at best, a dramaturgical analysis “on paper”. Let us therefore content ourselves with naming a few elements of this “check-list” which any dramaturgical analysis and preparation will necessarily point out (Pavis 2011: 13). 2.2. Interpretation and Dramaturgy The list of questions is divided into five levels, which can more or less easily be differentiated. On the surface, the level of textuality can be materialised in a situation of enunciation, which puts the text “in motion”. The four hidden, or less visible, levels introduce us more or less deeply or secretly to the planes of plot on the narrative surface, or of dramaturgy in the strict sense of the story and of the space-time component, further “down” in action with deeper meaning and finally in the ideological and unconscious structures. The dramaturgical analysis consists in interpreting an action, a story, a moment in the plot or way of speaking and materiality of the text. Such an interpretation “on paper” only takes its meaning when it is “translated” in stage actions. The dramaturge picks up a detail without being able or willing to justify her reading hypothesis. Any element of the text can be used at the different levels of the analysis. For instance, a small detail can be traced on the first level of the plot, on the more global second level of dramaturgy, on the actantial model of actions on the third level and finally as revealing the plane of the non-said or of the subtext on the fourth level. Dramaturge and director will ultimately have to look for the appropriate performative and scenic means of translating their analyses. 2.3. What is the Use of Dramaturgy? Dramaturgy helps us find the best (or the least bad) solution of the moment, not in absolute terms, but according to the situation and logic of the planned staging or the staging as it gradually takes shape, according to the artists involved and in view of the audience. Let us limit ourselves to a few references to the diagram, which will help the dramaturge to prepare the ground for the acting and staging: a. Analysing and progressively segmenting a scene: the actor’s task is to perform while clarifying the turning points, the movements of a scene, the changes of rhythm. The segmentation (structuring) not only depends on the text, but even more on the staging choices. (This might spare us a too psychological analysis of the characters and of their supposed motivations.) 18 Patrice Pavis b. Searching for the moments of the performance where the actor seems to mark his or her presence by focusing, insisting, leaning on certain aspects of the spoken texts or of moments of the mise en scène which can be viewed as turning points. These points constitute leaning points. Looking for the leaning points of the actor and of all elements on stage constitutes a dramaturgical punctuation for the interpretation of the plot or simply for the unfolding of the stage action. c. Establishing the subtext and its variations depends on how we spot the gaps of indeterminacy. The actor’s subscore, which the director has a hard time establishing, but which ultimately belongs to the actor, is the concrete and main result of the dramaturgical preparation. d. Establishing a score of physical and scenic actions is the final goal of any dramaturgical analysis and of any stage practice. These physical actions, “a series of attitudes and movements endowed with their own interiority 1 ”, draw on and embody the whole dramaturgical analysis; they are its living and moving trace, a kind of bodily signature of the actor. e. The actor, as a “dramaturge in action” (Dort 1986: 10) integrates all that prepares the mise en scène: the individual reading, the interpretation and the preparation of the dramaturge, the vocal embodiment and the acting. Hence the dream of the pedagogues of a synthesis of all these approaches to dramaturgy: “I would require a greater unity, a reflection shared by the different participants of the production, a coordinated dramaturgy of the body, the voice and the interpretation, as well as a practice in which the different approaches could complement each other in a cross-fertilisation, in a synthesizing process” (Adrien 1998: 19-20). 2.4. The Dramaturgy of the Performance (Done by the Spectator) The dramaturgy of the performance is the symmetrical pendant to the dramaturgical analysis of the text which is prepared in view of the production to come. It is done by the spectator when she experiences the performance. But how can we identify the dramaturgy of the performance, which had been conceived “beforehand” and which the spectator must at the same time discover and imagine, drawing from a single experience of it. The spectator can never be sure to decipher it and her trace in the reconstruction of the abstract object is by no means tangible and obvious. 1 Eugenio Barba. “Une amulette.” Unedited text. Dramaturgy and Postdramaturgy 19 The dramaturgy of the classical type is the skeleton of a mise en scène, its invisible structure. If it is true that “actors are dramaturges in action”, then mise en scène is dramaturgy in action. The dramaturgy of the classical type tends to absorb the dramaturgical disposition, the skeleton, which supports it invisibly. The dramaturgical structures dissolve in the mise en scène. 3. New Dramaturgies Dramaturgical analysis becomes necessary as soon as one has realised the power and efficiency of theatrical performance, compared for instance with the reading of a text. This efficiency of the stage is not really a discovery. It was obvious with authors-directors-actors such as Shakespeare or Molière, but it was not until the second half of the eighteenth century, with Diderot or Lessing, that it found its first theoretical formulation. This efficiency of dramaturgical analysis can be confirmed toward the end of the nineteenth century with the so-called “invention” of mise en scène and the reinterpretation of the classics; it persists and establishes itself in numerous countries beyond Germany, particularly after World War II. It culminates in the 1960s, under the influence of Brecht and his acting and staging method. With the arrival of postmodern and postdramatic methods in the 1970s, dramaturgy seems on the decline or in mutation. It distances itself more and more from its critical and political origins, from a Brechtian orthodoxy. It does not disappear however: numerous are its methods to renew itself, to hide, the better to come back to life. Here are a few examples of these new dramaturgies. 3.1. Devised Theatre Devised theatre is a theatre not so much of collective creation (to use the continental term) as of collaboration. The dramaturge has theoretically no different position from his colleagues: all dramatic and performative functions are open to everybody, particularly and strategically the dramaturgical activity. As opposed to text-based theatre or to performance with a central theme, dramaturges have to constantly adapt themselves to the inventions of other collaborators. Every new material is immediately tested, adapted and adopted. No other way of working demonstrates so clearly how dramaturgy is a part of the creative process. Each new production imagines an original dramaturgical interaction between the performers and between performers and audience. 20 Patrice Pavis 3.2. Educational Dramaturgy This is an initiation to the reading of dramatic texts and to the performing of children, adolescents and amateurs. It builds a bridge between the world of education and of theatre-making. The dramaturgical approach lends itself to a study of devices of creative writing. On the margin of a production or in an actors’ and dramaturges’ training program, the dramaturge has the possibility to make the non-specialists understand how a play, or a performance, is constructed; she can demystify the world of creation, propose different types of readings, of spacing or staging exercises. There is, however, a danger that this kind of artistic education deteriorates into a promotion for productions, a marketing campaign, that the writing workshops become a writing industry, as Turner and Behrndt warn us, in sum, that dramaturgy be used and exploited by management. The multiplication, on the Internet, of information sites on running shows, with all kinds of interviews with, and auto-presentations of the artists, might sometimes be useful for the consumers’ choices, but they also quickly degenerate into a standardisation against which the works themselves have a hard time to survive and break through. On the other hand, a critical and inventive educational dramaturgy would be an effective way of regaining a disoriented public. 3.3. “Dramaturgy of the Actor” This expression was coined by Eugenio Barba in reference to his own art: the actor and the actress create their own textual, gestural, musical and vocal materials, they assemble them gradually in individual improvisations during several months. The dramaturgy of the actor is basically a normal mode of theatrical work where the actor is required to propose materials which she has already shaped, accepting then more or less willingly to be dispossessed of because of other dramaturgical choices or of stage constraints. The term “dramaturgy of the actor” should however only be used for these cases of performances made out of vocal and rhythmical improvisations and eventually filled by texts and narratives, before they are shown to a director who does not recognise any binding narrative contract and does not feel obliged to tell a story which can be neatly summarised. Dramaturgy and Postdramaturgy 21 3.4. Postnarrative Dramaturgy Barba’s La vie chronique or Beckett’s Lessness are possible examples of postnarrative dramaturgy, where texts or performances lack any narrative, any story. They are drifting away from classical dramaturgy: not only dramatic, but also (Brechtian or post-brechtian) forms. The category of the postnarrative, which is a hotchpotch of ideas like the postdramatic, has been well researched. It refers to postclassical dramaturgy, which does not necessarily come “after” narratology, but rather stands as its continuation and its contestation. Postclassical narratology regroups “the various efforts to transcend ‘classical’ structuralist narratology, which has been reproached for its scientificity, anthropomorphism, disregard for context, and gender-blindness” (Herman and Vervaeck 2008: 450). We are in a postnarrative phase of dramaturgy. At the same time, contemporary dramatic writing since the 1990s witnesses a return of narration, of the narrative, of the pleasure to tell stories (Pavis 2012: 113-133). However, classical as well as postclassical dramaturgy rarely makes use of these more recent postclassical theories. For example, Joseph Danan, in his excellent Qu’est-ce que la dramaturgie? (2011), never refers directly to narratology, classic or contemporary. Attempting to explain the huge transformation of postdramatic theatre or performance, he refers to nonaction (46), as in Beckett, to the weakening of mimesis (47), to the absence of causal relationships between the episodes of a story (4). Thus he does not suggest any reflection on narrativity, at least not from the technical point of view of narratology. 3.5. The Expression “Visual Dramaturgy” This term was coined in the early nineties by Knut Arntzen (1994) to describe a type of performance without text and based on a series of images. It could be the “Theatre of images” of a Robert Wilson in his early career, or dance-theatre, or Musiktheater, or performance art, or any performative action. The main characteristic of visual dramaturgy is not the absence of text on stage, but a stage form in which visuality takes central stage, to the point of becoming the main feature of aesthetic experience. Visuality, the visual experience, has its own laws, it does not depend on a story, on a narrative; it contrasts with them. Visual dramaturgy and visual mise en scène are experienced as a visual bloc, which has been put without any comment onto the stage, whether this bloc is autonomous or is faced with a more or less audible text. Using the example of Jan Lauwers, Chris- 22 Patrice Pavis tel Stalpaert, talks of a “highly visual dramaturgy where images become autonomous structuring devices and along with his material approach to language and text, offer the spectators ‘readings’ of Shakespearean tragedies that go against the grain of the narrative” (Stalpaert 2010: 438). Visual dramaturgy uses predominantly sight and the visible where text and aurality used to reign. From classical dramaturgy it has kept the idea that the principle of composition remains valid when analysing a purely visual work and that the visual stage has its own laws and rules of composition, of impact on the audience, of organisation of the sensible. The visual dramaturge proceeds as a visual artist: she works from movements, images, and also from the unfolding of time. When a text has been kept and remains audible, it is treated differently; it is put into play in a certain space and according to images; it is shaped as an aural, rhythmical and musical matter, and not simply as a meaning to be consumed. What has changed is the status of the visual: the visual does not accompany the audition of the text any more, it is not limited to illustrating, explicating or clarifying it. It is sometimes about making the text ambiguous or more complex. Space and visuality are a signifying matter, a carrier of abstract and formal spatial relationships, an apparatus (“dispositif”), and thus they are not a signified at the service of text and meaning. The dramaturge has to be able to recognise these formal and abstract structures, but she also has to communicate the cultural, social, ideological and political meaning. She therefore has to connect these forms and their visual structure with history. She must also take the changing view of the audience into account. The attitude of the postmodern and postdramatic spectator has radically changed: the spectator no longer insists on understanding everything, to reduce visual representation to a given meaning. Now it is rather the choreographer, the director and their dramaturge who wonder: “What will they understand? ” The audience will probably think: “We understand all this too easily.” Thank Goodness, the dramaturge is here to make things more complicated, and often also to make them more beautiful. Visual dramaturgy is looking for its theory, its laws, its organisation. It is thus in search of a special kind of dramaturge and of dramaturgical analysis. Its dramaturge is required to understand this mode of visuality, of the spatial organisation of the image. She urgently needs a visual semiotics of the image for which Mieke Bal has established the foundations, albeit mainly for painting and visual arts. Maaike Bleeker has proposed her own theory of visuality when applied to the theatre. Visuality as “the distinct historical manifestation of Dramaturgy and Postdramaturgy 23 visual experience” (2008: 1) is a precious tool to understand this “visual thinking”. Her idea is to associate the viewer better with what they see, the seer with the seen. That is fortunate, because it is precisely the task of the dramaturge who is always confronted with a world to be perceived. Bleeker’s “aim is to expose how visuality consists of an intricate intertwining of the one seeing and what is seen as a result of which we always see more, and always see less than what there is to be seen. Moreover, that this one seeing is always necessarily a body” (7). Upon this sound theoretical basis visual dramaturgy hopes to devise a system which is as precise as classical textual dramaturgy. Maaike Bleeker bases her research at the same time on a visual and postnarratological semiotics and on a phenomenology of the body, of embodied gaze and of kinesthetic empathy. This is, as we shall see, exactly the aim of “natural narratology” as proposed by Monika Fludernik (1996): a new way of telling and a physical experience, which Fludernik calls experientiality. Thus visual narratology and postnarratology can provide the theoretician and visual dramaturge with useful and precise tools. Visual dramaturgy leads us directly to a dramaturgy of dance, which has considerably evolved since Pina Bausch and now constitutes a huge part of contemporary performance: for instance the theatre of movement and gesture, physical theatre. 3.6. Dance Dramaturgy Dance dramaturgy presents the most serious challenge to classical theatrical dramaturgy, to the usual reading and embodiment of texts through actors. How differently does a dramaturge look at theatre and at dance? The dance dramaturge looks at the non-verbal, and at movement, whereas the theatre dramaturge studies the dramatic actions and the characters. She strives to read movement, to make it visible and capable to tell a story. There is, however, no guarantee, and sometimes no need, to make the movement readable, visible and tellable. Whenever dance dramaturgy succeeds to visualise the movement according to one or more of these three characteristics, it provides the audience with a feeling of security. The theory goes that a movement made more visible will be more effective and memorable. When the visible stands out distinctly, the spectator becomes aware more clearly of its physical position in space and of her own body confronted with embodied ideas, because on a stage an idea only gains a meaning if it is embodied in moving bodies, singing voices, in a physically situated diction. If the “tellable” is accessible as a way of “nar- 24 Patrice Pavis rativising” the choreography, it acquires an unexpected and transmissible force. In the three cases - readable, visible and tellable - the dramaturge translates her ideas or hypotheses in physical forms that the director (or choreographer) tests during the rehearsals. But the dramaturgical work does not end here: the spectators will have to translate the work according to their own interpretation and from the point of view of their own world. This translation, this transfer of actions and decisions, is the goal of any dramaturgical activity. The production dramaturge (the dramaturge de plateau as she is now called in French), the one working by the side of the choreographer, explores the material reworked by the choreographer, in order to grasp its conscious and unconscious structures. This is the method used by André Lepecki, when he is the dramaturge of Meg Stuart: “She asks me about what I see happening in a scene, and I come up with what I call “metaphorical explosions” - where I see relations and connections, etc. Towards the latter part of the process we work together to make it more cohesive” (Lepecki qtd. in deLahunta 2000). The audience, this “invisible ghost” is always taken into account, since “we always keep coming back to asking ourselves: is this clear, how might that be interpreted, etc.” (Lepecki qtd. in deLahunta 2000). According to Lepecki, the dramaturge does not make do with seeing, judging intellectually, in a Cartesian manner, she engages her whole body, she confronts herself physically with the material: “Dance dramaturgy implies the reconfiguration of one’s own whole anatomy, not just the eyes. (…) I enter in the studio as dramaturge by running away from the external eye. Just as the dancers and the choreographer, I enter to find a (new) body” (Lepecki qtd. in deLahunta 2000). The dramaturge thus does not content herself to lend her ears and eyes to the creative process. She becomes herself a dancer, in order for us to see the dance better. Beyond this somewhat mystical transfiguration of the dramaturge, as Lepecki describes it, we still have to determine how the choreographic composition and the analysis are to be performed. Choreography works on movements, and not mimetic actions of actors representing characters. Dramaturgy consists in producing and later, for the spectators, in noticing the compositions of the different rhythms, tensions, changes of positions or attitudes. This is a dramaturgy of the signifier, which establishes formal principles, and not signifieds; it is a “Logic of sensation” (Deleuze 1989), a structure of composition, a discovery of the different dispositions. “Auto-dramaturgy”: a dramaturgy anchored in the dancer’s body which pre-exists every project, every construction and every intention. Dramaturgy and Postdramaturgy 25 Let us take the example of a scene from Wolf, a piece by Alain Platel 2 . Let us avoid, if possible, doing a performance analysis of this sequence. Let us rather try to imagine how the dramaturge, if there was one, the choreographer and the dancers have structured the scene, how one goes from one performer or from one moment to the next. As soon as one has understood that one of the dancers is deaf, one can follow how each performer tries to give the deaf man the sensation of sound and music. Each of them gives their opinion or a piece of advice, but to no avail. Each mini sequence, each motive, inserts itself in a certain continuity. They constitute a series of frames where speech, movement, melodies, etc. coexist. The chain of these frames gradually assembles, they create a continuity and a temporality through the accumulation and succession of the different frames, physical actions and scenes. Mozart’s music and the singing voice soon take over, almost in the literal sense of the expression: for everything happens so to speak underneath the different actions, in the immersion of music. The formation of the different frames, their narrative logic is obviously the result of the gaze of the spectators, of their analytical and synthetic faculty, of their own dramaturgical analysis and construction. The different points of view coexist; there is no real difference between the rehearsal, the conversation of the performers, and the sorting out by the spectators. What is remarkable is that speech, movement, mime, music, etc. which are at first juxtaposed and placed in opposition, are quickly integrated into a coherent whole, in a fusion of different intensities. These intensities are of different kinds: the one of risk and speed of aerial art, the one of the vibrating voice, the one of the choreography in the background, and finally of the opera. 3.7. Other Types of Dramaturgy There are evidently many more types of textless dramaturgies. We could mention music, music theatre, performance art, human gatherings, any possible performative activity, etc. To add other new dramaturgies, it is enough if these arts are made out of a similar non-figurative, abstract material. The dramaturge does not have to rely on a story, on a narrative; she only has to experience and make the spectator experience the formal structure of the piece, its internal order, the logic of the signifier and of the sensation. 2 See: Mozart, “Domine Deus”: A. Zamojska, M. Comparato, J. Neves. http: / / www. youtube.com/ watch? v=DK5cR-wd4Lc (last accessed 12/ 11/ 2013). 26 Patrice Pavis The arrival of these non-textual, non-literary performances has partly renewed the traditional dramaturgical analysis and it has thus extended the register of stage performances. All these new or emerging dramaturgies are easily accessible, but we have a tendency to interpret them with abstract, formal categories, as formal structure cut off from any reality, particularly a social reality. Formal, semiotic analyses do not pose insurmountable difficulties, as long as they remain cut off from any reference to the social, or as long as we do not attempt to connect them with the social reality of the spectator. We might be at a turning point of theatrical, cultural and social life, and even, more prosaically, of theoretical thinking. The question is thus: should we give up theory as something unattainable and useless, as postmodernist and postdramatic ideology encourages us to do? Or should we, as I would suggest, resume our theoretical labours, not necessarily by enumerating all the tasks of the dramaturge, but by looking for adequate methodological and theoretical tools, in order to think the new situation we are in. At stake might be the future of dramaturgy and its challenges. 4. The Future of Dramaturgy and its Challenges Methods of classical dramaturgy (of production) are fairly well-known and well-tried. The same cannot be said of the methods of new dramaturgies, the ones mainly relying on the reception of the audience. Theoretical thinking comes from practice, but it is nevertheless important to think about the methods best suited to study new experiences. What are the projects which we, academics and theory-oriented dramaturges, should start? And can we start them without being ourselves some kind of artist? 4.1. A Lack of Theory of Creative Subject/ Object and of Author-ity What is the part of the object we describe and the part of the describing subject? We can no longer rely, as in the fifties and sixties, on a theatrical relationship (relation théâtrale), where actor and spectator were supposed to meet and build a relation of exchange, as Grotowski would claim, where the roles of subject and object were neatly separated. This no longer corresponds to a relationship where the receptive side (the spectator) has a much bigger role to play, if the performance is to be received and understood, or at least re-constituted by the viewer and by a dramaturgy of the spectator. This new relationship, that of a postdramatic performance or of a postmodern non-narrative textuality, must be rethought. Maaike Dramaturgy and Postdramaturgy 27 Bleeker reformulates it in terms of visuality and of the physical implication of the spectator. For her, visuality is “our own involvement in how we see what we see” (2008 3) and this happens at the very moment “when we do become aware of our own being implicated in what we see” (3). Bleeker shows how the staging is both what the director (and we could add: the production dramaturge) have prepared for us spectators and what we spectators make out of this production by “taking into consideration our own involvement in how we see what we see” (3). Thus we are reminded that the production dramaturgy (and staging) has to be evaluated from the point of view of a given spectatorship. If we apply Bleeker’s view to the question of the dramaturge, it means: (1) That we spectators must be aware how the piece has been organised dramaturgically and then directorially; (2) But that we must also take into account how we are “implicated in what is seen”. Thus we must also do a dramaturgical analysis of the seen according to our needs and our desires, our ability to see and to analyse, to draw our own dramaturgical picture of what we perceive. We therefore have to re-think and re-view what we are given to see. We could add to Bleeker’s thesis that we must even perceive the distinction of the idea behind the production/ dramaturgy (i.e. what the dramaturge did and wanted us to understand) and the result (i.e. how director and actors have understood and “translated” this dramaturgy). We are then supposed to be critical of how successful they were or of what contradicts their system and why it does so. So we begin to notice the new author-ity of the different dramaturges, us spectators included. The more we are drifting away from a dramaturgy written by an author (according to the classical rules) or created by a dramaturgical analysis (in modern times), the more we will have to “do” our own dramaturgy from the otherwise unreadable performance we are confronted with, and the more “author-ity” we will be demonstrating. 4.2. The Call of Phenomenology What we spectators “extract” from the produced staging and from the successive layers of differently “applied dramaturgy”, in a kind of phenomenological Appelstruktur (as Karl Bühler and Roman Jakobson would say, a structure of appellation), is, according to similar phenomenological images, what we can extract from the different sediments of various seams/ layers/ traces/ rewritings of dramaturgy. This phenomenological “extraction” can be metaphorically described in different ways: 28 Patrice Pavis (1) Turner and Behrndt advise us to find an emerging pattern, teasing out the text’s theatrical potential (2008). (2) Peter Brook suggests that the director finds the shape of the mise en scène in a pre-shape, which results from intuitions and “external” questions which the director (and we could add the dramaturge) asks. (A solution which I personally prefer to the notion of “theatrical potential”, because in a non-dramatic text there is no specific theatrical potential, only open possibilities which depend mainly on the reader, on her position outside the text.) (3) Martin Seel defines the staging process as an “erscheinen lassen”, letting something appear: “Productions are of course not simply phenomena of appearance; they exhibit something in the process of its appearance, they mark it in order to make it perceptible for a moment in a public space” (2003: 57). 3 (4) The notion of embodiment, of “physicalisation”, so popular at the moment in the Anglo-American performance art world, fulfills the same function: a kind of embodied apparition, a ghost becoming human, and in our present case a structure which is visible and strong enough, but discreet at the same time: the dramaturgical framework. Such an apparition reminds us that the theatre can make us feel our body while watching other bodies, and also feel the movement of the performer thanks to “kinesthetic empathy”. 4.3. Kinesthetic Empathy According to the latest discoveries of cognitive psychology, we only understand, identify a movement (and identify ourselves with it), if we are able to redo it “interiorly”, not by imagining it intellectually, but by performing it, without apparently moving, as the theory of the mysterious mirror neurons tells us. Since we are able not only to conceptualise movement, but also to “physicalise” it, i.e. to embody it, the dance dramaturge will attempt to foresee the physical, kinesthetic reactions of the different spectators. She is not responsible for making things understood intellectually, to provide a message, but simply and at best to make people feel a bodily tension, a rhythmical change, a certain blocking, a distribution of the performers on stage. This kinesthetic effect is not very different from what Eugenio Barba calls “an action at work”, i.e. all those elements 3 “Inszenierungen freilich sind nicht einfach Phänomene des Erscheinens, sie stellen etwas in seinem Erscheinen heraus, markieren es, um für eine gewisse Dauer in einem öffentlichen Raum spürbar zu machen.” Dramaturgy and Postdramaturgy 29 which work directly on the attention of the audience, its understanding, its emotive nature, it synesthesia (1985: 75). Since we can conceptualise movement as well as physicalise and move thought, the dance dramaturge is in a position to foresee and trace the physical, kinesthetic, and motoric reactions of the future spectators. This kinesthetic empathy extends not only to the dramaturge or choreographer, but also to the spectator, or even the critic, whose performative writing, according to Peggy Phelan, is supposed to prolong the performance in the critical writing by using its energy and impulse, which is, says Phelan, a means to “re-mark again the performative possibilities of writing itself” (1993: 148). 4.4. From Classical Narratology to “Natural Narratology” The classical narratology, from the 1950s to the 1970s, and even more so, the new, “natural narratology” (Fludernik 1996) is the weak link in the chain of all theories useful for dramaturgy. We may wonder why: it may have to do with the old prejudice that narratology does not apply to theatre, only to the novel or narrative in general. Narratology was used a lot in the first phase of semiology analysing classical plays, but it was voluntarily left behind later and only used for a semiology of performance. It would, however, be a serious mistake not to have recourse to narratology, not only because postmodern and postdramatic forms constantly use all kinds of narratives, but because new narratology challenges postmodern, non-narrative texts, which can no longer be dealt with if one has not rethought the usual tools of the analysis of story, characters, mimetic actions, representation. For instance, in Beckett’s text Lessness, we cannot detect a story, and thus we cannot use traditional dramaturgical tools (Becket in Nixon 2010: 127-132). But on the other hand, as soon as we make use of our individual experience, of our “own involvement in how we see what we see”, as Bleeker puts it (3), as soon as we follow Fludernik’s advice to have recourse to “natural narratives”, i.e. to narratives of spontaneous storytelling, we can hope to make Beckett’s text speak, even if this text seemed so abstract and cut off from any story. According to Fludernik, “natural narratives”, i.e. narratives of spontaneous storytelling, cognitively correlate with perceptual parameters of human experience in the process of narrativisation, i.e. “a reading strategy that naturalizes texts by recourse to narrative schemata” (Fludernik 1996: 34). Neo-narratology thus becomes a reliable ally for the dramaturge who feels obliged to tell her disoriented spectators some kind of story. As another kind bit of advice, Fludernik mentions the 30 Patrice Pavis notion of “experientiality”: this means that the reader or spectator must engage physically, in the use of their imagination and their knowledge of the world. This leads us to a physical, embodied dramaturgy, not only a visual or vocal-musical dramaturgy 4 . 4.5. A Postdramaturgical Dramaturgy? If the reader and the spectator are promoted to the rank of final and decisive dramaturge, we may wonder if dramaturgy can still claim to rule texts and performances. When contemporary dramatic writing gives up story, action, character, dramatic form, what tools remain at its disposal? As mentioned above, the new postdramatic forms were sometimes able to attract new tools for a new narratology. Thus part of the aesthetic and political questions raised by classical dramaturgy has been transferred to the receiver and spectator. Would it help then to introduce the notion of postdramaturgy? Does the crisis of the dramatic and the arrival of the postdramatic entail a crisis of dramaturgical theory? Would postdramaturgy be in a better position to understand the functioning of so-called postdramatic works? We may doubt it, because these postdramatic forms often appear as a rejection of classical dramatic and dramaturgical forms. The postdramatic rejects any semiological, intercultural, historical explanation and refuses any objective, critical reference to the world. Is there a dramaturgy of the last chance, a method which would keep a few principles of a dramaturgy of the old times, while adapting them to the current situation of the performing arts? Is performativity the miraculous remedy? We should check if the theory of performativity, particularly dominant in the performing arts, will help dramaturgy and dramaturges to find a safe path back to theory. 4.6. A Performative Dramaturgy? Not only does theory disappear, for fear of being left too far behind the complex and contradictory performance: aesthetics and the work of art itself tend to dissolve. In L’Art à l’état gazeux, Yves Michaud points out how contemporary visual art leaves its materiality and aesthetics aside and becomes a mere individual visual experience for the viewer. For a 4 The work of Johnson and Lakoff (in Philosophy in the Flesh, 1999) can be helpful here. Cognitivism is not necessarily a synonym for intellectualism, an “embodied dramaturgy” can be political. Here we should see how the notions of passion, affect, effect produced can help us understand and rethink the link between perception and conception, which is a crucial link in the theatre. Dramaturgy and Postdramaturgy 31 postdramatic, postdramaturgical performance, this means that the performance loses any substance and aesthetic dimension and is reduced to an event, a personal experience; it dematerialises, becomes an “Art in gaseous state.” The spectator is encouraged to fill in the gaps and secure an interesting experience, far from any attempt to interpret, understand and utilise the work of art. With the metaphor of gaseous art, Michaud seems to describe the situation of contemporary dramaturgy, in the sense of dramatic writing and as a method of analysis. Often the performative work of art is totally individualised and privatised, and we are no longer able to share it with other people in a community, we are no longer willing to criticise it and to use it to change the world, or to change ourselves, even a tiny bit. But if the situation is desperate, it is not uninteresting and not irreversible. Michaud’s description only accounts for a post-theoretical attitude. Dramaturgy is by nature a theoretical reflection which merges into a practical activity. Performativity can be turned into an active process to help dramaturgy be an active and creative way of reading plays and performances. What Peter Stamer calls “performative dramaturgy” is a stimulating idea, because it forces us not to project onto the text or the performance a preconceived analysis. It encourages us rather to propose a dramaturgical analysis thanks to the creative work of the dramaturge, who, like the director, tests different possibilities, almost by trial and error, and takes the time to be involved in the process of discovery. It is by no means a new idea to start from a practical work on the text or the performance, in order to elicit propositions or hypotheses about the material to be “dramaturged” (analysed) and staged. Vitez was a master at using actors proposing a certain blocking and different staging choices, before deciding on a possible solution. It is fair to say, however, that he refused the role of the dramaturge, as useless, probably because he was himself inventing or confirming “performative dramaturgy”. More recently, as Turner and Behrndt report, a director like Luk Perceval has been using a similar method to discover the dramaturgy of a play: “Perceval was interested in discovering the dramaturgy of the play through process, and had therefore no interest in developing or defining a predetermined conceptual framework” (2008: 158). The example of Wolf may be a similar way of working in the context of devised performance. In his “Ten Notes on Dramaturgy”, Peter Stamer advocates a similar method: creating the dramaturgical system, instead of being subjected to it or receiving it from outside: “For dramaturgy does not structure pre-given meaning and applies it to the work, but rather creates sense that has not been revealed so far”(2010: 257). Performative dramaturgy, 32 Patrice Pavis whether visual, gestural or musical, favours a creative approach which will gradually appear “in the making”, as in devised theatre (but not exclusively in this kind of open dramaturgy). Stamer’s performance dramaturgy has emancipated itself from any descriptive and prescriptive theory and presents itself as an artistic activity: “The work of dramaturgy is practice of theory as opposed to analytical theory such as writings of critics or performance analysis” (257). This artistic activity is a production of forms from within, which means from an open confrontation with different readings and interpretations: “Performative dramaturgy does not administrate sense that is to be applied from outside the artistic process, it is creative by a ‘physical doing of form from within’” (258). The next step (which will be kept for next time! ) would consist in inventing various dramaturgical exercises which might extract and produce meaning “from inside and outside”. Often actors’ improvisations, or études in the Stanislavsky or Vassiliev sense of the term, will produce all kinds of meaning and proposals, which the dramaturge and director will pick up and select for a tentative dramaturgical analysis. Such an analysis aims at producing a visible, sensible and testable structure: “Both visualising and embodying by performing the structure itself. Emancipating it from an idea on paper by placing the idea into time and space, giving it a body” (259). Is this not what Platel achieved in Wolf, which in its “final” form bears the traces of a series of dramaturgical notebooks, of exercises, of constant shaping of ideas which are given a provisional body? 5. Conclusions 5.1. A Performative Dramaturgy The new methods of dramaturgical analysis, it would seem, measure up to the considerable changes in creative writing and staging. Peter Stamer’s notes offer a remarkable final synthesis of the future possibilities of a performative dramaturgy, if only in the open meaning of a creative, practical, experimental enterprise. 5.2. A Revolution This might be for dramaturgy and mise en scène a Copernican revolution. This reversal can be situated in the 1960s for literary theory and in the 1970s for the performing arts. In those years, 1966, to be precise, Foucault or Derrida, Lacan or Barthes, each in his own way, announced Dramaturgy and Postdramaturgy 33 the death of the author. To the list of the dead, we might add, also in the same post-Brechtian years, the death of the official dramaturge, but we must immediately plan his or her resurrection, metamorphosis, ubiquity and creativity. Many other types of dramaturgy are conceivable, depending on the creative attitude of the actors, directors and spectators. The traditional analytical dramaturge may lose her scientific aura, but she will gain the pleasure of really producing meaning. An artist amongst artists, the production dramaturge will perhaps be less of a distressed and depressed person. The spectator, a kind of reception dramaturge, is no less an artist. All the world is a dramaturgical stage. 5.3. Reversal and Decentring This world of dramaturgy is caught in a constant revolution, a reversal and a decentring. In spite of its two main sources, Lessing and Brecht, dramaturgy no longer represent a solid knowledge, a body of doctrines, not even a systematic method. Neodramaturgy is constantly constructed or reconstructed; it lends itself to all kinds of artistic audacities, which seem justified as long as they elicit meaning and are concentrated in a performing dramaturgy, in a productive reception: the dramaturgy of the spectator. 5.4. Evolution of Dramaturgy. A Survey To understand the evolution of dramaturgy through the history of theatre, let us finish with a survey of the evolution of dramaturgy, so as to observe the emergence of the dramaturgical function and maybe its return to the origins: (1) Classical dramaturgy, in the original Greek sense of the word, is purely textual. No one would then question the laws of its internal composition and, even less, confront it with its stage performance. (2) At least until the seventeenth century European classicism, when some playwrights find it more and more difficult to obey rules which seem to them no longer to correspond to their time. (3) From the second half of the eighteenth century on, neo-classical dramaturgy leaves the textual fortress and takes the stage into account in order to stage the dramatic texts (Diderot, Lessing, Goethe). (4) The rise of mise en scène, in the second half of the nineteenth century, delegates to the director the power to invent a new reading of the play 34 Patrice Pavis which depends on a dramaturgical re-interpretation. Ideally, for the director and the audience, dramaturgical analysis must be discreet and be hidden behind the mise en scène, or even coincide with it. (5) Brechtian dramaturgy, which is critical and political, is only interested in mise en scène if it helps to express its critical, even distanced reading of the play and to establish the story (Fabel). “Ideally”, for the Brechtians, the production coincides with the dramaturgy. (6) The crisis, in the 1960s, of the production/ mise en scène, as a closed system, the end of dramatic or epic writing, led to a postdramatic era and aesthetics, which no longer believes nor recognises itself, in an explanatory, even conflicting or radical dramaturgical analysis. Postdramaturgy renounces any system, any poetics, any normative dramaturgy. (7) This renunciation is of benefit to the spectator who has no other choice than to put some order in this sophisticated dramatic and scenic disorder. This spectator, as the ultimate dramaturge, builds a system, which helps her think and organise her fragmentary perceptions. She has become a dramaturge, no longer in the sense of a literary advisor, but of an author and a director. (8) In the visual and physical dramaturgy since the 1970s, this spectator only gets a clear orientation through the perception of formal and abstract, sometimes also both conceptual and material, structures. These structures rapidly become new norms of writing or of composition, which bring us back to a very formal, formalised or even normative dramaturgy. (9) Visual dramaturgy thus becomes a new genre, with its own rules and norms, which, in this respect, remind us of the classical dramaturgy of the beginnings. The only “slight” difference is that this visual neodramaturgy, in practice as well as in theory, does not feel obliged to refer to the outside world, to establish connections with the real, social world, to change our view of the world, and even less to refer to the texts and semiotic systems there. It is apparently not interested to engage in some exchange or relationship with our world. It does not have the need, in other words, to begin the cycle of meeting the other, as classical dramaturgy did, in the course of history. (10) The neo-dramaturgy, whether visual, corporal, or rhythmical, has repressed, if not eliminated, the good old classical, literary, intentional dramaturgy, a classical dramaturgy reduced to the unquestioned meaning of a text. In a way, it has taken its place, or has returned to the point of departure of classical dramaturgy. It looks like a closed-circuit system, self-sufficient, self-reflexive, but incapable or Dramaturgy and Postdramaturgy 35 unwilling to open itself to the outside world, the historical and real world of interpreters, unable to establish a relationship between its closed system and the world. Will it succeed in breaking itself against the world, or, more exactly, will we succeed to open it up to the world, so that we can see it and judge it better from our viewpoint? It is up to us, readers and spectators, to see if we should not perhaps reconnect with a dramaturgy accessible to analysis, particularly a dramaturgical analysis. Should we hope for a new Lessing, a new Brecht, so as to get out of a functional, sophisticated dramaturgy, but a dramaturgy closed in on itself. Can we return to the humanistic moment when theatre began to be conscious of its powers and invented dramaturgy? Literature Adrien, Philippe. Instant par Instant. Paris. Actes Sud-Papiers. 1998. Arntzen, Knut Ove. “A visual kind of dramaturgy.” In : Theaterschrift. 5-6 (1994). 274-276. Barba, Eugenio. “The nature of dramaturgy: describing actions at work.” In: New Theatre Quarterly, 1. 1. (1985). 75-78. Barba, Eugenio. “Une amulette.” unedited text. Beckett, Samuel. “Lessness.” In: Mark Nixon (ed.). Texts for Nothing and Other Shorter Prose, 1950 -1976. London. Faber & Faber. 2010. 127-132. Bleeker, Maaike. Visuality in the Theatre. The Locus of Looking. London. Palgrave. 2008. Danan, Joseph. Qu’est-ce que la dramaturgie? Paris. Actes-Sud Papiers. 2011. deLahunta, Scott. “Dance Dramaturgy: speculations and reflections.” In: Dance Theatre Journal. 16 (1). 2000. 20-25. http: / / sarma.be/ docs/ 2869. Last accessed 12/ 11/ 2013. Deleuze, Gilles. Francis Bacon. Logique de la sensation. Paris. Seuil, 2002 (1989). Bernard Dort. “L’état d’esprit dramaturgique.” In: Théâtre/ Public67. 1986. Fludernik, Monika. Towards a ‘Natural’ Narratology. London. Routledge. 1996. Herman, Luc and Vervaeck, Bart. “Postclassical Dramaturgy.” In: Herman David, Jahn Manfred and Ryan, Marie-Laure (eds.). Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory. London. Routledge. 2008. Pavis, Patrice. “L’écriture à Avignon (2010). Vers un retour de la narration? ” In: Meyer MacLeod, Arielle and Pralong, Michèle (eds.), Raconter des Histoires. Quelle narration au théâtre aujourd’hui? Genève. Métis Presses. 2012. 113- 133. Pavis, Patrice. Le Théâtre contemporain. Paris. Armand Colin. 2011. Phelan, Peggy. Unmarked: The Politics of Performance. London. Routledge. 1993. Seel, Martin. “Inszenieren als erscheinen lassen.” In: Früchtl, Josef and Zimmerman, Jörg (ed.). Ästhetik der Inszenierung. Frankfurt. Suhrkamp. 2001. 48-62. 36 Patrice Pavis Stalpaert, Christel. “Something is rotten on the stage of Flanders: postdramatic Shakespeare in contemporary Flemish theatre.” In: Contemporary Theatre Review. 20 (4). 2010. 437-448. Stamer, Peter. “Ten notes on Dramaturgy.” In: Haitzinger, Nicole and Fenböck, Karin (eds.). Denkfiguren. Munich. epodium Verlag. 2010. 255-259. Turner, Cathy and Behrndt, Synne K. (eds.). Dramaturgy and Performance. New York. Palgrave Macmillan. 2008. I. Dramaturgy’s Shifting Conditions: Histories and Economics The Educators of the Theatre. Dramaturgy between Enlightenment and Counter-Enlightenment Evelyn Deutsch-Schreiner The development of the dramaturge parallels the European Enlightenment of the 18th century and reflects the goals of the Enlightenment itself: the start of a new individualism, the capacity and courage to think for oneself, resisting tradition, convention and authority as sources of wisdom and knowledge. A better, happier, “new” human being was the objective, a person able to decide for himself. However, the intellects of the Enlightenment were not only philosophers; they sought to influence Realpolitik as well, hoping to emancipate the bourgeoisie from feudal absolutism. The theatre became the medium of dissemination for their views, a medium for the education of the bourgeoisie. Plays from England and France - George Lillo’s The London Merchant (1731) and Denis Diderot’s Le Père de Famille (1756) - became examples. The new genre of “domestic tragedy”, or drame bourgeois, spoke to middle-class sensibilities, making non-nobles the subject of tragedies. In Germany, the theatre found itself at the centre of Enlightenment discourse. According to Johann Christoph Gottsched, theatre was to be a “secular pulpit”; for Gotthold Ephraim Lessing it was a “school of humanity, of feeling and the moral world”. From the onset of the Enlightenment theatre was tasked with an educational responsibility in order that people might learn civic virtue. Public theatre was to instruct, to edify, and to better its audience. The new, dramaturgical vocation was not only a product of the Enlightenment but was also intended to propagate its ideas. Lessing advocated dramaturges working directly with theatre companies rather than in isolation. In the 1760s the German theatre was underdeveloped and of low quality in contrast to theatres in France and England, not suited to the spreading of ideology. Good German-language pieces were rare; the skills of German actors were far too meagre to meet the dramatic challenges posed by Lessing’s pieces. German audiences, too, were still a long 40 Evelyn Deutsch-Schreiner way from accepting the theatre as a kind of “civic evening school” and allowing themselves to be educated by it (Haider-Pregler 1980). It was only in the course of the Enlightenment that strolling players gradually became representatives of the bourgeois struggle for power, the German theatre an organ of bourgeois educational ideas. The splintered nature of Germany’s many principalities provided a further, political complication. A discourse on national theatre conducted by Enlightenment figures saddled the theatre with the responsibility of bringing about the national unification of art and culture. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing became a role model for intellectuals and young bourgeois playwrights, providing the movement with significant inspiration. His model of the educational theatre gave birth to the vocation of dramaturge, an important tool for the dissemination of the humanistic idea of the free individual: tolerant of, respectful and equal to other individuals. After describing Lessing’s and Friedrich Schiller’s work as dramaturges, this study will show the perversion of this ideal during National Socialism and the German Democratic Republic - a reversal of the dramaturgical profession and its humanitarian ideal, serving the state and repressing the citizenry. 1. Lessing, the World’s First Dramaturge In the 18th century it was very unusual for an intellectual to work for the theatre itself. In 1767, with the initiation of the ambitious and privately financed German National Theatre, Lessing was appointed as dramaturge with an annual salary of 800 talers. A consortium of twelve businesspeople financed the first attempt at the formation of a German national theatre, now known as the “Hamburg Enterprise”: Lessing was the world’s first officially appointed dramaturge (Luckhurst 2006: 24). He codified a range of dramaturgical activities that is still valid today: play reading, literary guidance, critical reflection on both performances and acting, the impact of a play on the audience, and general consideration of the theatrical arts and theatre’s role in society. As a student Lessing had already gained theatre experience with the well-known Neuber Company in Leipzig, translating and contributing his services for performances. The Leipzig company had successfully performed his debut work, Der junge Gelehrte (1748). As he put it, this experience had taught him “a hundred little things that a dramatic author needs to learn” (qtd. in Nisbet 2008: 70). Lessing’s stable status as in-house dramaturge allowed him - for the first time - to support himself independently; the practical theatre work came at a time when he had already made a name for himself in dramatic circles. The Educators of the Theatre 41 Lessing’s work Hamburg Dramaturgy stems from this period, between 1767 and 1769. It is not a complete or homogenous work but more of a journal, intended for the public. It might be described as a series of reviews, offering (rather unsystematic and unconventional) commentary on performances and their backgrounds. It was totally original in conception. Similar to his Laocoon, the Hamburg Dramaturgy set the standard for the discussion of aesthetic and literary theoretical principles. His plays (including Die Juden, Miss Sara Sampson, Minna von Barnhelm - the first German comedy - and Emilia Galotti, the most significant Germanlanguage bourgeois tragedy) set similar standards for German theatre. Lessing’s works, with their modern feeling of individualism and naturalistic speech, are the first plays written in the German language still regularly performed today, in both German-language and international theatres; the dramas of his contemporaries have since been relegated to college seminar discussions on literary criticism. “Lessing’s work was conceived of as an ambitious educational project” (Luckhurst 29). Lessing - dramaturge and playwright, editor, translator and critic as well as theoretician - raised the bar very high for his successors: he was highly educated, could read and speak several languages and was conversant with drama and the development of the theatre in the ancient world. He also had a profound understanding of Aristotle’s Poetics, upon which his own theory of tragedy was based. When he spoke on contemporary dramatic literature he was able to reference the entire range of European theatre. He knew the theoreticians and their objectives, the dramatists and their poetological statements; he was familiar with the theatres, the actors, and the character of the various audiences. He translated many theoretical essays, including writings on the actor’s art by Rémond de St. Albine and Francesco Riccoboni. He was editor of several theatre journals. In Hamburg his major interest was the impact of theatre on the audience. In Hamburg Dramaturgy no. 12, for example, he writes about the different receptions of a Voltaire comedy in the Netherlands, France, England and Italy, setting standards with his analytical method: typically, he describes the play in its literary context and its previous reception, then moves on to the theatrical performance itself. He offers expert commentary on stage adaptation and the difficulties in translating verse and metaphors - the same problems faced by modern dramaturges when translating pieces in a foreign language. His goals were ambitious: Lessing wanted to be the in-house critic at his theatre and yet remain independent. He sought a lively discourse with the public but also wished to instruct actors. He strove to “follow every step of both the writer’s and the actor’s art”, as stated in the Hamburg 42 Evelyn Deutsch-Schreiner Dramaturgy’s “Announcement”. However, this first dramaturge in European theatre history soon began to feel the contradictions of his situation. The actors in particular were a problem; they did not care to see their methods criticised. In a famous quote near the end of the Hamburg Dramaturgy Lessing writes: “We have actors, but we have no dramatic art” - unjustly, since at that time the National Theatre in Hamburg had the best acting troupe of its day, including Conrad Ekhof, the “father of German acting”, Konrad Ackermann, Sophie Friederike Hensel and Sophie Schröder, all of whom were well-known in Europe. Lessing particularly respected Ekhof; however, Madame Hensel often suffered from the sharpness of Lessing’s tongue. He became upset when the text was not fluently spoken, when wordplay was delivered slowly or stammeringly or the punch lines failed to come quickly enough - all of which he criticised in his performance reviews (Hamburg Dramaturgy nr. 9). At some point a discussion of principles must have taken place, for Lessing soon relaxed his criticism of the Hamburg actors. The point was not so much that he criticised, but that he did it so publicly, blaming the actors’ vanity. Even today, public criticism or ridicule of one’s own theatre troupe would be a deadly offence. Lessing attempted to defend his position by evoking a (fictive) “true virtuoso” - “possessed of no vanity; to him the art itself is more important than anything. He loves to be judged frankly and loudly; he would rather be criticised wrongly on occasion than too rarely.” And if an artist does not behave like this, Lessing adds, “he is not worthy of being studied” (Hamburg Dramaturgy nr. 25). Both in his role as educator of society and as a cultural intermediary between the stage and the public, Lessing felt the discrepancy between being an independent intellectual and a dramaturge bound to his theatre. Due to the limitations of his publisher he was not able to realise his plan of quickly opening a public debate after premieres. Nonetheless, in Germany the Hamburg Dramaturgy was widely read - and even appeared in pirated editions. Although Lessing considered the effect of the theatre on its audience more closely than almost anyone else, he was not able to prevent the eventual failure of the Hamburg National Theatre. Too few spectators came and the theatre’s finances eventually caused its death, probably due to its repertoire. Remarkably, he was excluded from the decision-making process and allowed no influence on the repertoire. However, he also failed to use his independent position to support the theatre sufficiently and made mistakes that dramaturges today must also avoid. His desire to educate led him to underestimate the audience - in the numbers 100-104 of the Dramaturgy he judged the Hamburg audience severely, but he had previously made derogatory comments about the The Educators of the Theatre 43 crude tastes of spectators in the gallery. He failed to acknowledge that the audience might not be interested in plays with which they were already familiar but, in contrast, came in droves to see new ones. “Denis Diderot’s The Family Father attained the record number of 12 performances. This was surpassed only by Lessing’s own Minna von Barnhelm, which was performed 16 times - numbers suggesting that the audience’s taste wasn’t so bad after all” (Fick 2000: 282). Still, he knew too little about the tastes of the audience and made no attempt to open a dialogue with them. Lessing’s conversation in the Dramaturgy was not with normal theatregoers but took the form of an imaginary discourse with insiders and “judges of the art”, as they were then called - an elite public. He often conducted fictional conversations with Voltaire or other intellectuals of his time. He was a polemicist, attempting to implement an open cultural debate in 18th century Germany, but this had no effect on the concrete situation and did nothing for the Hamburg Theatre. No modern dramaturge would dare to negatively criticise the productions of his or her own theatre in public but Lessing was merciless in his criticism of the plays and their adaptations - by no means an advertisement for the Hamburg Theatre. He was unaware of the effect his writings had; when approached on the subject, he said: “I was shocked to learn that my openly expressed judgement had a negative influence on some of my readers” (Hamburg Dramaturgy nr. 7). Lessing was filled with bitterness after the failure of the Hamburg Theatre and even more so in 1777, when a promised nomination for a position as director at the Mannheim National Theatre failed to materialise. This was 6 years before Friedrich Schiller became dramaturge in Mannheim. Instead, Lessing became a librarian in Wolfenbüttel, continuing in this job until his death in 1781. It was here that he wrote the Enlightenment tolerance play Nathan der Weise, a pioneering work that introduced inter-religious thought to the stage. The modern theatre owes Lessing its claim to a broadly educated, independent intellectual closely connected to the cultural milieu - a dramaturge who maintains an open discussion with the public and who, as an attending intellectual, codifies and encourages the development of the theatrical utopia in a continuing discourse. Lessing’s concept of the German theatre as a “school of sentiment” and “school of humanity” was meant to strengthen the individual in order to challenge the dominant aristocracy. More than that of other Enlightenment figures who wished simply to teach spectators to behave differently, Lessing’s aim was to “raise the individual’s moral awareness through an artistic process of communication” (Haider-Pregler 1980: 169). He wanted the theatrical experience to challenge spectators to think for themselves. It is noteworthy that Lessing - both in his Enlightenment work 44 Evelyn Deutsch-Schreiner and as a dramaturge - operated not only as a thinker and theoretician but also translated his ideas into action. The examination of theory in theatre praxis is a process in which modern dramaturges also risk ambivalent results. After Lessing the intellectual elite began to take interest in the theatre. The young Goethe, Lenz, and the young Schiller began to write plays for the German stage. The playwriting boom and the professionalisation of German acting formed the basis for an increasing public interest in Enlightenment theatre, allowing theatre in the geographically and politically fragmented Germany of the 1780s and 90s to take on a political function and promote the idea of Germany as a cultural nation. 2. Schiller as a Dramaturge Friedrich Schiller’s dramas are poetry and are considered among the greatest works of German literature, but they are also works meant to be performed, offering an abundance of acting possibilities. Schiller was a poet who was fascinated by the theatre and considered the performance while writing. In his eyes, the drama was only finished when performed before an audience: as he wrote in the prologue to his Braut von Messina, “tragic poetry is only completed in theatrical performance”. He wrote of his love for the feeling of “holding the reins of the audience’s soul, able when I will to heave it like a ball toward Heaven or Hell” - to make them “tremble” with his imagination (qtd. in Safranski 2004: 18). Schiller dealt with the theatre on several levels: as a playwright, he authored twelve plays that were successfully performed during his lifetime. As a theoretician he wrote important essays on the aesthetics of art and developed a theory of drama - and he was a dramaturge. He worked as a dramaturge twice in his life: in his youth in Mannheim at the National Theatre and during his “classical” period as Goethe’s congenial partner at the Royal Theatre in Weimar. He loved the theatre: “My world is the theatre, it is where I live and weave…” (qtd. in Brauneck 1996: 843). In Mannheim, the best theatre of the day and the stronghold of the “Sturm und Drang” movement, Schiller caused a sensation with the world premiere of his The Robbers and became the idol of Germany’s youth. In 1783-84 he fulfilled his contract there as writer-in-residence and dramaturge, an independent position, carrying a modest annual salary of 300 guilders. Yet it afforded him the rare chance to see his pieces performed and observe their aesthetic effects - a situation many modern dramatists can only dream of. He learned to make conceptual changes The Educators of the Theatre 45 and to cut text dispassionately and without fussiness; his artistic director, Herbert von Dalberg, was not a pleasant man. He asked Schiller for two adaptations of Die Verschwörung des Fiesko zu Genua. The play, directed by Schiller himself, was rejected by the audience and withdrawn after two performances. When writing Luise Millerin Schiller took the audience’s tastes and expectations into account, choosing the popular form of a sentimental family drama but still managing to integrate social criticism. He even accepted the suggestion of famous actor August Wilhelm Iffland to change the title to the more sensational Intrigue and Love, though he did not care for it himself. In connection with the production of Don Carlos he was prepared to make many compromises: in addition to the published version he wrote two shorter versions, specifically for the stage - one in verse, the other in prose. As today, the work of a dramaturge included the preparation of the theatre programme and work with the actors; Schiller was also a member of the theatre board and had to read many plays. His work with the actors made him aware of the limitations of the art of acting: the actors had difficulty speaking verse fluently and changed scripts as they saw fit. This was unacceptable, but Schiller understood the actors’ point of view and was able to serve as a mediator between script and stage: he took pains to write in an “appropriate, clear and speakable language of the theatre” (qtd. in Siedhoff 1983: 13). As with Lessing, Schiller’s goal was to critically examine his theatrical work in a periodical, adding it to the continuing artistic discourse. This publication was to be called the “Mannheim Dramaturgy”, in direct reference to Lessing’s Hamburg work. However, with von Dalberg’s non-renewal of Schiller’s contract, the publication never came to pass. Mary Luckhurst notes: “A major difficulty was that Schiller simply did not, at that stage in his career, have the outstanding critical and creative reputation that he later acquired” (Luckhurst 38). Schiller - uncommon for a poet - was both able to adapt the texts of others for the stage and interested in such work: just such a dramaturgical project was the beginning of Schiller’s legendary friendship with Johann Wolfgang Goethe. In 1794 Goethe requested that Schiller adapt his Egmont for the stage, as it had been premiered in 1789 to no great success. Schiller immediately agreed and became, from that time on, Goethe’s closest colleague in his leadership of the theatre in Weimar, where his work as a dramaturge led to a boom. “We worked together on the refinement of the theatre,” wrote Goethe, “Schiller wrote poetry; I taught, practiced, and executed” (qtd. in Safranski 472). Goethe was convinced of his friend’s superiority as a practical dramaturge and accepted the results even when he himself was not satisfied, as with Egmont. Between 46 Evelyn Deutsch-Schreiner 1794 and his death in 1805, Schiller adapted Goethe’s works Iphigenia and Stella, Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Lessing’s Nathan Der Weise, Gozzi’s Turandot and Racine’s Phaedra, as well as Louis Benoit Picard’s Der Neffe als Onkel and Der Parasit. His dramatisations were radical and incisive but highly successful. These adaptations represent a noteworthy culture transfer: several of them, like Macbeth, began to appear regularly in German repertoires only after Schiller’s reworking. His adaptation of Turandot is still performed today. Weimar saw the development of a further aspect of dramaturgy still important today: dramaturgical programming. Taken as a whole, the programme of the Weimar theatre represented the idea of Welttheater, including important authors and plays from all of Europe, in line with Goethe and Schiller’s shared belief that “provincialism has no place on the stage”. They produced pieces by Lessing, Kotzebue, Iffland, Terence, Plautus, Shakespeare, Gozzi, Cervantes, Racine, Calderon, Sophocles and Euripides. However, the Welttheater concept also dictated the incorporation of international themes in original works: the Wallenstein trilogy, produced during the Weimar period, is set in Austria and Czechia; Maria Stuart is set in Great Britain, Die Jungfrau von Orleans in France, Die Braut von Messina in Italy, Wilhelm Tell in Switzerland and the fragmentary Demetrius in Russia. Schiller and Goethe strove to expand the repertoire of the small Royal Theatre and raise the audience’s level of understanding - but also to realise the classical ideal of international literature. They succeeded in achieving their goals and the theatre at Weimar became, by dint of its wide-ranging repertoire and its production style, Germany’s leading theatre. Goethe and Schiller’s work in Weimar is responsible for the conviction, still held today, that a representative theatre should have an international repertoire - a reflection of the educational precepts of German classicism. Schiller and Goethe also recognised the dramaturgical necessity to encourage the writing of new works. In 1800 they announced a playwriting contest - a “dramatic competition” - and encouraged authors to take part. The term Entwicklungsdramaturgy (“developmental dramaturgy”) was later applied to the production of new plays and theatrical material. Schiller and Goethe made extensive use of “thrillers” for Weimar’s unique repertoire and audience. Such contests subsequently became a popular means of improving the range of German language dramas. Friedrich Schiller wrote a number of essays central to German theatre, including the 1784 paper “The Theatre as Moral Institution” [Die Schaubühne als eine moralische Anstalt betrachtet], in which he ascribed a powerful effect to the theatre: he claimed that, more than any other The Educators of the Theatre 47 public institution, the theatre is a school of practical wisdom, a guidepost for civic life and a place of spiritual education - a “moral institution”. He was convinced of the theatre’s ability to aesthetically educate and psychologically influence, but also of its political function: it could teach tolerance, point out educational missteps and offer the “great men” of the world a kind of “school for princes” - a chilling example of the misuse of power. The message to the powerful is crystal clear: “The theatre’s jurisdiction begins where the sphere of worldly law ends” (Schiller 1784) - a message that arrived with explosive force in Germany. Later, as it became clear that enlightened princes would by no means alter the prevailing societal structure, Schiller retreated from this ideal, positing that the theatre could at least offer spiritual resistance and a vision of liberty. His classical insistence on solemn nobility intimates a morally driven political emancipation, in which art plays a major educational role. These ideas stood in opposition to conservative political tendencies as well as to the official censorship of the theatre. As early as Lessing’s time the state had begun to institute theatre censorship. Paradoxically, it was initiated by Josef von Sonnenfels, an Enlightenment figure and censor for Empress Maria Theresia, as a means of compelling drama to conform to Enlightenment principles. Soon, however, the motivation of this censorship turned political - particularly in order to combat the ideas fomented by the French Revolution. Censorship reached a high point in the first half of the 19th century - the Restoration era before 1848 - with the banning or expurgation of many Enlightenment and classicist works. With a few brief exceptions, the censorship of German and Austrian theatre continued until 1918, peaking a second time in the 20th century. 3. The “Reichsdramaturg” in National Socialist Germany The goals of the Enlightenment and German classicism were freethinking, aspiring to an independent, individualist utopia. The 20th century brought a powerful backlash, a Counter-Enlightenment with its roots reaching back to the 1870s. The Enlightenment-era edifying role ascribed to the theatre was now forced to serve the escalation of National Socialism. Theatre could contribute to the expression of freedom and emancipation; instead it became a blind servant of the state. “Theatre has always been that branch of the arts with the closest relationship to the people and the branch that can have the strongest formative and ideological influence on its time,” stated Minister of Propaganda Joseph (qtd. in Völkischer Beobachter 1938). The theatre was to become warlike: the National So- 48 Evelyn Deutsch-Schreiner cialists linked art, the state, and war - a doctrine diametrically opposed to Enlightenment ideals. The Reichsdramaturg Rainer Schlösser declared: “Government, art, and the Wehrmacht are thoroughly aligned with one another” (1937: 7). The connection between high culture and menacing aggressiveness was typical of National Socialist politics, as well as of its cultural policy. State-supported theatre and festivals stood in contrast to the banishment and destruction of intellectual life and the arts in Germany. The artistic profession of the dramaturge was perverted during the National Socialist period (1933-1945) into that of a state censorship authority and political minder in the theatre. The new role of the dramaturge was to assist in the establishment of new guiding principles on which the new German citizens were to be modelled. After the founding of the Reichsministerium für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda in 1933 in Berlin, Joseph Goebbels established a completely new department: “Reichsdramaturgie”, led by Dr. Rainer Schlösser. Schlösser’s qualification for the post was based on anti-Semitic hate articles composed for Nazi periodicals such as Der Angriff and the Völkischer Beobachter. He had been active before the Nazis seized power as a local group leader of the “Kampfbund für deutsche Kultur” in Weimar, agitating under his leader Alfred Rosenberg against all modernist trends in the theatre and particularly against Jewish artists. In the Völkischer Beobachter he excoriated Carl Zuckmayer, Ödön von Horváth and the Prussian Poets’ Academy and advocated the abolishment of the prestigious Kleist Award. (Hüpping 2012: 98-109). Schlösser considered himself an artist as well, publishing poems and political essays. Like Goebbels and Hitler, Schlösser affected an artistic attitude and never tired of emphasising how fortunate artists were under the National Socialist regime. The “Reichsdramaturgie” was one of seven divisions in the theatre department of the Ministry of Propaganda. From 1935 Rainer Schlösser was the director of the theatre department, as such the most important theatre official in Nazi Germany. The department was a place of censorship and control. Schlösser was at once responsible for scrutinising and influencing German theatres’ repertoires, for overseeing all dramatic production - plays, operas, operettas - and also for the production of scripts and coordination with theatrical publishers. The department cooperated closely with the Reich Chamber of Theatre (Reichstheaterkammer), in which all theatre personnel - including dramaturges - were organised. The 1933 “Law for the Re-establishment of German Civil Service” [Gesetz zur Wiederherstellung des deutschen Berufsbeamtentums] had provided the pretext to immediately dismiss all The Educators of the Theatre 49 undesirable theatre personnel - meaning anyone who, due to their principles, race or artistic aesthetic, was objectionable to the National Socialist regime. Membership in the Chamber was a prerequisite for being able to work in theatrical professions; however, only those conforming to the Nuremberg race laws of 1935 - and considered politically harmless - were allowed to become members. Thus, the German Reich managed to rid itself of both Jewish and communist artists with a single stroke, moving forward with the realisation of the National Socialist artistic ideal: racist, anti-democratic, anti-Enlightment, anti-individualist and misogynistic, bent on maintaining the hegemony of its designers. Those not fitting this narrow definition of German culture were threatened with occupational bans, expulsion, and physical extermination. The power-hungry National Socialists achieved their aim of dictating the political direction and aesthetic of the German theatre; their goal was the re-education of the spectators in National Socialist doctrine: “It is impossible for National Socialism and the National Socialist state to require anything less of German art than that it be firmly rooted in our worldview,” affirmed Führer and Chancellor Adolf Hitler (qtd. in Die Bühne 1937: 274). Minister Goebbels, who had studied German philology and considered himself a great theatre expert, dictated the direction of the Reichsdramaturgie. At pomp-filled events such as theatre festivals and at culturepolitical press conferences he announced the new requirements for the theatre. Goebbels co-opted the history of theatre in order to praise German theatre as the best of its kind, at the expense of other countries: “It is an eternal stamp of our fame that a German wrote the Hamburg Dramaturgy, giving theatre for the first time an essential structure. For this reason, we are far ahead of other peoples in the theatrical arts” (qtd. in Deutsches Bühnenjahrbuch 1937: 2). However, the regime failed in its attempt to use Lessing for its own ends: Nathan der Weise, the great work of Enlightenment tolerance, was banned. Schiller, on the other hand, was named a “comrade in arms” of National Socialism, his essay “The Theatre as Moral Institution” reinterpreted as a template for a theatre of Nazi indoctrination: “The German stage today is once again becoming a “moral institution” according to Schiller’s vision, a podium for the political and social mores of our time,” said Goebbels in his speech at the Reich Chamber of Theatre’s annual meeting in 1937 (Die Bühne 1937: 277). However, Schiller’s great emancipation drama, Don Carlos, was rarely approved for performance. Under Goebbels Reichsdramaturgie pursued representative high culture - the bourgeois, established theatre of the 1930s such as the Festspiele in Bayreuth and Salzburg and city and national theatres. However, 50 Evelyn Deutsch-Schreiner the aesthetic experiments of the avant-garde and the political theatre of the 1920s were labelled “degenerate” and banned. The once-lively dance theatre scene, the new expressive dance of Germany, was brought to an end. Since ideological plays could only fill about a third of the season, emphasis was placed from the beginning on the traditional, bourgeois canon, approved according to the well-known criteria: no Jewish playwrights, no political freethinkers, no artists from “enemy states”, no “degenerate art”. Goebbels demanded a theatre of “steely romance” and “heroic objectivity”: a dramaturgy combining neo-romanticism’s yearning for belief and destiny with the glorification of power and elemental forces, couched in a realistic - but idyllic or elevated - form. The Reichsdramaturgie examined all dramatic works past and present for their political permissibility. Rainer Schlösser’s colleagues included Eberhard Wolfgang Möller, author of the Thingspiel or open-air drama, Das Frankenburger Würfelspiel ([“The Frankenburg Dice Game”] which premiered at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin), and Sigmund Graff, co-author - with Carl Ernst Hintze - of the military-themed Die endlose Strasse [“The Endless Street”]. They wrote assessments of selected plays according to the tenets of National Socialism; these assessments decided whether the plays were to be banned or allowed. Another major focus of the Reichsdramaturgie was the writing of new, ideologically appropriate plays. But in spite of high promotions, dramaturgically “good” plays could not be generated. In close cooperation with the Reich Theatre Chamber, publishers and local propaganda offices, the approximately 150 theatres in Germany were closely observed. Private theatres were mostly taken over by the state. In accordance with paragraph 1 of the 1934 Theatre Act, all theatres were now under the control of Reichsminister Goebbels; all theatre directors were made subject to the state dramaturge. The Reichsdramaturgie maintained a close relationship with directors, dramaturges and publishing houses: political standards for theatres were established; all theatres were forced to submit their programmes for approval. Theatres were forced to tailor their productions to guidelines established by the Minister - tellingly, these guidelines were referred to as “decrees”. Thus, the stagings were no longer created by the director and dramaturge and no longer bore the artistic signature of the director either, but were constrained by the staging guidelines of the Reichsdramaturgie. Characterisation was also prescribed by National Socialist societal models. The dramaturgical development of pieces was substantially affected as well: editing of plays forced a politically acceptable interpretation, the Reichsdramaturgie had The Educators of the Theatre 51 no qualms about adding textual passages in order to achieve ideological clarity. The messages of plays were trivialised, themes were rendered idyllic or heroic. Even the classics were not spared; their characters and plots were mostly twisted to match the ahistorical, “pure-blooded” Nazi ideal (see Schreiner 1981). In accordance with paragraph 2 of the Theatre Act of 1934, the Ministry assumed control not only of the appointment of general and artistic theatre directors and heads of stage design but also the posting of head dramaturges. The position of head dramaturge was itself an invention of the National Socialists, furthering their hierarchical methods of control. General directors received “recommendations” for head dramaturges close to the regime; the Vienna Volkstheater, for instance, was forced to accept Otto Emmrich Groh - a National Socialist playwright - as its head dramaturge. During his tenure in the theatre many Nazi-sympathetic plays were produced. Friedrich Bethge, author of the National Socialist play March of the Veterans, became head dramaturge in Frankfurt; Möller was head dramaturge in Königsberg when he was called to join the Reichsdramaturgie; Hanns Johst, author of the most famous National Socialist play Schlageter, was forced onto the National Theatre in Berlin. The dramaturge became an informer, politically influencing productions, putting Nazi cultural policy into action and making the theatre meet the political ends of the Ministry. Before that time only a few theatres had been equipped with a dramaturge; under National Socialism this position was implemented at all state and city theatres, a practice which remained in place after 1945. Some German dramaturges fought to maintain the ideals of the Enlightenment but could do so only in exile, beyond the borders of Germany. Kurt Hirschfeld was fired from his job as dramaturge in Darmstadt in 1933 in accordance with the “Law for the Re-establishment of German Civil Service” and fled to Switzerland. As dramaturge in the Zurich Theatre, he contributed to the theatre’s role as a symbol of intellectual resistance against National Socialism. In Zurich, pieces by dramatists banned in Germany - such as Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage and Her Children [Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder] - were performed, Schiller and Goethe’s “Welttheater” repertoire ideal was preserved and new authors were encouraged, including Max Frisch. Hirschfeld was successful with his “humanistic dramaturgy” concept after the war, a concept that proved decisive for Zurich: It was necessary to make the theatre an effective cultural institution once more, to define its spiritual standpoint and restore its functions at a time in 52 Evelyn Deutsch-Schreiner which German theatre was solely a weapon of propaganda. It was necessary to spotlight artistic, ethical, political and religious problems at a time in which discussion seemed replaced by blind allegiance. It was necessary to preserve and display the vision of man in his diversity, taking a stand against the destructive forces of Fascism. It was necessary, in opposition to the jingoist, warlike style of the official German theatre, to cultivate a sober, humanist style that communicated the content of works and encouraged their discussion. (15) 4. The Dramaturge in the Service of the Party in Communist Germany In the German Democratic Republic (GDR) - and before 1949, in the Russian zone of occupation - diverse state and communist party authorities did the work of the dramaturge. This interference in artistic work increased to the point that it could be described as a kind of state dramaturgy. Typical for the German Democratic Republic, state, theatre, and science were very closely linked - in this sense, the theatre obtained an additional function in its role as educational institution. The state tasked the theatre with an important role in the socialist re-education of the people, prioritising its own demands above artistic liberty. From the beginning until the political turnaround in 1989, censorship was commonplace. All theatres were under the control of the Ministry of Culture’s theatre department, 1 in which the minister, together with the Advisory Board for Drama, took the decisions concerning premieres and production concepts. Theatres were influenced by the “Department of Culture of the Central Committee of the SED” (Socialist Unity Party of Germany), the powerful “Association of Theatre Creators” and scientific institutes such as the “Department of Art and Cultural Science of the Academy of Social Sciences” at the SED Central Committee, as well as the Artistic Trade Union. Political directives for dramaturgy were announced at party conferences and at the meetings of the Central Committee, where artists were also regularly reprimanded when they failed to enact party edicts quickly enough. Subsequent theatre conferences, the “Performing Arts Section of the German Academy of the Arts” and all dramaturges were expected to follow the guidelines of the SED’s cultural politics for the creation of assertive and idealised art (Stuber 2000: 207). Only a single theatre periodical was in print - Theater der Zeit, founded in 1946 - and only a limited number of plays was available from Henschel, the monopolistic 1 Forerunner of the Staatliche Kommission für Kunstangelegenheiten 1951-53. The Educators of the Theatre 53 theatre publisher. Regional party officials were responsible for their local theatres, deciding on schedules and productions. The artists had to deal with amateurishness and incompetence but also with ideological indoctrination, like the apodeictic Das kleine Einmaleins der Dramaturgie [Dramaturgy 101] (Erpenbeck 1947). The author of this work was Fritz Erpenbeck, editor in chief of Theater der Zeit, opponent of Brecht and advocator of socialist realism. As in all dictatorships, the statements of the party leadership were sacrosanct - for instance, the playwright Heiner Müller was publicly condemned by Presidents Walter Ulbricht and Erich Honecker, resulting in a ban on the performance of his works. The ever-present question was what the socialist theatre should look like. The cultural policy predetermined the content of plays, bans were pronounced and specific systems imposed, such as the Stanislavsky method and later the so-called “Bitterfeld Way”, calling for blue-collar workers to write plays and for dramatists to search for new themes inspired by the industry. In order to establish a national theatre unique to the GDR, modern Western “aesthetics”, like those of Samuel Beckett and the Theatre of the Absurd, were denounced. The “heritage” of classical German theatre was conjured and a contemporary style was ordered - one showing the reality of the German Democratic Republic not in ambiguous terms but in a positive, heroic dramaturgy, with unified stories and resolved conflicts. “Decadent”, “formalist”, “non-folkloric” and “contradictory” were the epithets applied to silence dissenters. The Soviet Socialist Realism of the 1930s, as defined by Andrei Zhdanow, was doctrine. The antipode to this movement was Bertolt Brecht, with his epic model of theatre, in which the theory and practice of the dramaturge were developed. The new generation of dramaturges, including Heinar Kipphardt, Peter Hacks and Heiner Müller, was also in opposition: they advocated a socialist theatre, but one including critical content and new aesthetics. The GDR leadership avoided criticising the world-famous Brecht, whom they welcomed in 1948 as a figurehead, but reprimanded other dramatists. Theatre dramaturges were busy integrating such different forms as Stanislavsky’s psychological theatre of illusion and Brecht’s theatre of alienation in their work. Their first task was the education of the spectators: a broad educational movement had indeed been ordered by the state. Their responsibilities were numerous: dramaturges had to lecture on Marxism and Leninism, organise “Stanislavsky circles” to implement his programme of training actors, coordinate theatre clubs and take part in various meetings and seminars. In 1951-52 “concept rehearsals” became obligatory. Dramaturges and directors were forced to write conceptual 54 Evelyn Deutsch-Schreiner papers in which the cardinal political purpose of a play, as well as the method of its accomplishment, were described; these were to be submitted to the authorities and fulfilled in the rehearsal process. In practise, the dramaturge generally wrote these papers; they were often delivered after the premiere - a custom that was grumbled about at the Stanislavsky conference (Stuber 2010). The Association of Theatre Creators archived all directing concepts and rehearsal notes on scene variations - ostensibly so that other dramaturges could review them; in fact, this was a further means of political supervision. Another method, in the guise of “democratic collaboration”, encouraged actors not currently involved in a production to visit the rehearsals of other productions and discuss them with the dramaturges. Factory workers entered into collective consultation with the artists, which made life difficult for city theatre dramaturges and meant more non-artistic work. Heinar Kipphardt, head of dramaturgy at the Deutsches Theater Berlin (1951-59), in his play Shakespeare dringend gesucht satirised the hectic life of the dramaturge - in search of the ultimate new contemporary play and plagued by the obstructionism and senseless suggestions of narrow-minded officials of the omnipresent bureaucracy - officials who themselves were drowning in paperwork. In the play, a female party functionary appears as a “dea ex machina”, assisting the dramaturge in his battles with the head of the city theatre department. All this, of course, was irony: the mechanisms inimical to artists’ work were generated by the party itself, not by the petit-bourgeois incomprehension of a few individuals. For this play, performed in 1953, Kipphardt was recognised with the National Award, Third Class. Some years later, when supporting Peter Hack’s plays and publicly rejecting Shdanov’s socialist realism, Kipphardt came into conflict with the leadership of the SED and was denounced as a “reactionary head dramaturge” and a threat to German theatre (Franzkowiak 2002: 119). He continued writing in West Germany, creating several major works of the documentary theatre - including In der Sache Oppenheimer - and became head dramaturge at the Kammerspiele in Munich. In the 1970s and 1980s the dominant SED gradually began to lose its power, but in 1976, an exodus of theatre people followed the exile of Wolf Biermann, a singer and co-founder of the Berliner Arbeiter- und Studententheater (b.a.t). This represented a significant brain drain but, paradoxically, for the remaining dramaturges it meant more artistic opportunities - although, until the turnaround in 1989, such opportunities were confined to the regime’s margin. Still, Brecht’s model of the artisticscientific dramaturge was able to assert itself in the theatres of the GDR. The position of production dramaturge became common - a dramaturge The Educators of the Theatre 55 specifically responsible for research and developing the directing concept in co-operation with directors and designers, with a critical role in rehearsals and the collection of programme material. Brecht’s dramaturge was not only a production dramaturge but also an in-house intellectual placing a high value on artistic reflection, political discussion and the documentation of theatre performances - the most important development in German dramaturgy since Lessing. This model was based on Brecht’s own working method and was developed in the Berliner Ensemble - in dialogue with the communist leadership, to be sure, but also partially in opposition to it. In the final years of the GDR, the theatres - with the help of their dramaturges - became an important voice for public criticism of the government, ending with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The concept of the dramaturge under National Socialism and in communist East Germany was the polar opposite of the vocation first defined by Lessing and represents a Counter-Enlightenment ideal. The Frankfurt School philosophers Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer maintain, however, that the Enlightenment und Counter-Enlightenment share ideological roots. In Dialectic of Enlightenment, first published in 1944, they saw a dichotomy at the heart of Enlightenment thinking: on the one hand, the Enlightenment made great strides in terms of humanity’s technical understanding of the world and its capacity to manipulate it; however, it failed spectacularly to provide humans with the moral understanding to avoid replicating the barbarity of less technological ages on an ever more grotesque scale. According to this interpretation, the role of the dramaturge as censor and suppressor in the service of an authoritarian state is the “dark side” of the labour of the Enlightenment dramaturge, educating people to become free individuals. This view of Enlightenment and Counter-Enlightenment as two sides of the same coin is controversial to this day: the opposition posed by Kurt Hirschfeld in Zurich, as well as the self-determination of East German theatre from 1976 (with the help of the Brechtian dramaturgical model), show the potential of liberating critical dramaturgy, allowing it to uphold Enlightenment values. It is useful for dramaturges - practitioners of a young profession - to remember that though the German dramaturgical model is rooted in the Enlightenment, it was negatively impacted by National Socialism and state-imposed communism. The further development of the vocation and its responsibilities is closely linked to societal development - and also to the further development of the Enlightenment project. The failure of the Enlightenment in society is not necessarily due to the bankruptcy of humanist/ Enlightenment thought: as 56 Evelyn Deutsch-Schreiner Hans Mayer states, contradictions in societal existence confirm the need for Enlightenment (Mayer 1975: 9). The dramaturge today is no longer possessed of a state-dictated educational “mission”: instead, the dramaturge supports, accompanies and reflects on the artistic approach of his or her production team. The dramaturge refers to areas of conflict within society, using the theatre as an artistic location where new and different points of view on human co-existence can be researched - thus furthering the continuing project of the Enlightenment itself. Literature Brauneck, Manfred. Die Welt als Bühne. Geschichte des europäischen Theaters. Stuttgart. J.B. Metzler. Vol. 2. 1996. Erpenbeck, Fritz. “Außergewöhnlich und typisch. Aus einem kleinen Einmaleins der Dramaturgie.” In: Theater der Zeit 6 (1947), rptd. in Kreuzer, Helmut. Dramaturgie in der DDR. Heidelberg. C. Winter. 1998. Fick, Monika. Lessing Handbuch. Leben-Werk-Wirkung. Stuttgart. J.B. Metzler. 2000. Franzkowiak, Anne, “Weggehen und Wiederkommen. Heinar Kipphardt und Adolf Dresen.” In: “Nun ist es Zeit, das Antlitz neu zu schaffen”. Theater in Berlin nach 1945 - Schauspiel. Berlin. Henschel. 2002. Haider-Pregler, Hilde. Des sittlichen Bürgers Abendschule. Bildungsanspruch und Bildungsauftrag des Berufstheaters im 18. Jahrhundert. Wien. Jugend und Volk. 1980. Hirschfeld, Kurt. “Dramaturgische Bilanz.” In: Theater. Meinungen und Erfahrungen. Über die Grenzen 4. Affoltern. 1945. Hüpping, Stefan. Rainer Schlösser (1899-1945). Der “Reichsdramaturg”. Bielefeld. Aisthesis. 2012. Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim. Hamburg Dramaturgy. Luckhurst, Mary. Dramaturgy: A Revolution in Theatre. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. 2006. Mayer, Hans. Außenseiter. Frankfurt. Suhrkamp. 1975. Nisbet, Hugh Barr. Lessing. Eine Biographie. Munich. C.H. Beck. 2008. Rischbieter, Henning. Seelze-Velber (eds.). Theater im “Dritten Reich”. Theaterpolitik, Spielplanstruktur, NS-Dramatik. Seelze-Velber. Kallmeyer. 2000. Safranski, Rüdiger. Friedrich Schiller oder Die Erfindung des Deutschen Idealismus. Munich & Vienna. Hanser. 2004. Schlösser, Rainer. “Theater im Dritten Reich.” In: Deutsches Bühnenjahrbuch. 1937. 7. Schreiner, Evelyn. Nationalsozialistische Kulturpolitik 1938-1945 unter spezieller Berücksichtigung der Wiener Theaterszene. Vienna. Diss. 1981. Siedhoff, Siegrid. Der Dramaturg Schiller. “Egmont”, Goethes Text - Schillers Bearbeitung. Bonn. Bouvier. 1983. The Educators of the Theatre 57 Stuber, Petra. Spielräume und Grenzen, Studien zum DDR-Theater. Berlin. Ch. Links. 2010. Völkischer Beobachter. Berlin Ed. 24.10.1938. Relational Dramaturgies, Post-Fordian Work Structures and the East-West Discourse: The System Change of 1989 and the Theaterhaus Jena Franziska Schößler & Hannah Speicher East German theaters were significantly involved in the political system change of 1989 that led to the German reunification and the disintegration of the Soviet Union. Some East German plays of the early 1980s can even be read as an anticipation of the historical events - even if they asked for a radical change within the socialist system - as, for example, in Volker Braun’s Die Übergangsgesellschaft. During this phase, the plea for a poetic of destruction seems to increasingly replace constructive criticism, as in Volker Braun’s play, or in Werner Buhss’ piece Nina, Nina, tam kartina. Accordingly Christoph Heins’ Ritter der Tafelrunde formulates an extensive “swan song” to the former socialist utopias and hopes, in the form of an adaptation of the legend of King Arthur. In the 1980s a pluralisation of aesthetic forms also emerged, which then connected with the search for new institutionalised forms and democratic structures - this tendency is, for instance, embodied by the off-theatre group Gruppe Zinnober and their widely proliferated play Traumhaft (Gruppe Zinnober 1990), 1 as well as the struggle for an “Autorentheater”, in which Peter Hacks and Irina Liebmann were involved amongst others (Grubner & Weber 2012). Since its beginnings in 1945 - already one month after the German surrender, the Soviets allowed the first theaters in East Berlin - the East German theatre culture has been characterised by intense negotiations according to the fundamental relationship between theatre, politics and criticism (Gundmann 1996), as evident in the debate about Brecht’s and Dessau’s opera Lukullus in 1951 (Lucchesi 1993) or in the Stanislawski-Brecht debate. Despite measures of censorship (Baumann 2011), the 1 Similarly surreal, and constructed as a journey to the inward, are Jo Fabian’s plays, for example The No-Bericht (1990); see Stuber 1998 and Eke 2002. The System Change of 1989 and the Theaterhaus Jena 59 will for democratic production structures existed (Ullrich 1990-91). The transformations in East German theatres after 1989 led to a call for a stronger participatory model and the demand for a project-based polity, especially at the Theaterhaus Jena: Here, project work and the abolition of the (hierarchical) division of labour (that traditionally determines the German “Stadttheater” 2 ) were prevalent, as this was deemed the only way in which the current problems seemed to be negotiable: such as the gap between East and West cultures, that determined both aesthetics and biographies. The concept of relational dramaturgy thus refers to the interaction between social contexts and aesthetics, to the encounter of social practices and protagonists including their institutional environment (press, audience) out of which new demands and expectations can arise. Although work at theatres (as art or public service) cannot be called Fordian in a narrow sense, the example of the Theaterhaus Jena shows that work structures, that aim (in the tradition of the German student movement of 1968) for co-determination, can definitely produce job profiles, which foster post-Fordian circumstances: in the case of the Theaterhaus in the form of project work, or because of the attenuation of the division of labour. The reorganisation of working conditions at the Theaterhaus Jena can be connected to Eastern as well as to Western theatre traditions. The founders of the Theaterhaus were not only influenced by the charitable structure of the Theater an der Ruhr in Mülheim, which was established in 1981, but also by other West German co-determination experiments in the course of the 1968s, for example, the Schauspiel Frankfurt, the Theater im Turm and the Schaubühne Berlin. The socialist participation experiments at the Theater Halle in 1967 can be identified as an influ- 2 The tradition of the institutionalised theatre in Germany is deeply connected to German history and identity. So both East and West theatre culture share the same roots. In the course of the 18th and 19th (due to the emancipation of the bourgeoisie) the civic culture of “Stadtand Staatstheater” (municipal theatres) developed out of the feudal “Hoftheater” tradition. As a consequence of its federal history and organisation Germany (that first became a nation in 1871) unfolded a broad range and dense network of institutionalised theatres. As a result there is an intensive dependency between the theatres and their local environments. Until today one finds a “Stadttheater” in most of German cities, which provides theatre, opera, concerts and dance. Ensembles and companies at those theatres are engaged for one or more seasons and play their repertoires not ‘en suite’, but recurrently during the whole season or even longer. Today there are 140 theatres in Germany that are in public ownership, 200 private ones and (uncountable) numbers of free troupes and off-spaces. On the whole the public sector subsidises the theatre system with 2 billion Euro a year, which is about 0,2% of the national budget (see von Düffel 2003). 60 Franziska Schößler & Hannah Speicher ence from “the East”. This mutual translation of traditions appears to be the background for the nationwide publicity the Theaterhaus has received since its founding. Nevertheless even in avant-garde companies, especially in English-speaking troupes, from The Living Theatre or Robert Wilson’s work to Richard Foreman’s Ontological-Hysteric Theatre there has tended to be a division of labour and clear power structure; so of course the connection between co-determination and avant-garde theatre is not that clear-cut. But all in all the ’68-experiments raise (as in the case of the Theaterhaus) the question of labour regulations with regard to the problematic implications of the co-determination paradigm. To be precise: the wish for the democratisation of art appears to lead to creative modes of working that affect not only the artistic professions, but all theatre-workers (like technicians, public relations, etc.). Wolfgang Engler, since 2005 director of the Hochschule für Schauspielkunst “Ernst Busch” in Berlin, shares this assumption in his essay “Die Ostdeutschen als Avantgarde” (2002: 80ff.): he postulates that due to the dulled competition and the reduced rationalisation efforts, Fordian structures were not completely developed in the GDR's working-culture. Furthermore he points out that a creative work ethic dominated in the GDR that imposed on workers a constant improvisation, which finally simplified the adoption of post-Fordian work forms after 1989. In addition, one was used to the practice of collective working, which the post-Fordian teamwork requires in a modified form. 3 As to the domain of theatre, one could specify that the experience of censorship in the GDR led to a strong impulse for democratisation after 1989 as well as to an interest in experiments. The division of labour in the statesubsidised and supervised theatre (as an established structure, associated with a certain aesthetic) was questioned, free creative spaces conquered and post-Fordian working structures thus developed. Despite the innovative impulses after 1989, the well-known East-West stereotypes seemed reproduced, yet radicalised, even in the domain of the theatre. Social theatre in the GDR versus aesthetic experiments in the West (Jennicke 2011; Engler 2012: 78ff.) and a cold technical style of acting in the East versus an emotional, self-exploring style in the West (Klöck 2008) - those topoi are still defining the discussions, which is 3 Rainer Land (2003: 76-95), however, denies Engler’s thesis, when he talks about the “double change”, thereby underlining the existence of fully developed post- Fordian structures in the GDR. He claims that after 1989, the West implemented institutional structures in East-Germany that were already in the phase of transition in the West in the course of globalisation. This transfer of institutions distinguishes the system change in the GDR from the one in other socialist states. The System Change of 1989 and the Theaterhaus Jena 61 why a radical modernisation is juxtaposed to backward semantics. In the following it will be shown that a specific form of theatre work, based on co-determination and project work, resembles post-Fordian structures. In addition, it will be examined in what way the artists of the Theaterhaus reflect the aesthetic and institutional negotiations between East and West, whether they pick them up, modify or confirm the stereotypes. The East- West-discourse will be proved to be an essential component of the working process. 1. Creativity and Post-Fordism The Theaterhaus Jena is a unique experiment in Germany, since it is the only theatre founded after 1989 that still exists today. While many theatres are struck by closures and consolidation, as Hans-Thies Lehmann points out (1999: 15), a young ensemble (mostly graduates from the Ernst Busch School) moves into the ruins of the old theatre in Jena, trying to establish a self-contained profile (independent from Weimar and the theatres nearby). In this context, the phase of the political system change seems to function as a vacuum, a free space that fosters the adventurous and the experimental, combining a novel structure of organisation and financing with specific aesthetic demands, like the fragmentary and hybrid. The positions were initially financed by the state’s job creation program, in an effort to reduce the horrendous unemployment in Jena, since the Zeiss Werke were downsized. That way, the young Ernst Busch graduates were financed for two years, which is longer than most regular employment contracts at the institutionalised German “Stadttheater”. Although the German “Stadttheater-System” is known for its broad subsidisation, since 1989 there is an increasing dependence on free-lancers and short-term contracts like in other European countries and consequently the German “Stadttheater” has become a favored field of research in business studies and sociology (Eikhof & Haunschild 2004), describing actors and actresses as entreployees (Bröckling 2007; Voß and Pongratz 1998; Weiskopf 2005), or in other words, as employees working flexibly and with self-determination, taking care of their own marketing in order to maintain their employability and constantly exposing themselves to efficiency and performance tests. In this context, two years of contractually guaranteed artistic work can be seen as a phase of relative security that opens up space for experimentation. At the same time, the job creation program at the Theaterhaus Jena hints at an aspect that is significant for the development in East Germany in general. While the (formerly socialist) 62 Franziska Schößler & Hannah Speicher East German society itself (as avant-garde, according to Engler) was used to deal with the fact that work is disappearing and that the idea of work itself is being modified, work is simulated by measures of the (Western) welfare state (Land 2003: 91ff.). In contrast to the practice at the “Stadttheater”, the group in Jena relies on collective labour structures, which, in the spirit of the avant-garde, literally extend into life - the actors live together in a house and at times in the theatre building itself. At the same time the group relies on codetermination, trying to overcome the division of labour (a symbol of Fordian conditions, which, with the invention of the stage director in the 19 th century, also applies to theatres). One example for this attenuation is the simple path actors can take to becoming a stage director and putting their vision on stage. In the ‘adventure zone’ of the East, as it is called in the documentary Der zornige Engel. Theaterhaus Jena 1991-2001 (Lonius 2001: 13), artistic and non-artistic work highly depends on proactivity, flexibility, and the ability to react quickly and to commit oneself. In a certain sense, these post-Fordian and creative structures rely on self-regulation and self-identification. 4 Theatre-makers have always been considered prototypical entreployees - self-regulating, self-rationalising and self-promoting. In the last decades, the creative industries discovered the magic word creativity as a production factor (Florida 2002; Caves 2000). The free space in the East offers an environment to realise shared responsibility, identification and communication, and with it, creativity. 5 The Theaterhaus can be held as a model case for this close connection between the governmental hierarchy, creativity and democratised work - and as a laboratory for the cost saving reorganisation of a “Stadttheater”. 2. Project Work and the Abolition of the Division of Labour Consequently, the aesthetic work of the Theaterhaus Jena focuses on projects that react to social contexts in a specific way and dismisses the tradition of national literary theatre (Tiedemann and Raddatz 2010). In the context of a relational dramaturgy, the projects are linked to the concrete lifestyles and experiences of the ensemble members (from the East 4 Peggy Mädler and Bianca Schemel pose the question wether the work in the GDR (despite Fordian circumstances) did not also have post-Fordian traits, due to the required identification (Mädler and Schemel 2009: 123, Anm. 18). 5 For a critical evaluation of the alliance between capitalism and creativity see Boltanski and Chiapello: 2001, 2003. The System Change of 1989 and the Theaterhaus Jena 63 and West of Germany) and the theatre’s struggle for an economically secure existence is mirrored in the work. Thus, the Theaterhaus Jena does not concentrate on plays but on themes and self-investigations. A similar practice can be observed within the latest forms of dramaturgy training, since they focus on research and methods of interpretation instead of on the classics; the dramaturgical advisor becomes a field researcher, developing strategies for a dramaturgy of social situations (Bochow 2011: 227ff.). Therefore the method of ‘deep description’ could be developed for this theatre. In reference to Clifford Geertz’s ethnological concept, the organisational structures, the producers, the city’s economic and every-day life as well as the participants’ biographies would have to be united in a dense narrative, highlighting the interference between aesthetic and organisational structures (Geertz 1983: 7-43). The project work in Jena leads to specific working structures. For example, there is a weekly meeting where strategic decisions are made by the collective according to the repertoire and the cast. At the same time these meetings are used in order to discuss current problems and individual emotions - and emotional involvement seems to be an essential condition for the identification with work and personal motivation. This kind of communication that is the fundamental condition for co-determination, is conducive to the identification and emotionalisation of work, which ultimately boosts the sense of responsibility of each single employee, while the work load simultaneously increases. The specialisation of the working processes is abolished to the extent that everyone is involved in all problems (e.g. not only the stage designer deals with problems concerning the stage design). This all-encompassing communication thwarting the capitalist division of labour is the condition for this aesthetic project work, as director Lonius points out: “The artistic raw material seems to require a different structure. We don’t need these specialists that only do their job” (Lonius 2001: 22). The actor is also co-author as it is common to improvise. The material from the rehearsals is often included in the result, the process being more important than the product. The actor and the director are field researchers who shape the material to find and structure themes. This breaks the Fordian division of labour and entails a greater responsibility that requires broader competences and increased flexibility. One effect of those non-hierarchical structures is the heavy workload - everyone works for the house and for the projects, thus losing the personal free space within the “total theatre” (in reference to Erving Goffman). Equality and identification seem to increase the job performance, as Heinz von Förster has shown in an empirical study (1993: 264). A few years after the theatre experiment, the participants tellingly ex- 64 Franziska Schößler & Hannah Speicher pressed their explicit wish for some division of labour, clear responsibilities and a functioning balance between work and life. As they put it, art is not democratic (and has never been at theatres). 3. The Interplay between Eastern and Western Theatrical Culture The connection between production structures and themes can especially be seen when looking at the project Go Osten/ Go Westen that took place in the 1995-96 season. It was the first cooperation between the Theaterhaus and a group from the independent scene, namely Theater Mahagoni from Hildesheim. 6 Go Osten/ Go Westen was designed as a theatrenight, consisting of two performances, taking place one after another in the same stage setting: Albert Hirche from Theater Mahagoni staged Die Verschwörung der Idioten working with motifs from the novel A Confederacy of Dunces by the American author John Kennedy Toole. Sven Schlötcke, one of the founders of the Theaterhaus, put Nikolaj Kolada’s play Die Polonaise von Oginski on stage. Both performances dealt with outsiders who reject the ethic of achievement and the will to work. In both texts, costumes and travesty, meaning gender ambiguity and a metatheatrical element, play a central role; both texts examine the relational arrangement between minorities (African Americans, women and disenfranchised people) and the motif of the “insane asylum” (as an expression of fantasy, dream and periphery), while the topical borders between East and West, including their clichés, which enjoy a long tradition, are envisioned (especially in Go Osten). The double-project was based on the concept that not only different production forms (independent scene vs. the relatively secured production conditions of the Theaterhaus ensemble), but also different cultural traditions should converge. The conflict between East and West, as well as the corresponding stereotypes and incorporated dispositions extant within the ensemble, were supposed to be raised and broken up through the choice of plays and the production structures. For this purpose, the 6 That the group originates from Hildesheim is not without significance. The degree course “applied cultural studies”, which the Theater Mahagoni stems from, and the degree course “applied theatre studies” offered in Gießen form an exception to the regular German theatre degree courses. Hedging theory and practice, both degree programs focus on the training of young theatre artists, whose works mainly take place in the independent scene, are not primarily based on the logic of the German “Stadttheater” and the paradigm of literary theatre. Still the “Stadttheater” system is increasingly interested in the works of graduates from those “schools” (for example Rimini Protokoll or René Pollesch). The System Change of 1989 and the Theaterhaus Jena 65 idea of visiting each other’s rehearsals was part of the conception from the start. Go Osten/ Go Westen was an event transcending the plays. It was framed by installations in front of and inside the theatre building, involving motifs from the plays. Between the stagings, Soljanka (a thick and spicy soup common in Eastern Europe) was offered and the guests were constantly asked to choose a standpoint between Coca-Cola and Vodka commercials (Quilitzsch 1996: 122ff.). Due to this conception and its realisation, the Go Osten/ Go Westenproject can be read as a magnifying mirror for those aspects of a relational dramaturgy, which on the one hand influenced the theatre work and on the other hand are produced by its unconventional organisation. In order to trace those relations, in January and February 2012 we interviewed six people who participated in the project. In the interviews, we focused the questions on how far the theatre work in Jena (also beyond the doubleproject) was influenced by relations which arose as a result of the societal change, the break with the political system, the reorganisation of the theatrical work under the paradigm of co-determination, the aesthetics of certain productions (especially Go Osten/ Go Westen) as well as the artistic-conceptual and institutional orientation of the Theaterhaus. The interviews thus focused on how far Go Osten/ Go Westen mirrors the protagonists’ different (East and West) socialisations, and the incorporated artistic dispositions, stemming from these different theatre cultures. We spoke to the founder of the Theaterhaus and director of the Go Osten - project Polonaise von Oginski, Sven Schlötcke, and his “counterpart” Albrecht Hirche, director in the independent scene. We also interviewed a selection of participating actors and performers. We talked with Angela Hausheer on the Go Osten-project. Hausheer played Tanja, the lead in Schlötcke’s play, and completed her acting training in Zurich and therefore was lucky to hold - according to her own statement - a special position within the cultural “conflict matrix” of the Theaterhaus: “In Jena, there were Ossis, Wessis and me, a Swizzi. On a structural level, that was really a special function, namely the one of negotiation or the zero-position.” (Interview with Angela Hausheer, 09/ 02/ 2012). 7 Although properly speaking, there can never be an ideological zero-position, her statement makes clear that the East-West-conflict was the dominant for the work at the Theaterhaus. And we interviewed two actors who were involved in the Go Westen-project: Thomas Schweiberer, who was born 7 All quotes from the interviews were transcribed and translated by the authors. Furthermore the corpus was extended by the use of two publications, in which interviews with members of both projects can be found: Lonius 2011 and Schlötcke 2012. 66 Franziska Schößler & Hannah Speicher in Munich, studied acting in Vienna and played Irene Reilly in Die Verschwörung der Idioten; and Susanne Jansen, an actress from West Berlin, who received her training there as well, and played Lana in the same production. In order to gain a perspective on the project and its significance for the whole ensemble through an internal source, who is yet not involved in the production in a narrow sense, we additionally talked to the former press dramaturge Andrea Hesse. Unfortunately, we could not establish contact with Schlötcke’s dramaturge Bettina Masuch, although gaining an insight into her position within the production process would have been particularly interesting. Laure de Verdalle (2003: 135ff.) has already demonstrated that the system change strongly destabilised the function and position of the dramaturges. In the GDR the latter functioned as an interface between the state and art, as they had to ideologically justify the staging concepts to the director and the SED-party and watch over the ideological tenor of the stagings during the rehearsals. When State Socialism was abolished and the theatre field became aesthetically autonomous, most of the East German dramaturges had to position themselves in a new way with regard to their work. In contrast, the fact that Hirche’s production was managed completely without the participation of a dramaturge hints at the relation between an aesthetic that bids farewell to the primacy of the literary text and an institutional reorganisation of the rehearsals, in which the dramaturge as “the guard of the text’s authority” does not have a place. Analysing the interviews, Tanja Bogusz’s study about the Berliner Volksbühne (2007) functions as a frame of reference. Using Bourdieu’s field theory, Bogusz describes the habitus of East and West-German theatre artists and the different logics of artistic fields in East and West Germany, that had developed under the conditions of the Cold War: Whereas in West Germany permanent symbolic revolution and aesthetic innovation became the main criterion of what is considered to be “good” theatre (at least with the performative turn in the Sixties), the East has concentrated on literary theatre, social subjects and the repertoires were dominated by definite types of play. Along with the classics of bourgeois literature that were reinterpreted into plays of socialist classicism, contemporary Soviet and East German plays (e.g. Volker Braun, Christoph Hein or Heiner Müller) were staged. Thus, the agents of GDR theatre were permanently led by the search for compromises between their own creative ideas and those of the government, as well as the obligation to the socialist claim for utopia and the extensive institutionalisation of theatre work. In this regard, aesthetic innovation never was considered to be the primary criterion (Bogusz 2007: 105). The System Change of 1989 and the Theaterhaus Jena 67 The following short analysis of the interviews should shed light on the question of how far those field logics still influenced the members of the project Go Osten/ Go Westen six years after the Fall of the Wall. When examining the theatre conception of the West-German members, it can be noted that all of them consider artistic innovation a value in itself. Accordingly, West-German actors like Susanne Jansen described their colleagues from the East as “not very open to what is new” (interview 26/ 01/ 2012). In retrospect, the cooperation with Albrecht Hirche is interpreted as an example of the East German ensemble’s great skepticism towards formal and aesthetic revolutions. As she put it: Hirche had to cope with a lot of rejection by the ensemble. They asked ‘What kind of theater is that? That has nothing to do with skills. What is that about? There are people on stage that aren’t even actors but laymen.’ […] So the actors in Jena had to get used to what is a common practice today - that people on stage deal freely with their texts, improvise and rather use colloquial language. (26/ 01/ 2012) However, Jansen does not reflect upon the idea that permanent symbolic revolution is a specifically “Western” claim. In contrast, East German actors like Andrea Hesse highlight that Hirche’s aesthetics were indeed incredibly “powerful” (Interview 10/ 02/ 2012) but tended to lose sight of social references. 4. Differing Styles of Acting as (an) Expression of the Difference between East and West The crucial point in the discussion of the differences between East and West German actors was answered by all the interviewees with the keyword “skills.” All of the East German actors, regardless of whether they graduated from the Ernst Busch School or from another acting school in the East, are said to have “better” skills. Sven Schlötcke, director and founder of the Theaterhaus explains this as follows: The great “technical” acting training in Berlin and at other schools in the East was a mutual starting point for our artistic work. […] The dominant concept of theater in the East - and this is not a cliché - was rather influenced by analytical and rational methods. The seven question words - who, what, where, when, why, what for and how - are a good example of this “technical,” rational way to approach theater. (Schlötcke 2012: 87) 68 Franziska Schößler & Hannah Speicher In contrast Thomas Schweiberer, who studied acting in Vienna, describes a battle of interpretation amongst the actors, revolving around the idea of truthfulness: For me, socialized in the West, it was very difficult to see truthfulness behind their technical façade built from their art of recitation stemming from their collective notions about emotionality. They had problems with our formless emotional art that elevates the personal to the general. (Lonius 2001: 53) The Swiss actress Angela Hausheer also felt this tension within the ensemble and stressed that during her time in Jena, she clearly noticed how the socialisation as an actor/ actress is connected to the social environment: My interpretation was that the line of conflicts and the border in the East is rather between the individual and the state which is why the focus was rather on the outside and on social phenomena. Here, in the West, or especially in Switzerland, the individual or individualism and personal emotions are rather emphasized. (Interview 10/ 02/ 2012) All protagonists described misunderstandings as a result of social-ideological pre-conditioning. In this context, the protagonists seemed to refer implicitly to a binary order that brings emotion and reason, psychology and society in opposition, with the goal of distinguishing oneself from the other group. Although Anja Klöck has shown that the stereotype “Brecht is taught in the East and Stanislawski in the West” cannot be verified by acting schools’ curricula (Klöck 2008: 119), she indicates that the dichotomy between East and West actors has become a discursive factor in the medial debate after 1989. This dichotomy can be described as the result of a mythologising process, as understood by Roland Barthes, in which the figuration of the “cold” and analytical East actor and the emotional and “hot” West actor becomes naturalised. The danger of the East-West distinction is that it “[suggests] an apparently coherent, definite image of dichotomous essences that spreads itself over a geographical space” (Klöck 2008: 49) and an ideological one, too, we may add, as acting students were and are constantly seen as potential facilitators and transformers of the particular cultural set of values of both states. This means that artistic conflicts between the actors in Jena can always be described as conflicts of values (Klöck 2008: 119). The System Change of 1989 and the Theaterhaus Jena 69 5. The Directors’ Cultural Dispositions and Different Styles of Rehearsing The interviewees recall that the shared work sensitised their views to their distinctive styles of theatre. Those distinctive lines become especially clear when we analyse how the interviewees talked about visiting each other’s rehearsals. The free ensemble’s rehearsals, directed by Hirche, were characterised by quick results, goal-orientation and the avoidance of long debates. Accordingly Hirche described his rehearsals as follows: I don’t do rehearsals without a result or a product. The fact that everyone in the ensemble from Jena had a voice was problematic. Everyone could just interfere, depending on his or her mental state. […] We were colder, more technocratic, faster and more efficient. In Schlötcke’s rehearsals, scenes often didn’t take place, because not everyone was enthusiastic. (Interview 26/ 01/ 2012) Interestingly, Hirche’s type of rehearsing proves to a greater degree to a Fordian terminology, aiming at fast results without considering the overemotional and the tentative that can occur under the more secured working conditions of the institution. The other interviewees described Schlötcke’s directing style as ruled by what can be called the East German theatre-maker’s “sense pratique”, rationally geared to the social. Susanne Jansen accordingly characterises Schlötcke’s work, in contrast to Hirche’s, as “to a greater degree influenced by his technique, theoretical aspects, maybe also by political thought and thematic aspects and less intuitive” (Interview 26/ 01/ 2012). However, the institutional conditions in the form of the co-determination model had a great impact on the aesthetic practice and cannot be considered independent from the historical and biographical experiences of the theatre’s founders. The engagement of the East German theatremakers during the months before the Fall of the Wall is indeed described by its founders as the (democratic) impulse leading to the foundation of the theatre: “On November 4 th 1989 we stood in Berlin at Alexanderplatz and were part of a crowd that yet did not want to know that the powerful call for freedom would lead to another, less obvious form of unfreedom” (Schlötcke 2012: 83). Ultimately, the ambivalent structure of this engagement might also be applied to working conditions at the Theaterhaus, established by Schlötcke and the other founders. The wish to dismiss the hierarchical structures of civic theatres that were based on the division of labour, paved the way for the less obvious but equally problematic exploitative structures of the post-Fordian working conditions, established by the co-determination model. 70 Franziska Schößler & Hannah Speicher Schlötcke himself describes the foundation of the theatre as a “defiant act to pick up the co-determination model in Jena that had previously failed in the West as an expression of hope and the longing for the freedom that allows a self-determined work and life” (2012: 84). Yet, it would be short-sighted to describe the establishment of the co-determination model in Jena only as “catching up” with the ’68 avant-garde. The founders of the Theaterhaus with their demand for a grassroots democracy rather referred to GDR working culture at theatres, where co-determination was - admittedly limited in time and space - an essential aspect of work 8 (Ullrich 1990/ 91; Ullrich and Wiegand 1996). Although the GDR’s political system as a whole was authoritarian, for the work in the “Betriebe” (and theatres), co-determination was propagated in so far as workers (and artists) with their certainly not fundamentally oppositional opinions and complaints were supposed to get involved in the work. The idea was to strengthen the worker’s feelings of responsibility for their “Betriebe” and simultaneously to prevent the insight that the industries and society’s institutions were led by a few specialists, as this insight among the population potentially threatened the stabilising founding myth of the GDR’s egalitarian collectivisation (Port 2010: 181). This leads to the conclusion that precisely the supposedly ’68 avantgardist reorganisation of the production-process in Jena is the connecting element to the East German theatre, which again means that - despite the aesthetical orientation on the West - the formation and conception of the theatre always generates the cultural integrability of a specifically East German experience. Following Engler’s argumentation that East German society had been predestined for post-Fordian working structures after the system change (Engler 2002: 72-99), it becomes clear that the Theaterhaus functions as a model beyond theatre work. 6. The Habitual Character of the Audience as a Field Factor of the Theatre Work in Jena Finally, it has to be emphasised that what has previously been described as the logics of the fields of East and West German theatre are not to be seen as absolute, finite concepts. They are rather extremes of artistic pre- 8 Benno Besson, for example, actively tried to establish a co-determination model during his time as artistic director at the Berliner Volksbühne in the 70s. Around the same time, Horst Schönemann tried to reorganise the theatre work in Halle like a grassroots democracy; later Christoph Schroth tried the same in Schwerin (Ullrich 1999: 159ff.). The System Change of 1989 and the Theaterhaus Jena 71 conditioning and dispositions that began to interplay in the course of the Nineties, which the development of the Theaterhaus also shows. In retrospect Schlötcke, the artistic director since the foundation of the theatre as a GmbH, points out that until the collaboration with Hirche, “the search for non-narrative, fragmentary forms that focused less on the psychological development of roles was omnipresent as a vision” (2012: 87). However, as a result of the actors’ enormous power in the co-determination model, this vision was not realised within the first years. Only through the integration of free artists in the work of the Theaterhaus, the aesthetics of the house moved away from a dramaturgy that focuses on literature and roles. From the collaboration with Hirche and others, Schlötcke expected to be able “to break with pre-conditions and to move boundaries” (17/ 02/ 2012). In the following years, Schlötcke intensified his work with free artists and also brought free artists who were socialised in the East to the Theaterhaus (for example Jo Fabian and Erwin Stache). It can be observed that in the course of time the clear East-West dichotomy apparently softened, as the pattern of the argument moves into the aesthetic. The distinctions are no longer primarily discussed along the axis between East and West, but between two conceptions of theatre, the one rather geared to performance art (which eastern and western artists were associated with) and the other to the classical literary theatre. This development can clearly be seen when looking at the repertoire of the theatre. During the second half of the Nineties, complete seasons dealt with the fragmentary and thematic development of projects. Former dramaturge Andrea Hesse emphasises in her interview that she sees Go Osten/ Go Westen as the symbolic start of this aesthetic re-orientation. Schlötcke’s strategy of aesthetic opening only added up to a certain degree: on the one hand the Theaterhaus advanced to a nationally-known model-case, a brand standing for innovative structures and high artistic standards 9 , but at the same time, the audience failed to appear. Finally, the co-determination model that Schlötcke and Lonius established in 1991 was their fate. At the end of the Nineties, Schlötcke, as he told us (17/ 02/ 2012), pleaded to introduce a theatre manager for an increased international orientation that was supposed to be realised in collaboration with theatres in the Netherlands, Sweden and Greece. Given that 9 Since the foundation of the theatre, articles about the relatively “small” theatre have been regularly published in the national press, for example, in Die Süddeutsche Zeitung and in Theater der Zeit. In addition, almost all premieres are discussed on the nationally established Nachtkritik.de. 72 Franziska Schößler & Hannah Speicher the number of viewers is decreasing, the shareholders decided against the proposal and hired a new artistic director. Claudia Bauer, born in the West of Germany, but just graduated from the Ernst Busch School, was chosen since she and her team, in contrast to the former artistic directors, promised to consider the ‘likings’ of the people in Jena, the ‘classical’ narrative theatre and the ‘great’ social subjects: When I got there, the pieces were only called Mutation one, Mutation two and Mutation three, and featured life-art groups from England that were really famous, or, in any case became famous later - but that didn’t impress anyone in Jena. […] Everything was so experimental, with English titles and world famous plays that were given new titles, that I think, in the end, the average theatergoer looking in from outside would have no idea what was going on in there. (Bauer qtd. in Jennicke 2011: 92) The example of the Theaterhaus thus shows that the audience’s habitual pre-conditioning, much like the artist’s pre-conditioning, survived the social environment it evolved from. The expectations of the viewers regarding the theatre, influenced by State Socialism, function as a dominant factor in the theatre field. After 1989, the theatre artists in East Germany had to face a twofold structure of opposing demands: only if they succumbed to the (Western) ideal of autonomous art which was formerly limited in the GDR (as Castorf’s Volksbühne has prominently shown), the artists were nationally or internationally recognised, while simultaneously they had to focus on “narrative theatre […] with a social ‘gestus’” (Bauer qtd. in Jennicke 2011: 93) in order to reach a larger local audience and keep their legitimation. The aesthetics of the Theaterhaus after 2000 differed from the fragmentary and project-oriented aesthetic, which the founders of the Theaterhaus were pushing during the second half of the Nineties. 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Ostdeutsches Theater nach dem Systemumbruch. Berlin. Theater der Zeit. (Recherchen 85). 2011. Klöck, Anja. Heiße West- und Kalte Ostschauspieler? Diskurse, Praxen, Geschichte(n) zur Schauspielausbildung in Deutschland nach 1945. Berlin. Theater der Zeit. (Recherchen 62). 2008. Land, Rainer. “Ostdeutschland - fragmentierte Entwicklungg.” In: Berliner Debatte INITAL 6. Nr. 4. 2003. 76-95. Lehmann, Hans-Thies. “Die Gegenwart des Theaters.” In: Erika Fischer-Lichte, Doris Kolesch, Christel Weiler (Eds.). Transformationen. Theater der neunziger Jahre. Berlin. Theater der Zeit. (Recherchen 2). 1999. 13-26. Lonius, Horst-J. (Ed.). Der zornige Engel. Theaterhaus Jena 1991-2001. Arbeitsbuch. Berlin. Theater der Zeit. 2001. Lucchesi, Joachim (Ed.). Das Verhör in der Oper. Die Debatte um Brecht/ Dessaus Lukullus 1951. Berlin. BasisDruck. 1993. Mädler, Peggy & Schemel, Bianca. Sie lebt für ihre Arbeit. Die schöne Arbeit. Gehen Sie an die Arbeit. 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Ullrich, Renate (Ed.). ‘Mein Kapital bin ich selber’. Gespräche mit Theaterfrauen in Berlin-Ost. Berlin. Zentrum für Theaterdokumentation und -information. 1990-91. Ullrich, Renate & Wiegand, Elke. “‘Unsere Kunst muß Biß haben. Sonst - wozu? ’ Aus Lebens- und Arbeitsbiographien Ostberliner Schauspielerinnen.” In: Berliner Debatte INITAL. Nr. 1. 1996. 79-92. Ullrich, Peter. “Hallenser Anregungen zur Theaterdemokratie 1966-1972.” In: Henning Rischbieter (Ed.). Durch den eisernen Vorhang. Theater im geteilten Deutschland 1945 bis 1990. Berlin. Propyläen. 1999. 158-162. The System Change of 1989 and the Theaterhaus Jena 75 de Verdalle, Laure. “Les dramaturges est-allemands et la réunification: changement organisationnel et renouveau des identités professionnelles.” In: Revue française de sociologie 44. Nr. 1. 2003. 115-138. Voß, G. Günther & Pongratz, Hans J. “Der Arbeitskraftunternehmer. Eine neue Grundform der Ware Arbeitskraft? ” In: Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie. Nr. 50. 1998. 131-158. Weiskopf, Richard. “Gouvernementabilität: Die Produktion des regierbaren Menschen in post-disziplinären Regionen.” In: Zeitschrift für Personalforschung. Nr. 19. 2005. 289-311. Interviews Interview with Angela Hausheer. 09/ 02/ 2012. Interview with Albrecht Hirche. 26/ 01/ 2012. Interview with Andrea Hesse. 10/ 02/ 2012. Interview with Susanne Jansen. 26/ 01/ 2012. Interview with Sven Schlötcke. 17/ 02/ 2012. Interview with Thomas Schweiberer. 29/ 01/ 2012. II. Dramaturgy’s Encounters: Generations, Constellations and Spatialisations Relational Dramaturgies as a Search for the Other Generation Beyond European Borders: Veronika Blumstein and Wunderbaum Katharina Pewny 1. Introduction In this article I focus on the relational dramaturgies of the event produced on the occasion of the opening of the choreographic centre K3 entitled: Eröffnungsfest K3: Veronika Blumstein - Moving Heads (Kampnagel, Hamburg, June 18.-20. 2007), as well as a performance by the Dutch theatre collective Wunderbaum, namely Looking for Paul! (Los Angeles, REDCAT Theatre, 2010). Since the turn of the millennium, such dramaturgies have been paradigmatic of Central and Western European theatre practices, as they also bear witness to the merging of artistic genres: dramatic theatre, dance, performance and the Fine Arts. The performances chosen for my analysis reflect upon the “fraying” [Verfransung] of the arts, which Theodor W. Adorno already postulated in 1965 (Adorno 2003). The performances discussed here bear witness to a successful integration of the avant-garde and performing arts into European spoken word theatre and dance stages, which were once strongholds of so-called “high art and culture” and consequently of a traditional understanding of dramaturgy and choreography. Often this hybridising of genres was far from being a smooth transition between dramaturgical, choreographic and curatorial practices. The three-day opening event dedicated to the fictive choreographer Veronika Blumstein was a singular collective performance of and for its visitors. The artistic directors, dance-dramaturge Sandra Noeth and cultural manager Sabine Gehm, interrelate the participants in dramaturgically, choreographically and curatorially staged ways. Looking for Paul! is a production by the Dutch theatre collective Wunderbaum, which attempts a collective approach to the conflictual work of performance artist Paul McCarthy. Both performances work in different ways. While the drama- 80 Katharina Pewny turges and cultural managers were in charge of the art direction, there was also a collective dramaturgy. The pieces consisted of dance and spoken word, a grand opening event at the choreographic centre, followed by a succession of evening theatre events, performed by both fictitious and real live artists in addition to participants from the audience as well as seemingly inactive spectators seated in a black box theatre. At the same time, these two performances share three characteristics. Both operate beyond the borders of Western and Eastern Europe. The one turns to the East/ Poland (Veronika Blumstein is a German-Polish group), the other reaches out to the West/ US (Looking for Paul! stages a journey from Rotterdam to Los Angeles). These performances also share a collective model of authorship, which is, among other things, implemented by e-mail and snail mail. Finally, what is essential for my analysis is these performances’ shared relation to the artistic work of a predecessor, imaginary or real. This relation firstly forms the dramaturgical core of the performances and secondly reveals the dynamics of dramaturgy as a performative process in which the search constitutes the performance merely by taking place. In other words: relational dramaturgy, as a search for the other generation, performs performance. The obvious relationality of both performances is the search for an artistic position in relation to the work of the fictive artists in the Veronika Blumstein collective and in the work of Paul McCarthy. Both performances develop from and through the confrontation with their artistic heritage. They exist in a continuously shifting reference to the oeuvre of their artistic predecessors. The result of the search for the other generation is the performative embodiment of aspects of both Veronika Blumstein’s and Paul McCarthy’s works. The search for the other generation is self-reflexive, because its goal is the artists’ positioning in relation to the work of artistic predecessors. The search is therefore a double search driven by the Veronika Blumstein Group and Wunderbaum, which forges a link between the theatrical events, both in form and content. While neither of the performances primarily represent this search, they are both constituted by it. Through their dramaturgical search, the artists position themselves in relation to (a continuation of) particular artistic traditions, as well as to cultural, political, urban and transnational contexts. For the Veronika Blumstein Group, this is German-Polish political cooperation and Tanzplan, the German Federal Cultural Foundation’s action plan for contemporary dance (2005-2010), while for Wunderbaum, it is the debate surrounding the cuts in government funding for the arts, following the example of the US, which were implemented in the Netherlands in 2010, and the controversy around the public exhibition of Paul Veronika Blumstein and Wunderbaum 81 McCarthy’s sculpture Santa Claus in the Dutch city of Rotterdam between 2001 and 2008. Theodor W. Adorno postulated that there is a tension in art “between objectivating technique and the mimetic essence of artworks” (2003: 219). Do the dramaturgic searches lead to something nonidentical in the sense that something in art is monetarily unmeasurable and socially not immediately useable, which Adorno also spoke of? The Veronika Blumstein Group and Wunderbaum are different from the political movements of performance/ theatre-artists in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, for the recent works put into focus their relations to artistic predecessors. Many contemporary European groups and networks of theatre makers, performers and dancers currently assume a critical and/ or affirmative stance towards their direct and wider contexts. Examples are the Dutch theatre collective Schwalbe, the Italian theatre group Motus, the transnational artistic platform Sweet and Tender Collaborations, the Graz collective Zweite Liga für Kunst und Kultur, and the Schwabinger Ballett from Hamburg, to name but a few. Yet the two performances addressed here also vary from all of these projects through their explicit search for the relations to the works of their predecessors. My observations concerning the issue of “Relational Dramaturgies as a Search for the Other Generation” derive from the artistic developments mentioned and four concomitant discourses that have influenced European Theatre and Performance Studies since the 1990s: dramaturgy discourses, relational aesthetics, ethical considerations with regard to the encounter with the Other, and reenactment. I am going to briefly address them in the following preliminary comments to then analyze Eröffnungsfest K3: Veronika Blumstein - Moving Heads and Looking for Paul! in more detail. 2. Interartistic Contexts 2.1. Relational “Dramaturgy” “Today we witness both the triumph and the explosion of dramaturgy […]”. With this sentence, Patrice Pavis introduced a keynote speech at the conference “PLAY. Relational Aspects of Dramaturgy” on 15 March 2012 at Ghent University (Pavis 2014: 14). This enthusiasm resonates in the evaluation offered in Peter M. Boenisch’s contribution, wherein he claims: “Dramaturgy has become the new performance” (Boenisch 2014: 200). Since the 1990s, and the publication of Hans Thies Lehmann’s par- 82 Katharina Pewny adigmatic Postdramatic Theatre in 1999, discourses on dramaturgy have been booming, which also point to the aesthetic changes taking place in European theatre, performance and dance. Consequently, traditional definitions and new considerations of dramaturgy have been discussed since then. According to Christel Weiler’s definition, dramaturgy pertains to, in the widest sense, the relations between a text and its performance, and to the structures of theatre texts, their production and reception (Fischer- Lichte 2005: 80). Following her definition, one might expect a decrease in dramaturgy’s significance to be proportionate to the increased interest in post-dramatic theatre. Yet the opposite is the case: the extension of the zones for theatrical play and forms has kindled the debates around the term dramaturgy, its practices and theory - which this volume is a part of - and has brought about numerous dramaturgical networks, symposia and publications (e.g. Turner and Behrndt 2008, Gritzner et al. 2009). In addition to editing theatre text for performance, dramaturgy now entails the conception, rehearsal and performance of movable, (inter-)medial arrangements of people and theatrical signs within and outside of art institutions. Thus, many dramaturges alternate between or combine the fields of devised and/ or dramatic theatre, choreography and curatorship. Sabine Gehm, for one, worked as a dramaturge and festival curator from 1994 to 2001, and has since been working as a cultural manager. In the following, I discuss the expanded notion of dramaturgies, as formulated above, and its relevance for a specific stance articulated by Marianne Van Kerkhoven: “Dramaturgy is for me learning to handle complexity. It is feeding the ongoing conversation on the work, it is taking care of the reflexive potential as well as of the poetic force of the creation. Dramaturgy is building bridges, it is being responsible for the whole, dramaturgy is above all a constant movement. Inside and outside. The readiness to dive into the work, and to withdraw from it again and again, inside, outside, trampling the leaves. A constant movement.” (2009: 11). Van Kerkhoven worked as a dramaturge at Kaaitheater, Brussels since the beginning of the 1970s. She differentiates between “small” and “big” dramaturgy, between, on the one hand, the structural circle within a production, which connects people, and, on the other hand, the theatre, its urban context and finally the entire world and the cosmos (1999: 67-69). Van Kerkhoven’s understanding of “small” and “big” dramaturgies implicitly articulates the relational quality of dramaturgy, which Veronika Blumstein and Looking for Paul! render explicit. That is the interrelation with, and hence the relation to, the smaller and larger interhuman, interspecies, artistic, political, and (trans)national Veronika Blumstein and Wunderbaum 83 contexts of a performance as the energetic linchpin of dramaturgical practices. Even Sandra Noeth’s description of dramaturgy is relational as she uses the symbol of the mobile, the floating object, in which sticks and threads are kept in a movable balance: “Within this model, all involved are actors and authors at the same time. The texture of their encounter replaces ‘drama’ - the text in the sense of an identifiable authority with a certain logic or narrative to be followed.” (Noeth 2010: 45). The “texture of the encounter” of people can also include the embodied search for the artistic intentions and oeuvres of the predecessors. 2.2. “Relational” Dramaturgy Dramaturgy research is often embedded in contexts that intertwine academic and artistic research. One of them is the Dramaturgy Working Group of the Gesellschaft für Theaterwissenschaft, which was founded in 2007 at the University of the Performing Arts and Music (Graz) by Evelyn Deutsch-Schreiner, Peter M. Boenisch and myself, and which now has more than thirty members from seven countries, all of whom work as dramaturges and / or as Theatre Studies scholars. On our website, Peter M. Boenisch writes: “We neither understand ‘dramaturgy’ only as the dramaturge’s field of work, nor as the fields of work of the institutionalised dramaturgy in the German speaking theatre-sector. Rather we see dramaturgy in the sense of Eugenio Barba, as relational process inherent in each performance. A process which does both: Dynamically connecting the elements of the performance-texture and directly working on the audience and interacting with them (Barba 1991: 68ff.).” The idea of relational dramaturgy is inspired by the aesthétique relationelle developed by Nicolas Bourriaud (1998). This concept covers the specific procedural manners that, in the newer fine arts, have replaced traditional artworks (painting, sculpture, video, etc.) with encounters of human beings. “What they do share is […] the fact of operating within one and the same practical and theoretical horizon: the sphere of inter-human relations” (Bourriaud 2002: 43). Art that works through relational aesthetics not just addresses joint practices but rather the artwork itself is constituted through relations among people (42). “The Theatre,” a festival centre created by choreographer Marten Spangberg for the 2007 Steirischer Herbst art festival, fostered relational aesthetics in that sense. The transparent tent was open throughout the festival and served as a space for “live” and virtual communication. It was explicitly understood as theatre and theatre space, which occurs for and between the people present. Tino Sehgal’s 84 Katharina Pewny choreographic concepts of encounters between museum visitors and an “instructor” should also be mentioned here (Pewny 2011: 249-294). Jacques Rancière criticised the concept of relational aesthetic for its over-emphasis on social aspects (2008: 61). In response to Rancière’s critique, Bourriaud stresses his interest in the exhibition (and thus aesthetic rather than social aspects) of inter-human relations in the pieces he discusses, which are characterised by “precariousness” (2009: 20f.). It is precisely the interstice between Rancière’s and Bourriaud’s thoughts, which is significant for the concept of relational dramaturgy. In The Politics of Aesthetics Rancière outlines the arrangement of inter-human relations as the “re-distribution of the sensible” (2006: 7-47). Dramaturgy as a search for the other generation forms arrangements of people and thus of inter-human relations within aesthetics and art. 2.3. Search for the Trace of the Vanished Other Many contemporary performances stage the encounter with the Other, whether representatives of a precarious political heritage (as in documentary theatre) or the injured, vulnerable and/ or vanished (Pewny 2011). How then can crimes against humanity be portrayed in the post-dramatic performing arts, which are not set up in a way that makes them necessarily rely on classical forms of theatrical representation? European theatre, film and video and its much-desired borders (Elfriede Jelinek, Johannes Schrettle, She She Pop, Dea Loher), as well as those from Lebanon (Rabih Mroué), Argentina (Lola Arias) and Canada (Wajdi Mouawad) often reveal a dramaturgy of the witness report. The witness report (acted out by the messenger in Greek tragedy) seemingly allows one to tell stories about harm and injustice, without making the Other an object of the voyeuristic gaze or silencing it. Elfriede Jelinek, Renzo Martens, Sarah Vanagt, Margareth Obexer and Tanja Ostojic take a step further by challenging the very possibility of formulating a coherent narrative of harm and injustice as well as the credibility of witness and media reports. These artists consequently make their search for traces of the events and for the vanished Other the main issue of their videos, movies and theatre texts (Pewny, Spectatorship, forthcoming). One ethical dimension of these works is that spectators are invited to follow the search of the artists. Sometimes this search becomes a trace of the vanished Other, and the presentation of artistic (re)search a substitute for a conventional plot. Even if the works addressed here do not focus on crimes against humanity, the artistic searches of each of these production processes emerge more prominently. This is also due to a specific reenact- Veronika Blumstein and Wunderbaum 85 ment practice of contemporary performing arts and fine arts, in which both Eröffnungsfest K3: Veronika Blumstein - Moving Heads and Looking for Paul! participate. 2.4. Reenactment Artistic reenactments may bear traces of an artistic lineage, on which any form of contemporary performance art is based. Some exemplary reenactments that have occurred since the mid-1990s are Xavier Le Roy’s reenactment of Yvonne Rainer’s Chair and Pillow Dance (1996), Jerôme Bel’s reenactment of Susanne Link in his now canonic Last Performance (1998) and Seven Easy Pieces (2005), Marina Abramovic’s own reenactments of her performance pieces and those of fellow artists from the 1960s and 1970s at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. At the Museum of Modern Art, Fabian Barba showcased his Mary Wigman Dance Evening consisting of nine choreographies that gained fame during Wigman’s first tour through the US in 1930-31 (Barba 2011). Like reenactments of artistic works in museums and on stages, reenactments of historic events in (semi-)public and (pop-)cultural spaces have become very popular: at Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin, possibly the most famous crossing point between what used to be East and West Berlin, actors pose in the historical uniforms of the four allied powers, whereas in California, tourists can visit frontier towns accompanied by performers in historical clothing. Iteration or repetition that produces an endless series of differences is not only a major principle of sampling and remixing in a variety of musical genres but also in the films by the DOGMA group, founded by Lars von Trier, which were modelled on the Nouvelle Vague, and in lesbian drag king shows, which include impersonations of Elvis, the King. Incidentally, under a pseudonym, Elvis himself in 1975 signed up for an Elvis impersonation tournament and only came in second place (Blackson 2007: 30). Reenactments of vanguard productions are part of the revolution and institutionalisation of the contemporary performing and fine arts. In an altered form, classical elements of dramaturgical theatre (previously written texts, fictive characters, theatrical representation) are interwoven with avant-garde intentions and aesthetics. Theatre makers and performers interested in the political dimensions of art create reenactments (among them the German collectives She She Pop and Rimini Protokoll). The Veronika Blumstein Group and Wunderbaum are exceptional reenactment agents and are part of the new “Politics of Aesthetics” (Rancière 2004) in the contemporary performing arts. 86 Katharina Pewny In the following, I will not venture any further into reenactment’s complex network of origin(ality) and copy, of history, remembering and forgetting, ephemerality and archiving. Rather, I will show how reenactment informs the search for the other generation as one level of relational dramaturgies: “In the syncopated time of reenactment, where then and now punctuate each other, reenactors […] romance or battle an ‘other’ time and try to bring that time - that prior moment - to the very fingertips of the present” (Schneider 2011: 2). The dramaturgy of the search organises the relation of “then and now.” It takes place in countless moments of the performances of the Veronika Blumstein Group just as in Wunderbaum’s reenactments of Paul McCarthy’s performances. 3. The Impossible Appropriation of the Other: Searching for Veronika Blumstein “As an artist born in 1940 in Krakow Veronika Blumstein lived and worked as choreographer and scholar in Poland and in the US of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s” (Büro Kopernikus). Veronika Blumstein is the name of a fictive choreographer and production, invented by the German-Polish choreography-laboratory Move the Mount and curated by Büro Kopernikus in September 2005. The original production featured dancers and dance scholars Kattrin Deufert, Thomas Plischke, Paweł Goz´lin´ski, Helena Goła˛b, Angela Guerreiro, Isabel de Naverán, Peter Pleyer and Antje Pfundtner. The Veronika Blumstein Group, which emerged as a result, organised particular artistic events as well as larger festivals under its auspices. In different formations and with different degrees of participation, the Veronika Blumstein Group includes deufert&plischke, Goz´lin´ski, Goła˛b, Guerreiro, de Naveran, Pleyer, and Pfundtner, as well as Lukasz Borkowski, Kerstin Evert, Sabine Gehm, Janez Jansa, Sandra Noeth, Karen Schaffman, and Janine Schulze. The Veronika Blumstein Group was officially constituted at the Festival für Erfindung und Choreographie, which took place at the Schwankhalle in Bremen between 12-14 October 2006. In October 2007, Moving Heads was the second public show that the fictive choreographer presented as the official host of the opening event of K 3 - Zentrum für Choreographie in Hamburg’s danceand performance space Kampnagel. The event began with a staged dinner to which Blumstein invited a hundred guests and was followed by three days of public workshops and performances by the members of the Veronika Blumstein Group, so that Blumstein functioned as overall frame of reference for the festival. The group’s artistic directors were Sabine Gehm (head of Tanzkongress Deutschland, dramaturge and Veronika Blumstein and Wunderbaum 87 festival curator from 1994 to 2001, and currently working as a curator and cultural manager) and Sandra Noeth (at the time a freelance dramaturge and assistant for Performance Studies at the University of Hamburg, now the head dramaturge at Tanzquartier Vienna). 3.1. Mediatised Liveliness and the Interweaving of the Performing Arts While situated in the frame of dance due to the context of the Centre for Choreography’s opening event, Veronika Blumstein - Moving Heads, remained embedded in the performing arts by focusing on a fictive dramatis persona, who migrated from theatre to dance, just as she moved from Poland to the US, from a European acting scene to a crucible of the avantgarde performing arts. Yet, and this is a significant difference between Veronika Blumstein and other dramatic figures, the fictive choreographer does not come into being by an actress’s actualisation of a certain role but is realised through relationships between people. Blumstein is brought into being through the relations of the participants to her and through the stagings of invented choreographies, which she is said to have created. There are thus two levels of relationality in terms of the artistic performance in Veronika Blumstein - Moving Heads. At the Eröffnungsfest (inaugural event) nearly one hundred and forty people were involved in discussions, making contact, talking about Veronika Blumstein - Moving Heads and the attempt to come to grips with the relationality of art and politics. They carried out movements, which were part of “instant choreographies” and formed a collective choreography, created by the “artistwin” deufert&plischke in the name of the absent host Veronika Blumstein. Together the discussions and movements merged into the (body-)memory of the participants. By extension, Veronika Blumstein - Moving Heads also appeared as a material trace of the relationships between people, in the form of letters, printed interviews and websites on the Internet, as well as a few acoustic testimonies and filmic fragments. The latter were shown by Janine Schulze and Kerstin Evert in their lecture performance during the K3 opening, entitled Music was my first love and dance will be my last, or: Veronika Blumstein hört den Tanz und sieht die Musik [hears the dance and sees the music]. The fictive choreographer functioned as imaginary addressee of letters and e-mails, she also addressed letters to the organisers of the festival, prior to the opening event. As a result, people were called upon to act, write, read, answer and discuss texts, which then again were circulated in the name of Veronika Blumstein. Sabine Gehm and Sandra Noeth simultaneously enabled individual and collective authorship. Individual, because 88 Katharina Pewny the authors (individually) inscribe themselves into the context of the fiction Veronika Blumstein - Moving Heads, which in turn only comes into being because of that individual inscription. It is also collective because the Veronika Blumstein Group is deemed the creator of the eponymous character. 3.2. The Staged Opening Dinner The festival began with a staged opening dinner. One hundred invited guests were led to twelve tables where they were welcomed by a host on behalf of the choreographer. Each table was dedicated to a specific topic, which was either related to the opening of the K3 centre or linked to the choreographer, such as “education,” “body image,” “Avant-garde,” “migration,” “homelessness” and “the precarious.” The hosts themselves acted as agents of mediation by encouraging the guests, in the name of Veronika Blumstein, to invent stories and create different performance actions. For instance, the guests at the table rewrote their own biographies by imagining they were born in another country. At the “homelessness” table host Karen Schaffman sat with her hands tied behind her back until one of the participants untied her. At the start of the dinner the hosts read out a letter from Veronika Blumstein addressed to the guests. The exchange of letters entailed a dialogical structure, since the guests were in turn asked to read out letters found on the table to their neighbours. By means of different media (writing and blogging), Sabine Gehm and Sandra Noeth established and communicated the structure of relational aesthetics and staged the social: the fiction Veronika Blumstein is the vanishing point of the community that gathers in her name. Because she becomes a collective fantasy, Veronika Blumstein unfolds as a space shared by a variety of people. Veronika Blumstein - Moving Heads is therefore relational in the sense of Nicolas Bourriaud. What is addressed are the relations between people, which come into being in the framework of art. Veronika Blumstein - Moving Heads is constituted by several personal intertwinements and social networks. There are relationships among the group members, the relations of each individual to the fictive choreographer and, finally, also linkages from their contexts to Veronika Blumstein and the members of the group. The plural relationality of Veronika is not only an aesthetic procedure. Rather, the plural transnational relationality of the choreographer creates her/ their own contexts, which become integral parts of the festival’s text and perform the fiction of Veronika Blumstein. Veronika Blumstein and Wunderbaum 89 3.3. Reenacting the Avant-garde The relations between people who communicate as and with Veronika Blumstein often unfold using the medium of writing. The process of reading then follows the movement of writing, which in turn results in other movements. This happens, for instance, in the Rekonstruktions_maschine, an early part of the performance series Four Pelicans for Rauschenberg, which also took place in the frame of the festival. This part was organised by “artistwin” deufert&plischke in cooperation with Performance Studies students from Hamburg University (Cornelia Meier, Meike Klapprodt, Regina Fichtner, Jessica Golz, Lucia Rainer, Lydia Schulze Heuling, Britta Wirthmüller and Lilo Nein). Other parts of this performance series featured Karen Schaffman, Peter Pleyer, Helena Golab and Janez Janša. The four-part series is based on Rauschenberg’s first choreography entitled Pelican (1963), which he performed with Per Olof Ultvedt (later replaced by Alex Hay) at a roller skating rink with parachutes on their backs. The transfer of meaning is intentionally disturbed, disrupted and abandoned because the bodies, but also the dance movements and other stage components (light, costume etc.), are freed from their function as carriers of meaning (Foster 1986: 35). At the beginning of the performance, the participants received instructions on how to behave on stage and how to fit into the Rekonstruktions_maschine. The translation from reading into speaking and moving revealed an understanding of dance that does not privilege movement over language/ text (or vice versa) but situates both forms on a horizontal plane, like the possibility of participation in the event. This aesthetic demand, which is also political, follows the tradition of the Avant-garde and performing arts since the 1950s: “Even these evaluations of the vanguard movement’s stagings do ascertain - under different terms - interactivity, an interconnected anti-specialisation, a simultaneity that avoids hierarchical centres as well as the non-linear processuality, which is opposed to the product-like theatre-as-artifact-principle” (Fischer-Lichte 1995: 94). Furthermore, Rekonstruktions_maschine is an artistic statement, which must be seen in the context of debates on the (im)possibility of reconstructing dance (Hardt 2005). With Rekonstruktions_maschine the Veronika Blumstein Group radically shifts the reconstruction of former choreographies into the hic et nunc of the performance. Hence they realise their goal of opening up and distributing the aesthetic and political contexts of their work among the public. The fictive figure of Veronika Blumstein enables the Veronika Blumstein Group to position themselves at the interface of art and politics. 90 Katharina Pewny This is a consistent stance with regard to the group’s critique of art, which focuses exclusively on aesthetics. “In our opinion the arts and especially the performing arts of so-called Postmodernity tend to think and act ahistorically and apolitically. The principle of ‘everything goes’ allows us to connect everything with everything, to cite images, texts and works without context, to replace a dramaturgy of coherence with just the presence of bodies and the coexistence of highly diverse elements” (Veronika Blumstein - Moving Exiles. Festival für Erfindung und Choreographie. Unpublished manuscript, 2007; author’s translation). The fictive choreographer’s historical, political and aesthetic context in turn creates new contexts. The performance text, the authorship of which is ascribed to the fictive Veronika Blumstein, is not only open to its own contexts but is also an integral part of the author’s character itself. The festival participants are the people who actually extend this performance text and bring it into being, and keep the autopoetic feedback loop in constant circulation. The collective embodiment of Veronika Blumstein only works due to the “absence” of the imaginary character or any actress playing or performer performing her. The network of relations, which evolves during the festival, is animated by the impossibility of encountering and completely appropriating her. 4. Having Fun Searching for Political Art: Wunderbaum’s Looking for Paul! Wunderbaum was formed by six fellow students of the Toneelacademie Maasricht upon their graduation in 2001. That year they first founded Jonghollandia, which was affiliated with Zuidelijk Toneel Hollandia (in Eindhoven, the Netherlands), then led by artistic director Johan Simons. Between 2000 and 2008 Wunderbaum worked at NT Gent, the city theatre of Ghent, Belgium, as well as at the Schouwburg Rotterdam. To this day they are very active in the Netherlands and Flanders. They are now an independent company and, since 2013 have been more closely connected to the Schouwburg Rotterdam. In spring 2013 they began their four-year project The New Forest, in which they want to develop a new form and idea of living together by means of different live and mediatised formats. In the meantime the theatre collective has performed throughout Europe, for instance at Hebbel am Ufer in Berlin, the Steirischer Herbst in Graz, the Holland Festival in Amsterdam, the theatre-festival Boulevard in Den Bosch and the Distinctively Dutch Festival in Pittsburgh. At present the Veronika Blumstein and Wunderbaum 91 group consists of Marleen Scholten, Wine Dierickx, Matijs Jansen, Walter Bart and Maartje Remmers, and, according to Theater der Zeit spezial, is one of the most interesting Dutch theatre collectives. Many of the group’s works have strong local roots, e.g. Eindhoven de gekste (2002), stad 1 and stad 2 (2003-2004), Natives (2011), and Detroit Dealers (2012). As is the case with Looking for Paul! , the performance topics derive their inspiration from the concrete urban context, i.e. they intertwine “small” and “big” dramaturgy (see Van Kerkhoven above). Rail Gourmet (2010) is a performance that deals with railwayservices and takes place in a building next to Rotterdam’s Central Station, whose tracks can be seen through the windows. By choosing urban spaces as theatre sites, a more intensive relation is built up between the audience and the theatrical events, for the surroundings of one’s everyday experiences become the space where art takes place. Even if a performance does not take place on location, Wunderbaum still takes the audience to specific environments: Looking for Paul! starts with a video in which Marleen Scholten poses as Inez van Dam and introduces her favorite places in her home town Rotterdam and the controversy about Paul McCarthy’s Santa Claus sculpture. The several Wunderbaum performances I have seem so far seem to constitute a kind of soap opera: time and time again the same performers meet, and they always play themselves. The scenes and topics change but the series consistently adheres to the particular aesthetic principles found in Wunderbaum’s work. Scenes, live and on film, are shown in a seemingly arbitrary manner, and it is precisely these variations that prove Wunderbaum’s relational dramaturgy. Yet it does not trigger the impression of authenticity but, as in the works of author and director René Pollesch, establishes a “frayed” or hybrid aesthetics, live and mediatised, authentic and enacted (Dreysse 2011: 264). The different aesthetics and theatre signs exist side by side without any hierarchy, much as in productions by the Veronika Blumstein Group. This leveling is a product of the collective working procedure from which topics, scenes, and performances evolve. Until January 2013 the dramaturgy and direction were alternated depending on who was (not) on stage at that moment (Wunderbaum Acteursgroep Rotterdam Gent 2001-2006). Wunderbaum works in two groups of five persons: five act and five run the administration, though as in the case of audience assistant Eva van den Hove, they remain involved in the artistic process by getting updates on the performance process on a one to one basis. Since January 2013, dramaturge Tobias Kokkelmans has been responsible for the development and organisation of (press-)texts, research and broader structures of con- 92 Katharina Pewny tent. Wunderbaum appears - as is common in Flanders and the Netherlands - as a collective (see Wunderbaum 2006: 8ff). This is also true for the authorship of Looking for Paul! The five performers first developed the plot, then they shaped the script through an intensive e-mail exchange, which resulted in printouts that do not differentiate stage directions from the main text. Thus the script starts with “13 mei 2010, Aan Matijs, Walter en Maarten@wunderbaum.nl/ He jongens/ We gaan naar Los Angeles! Gisteren kreeg ik een email van Mark Murphy van het Redcat Theater. We hebben het geld! Alles! 20000 dollar! Wauw, ik heb er zo’n zin in! Kus Marleen” ([“13 May 2010, to Matijs, Walter and Maarten/ Hey guys/ We’re going to Los Angeles! Yesterday I received an e-mail from Mark Murphy at Redcat Theater. We got the financing! All of it! 20,000 Dollars Wow, I am really looking forward to it! Kisses, Marleen.”]). The academic search for information on the writing process, which also took place via e-mail, mirrors the evolution of the text: “Beste Katharina/ We hebben inderdaad de e-mails naar elkaar geschreven. Maar van tevoren hadden we wel alles al uitgedacht dus het was vrij duidelijk waar we naartoe zouden schrijven. Als je wilt kunnen we er eens over bellen./ Groet van Matijs.” [“Dear Katharina/ We did indeed write each other e-mails. But before we did so, we thought about it well, so we were indeed clear about whom we had to write to. If you would like, we can talk about it on the phone. Greetings, Matijs.”] (Wunderbaum 2010). The performance is structured in three parts. First, Inez van Dam (Marleen Scholten) is introduced and Rotterdam is shown on video. In the second and longest part (which is scripted), five performers sit on the empty black box stage and read out loud the e-mail conversation, which describes the production process. The third and final part is the reenactment of Paul McCarthy’s performances. As mentioned above, the story starts with the invitation to the renowned REDCAT theatre in Los Angeles (Roy and Edna Disney/ CalArts Theater) in the Fall of 2010. The invitation sparks controversies among the group regarding the material and form of the new production. Inez van Dam’s dislike of McCarthy’s sculpture Santa Claus, which was installed in 2008 across her Rotterdam house and bookstore, sparks another conflict, which turns out to be central to the performance. McCarthy’s so-called “butt plug gnome” was produced in 2001 on behalf of the city of Rotterdam. In 2008 it was moved to Eendrachtsplein after each of its former locations met with protests. Inez accompanies the group to Los Angeles because she wants to get back at McCarthy. The performance is centred on the search for Mc- Carthy and taking a stance on his work. In the course of the production process the former outsider gets involved with the collective and eventu- Veronika Blumstein and Wunderbaum 93 ally takes part in the McCarthy reenactment. The production charts the transformation of Inez from a decisive critic of the “butt plug gnome” to a performer of lesbian SM scenes during the McCarthy reenactment, which concludes with her uttering the words “I love you.” Due to the e-mail exchange, the text has a fairly classical dramatic form, with a lot of dialogue and speeches. These revolve around the idea, the conception, the performative negotiation and finally the realisation, hence the actual dramaturgy of the performance. Similar to Veronika Blumstein - Moving Heads, Looking for Paul! is motivated and driven by the search of an artistic community for artistic predecessors. The motive of the search, not the actual find, is once again central. When Wunderbaum actually meet Paul McCarthy at the opening of an exposition in Los Angeles, they do not even talk. The relational dramaturgy of the search for the other/ generation cannot be fulfilled. As with a deferred signification or movement, the search ends with the occupancy of the other/ generation by means of the embodiment of the predecessors in the performance. Looking for Paul! is a reenactment within the fine arts, mirroring traces of the sexual liberation movements of 1968 and the revolution of dramaturgical conventions. Though at first sight post-dramatic, Looking for Paul! actually contains conventional dramatic elements like the fictive protagonist, conflict and the creation of tension, which in the end is released. The third part even has a cathartic function. The five performers seem to assault and penetrate each other with food as they squirt and spatter ketchup, mayonnaise and chocolate sauce. They fill their orifices with fluids and snacks, the smells of which permeate the audience space. All of this appears less aggressive, twisted and forced than McCarthy himself, and rather emphasises pleasure. Looking for Paul! ends in an atmosphere of cathartic liberation from rigid artistic and social norms, which strongly echoes the upheaval of 1968. Paul McCarthy has been working since the late 1960s, but only in the 1990s did his work gain popularity. Inspired by icons of the mediatised, pop-cultural world of children, like Heidi or Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, the artist’s controversial oeuvre ranges from sketches to videos and sculptures. Unlike Hermann Nitsch, McCarthy never used real blood or made himself bleed, instead he uses human excretions and food such as “ketchup, mayonnaise, saliva, chocolate syrup, cold cream and raw meat…” (Klein 2001: 15). Wunderbaum obviously quoted McCarthy’s performances Sailor’s Meat, Meatcake (1974), Hot Dog (1974), Spit Face (1970-75), Shit Face (1974), and Class Fool (1976). Besides the obvious parallels, the self-critical questioning of the myth concerning artistic in- 94 Katharina Pewny spiration is another element that can be found in both McCarthy’s work (Klein 2001: 16) and in Looking for Paul! . At first sight the dramaturgies of Eröffnungsfest K 3: Veronika Blumstein - Moving Heads and Looking for Paul! differ from one another, since the one is fictive and the other real. However, upon closer inspection, it nevertheless becomes clear that Looking for Paul! is presented as a true story and records can be found online, which seem to prove its authenticity. However, these records may have been created only for the Internet by Wunderbaum or others. Hence questions concerning reality or fiction are not clearly answered but are incidental to the focus of the dramaturgy. The performance and the appeal to the audience work due to the conflictual search for self-positioning a) with regard to the controversies within Wunderbaum on the nature of the Los Angeles project (doing Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire versus staging a political debate on art sponsoring) and b) concerning the work of McCarthy. The latter opens up a debate on the meaning and morality of art (funding), which Wunderbaum communicates as a critique of the privatisation of art funding in the Netherlands. On the one hand, the predecessors’ works serve as models for younger artists, on the other hand, they stage a certain skepticism in the face of the current (economic) constraints. Wunderbaum explicitly brings this up by searching for a way to deal with the drastic funding cuts for art and culture in the Netherlands. The second and longest part of the performance is spent reading out the e-mails. The five performers sit on plastic chairs and address the audience with their gestures and their gaze. By doing so, the audience comes to know and becomes involved in their standpoint, which often turns out to be in conflict with other opinions. The time pressure, created by the nearing premiere, adds to the tension. All of this tension is discharged in the last part, the reenactment of Paul McCarthy’s work. Accessories such as masks, bales of straw and the said fluids, gestures and movements cite McCarthy, but in a playful manner. 5. Conclusions The Veronika Blumstein Group and Wunderbaum use the dramaturgy of the search for the other generation to answer the question of the Red Army Fraction, which German director Nicolas Stemann posed in his 2007 staging of Elfriede Jelinek’s Ulrike Maria Stuart: “When then still has to happen, until something finally happens? ” [“Was muß denn noch passieren, bis endlich was passiert? ”]. The search for the other generation Veronika Blumstein and Wunderbaum 95 is the powerful engine, the “poetic force” (Van Kerkhoven 2009) and the “texture of encounter” (Noeth 2010) of the performances taking place. Both theatrical events show that the reality of the artistic predecessors (Veronika Blumstein) or the encounter with them (Paul McCarthy) is not necessary for the search. The reenactment’s relation to the reenacted work is, quite the opposite, characterised by lapses and nonidentity (in the sense of Adorno). It is impossible to have an encounter with Veronika Blumstein, and there is no communication with Paul McCarthy. This, however, does not imply that dramaturgy as a search comes to an end: “… [A]rt reaches toward reality, only to recoil at the actual touch of it. The characters of its script are monuments to this movement” (Adorno 2004: 366). The dramaturgies discussed here are neither capable of achieving a specific objective, nor are they final, they do however indicate directions in which artistic research can begin to move towards. Literature Adorno, Theodor W. Aesthetic Theory. Transl. Robert Hullot-Kentor. London. Continuum Press. 2004. Adorno, Theodor W. Negative Dialektik. Frankfurt. Suhrkamp Verlag. 1975. Adorno, Theodor W. “Art and the Arts” [1967]. In: Adorno Theodor. Can One Live after Auschwitz? A Philosophical Reader, ed. by Rolf Tiedemann, Stanford. Stanford University Press. 2003. Barba, Eugenio. “Dramaturgy.” In: Barba, Eugenio, Savarese, Nicola (eds.) A Dictionary of Theatre Anthropology: The Secret Art of the Performer. New York. Routledge. 1991. 66-72. Barba, Fabian. “Research into Corporeality.” In: Dance Research Journal 43 (1). Summer 2011. 83-89. Blackson, Robert. “Once More … With Feeling: Reenactment in Contemporary Art and Culture.” In: Art Journal 66 (1). Spring 2007. 28-40. Boenisch, Peter. “Poetic Relations with the Real: Notes on the Actuality of Dramaturgy in the End Times.” In: Pewny, Katharina, Callens, Johan & Coppens, Jeroen. Dramaturgies in The New Millennium. Schriftenreihe Forum Modernes Theater. Tübingen. Narr Francke Attempto Verlag. 2014. Bots, Pieter. “Reduced Richness. Restructuring or Shrink to Fit? Reforms in the Dutch Theatre Landscape.” In: Theater der Zeit Spezial: The Netherlands and Flanders. 5. 2013. 8-11. Bourriaud, Nicolas. Relational Aesthetics. Trans. Simon Pleasance, Fronza Woods, & Mathieu Copeland. Paris. Les presses du réel. 2002. Bourriaud, Nicolas. “Precarious Constructions. Answer to Jacques Rancière on Art and Politics.” In: A Precarious Existence. Vulnerability in the Public Domain. SKOR 2009 (7). 2009. 20-40. 96 Katharina Pewny Dreysse, Miriam. “Heterosexualität und Repräsentation. Markierungen der Geschlechterverhältnisse bei René Pollesch.” In: GeschlechterSpielRäume. Dramatik, Theater, Performance und Gender. Ed.Gaby Pailer and Franziska Schößler. Amsterdamer Beiträge zur neueren Germanistik 78. Amsterdam. Rodopi. 2011. 357-371. Fischer-Lichte, Erika. Theater Avantgarde: Wahrnehmung - Körper - Sprache. Tübingen, Basel: Francke Verlag. 1995. Foster, Susan Leigh. Reading Dance. Bodies and Subjects in Contemporary American Dance. Berkeley: California University Press. 1986. Gritzner, Karoline, Primavesi, Patrick, Roms, Heike (ed.): On Dramaturgy, Performance Research Special Issue. Nr. 3. 2009. Hardt, Yvonne: “Prozessuale Archive. Wie Tanzgeschichte von Tänzern geschrieben wird.” In: Johannes Odenthal (ed.). tanz.de. Zeitgenössischer Tanz in Deutschland - Strukturen im Wandel - eine neue Wissenschaft. (= Theater der Zeit Arbeitsbuch 2005) Berlin. 2005. 34-40. Klein, Jeannie. Paul McCarthy: “Rites of Masculinity.” In: PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art. 2011. 10-17. Noeth, Sandra. “Dramaturgy. Mobile of Ideas.” In: Scores No 0. The Skin of Movement. 2010. 36-47. Pavis, Patrice. “Dramaturgy and Postdramaturgy.” In: Pewny, Katharina, Callens, Johan & Coppens, Jeroen. Dramaturgies in The New Millennium. Schriftenreihe Forum Modernes Theater. Tübingen. Narr Francke Attempto Verlag. 2014. Pewny, Katharina. Das Drama des Prekären. Transcript: Bielefeld. 2011. -. “Precarious Responsivity. Ethics and/ of Spectatorship in Contemporary Drama and Media/ Installation.” In: Pewny, Katharina, Stalpaert, Christel (eds.) On Spectatorship. Ghent: Academia Press (2014, forthcoming). Rancière, Jacques: The Politics of Aesthetics. Translated with an introduction by Gabriel Rockhill. New York: Continuum. 2006. Rancière, Jacques. Le spectateur emancipé. Paris: la Fabrique. 2008. Schneider, Rebecca. Performing Remains. Art and War in Times of Theatrical Reenactment. New York: Routledge. 2011. Turner, Cathy and Behrndt, Synne K. Dramaturgy and Performance. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan. 2008. Van Kerkhoven, Marianne. “Van de kleine en de grote dramaturgie.” In: Etcetera. 17 (68). 1999. 67-69. -. “European Dramaturgy in the 21st Century. A constant movement.” In: Performance Research 2009. 14 (3), September 2009. 7-11. Weiler, Christel. “Dramaturgie.” In: Fischer-Lichte, Erika et al (ed.). Metzler Lexikon Theatertheorie. Metzler Verlag: Stuttgart, Weimar. 2005. 80-83. The Distributive Agency of Dramaturgical Labour and the Ethics of Instability: Becoming the Outside Body, Implicated in the Life of Others Christel Stalpaert For her improvisation dance project Auf den Tisch! (Belgium, 2006) 1 the Berlin-based American choreographer and dancer Meg Stuart gathered performers, audience and dramaturges around a huge table, composed of several smaller tables, which served as a performance area. Instead of a traditional stage, a table functions as the ambivalent platform for presentations and improvisations by artists, dancers and musicians, in a format that links movement to reflection. Due to its improvisational and reflective nature, this performance creates a “dramaturgy in the moment of performing” (Van Imschoot 2003: 64). The performance itself develops from a reflective space shared not only by choreographer and performers but also by audience members and dramaturge(s). The production dramaturgy - usually conceived before the actual performance - is therefore made public and the usual, clearly delineated function of the dramaturge constantly changes in shape. Dancers and performers regularly climb down the tables and take their seats amongst the spectators and dramaturges Jeroen Peeters and Myriam Van Imschoot, seated around the same table. Together, they watch how the performance unfolds and wait in anticipation of more improvisations triggered by other performers, spectators and dramaturges. Members of the audience also interact with the performers and thus co-create the “dramaturgy in the moment of performing” (Van Imschoot 2003: 64). Accepting an invitation to step up, answering questions or remaining silent, the spectators move and are moved within a shared dramaturgical context that is made public. Performer Emil Hvratin, for instance, asks if he can borrow someone’s glasses. The person responding to his request in fact accepts to re- 1 On 6 February 2006 the improvisation Auf den Tisch! by Damaged Goods, Meg Stuart’s dance company, was premiered at Vooruit (Ghent, Belgium). 98 Christel Stalpaert frain from seeing the performance clearly and to rely on the impressions from his other senses. The second improvisation evening several spectators (who were actually students from Ghent University College’s KASK/ School of Arts) wholeheartedly jumped onto the table and ran from one side to the other. There was something youthful and daringly disruptive but also something fragile about this intervention. The other spectators experienced a mix of vicarious shame, nervousness for the risks involved in this co-creative context, but also cautious admiration for the juvenile playfulness. On several occasions, production dramaturge Myriam Van Imschoot also performs some hesitant dance gestures herself and makes her way through the improvisation project, beyond the practice-versustheory divide. What is noteworthy here, is that in the brochure she is not labelled as “the dramaturge”, even though we know she is the production dramaturge. She is simply called a performer, next to Boris Charmatz, Eavesdropper, Emil Hvratin, Vera Mantero, Martin Nachbar, Erna Omarsdottir, Chrysa Parkinson, Hahn Rowe, Hooman Sharifi, Bo Wiget, and Meg Stuart herself. In Auf den Tisch! the choreographer(s), performer(s), dramaturge(s) and spectator(s) contribute to a multi-layered production dramaturgy, a function that is usually attributed to the one and only figure of the dramaturge. What I will call the distributive agency of dramaturgical labour indicates how, in contemporary theatre and dance performances, the function of the dramaturge is not always confined to that of a “theoretical outsider” or “onlooker”, a non-participating observer. 2 In this essay, I introduce the notion of a dramaturgical constellation to point at the complex distribution of dramaturgical labour in contemporary production dramaturgy. Subsequently, I replace the notion of the dramaturgical function by the more flexible concept of dramaturgical figuration. This allows me to locate the ethics of corporeal dramaturgy not within the conveyed message but within the ontological instability that is the conditio sine qua non of a corporeal dramaturgical constellation. The dramaturge, shapeshifting in this dramaturgical constellation, becomes an outside-body, implicated in the life of “others”. 1. Distributive Agency of Dramaturgical Labour In “A Dramaturgy of the Body” (2009) I already observed that the role or function of the dramaturge is too easily considered as a that of a “theoret- 2 The Greek verb “theorein” means “to look at”, “contemplate”. The Distributive Agency of Dramaturgical Labour 99 ical outsider” (121). Firstly, production dramaturgy is supposed to be “always concerned with the conversion of feeling into knowledge, and vice versa” (Van Kerkhoven 1994: 142). It is supposed to “describe the thread of meaning, philosophic intent or logic, which allows the audience to accept and unite the disparate clues you give them into a coherent whole, connecting to other reference points and contexts in the larger world” (Burrows 46). Dance dramaturgy for that matter does not so much differ from theatre dramaturgy. “[I]ts main concerns are: the mastering of structures, the achievement of a global view; the gaining of insight into how to deal with the material” (Van Kerkhoven 1994: 146). The dramaturge’s function is primarily associated with the cognitive function of the brain, with gearing the spectator towards common sense in perception. Secondly, the dramaturge is supposed to maintain a humble outsider’s position in the production process. The dramaturge’s relation with and attitude towards the choreographer or the director is a subordinate one. The dramaturge supplies the choreographer or director with information that is crucial for clarifying the goals of the production and for making decisions in the creative process but the dramaturge does not make these decisions herself. As the English choreographer Jonathan Burrows observes: “A dramaturge is someone who collaborates with you to help find overviews of the work which disentangle threads of possible meaning, so that you can make consequent choices during the process” (47). A dramaturge has to acknowledge this subordinate position in the creative process. Besides, in the end, as Marianne Van Kerkhoven aptly remarked, the dramaturge does not appear on the photo and his work remains largely invisible. “The dramaturge is not (perhaps: not quite or not yet) an artist” (1994: 144). In Auf den Tisch! Meg Stuart envisages another kind of collaboration with the dramaturge. As the dramaturge becomes a performer and vice versa, she stimulates both to work “on several different channels at the same time, which becomes a kind of virtuosity in itself in terms of being able to switch. (…) I push them to spaces that are uncomfortable for them (Stuart and DeLahunta 130). Van Imschoot herself admitted that she “felt somewhat nervous” in this “hybrid blend”, “mixing audience behaviour and performance actions” (2010: 212). The dehierarchised and improvisational nature of the collaboration in fact entails that “even Meg Stuart could be replaced as the choreographer” (Stuart and DeLahunta 2007: 135) (even though Meg Stuart knew exactly what she was doing when she set up the conditions for creating and improvising Auf den Tisch! ) 3 3 See also my article on “The Dumbfounded Participatory Spectator. The Power of Failure in Contemporary Performance” (Stalpaert 2009). 100 Christel Stalpaert This mode of collaboration as co-authorship 4 , through improvisation, with the dramaturgical process rendered public, challenges both the primal theoretical scope and the outsider’s position of the production dramaturge. Being deliberately present and surprisingly physically active throughout the performance of Auf den Tisch! , the figure of the dramaturge is a dissonant one. It blurs the division between reflection and creation, between theory and practice and inaugurates a dramaturgical constellation in a Benjaminian sense of the word. Walter Benjamin derived the term constellation from modern astrology. It is a grid-like segment, formed by the stars in the earth’s night sky, describing how the celestial sphere is grouped around asterisms. Benjamin explains the benefits of this concept through its flexible configuration. A constellation in modern astrology does not limit possibilities and opportunities through a fixed pattern or grid. On the contrary, it challenges our traditional conceptions of time and space in several ways. First, the signs from, for example, the Zodiac that we perceive, are only perceived from our particular point of view. Moving within the constellation, one would constantly have a different perception and would have flashes of insight in doing so. One would eventually realise, for example, that some stars are more distant from each other than they are from the earth. Secondly, a star that we perceive might have disappeared a thousand years ago, challenging the notion that what we see is what we get. And thirdly, stars travel through the galaxy with different velocities. The constellation they have formed together as part of a cluster is slowly dispersing. In Deleuzian terms the dramaturgical context as constellation is in perpetual modulation. It is “a putting into variation of the mould, a transformation of the mould at each moment of the operation” (Deleuze 2005: 27) and it appears in “a continuous and perpetually variable fashion” (Deleuze 1988: 19). Likewise, the dramaturgical constellation in Auf den Tisch! is neither a mould nor a grid that rigidly distinguishes theory from practice, sensemaking from moving, knowing from feeling. It inaugurates an open creative process in perpetual modulation, where the division of dramaturgical labour “shape-shifts” constantly, as the relationship between action and reflection is in constant motion. In engaging with that kind of dramaturgical constellation, the dramaturge’s function in Auf den Tisch! becomes a dramaturgical figuration, 4 Meg Stuart proposed to consider the table set-up as a co-authored concept. Benoît Lachambre and Boris Charmatz were free to use elements from the improvisation sessions in their own work. As Myriam Van Imschoot points out, Benoît Lachambre in fact re-used material in The Maasmechelen Set-up in Vienna and Montreal in 2005 (2010: 214). The Distributive Agency of Dramaturgical Labour 101 constituting “points of emergence or of creativity” and being very much aware of the perspective that these points constitute (Deleuze 1999: 30- 31). As is the case in modern astrology, when a group of stars is looked at from a different angle, or when a different selection of stars were made, a different perception evolves that is not therefore any less valuable. In Auf den Tisch! , performers, dramaturge(s) and spectators are similarly invited to move beyond the comfort zone of their traditional and clearly delineated function in order to switch creatively with other functions’ perspectives. In traditional theatre, the dramaturge’s and spectator’s external positions are secured by an opposition between outside and inside, between we and them, between subject and object. The dramaturgical constellation in Auf den Tisch! deliberately confuses the “we” with the “I”, and even with the “you”. In the course of the performance the dramaturge and the spectator move creatively in between the “inside” and “outside” of the performance, constituting an entangled, “distributive, composite notion of agency” (Bennett 37). This results in what I, after Jane Bennett, call a distributive agency of dramaturgical labour. This phrasing echoes Bennett’s “distributive, composite notion of agency” in the sense that it affirms “a vitality distributed along a continuum of ontological types” (37) and “addresses multiple modes and degrees of effectivity” (viii). 5 Bennett’s notion of distributive agency is indebted to the French philosopher Bruno Latour and his Actor- Network Theory (ANT). As Latour stated in Action Is Overtaken (2005), our capacity to act is embedded in a network consisting of human and non-human agents or actants. The mode of collaboration in this network inaugurates a different notion of corporeal action: “the question of who is carrying out the action has become unfathomable”: we are all “bodies, involved as mediators in different networks” (2005: 9). According to Latour, all actants in the network have at their disposal the same possibility of agency, subsequently subverting the strict division between active and passive, performer and spectator, subject and object. 2. Becoming the Outside Body Within this dramaturgical constellation as Actor-Network, the traditional labour of the dramaturge as an “outsider’s eye” also changes profoundly. The outside eye in fact becomes an outside-body. 5 Bennett’s Vibrant Matter is indebted to Bruno Latour’s vocabulary in a.o. Politics of Nature and even identifies “the human-nonhuman assemblage as a locus of agency” (37). 102 Christel Stalpaert I share Myriam Van Imschoot’s observation that, throughout history, “the dramaturgical has been separated from the body of the artist to turn into an ‘outsider’s eye’” (2003: 63; see also Stalpaert 2009: 122; Van Kerkhoven 1994: 142). The opposition between practitioners and theorists goes hand in hand with the metaphysical distinction between body and mind, between doing and thinking, between the head - with its privileged sense organ, the eye - and other sensorial intensities. Our distributive agency of dramaturgical labour hardly inaugurates “a knowledge” in Cartesian terms but rather in Spinoza’s terms “an experience in which one randomly encounters confused ideas of bodily mixtures” (Deleuze 1997: 25,6). The dramaturge’s outsider’s eye should therefore give way to an embodied mind, where body and mind are connected, operating on an equal level. Departing from a Cartesian cogito, the dramaturge’s “external gaze” is expanded to become an outside-body, exploring in a corporeal dramaturgy the bodily capacity to read and make “sense” of an aesthetic of intensities. This becomes clear in the following hesitant words of Meg Stuart, trying to describe the aesthetic at work in her performances based on improvisation: There’s a moment when you can tell where the energy in the space, in the studio, in the theatre … it turns. They are not just doing movements, they are … it’s a dance at this moment, it’s like something just clicks and you realise you stepped this border and a dance is making itself. And you can’t describe it but you feel like you’re in a bit dangerous territory, you feel like, “Do you go there? ” You think, “This is the greatest idea, this is no idea.” It’s like there’s a lot of doubt at that moment also. And you feel like you’re in a bit of a dangerous space and a delicate space, and then it’s at that moment you know, I want to go there and dig! (laughs). (Stuart and Burrows 1998: 9) Becoming the outside body in this context means trying to put feeling into knowledge along an aesthetic of intensities. In doing so, common sense might and probably will fail. Words might and probably will be inadequate. It is striking how dance dramaturges often employ metaphorical ways to try and interfere with the movement text of a choreography. Andre Lepecki, for example, talks about metaphorical explosions, freelance dramaturge Christine Fents talks in terms of colours and landscape structures. Carmen Mehnert, dance dramaturge for Constanza Macras and others, dialogues on an energy level. 6 Maybe this is a way of becom- 6 See also Stalpaert 2009: 123. The conference European Dramaturgy in the Twenty-First Century was organised by Hans-Thies Lehmann and Patrick Primavesi at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe Universität in Frankfurt am Main and took place from 26-30 September 2007. The workshop was chaired by Gerald Siegmund and Bettina Milz. The Distributive Agency of Dramaturgical Labour 103 ing this “outside body”, which is admitting that you, as a dramaturge, do not have the language to express everything, that you and your mind cannot perceive, grasp and understand everything completely. The creative potential of language lies in its mutability, in the poetic registers that signal the potential for differential expressions and articulations. To become-the-outside-body is for that matter also to move beyond the rigid structures of language, “to make the sequences vibrate, to open the word onto unexpected internal intensities - in short, to create an a-signifying and intensive utilisation of language” (Deleuze and Guattari 1986: 22). To become-the-outside-body then inaugurates new possibilities and opportunities of thinking in the sense that Cartesian thought is undone. The distributive agency of dramaturgical labour in Auf den Tisch! creates a space for negotiation and assembles figurations of concepts in the hope that this will lead to one or more flashes of genuine insight (Benjamin) or shocks to thought (Massumi). 7 These not only affect the brain, but also - and primarily - the body. Thought strikes like lightning, with sheering ontogenetic force. It is felt. (Massumi xxxi) If the expressive momentum hits the body with its full ontogenetic force, it produces a compression shock. To convey the expressive potential ‘faithfully’ (with sufficient, creative absurdity) the body must transmit the reality of the shock. It’s a torture, a multi-level, interlocking, self-magnifying torture. (Massumi xxxi) Becoming the outside body in a dramaturgical constellation also inaugurates a cognitive stalling in the dramaturgical process of sensemaking. A dramaturgical constellation for that matter also resembles Deleuze’s plane of immanence “in which (…) ideas are not aligned with one another so that they fit together, because their edges do not match up. They are not pieces of a jigsaw puzzle but rather the outcome of throws of the dice” (Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 35). Or as Meg Stuart herself put it: “in the not-knowing there seems to be a greater possibility for igniting a creative spark” (Stuart and DeLahunta 2007: 135). As Pavis aptly remarks, “we are in a post-narrative phase of dramaturgy” (Pavis 2014: 21) and the spectator no longer demands to understand completely. The dramaturgical input is not dissolved into a coherent whole, the dramaturgical labour remains visible throughout the performance. Rather than distributing a clear message to recipients situated out- 7 Dramaturgical ideas in that sense are “timeless constellations and by virtue of the elements being seen as points in such constellations” (Benjamin 34), in this case the dramaturgical constellation. 104 Christel Stalpaert side of the creation process, the dramaturge’s input of possible meanings resonates throughout the performance and the interpretation process remains open. The contemporary dramaturgical figuration for that matter does “not speak in the tones of revelation” (Benjamin 36) and is not concerned with the reconstruction of a clear-cut story and its moral message, to be recognised and grasped by the audience. The open structure of the dramaturgical constellation opposes moralism in the sense that Judith Butler understood it, that is, “as the moment in which morality exhausts itself in public acts of denunciation” (Butler 2006: 15). This openness in Auf den Tisch! creates a “state of instability” (Stuart and DeLahunta 2007: 133) on behalf of the performer, the choreographer, the dramaturge and the spectator. In moving outside of their comfort zone, all functions involved in the dramaturgical constellation attain an inherent state of ontological instability. Meg Stuart describes it as follows: “Somehow for me the person, whoever that is, is then in question: and the body is sort of transparent and flickering, it’s not fixed” (Stuart and DeLahunta 2007: 133). They are, as it were, in a “state of instability” that creates a “sense of consciousness awareness” in relation to the performance (Stuart and DeLahunta 2007: 133). This should not be mixed up with the devastating experience of groundlessness. It is rather an openness towards co-emergence and co-creation that is at stake here. This also entails a profound rethinking of modes of relating to one another. In the dramaturgical constellation the concept of relation becomes less a Hegelian-dialectical one. It is rather understood in a Spinozist-Deleuzian way. Beings, rather than being able to distinguish their “Self” in an opposing (and often negative) relation to “others”, are self-differentiating, engaged in a cosmic process of infinite becoming. In the following paragraph, I denote how becoming-the-outside-body in Auf den Tisch! is always implicated in the life of others. As I will observe, this entails new opportunities and possibilities of thinking and relating. 3. Implicated in the Life of Others To become-the-outside-body is to disconnect from a rigid function and perspective in order to explore unstable ground. As I observed above, in moving outside of their comfort zone, all functions involved in the dramaturgical constellation of Auf den Tisch! , including the dramaturge’s function, in fact attain an inherent state of ontological instability. However, the individual work is not dissolved in the distributive agency of dramaturgical labour and neither does the individual lose his or her inter- The Distributive Agency of Dramaturgical Labour 105 connectedness with other individuals in the dramaturgical constellation. In relating to open dramaturgical concepts one disconnects from rigid moralism but remains response-able in relating to the “other”. Becomingthe-outside-body does not mean that one moves outside of the dramaturgical constellation to be a disconnected, outsider’s body. The “incoherent” outside body provides new opportunities and possibilities of relating. As Butler in Giving an Account of Oneself points out: The way in which we are, from the start, interrupted by alterity may render us incapable of offering narrative closure for our lives. The purpose here is not to celebrate a certain notion of incoherence, but only to point out that our ‘incoherence’ establishes the way in which we are constituted in relationality: implicated, beholden, derived, sustained by a social world that is beyond us and before us. (64) The dramaturgical constellation for that matter creates an intensive zone of mutual becoming that provides space to relate differently 8 and to become, to put it in Butler’s words, “implicated in the life of others” (2005: 64). I refer here to Butler’s understanding of the always-social individual who, due to his or her interdependence, is always implicated in the lives of others. In the dramaturgical constellation of Auf den Tisch! not only performers but also dramaturges and spectators are implicated. It is important to observe that, taking into consideration the particular distributive agency of dramaturgical labour, this effects a shift from moralism to ethics. As Bennett observed in her Political Ecology of Things: An understanding of agency as distributive and confederate thus reinvokes the need to detach ethics from moralism and to produce guides to action appropriate to a world of vital, crosscutting forces (38). Being implicated in a dramaturgical constellation thus moves into the direction of what Félix Guattari in The Three Ecologies refers to as the ethico-aesthetic paradigm (41). It connects the environmental with the psychic production of subjectivity and social relations. We, as spectators of Meg Stuart’s Auf den Tisch! , are not only aware of our ontological presence in the room but also of our complicity in the dramaturgical constellation, hence in the actions presented. Being implicated in the dramaturgical constellation, “we” experience a transformation of subjectivity, 8 As Butler has pointed out, being implicated in the life of others means living in community with others, where community connotes sharing, not only the good and the bad, but also the ambiguous and the precarious, with the persistently vulnerable. Katharina Pewny, in Das Drama des Prekären. Über die Wiederkehr der Ethik in Theater und Performance, develops Butler’s notion of the precarious as an analytical category for performance studies. 106 Christel Stalpaert otherness and relationality itself. In the flashes of insight that make us aware of our “Selves” watching and co-creating, we can no longer retreat into the spectator’s comfort zone and objectify ourselves as merely “outside” of the performance event. We have to rethink the foundational dialectics of “Self” versus “Other” in order to explore new concepts of relationality and relatedness. The distributive agency of dramaturgical labour in Auf den Tisch! hence unhinges our habit of dialectically relating to others as “we” know “them”. The dramaturgical constellation inaugurates a co-creative kind of relating. This entails an ontological instability that is not so much about losing oneself, as about encountering otherness. It is not so much about disconnecting in the sense of not relating but all the more, about relating differently. In the co-creative dramaturgical constellation of Auf den Tisch! we experience, to use Bracha L. Ettinger’s words, the “co-emerging I and Non-I prior to the I versus other” (qtd. in Thiele 2008: 69). The dialectics of “Self” versus “Other” holds “the presupposition that all relating implies clearly separated subjects and objects, that it is first of all against the other that we act” (Thiele 2008: 66). To unhinge this very dialectic itself is to move on ontologically unstable ground. However, as Kathrin Thiele observes in her thinking with Deleuze, “not so much the comfort of “my” other is gone, but most of all the comfort of structural assurance of this world itself is gone, in order to imagine - that is to think - differently” (66). In Guattari’s words, our ontological presence moves on unstable ground, and it is this instability in Auf den Tisch! that constitutes an ethico-aesthetic implication. Frail and adrift, our subjectivity in the dramaturgical constellation resonates with a multitude and the multiplicity. It is from this unstable ground that the concept of relation and relating itself is rethought in order to create opportunities and possibilities to relate in new ways: “differential futures emerge in unpredictable, unforeseeable and ever new ways” (Burns and Kaiser 2012: 15). The dramaturgical figuration for that matter does not seek to convert people to unanimous consensus. Rather, it creates possibilities to think through that which concerns “us” in close interconnection with the community we dwell in. If the flashes of insight in the dramaturgical constellation have any value whatsoever, it lies in its ability to fold the cultivated and rational “know-it-all”-attitude into a never-ending process of negotiating heterogeneity. Exploring such new possibilities of thinking is then, following Deleuze, always a political act. It performs a radical step beyond the moulding principles of history, identity and representation. The Distributive Agency of Dramaturgical Labour 107 4. Ethics of Instability How, then, do we connect aesthetics with ethics? How to conceive of new modes of relating, not only with(in) the dramaturgical constellation of the artistic process but also in the world at large? How to involve spectators in a position of ethical responsibility, not only with regard to the work of art but also to the world at large? Dramaturge Marianne Van Kerkhoven is also concerned with these questions and demands that “the micro-dramaturgy in the rehearsal should communicate with a macrodramaturgy of the social. Because the theatre dwells in the city and the city dwells in the world and the walls are made of skin. We cannot escape what penetrates the pores” (1999: 67, translation mine). Following Deleuze and Guattari, the production of intensive quantities on an aesthetic level always affects “the social body” and is “plugged all the more into a social field with multiple connections” (Deleuze and Guattari 1986: 70-71). Rethinking the objectifying dialectics of “Self” versus “Other” with(in) an aesthetic configuration has socially transformative potential. Deleuze himself is convinced that creative, virtual thinking has the ability to transform actual situations. To engage with aesthetics does not necessarily mean to abandon political responsibility, nor does it mean the end of politics. This is where the interconnectedness of a corporeal dramaturgy and an ethico-aesthetics of ontological instability enter the picture. In his article “Dramaturgies of Exile” Freddie Rokem reminds us of how “for Aristotle, the combination of the proximity of poetry to philosophy and the ontological instability of the work of art were crucial for the inherent ethical authority of artistic practices” (Rokem 2008: 6). Rokem’s writings challenge us to (re)consider the crucial role of artistic creativity and the aesthetic experience for an understanding the world we live in. “In fact”, Rokem observes, “the arts serve as an important point of departure for philosophical reflection. First, the arts enable us to consider basic ontological issues, in particular in trying to grasp the ontological instability of the work of art and the subversive potentials this instability gives rise to; second, the arts allow us to explore epistemological issues and to question how we know certain things and how we can gain this knowledge; third, the arts enable us to consider the ethical dimensions of this understanding and our emotional response to this knowledge” (8, emphasis added). I am convinced that the contemporary dramaturge has an important responsibility within the dramaturgical constellation in safeguarding what Rokem called “the ontological instability of the work of art and the subversive and ethical potentials this instability gives rise to” (8). 108 Christel Stalpaert In the interconnected mesh of an Actor-Network bodily power is no longer conceived of as generated from individual action but as always processed. This new paradigm of shared responsibility is actually embodied in the process of co-authorship of the shape-shifting functions of choreographer, dramaturges, performers and spectators in the dramaturgical constellation of Auf den Tisch! . We are all composite actors or actants, or, to put it in Rancière’s words, in “the collectivization of capacities invested in scenes of dissensus” (2009: 49). The stage then becomes a dynamic network of dehierarchised encounters, where dramaturges free themselves from assigned subordinate roles, subsequently liberating the spectators of preconceived notions and dialectic relationalities. We have to develop a mental flexibility in order to encounter in wonder, we have to open up towards several possible meanings, relations and identities in Auf den Tisch! . Spectating, then, no longer works with common sense to recognise “others” on the basis of easily recognizable external features such as race, gender or kinship, but to meet or encounter according to an accord discordant or discordant harmony, according to an agreement to differ and disagree (Deleuze 2004: 183), to postpone interpretation, hence judgment. (Stalpaert 2010 and 2012: 388-389). As Jonathan Burrows aptly observed: “Collaboration is sometimes about finding the right way to disagree” (Burrows 2010: 58). Literatur Benjamin, Walter. The Origin of German Tragic Drama. London. Verso. 2003. Bennett, Jane. Vibrant Matter. A Political Ecology of Things. Durham. Duke University Press, 2009. Burns, Lorna and Birgit M. Kaiser. “Introduction.” In: Lorna Burns and Birgit M. Kaiser (eds.). Postcolonial Literatures and Deleuze. Colonial Pasts, Differential Futures. New York. Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. 1-17. Burrows, Jonathan. A Choreographer’s Handbook. London. Routledge. 2010. Butler, Judith. Precarious Life. The Powers of Mourning and Violence. London. Verso. 2006. deLahunta, Scott. “Dance Dramaturgy: Speculations and reflections.” In: Dance Theatre Journal. 16 (2000) 1. 20-25. Deleuze, Gilles. The Fold. Leibniz and the Baroque. Transl. Conley, Tom. Minneapolis. University of Minnesota Press. 1988. -. “He Stuttered.” In: Essays Clinical and Critical. Transl. Smith, Daniel W. & Greco, Michael A.. Minneapolis. University of Minnesota Press. 1997. 107- 114. -. Cinema 2. The Time-Image. Transl. Tomlinson, Hugh & Galeta, Robert. London. Continuum. 2005. The Distributive Agency of Dramaturgical Labour 109 -. Foucault. Transl. Hand, Sean. New York. Continuum. 1999. -. “Spinoza and the Three ‘Ethics’.” In: Montag, Warren & Stolze, Ted (ed.). The New Spinoza. Minneapolis. The University of Minnesota Press, 1997. -. Difference and Repetition. Transl. Paul Patton. London. Continuum 2004. Deleuze, Gilles & Félix Guattari. Kafka. Toward a Minor Literature. Transl. 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Schriftenreihe Forum Modernes Theater. Tübingen. Narr Francke Attempto Verlag. 2014. Pewny, Katharina. Das Drama des Prekären. Über die Wiederkehr der Ethik in Theater und Performance. Bielefeld. Transcript. 2011. Rancière, Jacques. The Emacipated Spectator. Transl. G. Elliott. London & New York. Verso. 2009. Rokem, Freddie. Philosophers and Thespians. Thinking Performance. Stanford. Stanford University Press. 2010. Stalpaert, Christel. “A Dramaturgy of the Body.” In: Performance Research. 14 (September 2009) 3. 121-125. Stalpaert, Christel. “The Dumbfounded Participatory Spectator. The Power of Failure in Contemporary Performance.” In: Maaike Bleeker, Lucia Van Heteren, Chiel Kattenbelt & Rob van der Zalm (eds.) Concepten en Objecten. Amsterdam. Amsterdam University Press. 2009. 71-83. Stuart, Meg and Jonathan Burrows. “Interview with Meg Stuart.” In: Conversations with Choreographers, a Series of Interviews for the Performance ‘As it is at The South Bank’, London. 1998. Online at http: / / www.jonathanburrows. info/ #/ text/ ? id=60&t=content. Stuart, Meg and Scott DeLahunta. “Flickering and Change. Meg Stuart in Conversation with Scott DeLahunta.” In: Sabine Gehm, Pirkko Lusemann and Katharina von Wilcke (eds.). Knowledge in Motion. Perspectives of Artistic and Scientific Research in Dance. Bielefeld. Transcript Verlag. 2007. 129-135. 110 Christel Stalpaert Stuart, Meg & Jeroen Peeters (ed.). Are We Here Yet? Dijon. Les presses du réel. 2010. Thiele, Kathrin. “The World with(out) Others, or How to Unlearn the Desire for the Other.” In: Lorna Burns and Birgit M. Kaiser (eds.). Postcolonial Literatures and Deleuze. Colonial Pasts, Differential Futures. New York. Palgrave Macmillan. 2013. 55-75. Van Imschoot, Myriam. “Anxious Dramaturgy.” In: Women & Performance, A Journal of Feminist Theory. 13 (2003) 2. 57-68. Van Imschoot, Myriam. “Waiting for a Sign.” In: Jeroen Peeters (ed.). Are We Here yet? Dijon. Les presses du réel. 2010. 212-219. Van Kerkhoven, Marianne. “Looking Without Pencil in the Hand.” In: Theaterschrift. 5-6 (1994). 140-146. Van Kerkhoven, Marianne. “Van de kleine en de grote dramaturgie: Marianne van Kerkhoven over productiedramaturgie en het dramaturgische werk waardoor het theater gestalte geeft aan zijn maatschappelijke functie.” In: Etcetera. 17 (1999) 68. 67-69. The International Festival and the City Space: The Dramaturgy of the Local Cathy Turner & Stephen Hodge 1. Introduction Wrights & Sites is an artists’ collective concerned with making work about place and space. Space is an abstract and experiential dimension and within it, place is both a location and ordering system, a “unique and complex ensemble”: “all places are small worlds” (Yi-Fu Tuan 1979: 388 and 421). As such, the multi-layered understanding of place is at the heart of our work, which was first created for our city of Exeter in the South West of the UK. In their origins, then, our dramaturgies have been intimately concerned with the local, our local - though we were always and increasingly interested in the various ways in which space is experienced through and between and in defiance of ordered places. The four core members are Stephen Hodge and Cathy Turner, with Phil Smith and Simon Persighetti. We have been working together for over 15 years. Our work took place early in the recent expansion of arts practice based on walking and is placed in a longer context in the exhibition “Walk On: From Richard Long to Janet Cardiff - 40 Years of Art Walking,” touring the UK in 2013-14 (Morrison-Bell et al. 2013). Walking art, as evidenced here, frequently ranges across genres. Our own is no exception to this, although performance is at the root of our practice and all of us are graduates from university courses in Drama or related areas. Our first collaboration, The Quay Thing (1998), preceded our walking practice and was a large-scale project that comprised a series of sitespecific performances in numerous locations on Exeter’s Quayside. This was our first encounter with the tensions created where disparate groups have claims on places, and the difficulties of entering into those places as outsiders. The city council, residents, clubbers, tourists, boat-builders and workers all had an investment in Quayside sites, where art could easily 112 Cathy Turner & Stephen Hodge be perceived as either a direct challenge or a means to an end. While we did manage to navigate these tensions, we subsequently made a deliberate choice to move away from direct involvement in territorial struggles, by shifting our practice away from the theatrical event and towards walking, where the artist is not setting up a theatre but merely passing through. Furthermore, our most significant works did not involve our direct presence, since we became more interested in providing stimuli for the rediscovery of place and the opening up of space by our audiences. We became best known for an alternative guidebook, An Exeter Mis-Guide (2003), which invited the walker to explore Exeter in a range of ways designed to make the familiar unfamiliar and to reveal the “other” city hidden in the habitual one. The “theatrical” is located in the walker’s “performance” of the city, if at all. After a time we began to recognise that An Exeter Mis-Guide was also being used in other cities, as far away as Quebec and Bangalore. People were transferring our ideas and applying them, adapting them for elsewhere. This led to our decision to write A Mis-Guide to Anywhere (2006), which is designed to be transferable between places, yet pushes this attempt to its limits, to reveal what is problematic in our seemingly imperialist determination to be able to provide a Mis-Guide to “Anywhere”. We were mindful of the privilege of being located in a particular kind of city - and part of the purpose of this Mis-Guide was to question transferability and to highlight specificity, even as we appeared to seek to transcend it. The economics of these decisions proved interesting. Our work, largely ignored by critics when it comprised locally-based performance, began to receive recognition with the production of the book as art object, and this increased as we produced a deliberately transferable work. While remaining committed to the idea of site-specificity, we inevitably became aware of the advantages of producing work that can be appreciated “anywhere”, via the art object, publication, transferable concept or tourable performance. As a result of the new opportunities that arose - commissions from European festivals, for example - a significant part of our recent work has been engaged with the tension between the local place and the undefined space: “anywhere”. “Global nomadism” (albeit in our case to a modest degree) is increasingly a product of “the global economy and the global village”, as Regina Gleeson suggests (2004a: 67). She rightly argues the need not to “slip unquestioningly into a new internationalism, where we all share the same global catalogue of history and our individual cultural accent is neither evident nor important” (2004b: 66). However, this raises the dramaturgi- The International Festival and the City Space 113 cal question of how one might resist the pressures that push towards work that belongs “anywhere”, without insisting on a nostalgic and limiting identification with a place of belonging. Conversely, how do producing organisations draw on local knowledges and experience, while maintaining their dialogue with a wider context of international arts practice? This article considers dramaturgy in several senses: primarily, it considers dramaturgy in terms of what, in the UK, is more often described as “curation”, “programming” or “creative production”, examining the structure of three European projects. Secondarily, it considers the dramaturgical structure of site-specific artworks and the possibility that a “porous” or “relational” dramaturgy is one way to allow the artwork as “foreign object” to become localised through its habitation by local residents. Finally, we touch on the dramaturgical role we have played in mentoring and supporting artists in Vienna and Fribourg. All three senses of dramaturgy are intimately connected. 2. International Art Markets and Festivals In One Place After Another Miwon Kwon (2004: 159-160) is critical of the nostalgia apparent in the work of art critics such as Lucy Lippard. Her The Lure of the Local (1997) appears to celebrate a place-bound identity, which Kwon suggests can no longer be sustained in a postmodern, globalised context. However, Kwon is also ambivalent towards “a certain romanticism” that “has accrued around the image of the cultural worker on the go […] To embrace such conditions”, she argues, “is to leave oneself vulnerable to new terrors and dangers”. She concludes that there might be need to look at “relational specificity” - the tensions and relationships between places. In a chapter on “Site” for Deirdre Heddon and Jennie Klein’s Histories and Practices of Live Art, we comment on Kwon’s analysis, suggesting that she underestimates the sophistication of live artists’ addresses to the local and specific. These comments are placed after a history of live artists’ engagement with site, and here we place this in contrast to Kwon’s greater emphasis on the international market in art objects, site-specific or otherwise: It is not that live artists are naively insisting on the integrity of place. Rather, they are making use of the ruptures and dislocations of space, demonstrating its fluidity and the ensuing possibility of re-imagining it for evolving communities, identities and activities (Turner and Hodge 2012: 117). 114 Cathy Turner & Stephen Hodge Thus, we argue, there is still work to be done with a focus on the local itself, even while noting its fluid and networked identity. Gleeson confirms this in relation to cultural identity, too, when she recommends, with the curator Grant Watson, a balance between “external influence and re-affirmation of one’s own status” (Gleeson 2004b: 63). Others have suggested practical and aesthetic reasons for doubting an emphasis on the circulation of international artists or for valuing the commitment to specific places. For example, at a 2009 conference in Warsaw Thomas Kraus, of the Pazz Festival, Germany, commented on the monotony of the international programming in European festivals, saying, “It is as if the performances travel with me” (Kraus 2009). He suggested the need for vital dramaturgical thinking and a longer-term commitment to working with artists. At the same conference Beate Seidel, dramaturge at the Schauspiele, Stuttgart, referred to her work on productions that occupied public space and addressed local issues, to suggest the need to render the theatre a “civic space”, one that approached the agora of ancient Greece (Seidel 2009). There is, then, a significant role for the local, next to the international, in the context of festival and theatre programming. At the very least, there are dangers in its omission. 3. Stadtverführungen in Wien We will go on to discuss one possible model for resolving the tension between fidelity to the local and the desire to recruit artists of international standing. The concept was developed by Wrights & Sites after having been approached by Sigrid Gareis, then foundational director of the Tanzquartier Wien, who had quietly attended a Wrights & Sites video installation and manifesto performance in London in 2006. In partnership with the late Marie Zimmermann from the Wiener Festwochen, Gareis invited us to curate and mentor a series of tours and performances, framed by our concept of the ‘Mis-Guide’, but conceived and performed by local people, some of them artists. The project was entitled Stadtverführungen in Wien (2007), a play on words intended to echo the notion of ‘mis-guide’ in its subversion of city guide (Führung) by city seduction (Verführung). Stadtverführungen in Wien was conceived as a new approach to Tanzquartier Wien’s summer “Factory Season”, an annual programme of funded research and development residencies designed to foster experimentation in the city but usually resulting in studio-based outcomes. The The International Festival and the City Space 115 first co-production by the Tanzquartier Wien and the Wiener Festwochen, it was financially supported by the Wiener Linien. Targeted at Viennese artists and non-artist residents, the call for proposals asked for contact details, a working title, the location(s) of the work, the number of possible tours, the length of the work, a description of the project (up to 2500 words in German) and an optional summary (up to 800 words in English). It drew 142 proposals from Vienna, and the “expert panel” screening them comprised representatives from Wrights & Sites, Tanzquartier Wien and Wiener Festwochen, together with four eminent Viennese citizens: sociologist and urbanist Anette Baldauf, cultural philosopher and anthropologist Herbert Lachmayer, composer Bernhard Lang, and architect Bärbel Müller. The selection process resulted in the realisation of 16 projects over a 20-day period that spanned the 2007 Wiener Festwochen, and the project leaders were mentored throughout by Wrights & Sites. The call, addressed to “KünstlerInnen und Wien KennerInnen aller Art”, 1 required the contributors to be present in Vienna over a considerable period. Thus, it largely presumed that the commissions would be given to Viennese residents and not exclusively to artists, Viennese or otherwise. The emphasis here was on the local, on knowledge of the city itself, augmented and supported by a vibrant and supremely competent dramaturgical and production team at Tanzquartier Wien. At the same time, Bärbel Müller pointed out the importance to the mis-guide concept of maintaining a degree of unknowingness about the city spaces: The ‘Stadtverführung’ is - besides being a localised intervention or narration - a route or journey. Either points in the field ‘Vienna’ are targeted, or the paths between these points are subject of discussion. The points (= places or objects), as well as paths can be intended or un-planned. The more determined points and paths are, the more the ‘Stadtverführung’ becomes a ‘Stadtführung’. If the spatial frame AND the time frame is defined, I would suppose, one is definitely guided, not misguided. (2007) 2 If our own involvement was valuable as named artists whose concept framed the work and as advisors and mentors to inexperienced perform- 1 Tanzquartier Wien and Wiener Festwochen, Call for proposals, Vienna 2006. 2 This paper was given in both German and English. The German text reads: “Die Stadtverführung ist neben einer lokalisierten Intervention oder Narration auch eine Route bzw. Reise. Es werden entweder Punkte im Feld Wien anvisiert, oder die Wege zwischen den Punkten thematisiert. Sowohl Punkte (meint Orte oder Objekte), als auch Wege können vorgesehen oder unvorhergesehen sein. Je determinierter Punkte und Wege sind, umso mehr wird aus der Stadtverführung eine Stadtführung. Ist neben dem räumlichen Rahmen auch der zeitliche festgelegt, wird - so mutmaße ich - definitiv nicht verführt, sondern geführt.” 116 Cathy Turner & Stephen Hodge ers and makers of work, it was also a means by which to encourage dramaturgical uncertainty, the offering of mis-guides rather than guides. A discussion of a few of the sixteen artworks helps to suggest what opportunities were opened up by this structure and why only local contributors could have offered them, even if our assistance and concept were helpful. Georg Blaschke’s tour, entitled Lehmann’s Addresses, is exemplary of material that would have been politically and ethically difficult for non- Viennese artists to deal with. The artist is a dancer and choreographer. Although at the time we probably considered that his skills and dancer’s sensibility did not underpin the work itself, in fact Tanzquartier Wien’s expanded understanding of dance informed the season as a whole. However, Blaschke was not using the techniques of conventional dance training, as he invited audience members to look at Lehmann’s Address Book for Vienna, dated 1935, in order to compare past and present. The audience members would decide on a route to take together, perhaps recalling personal associations and connections, vanished buildings and lost transport routes. The pre-war date of the book gives rise to potentially painful and difficult memories and discussions of World War II Vienna, requiring sensitive treatment and all the more difficult for English artists to propose. Another example may be Johann Schneider’s tour, The City Belongs to You! This was a piece offered by our youngest contributor: 10-year old Schneider created it, with his father, and it was born out of his obsession with trams. He took the audience on a tour of the tram system, suggesting improvements to its design and efficiency as he went alone, by drawing on a detailed knowledge beyond the scope of any visiting artist. The Suburb Safari offered by Patrick Golkowsky, Helmut Preis and Stefanie Sandhäugl drew on local knowledge of one particular area. These artists, operating as the KagranKollektiv, had a commitment to making work exclusively in and for Donaustadt, a culturally overlooked district of the city to the north of the Danube. The group’s publicity pointed out that In the wide open steppes of the Vienna suburbs there is another country: the kingdom of rubbish. Hardly any Viennese from the city centre districts cross the Danube voluntarily - but their rubbish does, and forms almost Alpine mountain ranges there. In the 1960s, the residents protested against the Rautenweg rubbish dump. They feared the dumping of hazardous waste. As proof to the contrary, the Pinzgau mountain goats were settled there, which have since then flourished. This group comprised a risk management consultant as well as two visual and textile artists. The latter have gone on to create further work in The International Festival and the City Space 117 Fig. 1: Suburb Safari by the KagranKollektiv (Vienna 2007). Photograph: Stephen Hodge the vein of Suburb Safari, including “un-guidebooks”, “un-guided exhibitions” and “un-guided tours”. 3 Members of Wrights & Sites visited Vienna a number of times over the course of nine months (October-June) substantially helping to shape work that was sometimes rough but always locally resonant, drawing on our own experience of leading “mis-guided tours” and unstructured Situationist-inspired drifts. All of us were present for three weeks at the end of the development period, so that our input was substantial and varied, depending on the levels of experience offered by the contributors. We were also supported by dramaturges from Tanzquartier Wien, whose local and organisational expertise augmented what we were able to offer. We introduced the projects at a well-attended opening at Tanzquartier Wien. Since the tours were usually encountered through the festival and brochure, they were framed by the context of the mini-festival and by our articulation of the concept of the Mis-Guide. This kept local performances and imported concept in varying degrees of explicit relationship 3 See for example Mobile Initiative Kultur (MIK), “Stadlnova”, http: / / stadlnova.colme.info/ projects/ -un-guidebook- (last accessed 15/ 10/ 2012). 118 Cathy Turner & Stephen Hodge throughout. Even so, the texts we wrote to introduce the Viennese “misguided tours” were largely ones in which we responded to the artists, their work and the places they inhabited, rather than ones in which we expounded our own framing ideas. 4. Mis-Guided in Fribourg The following year we were invited to work on a similar mini-festival, entitled “Mis-Guided”, conceived as a backbone to the 2008 Belluard Bollwerk International (BBI) Festival in Fribourg, Switzerland, and financially supported by the Pour-cent culturel Migros. 4 The concept was developed by Wrights & Sites after an approach by Sally DeKunst, director of BBI, who had followed the Vienna project. Targeted at any artist anywhere, the call for proposals asked for one side of an A4 sheet containing contact details; the project details in English, French or German (with an English summary of 1000 characters for French and German applications); and optional visual material. It drew 276 proposals from around the world, and the “jury” comprised Wrights & Sites and BBI staff and committee members (Sally De Kunst, Gabrielle Gawrysiak and Oliver Schmid). The selection process resulted in the realisation of six projects over an 11-day period that spanned the 2008 BBI Festival, and the artists were mentored throughout by Wrights & Sites. This was a smaller city and a smaller-scale enterprise compared to the one in Vienna. We were drawn to it because we hoped to use it to explore a new direction in our own work. We had begun to doubt the sociopolitical power of the “Mis-guided tour” or “Mis-Guide”, feeling that it essentially left place unchanged. We were interested in what the Situationists called “constructed situations”, 5 the creation of a new, playful ambiance that revolutionises our use of time and space. In relation to this, we were also increasingly interested in architecture, which we felt involved a deeper commitment to processes of transformation than performance could offer alone. We had initially proposed to Tanzquartier Wien that we might run a “mis-information centre” as a hub for the artworks. This had not been 4 Migros is Switzerland’s biggest retailer and employer. Pour-cent culturel Migros funds the production of, and access to cultural and social pursuits across the country. 5 See for example Guy Debord, “Report on the Construction of Situations and on the International Situationist Tendency’s Conditions of Organization and Action”, Situationist International Online, http: / / www.cddc.vt.edu/ sionline/ si/ report.html (last accessed 15/ 10/ 2012). The International Festival and the City Space 119 possible in 2007; however, Fribourg gave us this opportunity. This centre offered a number of small spaces where the artists could each have a presence and provide contextual material for their work. There was also space for us to exhibit images, text and a sound installation - and space for talks and other related activities. We hoped that this hub would provide a space that linked the “international festival” with the local urban spaces of the six artworks, and would provoke further exploration. We saw it as an approach to the “constructed situation” and a way to subvert the authority of the ubiquitous “Tourist Information Centre”. 5. Fribourg (Local Works) Before examining this further, we will first comment on the relationship between local and international as it operated in our engagement with local artists. What had been an elegant dramaturgical structure in Vienna was somewhat less clear in Fribourg, partly for practical reasons. Unlike the Viennese call, the Swiss call for contributions was made in three languages - French, German and English. While French and German are both languages native to Fribourg, the English call suggested the intention, made explicit in the wording, that the call was open “to Fribourg residents and to people from other places” (Belluard Bollwerk International Festival 2007). In the event there were four local artists (three artworks) and three from elsewhere - England, Germany and a Swiss artist based in another city. 6 This meant that the structure, in which we, as contextualising visiting artists, worked to facilitate local artists, became less immediately readable. Nonetheless, our mentoring relationship with the locally-made works still operated in much the same way as in Vienna, since these artists were less experienced than ourselves (or indeed the other artists) in creating this kind of work. Robert Walker, a Fribourg architect, constructed a (German-language) guided walking tour of Fribourg, called Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow, that highlighted, as he put it, “the metamorphosis of the city” (Walker 2008). Drawing on his many years of professional experience in Fribourg, he led audiences from one construction site (or recently realised project) to another, where he employed stereo images and viewers to help them to visualise the demolished buildings of the past and their proposed replace- 6 Since the Swiss artist did not know Fribourg well and was at that time a postgraduate student in the UK, we will consider him as ‘international’, although his presence draws attention to the possibility of a spectrum of relationships from the lifelong inhabitant to the distant traveller. 120 Cathy Turner & Stephen Hodge ments. The tour was serious and authoritative, deeply mapped through Walker’s close knowledge of the changing fabric of the city and its documentation. Two young local artists, Blaise Roulin and Yoann Chassot, subverted the tourist nonsense of a centre to a city or nation in their (French-language) work, The Centre of Fribourg. By adopting what they called the personae of “infomaticians and geomatic researchers” and by employing convoluted pseudo-methods (related to topology, mathematics, satellite imagery and “quite a bit of luck”) (Roulin and Chassot 2008), the pair sought to relocate the centre of Fribourg away from the commercial and educational foci to a tiny back lane. Riffing off their local knowledge with enormous wit and bravado, they launched a marketing campaign to advertise this new dislocated “centre” (playing with buzzwords, marketing language, signage and ceremonies involving the mayor). Photographer and cinematographer Alexander Hana hijacked Fribourg’s tourist road train in his piece Tschou-Tschou. Jettisoning its usual pretty tourist route and the municipal voice-over that highlighted “the good bits” of the city, he used his local knowledge to construct a new route (veering in and out of city edgelands, around the abattoir, along barbed wire fences, and so on) and a new voice-over (supposedly of the little train itself). All of these, then, were intelligent responses to a long experience of that particular location, and they all gave rise to questions concerning its identity, its dynamics and its history, revealing each of these as shifting and subjective by way of an attention to objective, but frequently overlooked local detail. Our role was to help each of them to articulate their projects clearly, helping to edit, simplify and compose their tours as performances. We were, in effect, dramaturges, assisting in the composition of the work. 6. Fribourg (International Works) In contrast, the visiting artists needed little dramaturgical assistance from us. Our role here was restricted to supporting with practical assistance (watering the grassy island), or helping to observe and feed back on the effects of the work as it unfolded. Lacking a long acquaintance with Fribourg, the tendency of these artists was to create interventions that caused new relationships to form rather than to use local knowledge to reveal the hidden city. As mentioned, the key to the idea of the “constructed situation” should have been our own mis-information centre. However, while it had interesting and successful elements, we doubted its functional suc- The International Festival and the City Space 121 cess. It seemed subsumed by its use as box office and was not a sufficiently informal or occupied space to allow it to become a lively hub, let alone a space of provocative or disruptive power. Nevertheless, its potential was suggested in a number of ways. The various rooms offered alternative routes into understanding the artworks taking place in the city. Roulin and Chassot, for example, could be encountered working as officials at the “Centre for Restabilisation” in a parody of government quangos. We offered a range of talks, a screening of short films and a library of books about site-specific art, walking and urban spaces. A sound installation involved the listener in watching trains pass by on the railway directly outside the window, thinking about Fribourg as a space of entries and exits, and the problematics of official narrations of a city. Situated between the local and the festival’s international context, it probably required a longer local engagement than we were able to bring to it, remaining in the end a strong concept but ultimately an unrealised one. We were, however, very interested in the dramaturgical possibilities that began to be revealed by the work of the other artists who did not come from Fribourg. Fig. 2: The Island by Christian Hasucha (Fribourg 2008). Photograph: Stephen Hodge Christian Hasucha’s The Island was a raised platform above the street, which could be used, for whatever purpose, by those who booked it out by the hour. A public-private space, it existed in tension with the public 122 Cathy Turner & Stephen Hodge space that surrounded it. Curved so that, when sitting on it, one could not see the edges, it provided a sense of security and intimacy, although it remained in full view from the street. It was, Hasucha suggested, a “proposition” to the city residents; an invitation to find a use for it and a relationship to its unfamiliar space, to book it for whatever purpose and to play with this dynamic between the private kingdom and its public reception by the street. Hasucha’s work brought no explicit agenda to bear on Fribourg. Rather, it offered its visitors a detached, voyeuristic view of the city from their very own island. As Hasucha put it: “There they can follow - as if they were private - the 360° - live show of Fribourg’s every-day business. And they will be observed like performers” (Hasucha 2008). Over the course of its time in Fribourg the “island” was put to multiple uses, as a meeting place, a workshop area, a performance space, a viewing point. On one occasion Hasucha’s island was illicitly occupied by football fans, who neglected to book a slot but simply found a way to climb up onto it. While this presented some difficulties for the stage management team, who stood at the bottom imploring them to come down so that booked appointments could take place, it was perhaps a measure of the way that the city took the island to its heart. For A Box for Fribourg Nicolas Galeazzi created multiple human-scale boxes scattered through different districts of Fribourg. Neutral in colour and intentionally vague in design and purpose (with openings that might be doors or windows and ledges that might be shelves, seats or beds) they were similarly “propositions”, albeit enigmatic, lacking introduction. They did not announce their presence but were left for Fribourg residents to use and abuse as they wished. Traces of these uses and occupations were recorded and documented at the mis-information centre, together with discussions of the different districts in which they were located. This then created a kind of portrait of the different parts of Fribourg and stimulated comparison between them. Like Hasucha’s island, Galeazzi’s boxes were other to the city, alien interventions, in his own assessment: “Raw, public and for use” (Galeazzi 2008). We ourselves were present on occasions where city dwellers attempted to explain and describe them, seeming to find in them amusingly open encounters. They were adopted by vagrants, moved around by park officials and partied in by knowing festival-goers. Rajni Shah’s Altars of Us All were scrolled letters, left for the passer-by to find, written by strangers in whatever language they chose. These were produced in workshops with festival audiences. Participating in one of these, Cathy Turner was initially confused by the request that she should The International Festival and the City Space 123 write a letter for a complete stranger - then ended up pouring her heart out in halting French. A message for a stranger, by a stranger, left with flowers in the anonymous spaces of the city. Shah’s work explicitly addressed the possibility of intimate exchange and generosity between those who do not know each other or do not necessarily experience place in the same way. Placing flowers and letters in the city’s funicular railway did, however, feel a little intrusive, despite the gentleness of the gesture itself. Because their meaning was enclosed within them, these letters were, perhaps, more challenging than the open, if enigmatic structures of island and boxes. All of these operated as, to use Hasucha’s term, “propositions” to local people, who were not necessarily addressed through the festival mechanism itself. Whereas the Vienna performances were mostly tours, requiring tickets, these three works were “relational”, open to being noticed and responded to by unknowing audiences - audiences who did not necessarily perceive the work as part of an “international festival” framework. For part of the audience, then, this was not international artwork or even artwork at all. It was a ripple in public space, something unusual or interesting to be reckoned with. The Situationists suggested that, to be effective, the “constructed situation” should not be art, should not be a “happening”. When the work cannot be categorised as art, it requires negotiation in terms of what it does, how it changes things. The local absorbs or rejects it but finds it difficult to ignore. Indeed, the Fribourg experience suggested that one can be involved in a festival as an international artist and yet make work which risks its very identity as art form, regaining an identity through local redefinition. The local resident becomes a collaborator - perhaps becomes the “local” artist. In order to allow this, the artwork must possess a dramaturgical quality that can be considered within the framework of “relational aesthetics” (Bourriaud 1998), but which Cathy Turner and dramaturge Duska Radosavljevic have begun to refer to as “porosity” (2012), referencing Kully Thiarai’s use of the term to describe a theatre institution that is open to a range of uses by its constituency (2011: 16). Our motive in adopting the term “porous” (where we might have used terms such as “relational”, “interactive”, “socially engaged”, “dialogic” or even “immersive”), was to link aspects of “relational” work to this desire, held by Thiarai and others, for the arts organisation to be made permeable and open to transformation by disparate publics. The “porous” dramaturgy makes space for its audience’s contribution: perhaps it also constitutes or invokes a form of community, allowing the artwork, and through it the arts organisation, temporarily to hold, but not to control, unforeseen constituencies. The Mis-Guide possesses such 124 Cathy Turner & Stephen Hodge porosity and Hasucha and Galeazzi’s works, in particular, revealed that the architectural object can also possess it. 7 7. Sideways In 2012 we became involved in a third festival, which took quite a different approach to commissioning both international and local artists. The extended itinerant festival and conference concept behind Sideways was conceived at a Walk21 conference by Andy Vandevyvere (director of Belgium’s Trage Wegen or “Slow Ways”), Martin Kohler (German photographer, urbanist and academic), Peter Ankh (Italian artist) and Andrew Stuck (director of UK-based Rethinking Cities). Drawing on Trage Wegen’s resources and connections, Vandevyvere was responsible for its realisation in 2012, having gained the backing of over 50 partner organisations. Targeted at itinerant artists anywhere, the call for proposals asked for contact details, the project name, a project synopsis, the project form, a detailed budget and optional visual material. The “jury panel” included art experts and the Sideways team. The selection process resulted in the realisation of 33 projects, four weeks of walking, five weekend festivals and two symposia. Included within this was the Wrights & Sites proposal, Ambulant Architectures. This festival was managed by Vandevyvere and his team at Trage Wegen in Ghent - not an arts organisation but “an environmental non-profit organisation that works for the conservation and (re)development of paths and trails in the northern, Dutch-speaking part of Belgium”. This gave the festival quite a different set of aims and priorities from those held by either Tanzquartier Wien/ Wiener Festwochen or Belluard Bollwerk International. Thus, it was not only advertised as “an interdisciplinary arts festival” but emphasised the research element of the artistic process, opening it up to “the cultural meanings of being on the road. Not as a driver or passenger, but on foot”, and being designed to reach out to a wide range of people concerned with walking and the landscape. Its aims, similarly, were to emphasise the qualities of “slow paths” and aspects of environmental sustainability. 8 These priorities and aims produced a completely different kind of festival structure. Rather than being based in one city, Sideways was an 7 See Cathy Turner (2014) for a more comprehensive discussion of ‘porosity’ as a metaphor. 8 Sideways Festival, “Welcome to the Sideways Festival”, http: / / www.tragewegen. be/ nl/ about (last accessed 15/ 10/ 2012). The International Festival and the City Space 125 itinerant festival, crossing Belgium from West to East, over four weeks (August 17 th to Sept 17 th , 2012) and with five stops for more accessible public events at the weekends (in Menen, Herzele, Brussels, Turnhout and Zutendaal). Participating artists were divided into “site explorers”, who took part in the weekends, and “wayfarers”, who joined the walkers for all, or part of the route. Fig. 3: Sideways Festival wayfarers (Belgium 2012). Photograph: Stephen Hodge The artists, both “site explorers” and “wayfarers”, were from a range of countries - Belgium and the UK being the largest national groups, with roughly equivalent numbers. Alongside these were Belgian nationals from the Trage Wegen team and local guides as the journey passed through each district. These guides were responsible for the precise routes taken in their area (the general direction having been mapped out by Trage Wegen), and they often explained aspects of it to the walkers. The walking party consisted of around 20 people, with a range of different relationships to the terrain they passed through. The length of each day’s walk - ranging from approximately 18km to 36km - meant that all shared in considerable effort and close engagement with the detail of Belgium cities, suburbs and countryside. This shared commitment to the experience of place levelled 126 Cathy Turner & Stephen Hodge out many of the differences between artists, and rendered largely irrelevant issues such as their degree of experience or acclaim. If there was a sense of “difference” it was most marked between “wayfarers” and “site explorers” in that the latter’s experience of the festival was inevitably less rich, even than that of “wayfarers” who walked part of the route, as we did. The somewhat strenuous nature of the festival did produce some limitations but also strengths. It was sometimes difficult to spend sufficient time in artistic exploration, given the need to complete a longish journey in a day. However, the oscillation between an inward-facing group that learned from and conversed with each other, and an outward-facing engagement with a wider public, made it an event whose impact might be considerable, if difficult to ascertain. The walk enabled us to test out our own ideas of what we termed “Ambulant Architectures”. Our original idea was that the walker might become a form of architect, intervening in the built environment. However, as they evolved, the objects we carried were not really “architectures” at all, but, as Elke Van Campenhout beautifully put it, the objects “grew out of the fantasy of architecture” (informal dialogue at Sideways, 2012, Zutendaal). We called them “Geometries” (based on Le Corbusier’s ideal architectural forms), “Plinth” (a portable platform), “Boat” (a boat-like wire structure) and “Beacons” (markers made of angular metal wire). The objects, then, were not exactly architectural interventions but became lenses for seeing, or perhaps subversions of the original architectural forms that inspired them: the plinth that was carried; the boat that did not float but which floated conversations; the beacons that were secretive, spectral markers; the geometries that measured real architecture against ideal forms. As quite literal “baggage”, these architectures gave form to some of the ideas and ideals we brought with us to this unfamiliar landscape. They were conversation points and burdens in varying measures. 8. Conclusion Each of these festivals, then, curated artists from their home countries and from other countries in different ways and proportions. Each had different priorities but all had to negotiate the tension between the need for a local engagement with place and an international forum and platform. For both Tanzquartier Wien/ Wiener Festwochen and Belluard Bollwerk International Fribourg there was a need to ensure some visibility for international artists, alongside a rich engagement with the local. The work in Vienna created a meaningful dialogue between UK artists who had long The International Festival and the City Space 127 worked with site, as mentors to those who were “expert” in their knowledge of the city (and sometimes as artists of various kinds) but who, on the whole, did not have an arts practice primarily concerned with place and space. In Fribourg our presence became less instrumental, though arguably it still provided coherence and guidance in the curation of six works which placed locals side by side with artists from elsewhere. The “international” artists, ourselves included, tended to create rather different kinds of work from those who knew the city well: by introducing “foreign objects” into the space of the city, there was a tentative experimentation with artistic intervention and relational or “porous” work, rather than a revelation of deep knowledge of place. The Sideways festival had different priorities and different results. It was a “travelling laboratory” rather than a platform for individual artists, whatever their country of origin. As such it was able to be less hierarchical, but it may have been more difficult for non-participants to obtain a clear sense of any artist’s individual project. What was both exhausting and immensely valuable in this project was the way it demanded an absolute commitment to engaging with the places along the journey, and a dialogue between those with hugely varying perceptions of the place. While its precise form might be problematic to replicate elsewhere, this aspect deserves attention, as it begins to erode the problematic notion of the “international” artist making a work for “anywhere”. The Viennese project provides a dramaturgical model that might most easily be emulated and that seemed to work well, though it might appear to under-employ the artistic skills of the international artist, whose role becomes primarily one of facilitator or, indeed, dramaturge. The Fribourg project, while problematic as a model, since it lacked clarity, does demonstrate that work made by international (or non-resident) artists can reveal the city if that work is dramaturgically porous, allowing local residents to interpret it according to their own needs and desires. Finally, the Sideways approach is an interesting precedent for a different relationship between place and art - one in which hierarchies are reversed and place becomes the central concern, while art is responsive to it, and to dialogue between different constituencies. Literature Bourriaud, Nicolas. Relational Aesthetics. Dijon. Les presses du réel. 1998. Debord, Guy. “Report on the Construction of Situations and on the International Situationist Tendency’s Conditions of Organization and Action.” Situationist 128 Cathy Turner & Stephen Hodge International Online. Online at: http: / / www.cddc.vt.edu/ sionline/ si/ report. html (last accessed 15/ 10/ 2012). Gleeson, Regina. “Dislocate, Renegotiate and Flow: Globalisation’s Impact on Art Practice, Part 1.” In: Circa 107. 2004a. 67-70. Gleeson, Regina. “Dislocate, Renegotiate and Flow: The Mercurial Curatorial, Part 3.” In: Circa 109. 2004b. 63-66. Kraus, Thomas. Conference paper for DRAMAforum. Warsaw. Instytut Teatralny. 2009. Kwon, Miwon. One Place after Another: Site-Specific Art and Locational Identity. Cambridge. MIT Press. 2004. Lippard, Lucy. The Lure of the Local: Senses of Place in a Multicultural Society. New York. New Press. 1997. Müller, Bärbel. “Überlegungen zur Stadtverführung/ Thoughts on ‘Stadtverführungen’.” Artists’ briefing. Vienna. Tanzquartier Wien. 2007. Morrison-Bell, Cynthia, Mike Collier, Tim Ingold & Alistair Robinson. Walk On: From Richard Long to Janet Cardiff - 40 Years of Art Walking. (Exhibition Catalogue, accompanying exhibition curated by Cynthia Morrison-Bell, Alistair Robinson with Mike Collier and Janet Ross, touring PMG London (Mar - May 2013), NGCA Sunderland (Jun - Aug 2013), MAC Birmingham (Feb - Mar 2014), The Atkinson, Southport (Apr - Jul 2014), Plymouth Art Centre (Sept - Dec 2014)). Art Circuit and Arts Editions North. Sunderland. 2013. Seidel, Beate. “Conference paper for DRAMAforum.” Warsaw. Instytut Teatralny. 2009. Thiarai, Kully. “Cultural Diversity and the Ecology of Dramaturgy in Making Vibrant Theatre Practice.” In: Peter Eckersall, Melanie Beddie and Paul Monaghan (Eds.). Dramaturgies: New Theatres for the 21st Century. Melbourne. The Dramaturgies Project. 2011. 11-19. Tuan, Yi-Fu. “Place and Space.” In: Stephen Gale and Gunnar Olssen (Eds.). Philosophy in Geography. Dordrecht. Reidel Publishing. 1979. 387-425. Turner, Cathy & Hodge, Stephen. “Site: Between Ground and Groundlessness.” In: Deirdre Heddon and Jennie Klein (Eds.). Histories and Practices of Live Art. Basingstoke. Palgrave Macmillan. 2012. 91-121. Turner, Cathy & Radosavljevic, Duska. “Porous Dramaturgy: ‘Togetherness’ and Community in the Structure of the Artwork.” UK, Croatia, N. Ireland. 2012 (AHRC funded project 2013-14). Turner, Cathy. “Porous Dramaturgy and the Pedestrian.” In New Dramaturgy: International Perspectives on Theory and Practice. London. Methuen Bloomsbury. 2014. 199-213. Artist Proposals Belluard Bollwerk International Festival. Call for proposals. Fribourg. 2007. Galeazzi, Nicolas. Artist’s proposal for Belluard Bollwerk International Festival. Fribourg. 2008. The International Festival and the City Space 129 Hasucha, Christian. Artist’s proposal for Belluard Bollwerk International Festival. Fribourg. 2008. Roulin, Blaise and Chassot, Yoann. Artists’ proposal for Belluard Bollwerk International Festival. Fribourg. 2008. Tanzquartier Wien and Wiener Festwochen. Call for proposals. Vienna. 2006. Walker, Robert. Artist’s proposal for Belluard Bollwerk International Festival. Fribourg. 2008. Dramaturgy and the Facilitation of Encounters Synne K. Behrndt I preface this discussion about encounter, the relational and the spectator by declaring an interest in these ideas and processes due to my work as dramaturge within devising. In devising my work is often about facilitating situations or creating conditions that enable something to happen. To be more precise, dramaturgical work in devising is about creating a space for initial exploration and then to extrapolate potential and create a structure and dramaturgy. Devising is often described as an openended process where the collaborators attempt to create parameters and a holding form whilst at the same time working out what “the work” may be or is attempting to do. In the book Invisible Things: Documentation from a Devising Process (Harradine and Behrndt 2011 b) director David Harradine and I discuss the way in which rehearsals at the beginning of a devising process are often about creating the conditions for the work. How then does one create conditions for exploring that which one cannot know yet whilst at the same solidifying that which may only be vague hunches and ideas? It may in the first instance be about creating conditions for something to happen and to work out what questions may provide the most interesting answers. Jeroen Peeters puts it well in his article “Heterogeneous Dramaturgy” when asking “How to discover things one doesn’t know yet? How to create a space for that? ” (2010: 19). In devising the performance dramaturgy often finds its genesis in the encounter and meeting between people in the rehearsal space, and it may therefore make sense to think of rehearsals as creating conditions for something to happen in the space between people. This also involves finding a shared way of talking and thinking about the work. And every project invites the devisers to work out its specific “conceptual space,” a process which is about inventing a shared space and language of making (Harradine and Behrndt 2011: 152b). Dramaturgy and the Facilitation of Encounters 131 What brings me to talk about the spectator and the relational in this essay is also an interest in how devising’s open exploration form can translate into the work’s dramaturgy. When collaborating with the directors David Harradine and Samantha Butler of Fevered Sleep, our ambition is often to create a performance dramaturgy where the audience has space. In a conversation about the piece On Ageing (2010) Harradine remarks that unlike the well-driven and well-paced narrative structure that does not give much space for the audience to drift away, Fevered Sleep’s work and performances deliberately and “actively create opportunities for people to drift or make a space within a work […], and as Harradine remarks give the audience time to spend with one emotion or moment” (Harradine and Behrndt 2011: 59a). The challenge is then to create dramaturgical and compositional conditions for this “drifting or meandering space and encounter” to happen in the performance. As is evident in the description above I am interested in how we create conditions for making discoveries in a devising process, and how we - on a practical level - create conditions for a dramaturgy and performance structure that enable the audience space to roam. What would be an interesting dramaturgical language that avoids reducing the audience’s experience to an exercise in following a narrative and decoding the content? In this article I look at examples of contemporary practice where the spectator is seen as an active co-creator and participant and where the presence of the spectator is built consciously into the dramaturgy of the work. In his contribution “Dramaturgy and Postdramaturgy” to this volume, Patrice Pavis remarks that “We still lack a theory of creative subject/ object and of author-ity; what is the part of the object we describe and the part of the describing subject” (Pavis 2014: 26). While this article does not propose a theory on the subject and object, it offers up examples of the way in which some contemporary artists have put classical definitions of the audience-artwork relationship under considerable pressure, and how their work may enable us to understand the relational as a dramaturgical strategy. While we still do not have a theory per se, as Pavis stated, the ideas about the subject/ object relationship have been in circulation for many years in the visuals arts, dance and literature. Sandra Umathum opens her introduction to her book on intersubjectivity in contemporary art with a quotation from philosopher Siegried J. Schmidt, who in 1971 predicted that the “development where the viewer (Betrachter) is elevated to the role of collaborator in the art process is indicative for arts practice in the future” (qtd. in Umathum 2011: 9). This perspective may arguably have its conceptual genesis in Duchamp’s lecture from 1957, where he 132 Synne K. Behrndt posits that “the creative act is not performed by the artist alone”, rather the spectator “adds his contribution to the creative act” (Duchamp 1957: 140). In other words, the “work” emerges in a dialogue between the viewer and the work, thus “meaning” does not reside in the work waiting to be discovered. Roland Barthes releases the spectator from the role of a decoding subject by suggesting we should do away with the subject (the decoding spectator) and object, remarking that there is “not a subject and an object” (1990: 16). This does not mean that there is no spectator or work, rather the “reader” also becomes a “writer”. There is no one universal interpretation that the reader is supposed to unveil. Bakthin noted that in actual living speech a message is essentially “created for the first time in the process of transmission”, hence there is no fixed code (qtd. in Todorov 1984: 56). While transmission may be a somewhat problematic term, the interesting point here is that meaning-making is a process of negotiation. The question and discussion about subject/ object are therefore not new and we can find many helpful historical perspectives, however Pavis’ comment about the need for a more developed theory in relation to performance seems pertinent when considering contemporary work that places the spectator, or public, at the centre of its dramaturgy. In her article “Postdramatic Spectatorship: Participate or Else” Rachel Fensham maps the changing approaches to spectator dramaturgy that have followed Hans- Thies Lehmann’s thesis and remarks that “the postdramatic hypothesis leads to the creation, and installation, of a new kind of spectator, one who participates in the process and meaning of the event, or situation” (Fensham 2012). And while audiences are arguably always participating in creating meaning, classical theatre or not, the new spectator paradigm that Fensham is referring to challenges, to quote Peter Boenisch, “underlying spectating relations and their implicit hierarchies” (Boenisch 2012). This subversion of hierarchies will have conceptual and practical consequences for how we understand the dramaturgy of a work, and it may even mean that we have to re-negotiate our understanding of what, where and how the work is in the first place. We can take a new spectator paradigm to mean that the spectator renegotiates her own position or role, possibly shifting her position from that of the decoding subject, slightly outside of the work, to the position of the implicated participant who is aware that her presence is a significant part of what the work is or may be doing, the presence of the spectator will also affect the dramaturgy of the work. Maaike Bleeker summarises a more self-reflexive approach to spectatorship when she posits that seeing will have to implicate an understanding of how we are part of what we Dramaturgy and the Facilitation of Encounters 133 see. We therefore need to be aware of how we ourselves are implicated in what is seen: What seems to be just “there to be seen” is, in fact, rerouted through memory and fantasy, caught up in threads of the unconscious and entangled with the passions. Vision […] appears to be irrational, inconsistent and undependable. More than that, seeing appears to alter the thing seen and to transform the one seeing, showing them to be profoundly intertwined in the event that is visuality. (Bleeker 2008: 2) In other words, our seeing is charged with our own dramas, desires and fears, and to some extent we might rehearse or live out these dramas in our interpretation of and responses to the work. It therefore seems interesting to consider how performance and art can facilitate an opportunity for us to become aware of how we see and in so doing, how one can create a dramaturgy that reflects us back to ourselves. In the following I will discuss examples of work where fundamental questions are raised about the relationship between the work and the spectator, and where the point of the work may be to give space for the spectator to engage with actual encounters, social structures and the spectator’s self-reflexive process. That art can facilitate a self-reflexive process was also the topic of discussion when Hans Christian Gimbel, co-artistic director of the 2007 Metropolis Public Art Festival in Copenhagen, published an article in the Danish newspaper Politiken. In this article, Gimbel defended the festival against the criticism that some of the work in the programme was “lacking”. One criticism was that it was difficult to identify where or what the work in fact was. Gimbel argued that some of the creations, for example very subtle sound installations in the city space or fleeting encounters between performers and spectators, needed a different critical approach and could not be grasped or understood by way of a classical dramaturgy paradigm. To him, what may have been perceived as unfinished or incomplete work was in fact work that invited the audience to participate in the creation of the work. But not in the sense that the audience should be adding the missing pieces to work otherwise lacking in completion, rather this openness was an invitation for the audience to have, as Gimbel wrote, a guided tour within themselves (Gimbel 2007). How then can the critic adopt a critical position when the work resists an objecthood that can be critiqued? What happens to critical engagement when we ourselves are the subject of the work? Shannon Jackson has referred to Claire Bishop’s very critical discussion of this question in relation to works maintaining that they are about inter-subjective encounters (Jackson 2011: 47). If the work is attempting to break down the idea of the bystanding spectator 134 Synne K. Behrndt and instead invites the spectator to be part of shaping the work’s dramaturgy, then the implied hierarchy of the subject and object shifts or is unsettled. If the spectator, as Olafur Eliasson has put it, becomes “the source of the artwork”, then our focus for criticism may shift to our own way of engaging but it may also shift to a more direct engagement with the kind of content that the work is proposing. Gimbel’s criticism of what he called a longing for the tangible and complete object that can be analysed and critiqued is reminiscient of Nicolas Bourriaud’s argument in Relational Aesthetics (first published in French in 1998). Bourriaud describes art as “a state of encounter” (2002: 18). To him, “[a]rt is no longer seeking to represent utopias, rather it is attempting to construct concrete spaces” (2002: 46), and this shift from the representational to the concrete also marks a shift from the idea that art is an object, created by an autonomous artist, to art as a process that the spectator has to enter actively into. Bourriaud writes: Meaning and sense are the outcome of an interaction between artist and beholder, and not an authoritarian fact. In modern art, I must, as beholder, make an effort to produce sense out of objects that are ever lighter, ever more impalpable and ever more volatile. Where the decorum of the picture used to offer a frame, a format, we must now often be content with bits and pieces. Feeling nothing means not making enough effort. (2002: 80) It is difficult to gauge if Bourriaud intends to make the spectator exclusively responsible for the work’s impact. If so that could be overstating the case somewhat since surely it would still be possible to distinguish between more or less successful attempts at facilitating an encounter. Nevertheless Bourriaud’s suggestion that contemporary art challenges the spectator to make sense of ever lighter, porous, intangible objects or situations puts the onus on the spectator to take responsibility for their own experience, making art a social and relational practice, and not just an object to behold. Thus artist and curator Rirkrit Tiravanija has proposed that what is important in his performative exhibitions is the sense of community and audience engagement. According to Tiravanija it is not “what you see that is important, rather the important thing is what takes place between people” (qtd. in Thea and Micchelli 2009: 8). In 2003 the Museum für Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt opened the ambitious exhibition “The Living Museum” where fixed objects and installations were replaced by living human beings. For example in Tobias Rehberger’s Three Boys Four Girls seven teenagers took up residency in the museum and visitors were invited to “hang out with them”, so to speak. Sandra Umathum remarks that some people did end up spending much Dramaturgy and the Facilitation of Encounters 135 time with them and became part of a group of sorts (Umathum 2011). In Rehberger’s work the line between performer and visitor is somewhat blurred, and one could say that the work ends up being about sharing time and space with other people, perhaps forming bonds or friendships or just hanging out for a while. What essentially comes of this and what this experience may amount to for any of the participants is of course a good question. For some visitors this was perhaps a rare opportunity to spend time with an age group and section of society that is sometimes maligned, patronised or ill understood, for others the piece may be a thought provoking and interesting challenge to the concept of the museum. But what is of interest to this discussion is that our decisions and actions constitute the dramaturgy of “the piece”. We are not on the outside, peering in on an object, and if we choose to study the group as if they were an exhibit or an object, the point of Three Boys Four Girls may then be to make us conscious of the fact that we are objectifying living people. We are actively deciding whether or not to engage ourselves in the encounter. It may even make us aware that every day and every interaction in the everyday has a kind of dramaturgy, a dramaturgy that comes into being through a series of decisions, moments, action and interactions. An interesting slipperiness between the work and the viewer is also found in artist and choreographer Tino Sehgal’s dramaturgy, which may well be described as orchestrated live encounters between people in social situations. His work often takes place in gallery or museum spaces, and these contexts in an almost Duchampian way become the stage for his exploration of how far one can dematerialise the fixed object. In an interview given in connection with the Turbine Hall commission at the Tate Modern in London Sehgal explains: “The museum is a place where we think about how to produce material things. That is my question - not the question of choreography, which is ‘How can a body move? ’, but ‘What can we do instead of producing objects’? ” (qtd. in Higgins 2012). In This Progress at the Guggenheim in New York (2010) the visitor is invited to move up Frank Lloyd Wright’s spiral ramp whilst being engaged in conversations on the theme of “progress” with participants of various ages. Thus the piece begins with a conversation with a child and ends with the farewell of a senior participant. In This is Propaganda the visitor enters the gallery space and is greeted by an attendant literally singing the credits of the piece: “Tino Sehgal, This is Propaganda”. This scenario is repeated every time a person enters or indeed re-enters the space. As Umathum remarks, Sehgal’s “work” comes into being at the moment when the visitor enters and it dissolves upon the visitor’s departure (Hinz and Roselt 2011: 164). The visitor’s presence mobilises and brings the 136 Synne K. Behrndt work into existence, thus it exists as a fleeting moment, announcing itself upon a visitor’s entrance and then disappears. In contrast to the other museum or gallery exhibits Sehgal’s work constitutes a moment that can be repeated but cannot be fixed or held in full view as an object. In This Objective of that Object the visitor enters an empty gallery space and soon finds herself in the company of five other visitors. They begin to form choreographic patterns, chant as a chorus and end with casual conversation. In Frieze Catherine Wood vividly reflects on her experience and how she attempts to negotiate her role within a dramaturgy that unfolds in real time, thus concluding: The self-conscious paranoia induced by Sehgal’s open invitation to probe the boundaries of this work represents a transfer of emotional vulnerability, displacing the revelation of internal subjectivity from the performer to the - perhaps involuntary - spectator who is framed as though on stage. (2005) Wood’s observation that the visitor finds herself framed as a spectator who is “on stage” indicates that she becomes both a performer and spectator, and so Sehgal’s work arguably radicalises the idea that art is a process and that the work, whatever it is, takes shape in a dialogue with the viewer. Indeed Sehgal’s work comes into being as a consequence of the spectator, and inadvertently the spectator becomes the subject of the work. This slipperiness is also evident in the way in which Sehgal develops and rehearses. Sandra Umathum comments that behind the seemingly improvised nature of the work, there is a carefully managed rehearsal process where Sehgal and the performers seek to approximate the real encounters with the public or visitors. Test audiences are brought in to expose the performers to different scenarios. As Umathum remarks, the rehearsal process consists of the performers exploring all possible, likely and unlikely dramaturgical scenarios and situations that could arise in their meeting with a public (Hinz and Roselt 2011: 167). Here rehearsal is not to be understood as a process of repetition and fixing actions, instead it is all about exploring the many different permutations of social interaction between people. One could say that rehearsals are about investigating the way in which a dramaturgy may occur or emerge in the situations and conflicts that arise between people in somewhat real situations. Sehgal’s work engages us more directly with other human beings, situations that are provoked and staged through the performers, or “interpreters” as they are sometimes named. In These Associations (2012) the giant Turbine Hall at Tate Modern London becomes a stage. Groups of “interpreters” move like a giant wave, or formation, through the hall. The choreographic pattern is seemingly determined by game rules. A small Dramaturgy and the Facilitation of Encounters 137 group circles me and stands close by me, waiting and watching for a couple of minutes. The performers have by their simple gesture put me on stage, they have framed me as part of the performance. I do not know if I have become the object of a small group’s game, or if they are waiting for me to do something. Other spectators watch me as I watch them watching me. Spectators begin to mingle with the performers and join in, and everybody in the hall is potentially part of the piece. I am approached by a young woman who tells me a story about her father’s visit to London. He accompanied her everywhere she went that week and when he left she realised that his presence (and now absence) made her feel differently about her life and work. This moment is an unexpected and unassuming intimacy between two strangers created in the space of a short story. Her story about other people’s presence in our lives, about intimacy, companionship, and about absence and being left behind mirrors the way that these “interpreters” drop into the spectator’s life, or space, for a short moment. Although very different from Rehberger’s piece, the dramaturgy of These Associations, like Rehberger’s, is predicated on strangers meeting in a public (art) space and negotiating each other’s presence and making active decisions about how to engage with this “other”. Adrian Searle’s review of These Associations concludes: “There are no objects: we are the subject. It is about communality and intimacy, the self as social being, the group and the individual, belonging and separation. We’re in the middle of things” (Searle 2012). Albeit with different consequences, visual artist Olafur Eliasson’s installations are, like Sehgal’s performances, often mobilised by the presence of the visitor. Eliasson himself remarks that he calls his works “experimental setups; they are structures which visitors can engage with” (Eliasson and Irwin 2007). This engagement may be subtle. In The Curious Museum (2010) created in Berlin’s Martin-Gropius-Bau the visitor, whilst walking past a big window, catches her own reflection. As she comes closer to the window she realises that this reflection is the effect of mirrors installed in the opposite-facing building. Or perhaps the building is being reflected in a big mirror that in turn produces the distinct feeling that the building is turning in on itself. The Curious Museum produces a range of responses from other museum guests, from quiet contemplation of oneself to outright performance to the mirror and to other visitors. It invites the visitor to look at herself looking and thus frames the activity of the spectator looking. We become aware that we are spectators in the museum, and while we are a solitary spectator in the museum, we are also engaging in the collective activity of looking. Thus Eliasson’s work incorporates a self-reflexive element where the viewers 138 Synne K. Behrndt acknowledge their own and other people’s presence as well as their own looking. In an interview with Robert Irwin Olafur Eliasson goes as far as to call the spectator a user of art. He is aware that this may seem utilitarian but insists on the term because “a utilitarian perspective is useful in order to forge and gesture towards a more direct relationship between art and society”. He remarks: The key issue is the role of the engaged spectator or user. The question is whether the activities or actions of that user in fact constitute the artwork. Let’s say that without the participation of the user there is nothing.[…], we need to take it to the point of saying that the user is the source of the artwork. And the psychology - the memories, expectations, moods, and emotions - that a person brings to the work is an important part of it. (Eliasson and Irwin 2007) The idea of the user reappears in an interview with Hans Ulrich Obrist where Eliasson asks: ‘How do you actually take your own individual experience of something and do something productive with it? […] This is where the idea of the plural or collectivity or ‘being-with’ comes into play’ (Obrist and Eliasson 2008). I take Eliasson’s notion of the engaged spectator or user to mean that when we are directly involved we also get a sense of how meaning is created through the act of doing. This practical element seems crucial, it is by being implicated in a physical sense that we also understand how our presence affects change. The point may be to make us aware of structures, processes and our own behaviour and how we are with other people and in the world. This merging of subject and object implicates a blurring of the perceived boundaries between the work and the viewer, but can it also lead to a greater sense of responsibility through action? The dramaturgy of the work situates us as a creator, but not just in the sense that we create meaning and make sense of things, rather it is through our actions and our decisions that the work emerges. Dialogue, encounter and potential collision with “otherness” are dramaturgical strategies in the work of Rehberger and Sehgal, inviting an exploration of the ways in which relationships, be they political, personal or institutional come into being. In their article “Precarious Encounters” Katharina Pewny and Simon Leenknegt discuss Sehgal’s work in relation to “the precarious”, referring to the sense of instability that is built into his dramaturgy. Here for example they comment on Diese Beschäftigung [This Preoccupation]: The visitors found themselves in an unstable situation which oscillated between art and everyday life, being neither and both at the same time. In this Dramaturgy and the Facilitation of Encounters 139 unstable or precarious situation, the visitor had to make small decisions about potential movements and gestures. (Pewny and Leenknegt 2011: 12) Precarious, a word that Pewny has adapted from Judith Butler and applied to theatre studies, opens up a perspective on Sehgal’s work where the spectators find themselves directly involved in situations and scenarios which may, as in the case of Diese Beschäftigung, lead to contemplation of real-life relationships and authority. As suggested in Eliasson’s earlier quotation the point of activating the spectator, as it were, is also to initiate change through action. Thus for Tino Sehgal the classical architecture of the stage-audience is outdated, as he comments in the interview with Charlotte Higgins: It is for me a problematic format because it belongs to another time, a more collective time. For me, politically, to sit people down, shut them up and ask them to look in one direction, somehow doesn’t belong to our times. (2012) Sehgal’s observation invites a consideration for how best and most profoundly to stage a public’s relationship to their space, themselves and their environment. Sehgal’s dismissal of the theatre auditorium as outdated may seem a bit categorical, and I am not convinced that we live in a less collective time but he has an interesting point about the political nature of the audience-stage configuration. It would be too easy to dismiss the classical theatre auditorium on the grounds that it implies a passive audience attitude. There are after all positive things to be said for more quiet contemplation and listening. However, this architectural arrangement does perhaps to some extent reinforce a classical subject-object relationship where the audience are observing as if they are somehow outside the work, and the stories and conflicts presented on stage belong to other people. Moreover, and this is where I follow the point about collectivity, can the theatre auditorium with its predetermined rules, communal sharing and long tradition of critical discourse hold or contain work that explores the incomplete nature of life processes and work that is not trying to represent something? In a discussion with Sky Goodden in connection with his work Untilled, Pierre Huyghe posits that the work was not made for a public per se and in response to the question what then happens to the “art object”, he says that this is difficult to say but that he is interested in “the things or operations in themselves, in the contingency, in the creation of form that would not be exhausted by a sedimentation of discourses” (qtd. in Goodden 2012). I find Huyghe’s response interesting because it challenges us to engage with the work without the ballast of prescribed discourses or criti- 140 Synne K. Behrndt cal frameworks, and it challenges us to see the dramaturgy of the work as something that is being created in the moment of encounter. In the opening article to this volume, entitled “Dramaturgy and Postdramaturgy” Patrice Pavis refers to what he calls an open dramaturgy, or citing Peter Stamer, a “performative dramaturgy” (31). The open dramaturgy, he remarks, requires that spectators “do our own dramaturgy” (27). While spectators arguably always “do their own dramaturgy” in the sense that they will usually attempt to understand and interpret what they see, an open dramaturgy refers to structures that make the spectator’s cocreation - and in some cases active participation - a prerequisite. What Sehgal and Eliasson, and possibly Bourriaud, imply is that by being implicated we engage critically and actively with the world and thus possibly the structures around us. The point is therefore not to create works that one has to criticise, the point is to devise structures that engage spectators in an active and perhaps direct critical experience with structures, situations and relationships. The question for me remains how we create and grapple with work that, as Eliasson remarked, asks real questions about the way in which we make connections, and about the way in which we take responsibility. Is this perhaps also where we stop separating “viewing” and criticism from the idea of action and (social) responsibility? And what would that actually mean? I prefaced this discussion by referring to my interest in devising processes and dramaturgy. There is for me a link between the relational dramaturgies that I have discussed in this essay and the dramaturgical challenges when working in devising. Nicolas Bourriaud’s remark that in a relational aesthetics the beholder must “make an effort to produce sense out of objects that are ever lighter, ever more impalpable and ever more volatile” could be applied to the plight of devisers. Devising necessitates an alertness to that which is at first intangible and is not easily named or captured. Compared to process of staging a play where the text gives the process a more solid starting point and a pre-existing dramaturgical structure, the collaborative devising process with its open-ended starting point can seem like a labyrinthine attempt at solidifying something. Thus the devisers and the dramaturge continuously attempt to hold on to fleeting and ephemeral moments and to find a language that can describe what is emerging. Dramaturge David Williams has described the process in the following way: The task of devising is to try to locate the shapes of what it is you think you’re looking for while often being largely in the dark as to exactly what that is. So, the deviser’s - and the devising dramaturge’s - role straddles tensions between structure and possibility, known and unknown, fixity and fluidity, and so on. (Williams 2010: 197) Dramaturgy and the Facilitation of Encounters 141 According to director Gregg Whelan’s suggestion, Williams, as the dramaturge in Lone Twin’s devising process, has the ability to “see things that aren’t there”. Whelan writes that after a two hour improvisation Williams may say: “it’s there, something is there, I can’t say what is, but it’s there, something is there” (qtd. in Williams 2010: 198-199). These statements from Williams and Whelan suggest that the dramaturge makes connections between a concrete present and a potential future, thereby also taking responsibility for making sense of porosity and ephemerality. Dramaturgical work ends up being about articulating that which comes into being, and in doing so the dramaturge creates material. She is therefore not an objective set of eyes that critique something that has already been created, instead she actively has to help create conditions for the dramaturgy to emerge. The task is to create continuity between fleeting moments, situations and ephemeral “atmospheres” that arise in the space, offering initially, to borrow a phrase from Lehmann’s Postdramatic Theatre, “partial perspectives and stuttering answers that remain ‘works in progress’” (Lehmann 2006: 25). The plight of the deviser and the dramaturge in devising is the same as that of the postdramatic spectator: how do they make sense of porosity, ephemerality and uncertainty within what seem like very open and undefined structures. As a final note, Patrice Pavis, once again, in citing Peter Stamer calls “Performance dramaturgy” an approach that “[…] favors a creative approach which will gradually appear “in the making”, as in devised theatre) […]”. Pavis goes on to remark that a “performative dramaturgy” encourages an approach where the dramaturge - together with the director - tests different possibilities, and “takes the time to be involved in the process of discovery” (Pavis 2014: 31). I have not discussed time and duration in this essay yet the temporal plays a critical role in understanding a relational kind of dramaturgy. As Pavis suggests in the quotation above, time plays a role in discovering through process. Moreover time, as Eliasson posits, destabilises a fixity: “Artworks are not closed or static, and they do not embody some kind of truth that may be revealed to the spectator. Rather, artworks have an affinity with time - they are embedded in time, they are of time” (Eliasson and Irwin 2007). The question is then how to create a structure that enables the audience to experience the dramaturgy as a process as opposed to something already determined, a fixed architecture as it were. Returning to Gimbel’s defence of the “incomplete” work, it is arguably through taking one’s time with structures, situations and ideas that something tangible comes into 142 Synne K. Behrndt focus, and that the “work” emerges. 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Online at: http: / / www.frieze.com/ issue/ review/ tino_sehgal1/ (last accessed 30/ 12/ 2012). III. Dramaturgy’s Potentialities: Perception, Movement and Difference The In-Between of Visual Dramaturgy Jeroen Coppens In recent years, there has been a significant rise in theatre and performances practices without - or with little - text, that focus dramatic attention towards visual elements on stage, often in an intermedial setting. This tendency has been picked up by different critics and theoreticians claiming that since the 1990s, a new kind of dramaturgy has arisen, that integrates visuality into the theatre in fundamentally new ways. Knut Arntzen, for example, coined the term “visual dramaturgy” in 1991 to describe mostly speechless performances that are based on images and derive their expressiveness mainly from their visuality (1991: 274-276). In his Postdramatisches Theater (1999), Hans-Thies Lehmann develops this idea further in arguing that visual dramaturgy “[…] does not mean an exclusively visually organised dramaturgy but rather one that is not subordinated to the text and can therefore freely develop its own logic” (2006: 93). Fifteen years after Lehmann’s groundbreaking publication, Patrice Pavis sharpens the definition by highlighting the primordiality of visuality: The main characteristic of visual dramaturgy is not the absence of text on stage, but a stage form in which visuality takes central stage, to the point of becoming the main feature of aesthetic experience. (2014: 21) Recently, there has been historiographic research into the topic of visual dramaturgy, like Nic Leonhardt’s Piktoral-Dramaturgie [Pictorial Dramaturgy 2007], focussing on visuality in 19th century theatre in Germany. Nevertheless, Pavis rightly observes that “visual dramaturgy is still looking for its theory, its laws, its organisation” (2014: 22). In this article, I will argue that this delay in finding methodologies to analyse and understand visual dramaturgy stems from an awkwardness in critical discourse to let go of a textual approach to visuality. After an historical survey of 148 Jeroen Coppens the concept of visual dramaturgy, both in critical discourse and in theatre practices of the 19th century, I will argue that an additional pitfall in the search for theory is the reduction of visuality to the optical, the visible or simply to visual perception. In trying to steer a middle course between the reduction to text on the one hand, and reduction to the optical on the other, I will propose an understanding of visual dramaturgy as a fundamentally intermedial theatre practice that creates an in-between (Röttger 2014 1 ) that does not merely focus on the sense of sight, nor on the dramaturgy of the visible. Analysing Vincent Dunoyer’s The Princess Project (2001), I will argue that there is no strict or pure visual dramaturgy, as it does not exclusively address the sense of sight. Relying on Maaike Bleeker’s Visuality in the Theatre and Kati Röttger’s concept of intermediality as an “[…] interplay of mediality, theatricality and performativity” (2014: 11). I will finally argue that a proper approach to visual dramaturgy needs to focus on intermedial transmissions on the one hand, and the beholder’s personal perspective on the other. 1. Reading Images & Seeing Texts As theatre scholars and critics alike noticed the tendency towards highly visual theatre performances in the 1990s, the awareness grew that these practices have severe consequences on how an audience looks at, thinks about and makes sense of a theatre performance. Sequences and correspondences, nodal and condensation points of perception and the constitution of meaning communicated through them (however fragmentary it may be) in visual dramaturgy are defined by optical data. A theatre of scenography develops. (Lehmann 2006: 93) This theatre of complex visuality demands a different attitude of the spectator, as the hierarchic structure of theatre signs makes way for a fundamental simultaneity that aims at overwhelming the senses of the spectator (Lehmann 2006: 87). Describing the paratactical use of theatrical means - an aesthetic strategy popular in postdramatic theatre in general, and in visual dramaturgy in particular - Lehmann argues for a perception of 1 As the article has not yet been published, I refer to the English manuscript entitled “The Mystery of the In-Between”, presented as a lecture at the conference Intermédialité, théâtralité, (re)-présentation et nouveaux medias, organised in May 2007 by The Centre for Research on Intermediality (CRI) at the Université of Montréal and the Laboratoire des nouvelles technologies de l’image, du son et de la scène of the Université Laval à Québec (LANTISS). The In-Between of Visual Dramaturgy 149 gleichschwebende Aufmerksamkeit (evenly suspended attention), a concept he borrows from psycho-analysis to describe a perception that “[…] depends on not understanding immediately. Rather one’s perception has to remain open for connections, correspondences and clues at completely unexpected moments, perhaps casting what was said earlier in a completely new light. Thus, meaning remains in principle postponed” (2006: 87). When dealing with perception in the context of a visual dramaturgy - and specifically with the process of generalisation, in which the spectator sees the individual body of a dancer on stage as a human body in general - Lehmann explicitly suggests a textual mode of looking at and understanding visual dramaturgy: In this sense the gaze in turn is a reading gaze, the scene a writing (graphy), a poem, written without the writing implements of a writer. Scenography, naming a theatre of complex visuality, presents itself to the contemplating gaze like a text, a scenic poem, in which the human body is a metaphor, its flow of movement in a complex metaphorical sense an inscription, a ‘writing’ and not ‘dancing’. (2006: 94) This proposal to approach visual dramaturgy with a textual mode of interpretation and a reading gaze is interesting as a metaphor but dangerous as a theoretical tool for analysis, as visual dramaturgy here seems to be reduced to images that need to be read, a scenographical text that needs to be decoded. Another example worth mentioning here is Isa Wortelkamp’s Sehen mit dem Stift in der Hand (2006), in which she explores the question of how the ephemeral event of theatre and dance performances can be captured in the act of writing. The tension between word and image has already been a central philosophical, linguistic and semiotic issue, and has been stressed explicitly in Richard Rorty’s publication of The Linguistic Turn (1967). In the 1990s the word and image problem gained even more attention, since W.J.T. Mitchell’s argument that culture had undergone a pictorial turn. In Picture Theory (1994), Mitchell argues that although it has become ubiquitous both in popular culture and in science, the picture remains an unsolved problem, as the model of textuality that issued from the linguistic turn is not the optimal method for analysing a culture dominated by the visual and, as a consequence, by spectatorship (13). Ultimately, his purpose is to acknowledge pictures as fundamentally different than language, and to develop tools to “give images a voice” without simply reducing them to discourse. Mitchell’s plea for “a global critique of visual culture” - that ultimately resulted in the discipline of Visual Studies - is 150 Jeroen Coppens of an educational nature, as this critique aspires to create an awareness of the complexity of the image and aims for “visual literacy” (16), a concept that perfectly grasps the paradox of the project. In looking for a “visual literacy” and a theory for theatre performances that are dominated by visuality, it is important to keep in mind the problem of word and image, and more specifically the danger of reducing either one to the other. At a later point, I will come back to Mitchell’s proposal to resist this danger with the concept of the metapicture, but first it is important to explore the second difficulty in analysing visual dramaturgy, namely the reduction to the purely optical. 2. All Things Visual? To explore the second challenge offered by visual dramaturgical practices more in detail, it is necessary to shortly consider the roots of this specific form of dramaturgy. Lehmann seems to suggest that visual dramaturgy - and more broadly postdramatic theatre in general - came about under the influence of other art forms, and more particularly the visual arts. He argues that theatre has now caught up with aesthetic developments that other art forms went through earlier, and therefore [t]here is little reason to be surprised that it is only in the theatre of the recent decades that we have seen trends that can be described with keywords such as self-referentiality, non-figural, abstract or concrete art, autonomization of the signifiers, seriality, or aleatoric art. (94) More generally, abstract and non-figurative visual dramaturgy has a lot in common with the tradition of minimalism in the visual arts. A wellknown example of the influence of minimalist art in theatre performance is “Bed”, a central scene in the final act of Robert Wilson’s well-known Einstein on the Beach (1975). In that scene, a “column of light” - that turns out to be a big white illuminated pane - on a pitch-black stage is raised in extreme slow-motion from a horizontal position into a vertical one and subsequently rises into the flies until it is no longer visible. As this scene takes about 12 minutes and is accompanied by a wordless aria, the scene has an unmistakably contemplative quality. Moreover, the resemblance with minimalist aesthetics in the visual arts of the 1960s and 1970s is striking. A more recent example of a visual dramaturgy that reflects these developments of the visual arts, is the last scene of Romeo Castellucci’s M.#10 Marseille (2004). In this scene, different layers of transparent curtains are The In-Between of Visual Dramaturgy 151 lowered onto the stage, and the last ten minutes of the performance consist only of projections of color areas and geometrical forms moving up and down the curtains, accompanied by a soundscape by Scott Gibbons. The shifting colors, the interplay of the different forms and the juxtaposition and contrast of the visual elements seem to be theatrical quotations of minimalist visual artists like Rothko, Kasimir Malevich or Wassily Kandisky (Duneuskaya 2011: 70-75). Moreover, the two-dimensionality introduced on stage by lowering transparent curtains, supports the claim that in this scene Romeo Castellucci “[…] stages theatre as a painting” (77). This alliance of theatre and painting has been stressed by Bonnie Marranca (1977), who coined the term “theatre of images”: In the Theatre of Images the painterly and sculptural qualities of performance are stressed, transforming this theatre into a spatially-dominated one activated by sense impressions, as opposed to a time-dominated one ruled by linear narrative. Like modern painting, the Theatre of Images is timeless […], abstract and presentational […], often static […]; frequently the stage picture is framed two-dimensionally. […] It is the flattening of the image (stage picture) that characterises the Theatre of Images, just as it does modern painting. (xii-xiii) This mingling of theatre and the visual arts (especially painting) has become paramount in postdramatic theatre, as Hans-Thies Lehmann pointed out, but has precedents in “dramatic” theatre forms of the 19th century. In his Realizations: Narrative, Pictorial, and Theatrical Arts in Nineteenth-Century England (1983), Martin Meisel argues that 19th century theatre was influenced radically by other art disciplines, and not in the least by painting. Meisel of course not only points to theatre being organised according to the laws of perspective, but also to a new kind of dramaturgy that integrates painting into theatre, with a “[…] focus on static tableaux and series of (scenic) pictures”(qtd. in Leonhardt 2007: 10). Peter Simhandl goes even so far as to call it “Bildertheater”, a theatre of pictures, that consists “[…] not of causatively formed stories, but that presents series of moving images and connects them associatively; […] it does not mediate rationally understandable messages in discursive language, but creates entire picture worlds” (qtd. in Leonhardt 2007: 12; my translation). Although these historical and contemporary practices of visual dramaturgy enhance the status of visuality, visuality here should not be understood as the purely optical. Both Lehmann and Pavis accurately point out that visual dramaturgy by no means implies the absence of any text, and I would like to broaden that argument by stressing that visual dramaturgy in theatre performances does not exclude the use of other theatri- 152 Jeroen Coppens cal means than the purely visible. In Wilson’s visual dramaturgy of the ascending light column and Castellucci’s staged painting, the music or soundscape plays an important role in the aesthetic experience. Although the sense of sight is addressed predominantly, the other senses are not excluded from the aesthetic experience of visual dramaturgy. Such an account of visuality and of dramaturgy would tend to maintain the Cartesian schism “[…] which separates the mind from the body and equates the mind with the optical” (Stalpaert 2009: 123). In fact, visual dramaturgy is a mixed dramaturgy (just like theatre in itself is a mixed medium), that is centred on and organised by visuality, but not reducible to it, as it interacts with the audience in multifaceted ways. Dramaturgy, according to Eugenio Barba, is a process which does both: dynamically connecting the elements of the performance-texture and directly working on the audience and interacting with them (see Barba and Savarese 1991: 68ff.). In contemporary practices of visual dramaturgy, visuality on stage (visuality as performance-texture) not only stands for opticality, it works on and interacts with the audience in multiple ways, as is evident in the contemplative effect of Einstein on the Beach or M.#10 Marseille. That visual dramaturgy is by no means purely visual should become clear in the following short parallel with Mitchell’s article “There are no Visual Media” (2005), demonstrating that visual dramaturgy is fundamentally an intermedial and interartistic practice as understood by Kati Röttger. 3. Impurity and In-betweenness of Visual Dramaturgy In “There are no Visual Media” (2005) Mitchell asserts that all media are mixed media, as all media “[…] involve the other senses (especially touch and hearing)” (395). With this claim, Mitchell not only refutes the idea of some media being exclusively visual, he also undermines the purity of any medium, even modernist painting. He thereby dismisses the traditional story of the purification process “[…] in which painting emancipates itself from language, narrative, allegory, figuration, and even the representation of nameable objects in order to explore something called pure painting characterised by pure opticality,” a story found in the theories of Clement Greenberg and Michael Fried (396). Their insistence on the purity and specificity of media, and their denouncement of any hybrid forms of art as merely theatrical and therefore inauthentic has to be laid to rest if all media are by definition mixed media. Mitchell’s argument is particularly relevant here, because it destabilises the idea of medium specificity and reformulates it in terms of “[…] specific sensory ratios that The In-Between of Visual Dramaturgy 153 are embedded in practice, experience, tradition, and technical inventions” (400). By analogy with Mitchell, I would argue that there is no such thing as a visual dramaturgy, in the sense of a dramaturgy that is centred on the optical and primarily appeals to the sense of sight. Rather, visual dramaturgy is a mixed dramaturgy in which different sensory capacities are addressed, and contemporary visual dramaturgy is a fundamentally intermedial dramaturgy that “[integrates] aesthetic concepts from different media into a new concept” (Pavis 2003: 49). To elucidate this concept of intermediality, Kati Röttger’s concept of the in-between is particularly helpful. In “The Mystery of the In-Between” (in press), Kati Röttger takes the destabilisation of media differences, and not their total dissolution as a starting point to concentrate “[…] on the transactions between media, the mediated and the observers” (Röttger 2014: 1-2). She argues that theatre is not “[…] an open, dynamic configuration of intermedial transmissions” (2), and more specifically allows for an interplay of mediality, theatricality and performativity (6). Mediality is the specific quality of the medium in regard to structures, experiences and perception. Theatricality is a mode of perception. It creates the effect of spectatorship and works on the unstable border that shifts between fact and fiction, reality and illusion. Performativity defines the capacity of media to constitute possible worlds by embodying audible and visible phenomena. (11) The merit of this approach to intermediality is that it shifts the focus away from media comparison and towards the interplay of transformation processes of media that opens up what Röttger calls an “in-between”: intermediality is a powerful and potential[ly] radical force that operates inbetween the media in the interplay of the medial processes of transfiguration and transmission. It operates also between performer and audience by embodiment and the interplay of mediality, performativity and theatricality, thus constituting aesthetic acts of the beholder; and it operates between realities by opening up perspectives on the constitutive acts of medial world making. (4) Röttger stresses that in these processes of transfiguration and transmission, the perspective of the spectator is of great influence, as “it is the beholder’s perspective that shifts between medium and mediated and decides to identify pictures, words, music as referring to the discourses, histories and cultures the event is embedded in” (11). As such, the theatre performance as an intermedial event creates a “Vortex-Effect”, as it coincides with the media that constitute it and simultaneously creates an 154 Jeroen Coppens awareness of those media. Finally then, it is up to the spectator to actively decide “[…] what counts as (invisible) medium and what counts as its (visible) image, and thus [the] shifts between figure and ground” (13). In other words, it is up to the spectator to decide if s/ he focusses to see the represented content or the staged medium as epistemological object. Visual dramaturgy, in turn, offers a very specific case of these processes of transfiguration and transmission, as it uses the in-between and the described vortex-effect to specifically show the processes of visuality. In that sense, visual dramaturgy turns theatre into what Maaike Bleeker calls “a critical vision machine” that offers critical tools for analysing (amongst others) spectatorship (2008). In what follows, I propose to look into Vincent Dunoyer’s The Princess Project (2001), specifically focussing on the self-referential vortex-effect brought about by the specific visual dramaturgy of the performance and what that implies for theatre as a critical vision machine. 4. The Princess Project - Self-reference and Metapictures Vincent Dunoyer, a well-known Belgian dancer and choreographer, intended to examine the traditional constellation of the duet in The Princess Project, a cooperation with dancer Sarah Ludi. When Ludi had to leave the project due to a pregnancy, the pas de deux became a pas de deux - a negation of duality (Siegmund 2006: 210). Although Dunoyer had chosen the traditional configuration of the duet, he decided not to replace his dance partner and, in doing so, the project, that would have originally dealt with how to stage big emotions like love, became a solo about the absence of the Other and the search for the irreplaceable Other (T’Jonck 2000). Inspired by Together Alone (1991), a film by P.J. Castellaneta about two men, Brian and Bryan, who find out they had the same dream after having casual sex, The Princess Project opens with a series of words projected onto the rear wall: Opening scene - Light on - A room - Two persons - B and B - They had the same dream - At the same time - Music. The words seem to create a narrative but in the course of the performance it becomes clear that it is only the suggestion of a narrative. Dunoyer is seated on stage, slightly to the left and with his back turned towards the audience. In front of him, we see a television screen and a camera. The back wall is white and, on the right hand side, one can clearly recognise a projection screen. First, Dunoyer circles the floor in small, fragmented The In-Between of Visual Dramaturgy 155 and slow movements, still seated. Then, the movements become bigger. Dunoyer stands up and seems to explore traditional choreographic movements from classical ballet. In Act 1 Dunoyer performs the sequences from the opening scene more fluently and it becomes clear how he “[…] modulates movements and patterns from the classical ballet into his own body language and movement idiom” (Haeghens 2001: 59). In Act 2 the choreography of Act 1 is projected onto the screen together with a live recording of Dunoyer’s choreography. Sometimes, the images overlap or coincide, but at other moments the two projections together create a perfect illusion of Dunoyer dancing a duet with himself: an intermedial dramaturgy of a duet for one. Various theoreticians and critics have pointed to the logic of presence and absence created by the discord between the live Dunoyer and the mediated ones. Hugo Haeghens connects the intertwinement of live movements and projections with the human condition of fundamental loneliness, not being able to reach the perfection of total identification, and the impossibility of satisfying the desire to reach the Other (60). In his psychoanalytic interpretation of the performance, Gerald Siegmund recognises the same theme: “[…] the phantasm of love […], that is always more projection than reality” (210). For him The Princess Project in essence is “[…] a reflection of the structure of love and desire,” (210) and in that sense a reminder of the pas de deux in classical ballet, where the prince does not exist in reality, but is merely an ideal (Vorstellung), an imaginary utopia. Siegmund continues his psychoanalysis by arguing that the doubling of Dunoyer’s body results in a “[…] third gaze, that intervenes between dancers and audience, to show the dependence of the imaginary on the symbolical apparatus” (211). After the pas de deux, the sound of The Velvet Underground’s “I’m set free” fills the theatre space. In complete darkness, the audience hears Lou Reed’s fragile voice singing: And now I’m set free I’m set free I’m set free to find a new illusion Heavily influenced by psychoanalytic discourse, Haeghens, Siegmund and other critics mainly focused their attention on the “ballet of absence” rather than casting light on how Dunoyer uses an intermedial visual dramaturgy to achieve an interesting, albeit virtual, presence. Instead of taking the “lack of the Other” as a starting point for the analysis, I would like to propose the integral (mediated) image as a basis for analysis. In what follows, I will concentrate on the mediated pas de deux of Act 2, 156 Jeroen Coppens arguing that the intricate interplay of live and mediated elements brings about a visual dramaturgy that presents us with (and makes present) a vortex of self-reference. Dunoyer’s duet with himself, or rather with the Dunoyer of Act 1, confronts the spectator with a complex entanglement of layers as his stage movements are synchronised with their projection in real time and the projection of the pre-recorded movement sequence from Act 1. At the same time, Dunoyer explicitly shows the technological mechanisms (the screen, video camera, projection) at work in the performance through the strategy of hypermediacy. According to Bolter and Grusin, this strategy offers […] a heterogeneous space, in which representation is conceived of not as a window on to the world, but rather as “windowed” itself - with windows that open on to other representations or other media. (34) In an effort to disentangle the different layers and windows at work in The Princess Project, Mitchell’s concept of the metapicture proves to be very productive. Since his aim is “[…] to see if pictures provide their own metalanguage [… and] to experiment with the notion that pictures might be capable of reflection on themselves” (1994: 38), my parallel question here is to see if visual dramaturgy provides its own metalanguage and reflection on itself, rather than to interpret and maybe even reduce it to (psychoanalytic) discourse. Mitchell discerns three different classes of metapictures, depending upon the different types of self-reference they entail. The first category of metapictures “[…] exemplifies strict or formal self-reference, the picture that represents itself, creating a referential circle or mise en abîme” (56). In his example from Saul Steinberg, The Spiral (1964), the drawing originates from a spiralling form that, according to Mitchell, refers to the artist and the construction of the very drawing (42). By revealing the construction process of the image or by integrating a picture within a picture, this first kind of metapicture “[…] refers to its own making” (42). The constellation of the different Dunoyers in Act 2 is obviously selfreferential in this formal manner. At that point Dunoyer, the creator and subject of the image, dominates the scene in three manifestations: the Dunoyer who is bodily present on stage, the Dunoyer mediated in real time and the pre-recorded Dunoyer of Act 1. Furthermore, the means of production (the video camera, the projection screen, and the monitor) are overtly exposed on stage, and the structure of the performance (first a slow, chopped-up choreography, then the fluent choreography of Act 1, and subsequently the integration of that choreography in the new media The In-Between of Visual Dramaturgy 157 constellation of Act 2) shows the process of construction almost didactically. Looking closely at the projected choreography, at some points one can even discern a literal mise en abîme in the middle of the screen, as it integrates a projection of the projection within the frame, ultimately completing the referential circle of the picture within the picture. In further unravelling the different layers of the metapictures in Dunoyer’s The Princess Project, Mitchell’s second class of metapictures is particularly relevant, pertaining as it does to the “[…] generically self-referential; it exemplifies the sort of picture that represents pictures as a class, the picture about pictures” (1994: 56). As a case in point Egyptian Life Class (1955), a cartoon by Alain, depicts Ancient-Egyptian art students measuring their model, represented in the Ancient-Egyptian relief style, with pencils and fingers. Here, two different traditions of representation collide with one another: on the one hand, the measurement of perspective painting that became paradigmatic in European art from the Renaissance era onwards and, on the other, the Egyptian tradition of “symbolic perspective”. The picture shows not only its own principle of construction, but contrasts it with an earlier tradition of visual representation. The aforementioned strategy of hypermediacy obviously points to the fundamental principles and conventions connected to liveness and mediality. Clearly, the live body of Vincent Dunoyer collides with its projection in real time and its pre-recorded projection, creating a field of tension between the live spectacle and its respective mediations. Interestingly, this tension field does not consist of one-on-one relations. Rather than one element being overpowered or dominated by another, I would argue that the live and mediated bodies are fundamentally interconnected and even co-dependent, as the self-referential circle they open up cannot be reduced to either one. Nonetheless I speak of a tension field, considering that at different times in Act 2, and particularly in their collision and overlap, the live and mediated bodies are alternately foregrounded. In this way the metapicture oscillates between the construction of the illusion and the illusion of the duet itself. This last point can be clarified by means of Mitchell’s third class of metapictures, which he calls dialectical images that “[…] illustrate the co-existence of contrary or simply different readings in the single image, a phenomenon called ‘multistability’” (1994: 45). “The Duck-Rabbit” for instance, is an ambiguous image representing both animals in one, that became well-known in the field of Gestalt psychology. Mitchell argues that such metapictures have a “[…] discursive or contextual self-reference; its reflexivity depends upon its insertion into a reflection on the nature of visual representation” (56). 158 Jeroen Coppens The visual dramaturgy of The Princess Project can be understood as a particular kind of multistable image. On the one hand, the dialectic frame is triggered by a collision within the frame of the image as the various layers of live and mediated elements open up different readings of the image constellation. More importantly, however, Dunoyer’s duet with himself also creates a collision regarding the status of the image, as the multistable image opens up a twofold experience: a theatrical alienation that foregrounds the construction of the image, and an illusionistic exaltation of being absorbed by the mediated illusion of Dunoyer’s duet. This Gestalt experience can be a dialectic switching between the different aspects of the metapicture but can also be a simultaneous awareness of the different layers of the image. Mitchell argues - in line with Wittgenstein - that “[…] it is possible to see the drawing as ‘the Duck-Rabbit’, a form which is neither one nor the other, but both or neither” (74). In any case, the metapicture creates a multistability effect that triggers a complex experience of the various levels of the picture. To conclude, I would like to zoom out again, and outline the implications of this self-referential vortex-effect of the metapicture for visual dramaturgy in general. 5. Visual Dramaturgy - between the Optical, the Visual and the Personal The specific use of metapictures in the visual dramaturgy of Dunoyer’s The Princess Project points to interesting characteristics of visual dramaturgy in general. Visual dramaturgy, although informed by the optical (in the sense of “the visible”), works beyond vision, as it lays bare processes of visuality i.e. “the distinct historical manifestation of visual experience” (Bleeker 2008: 1). In doing that, it “[…] demonstrates the working and undermines the effect” of its own visual production, “[… evoking] reflection on what might be called the construction of the real” (Bleeker 2008: 7). 2 This theatrical effect is clearly at work in the self-referential vortex that Dunoyer’s metapictures open up, reflecting upon themselves and referring back to their own mode of production. In this sense, the metapicture demonstrates “[…] theatre’s ability to draw attention to its 2 Here it is important to note that Maaike Bleeker’s account of theatre is not representational in the sense that theatre ought to present an accurate representation of an absent reality, but, in keeping with Lehmann, she argues that “[…] theatre and reality are better understood as parallel constructions and the success of theatre to convince is the effect of its being structured according to a logic similar to the logic at work in concepts of reality” (2008: 44). The In-Between of Visual Dramaturgy 159 (visual) means of production” (Bechtel 2011: 145). The theatrical use of metapictures operates as an alienation strategy so that “[…] what we see appears as inauthentic or false, and the address presented to us is dismissed as exaggeration or make believe” (Bleeker 2008: 3). This awareness of the inauthenticity of representation, of its construction and of its windows (to speak with Bolter and Grusin) is what I would like to call an emersive experience. Dunoyer provokes this awareness of the means of production and the framing of representation in the collision of the different layers of the performance. This awareness of the means of production is paramount in contemporary practices of visual dramaturgy: as there is no wider narrative to make sense of what is visible on stage, the visible becomes “self-sufficient” and speaks for and simultaneously about itself. Just as Dunoyer combines live and mediated elements in a metapicture, the final scene of M.#10 Marseille and the bed-scene of Einstein on the Beach combine different representational practices (specifically painting and theatre, and sculpture and theatre), and in doing so, reveal visuality as a distinct manifestation of visual experience. That way an in-between is created, not only between different media but also between different disciplines and different representational practices. Due to the lack of narrative organisation, this in-between heavily depends upon the personal perspective of the viewer. Kati Röttger already stressed the importance of the spectator’s choosing to see either the construction or the represented as epistemological content. 3 In the case of Dunoyer, this point becomes clear in the Gestalt experience of the “Duck- Rabbit”, where the multistable image is both of them and neither. The virtual duet of Dunoyer is neither a solo nor a duet. Wilson’s bed-scene is at the same time theatre and sculpture, and Castellucci’s final M.#10 Marseille-scene is at the same time painting and theatre. In that sense visual dramaturgical practices present the audience with a fundamental in-between that is informed by the visible but cannot be reduced to it, as their theorisation is already present in the self-referential effect. That way, visual dramaturgy is always “open-ended”, as the process of sense-making and interpreting visuality on stage throws the spectator back on his own resources due to a lack of (narrative) grip. In that man- 3 Of course it is also necessary to keep in mind the temporal aspect of theatre here, as the choice is only possible after grasping the duality of the image. In this sense, the aforementioned evenly suspended attention of Hans-Thies Lehmann, the perception in postdramatic theatre, which does not understand completely, and is open to retroactively make connections and interpretations, is of great importance. 160 Jeroen Coppens ner the spectator is confronted with and able to explore “[…] the product of vision ‘taking place’ according to the tacit rules of a specific scopic regime and within a relationship between the one seeing and what is seen” (Bleeker 2008: 2). That way contemporary visual dramaturgical practices realise the aim underlying Bleeker’s Visuality in the Theater, namely that of demystifying “[…] the modern fable of vision as true and objective, of the possibility of seeing it ‘as it is’,” thereby repudiating looking as a neutral, disembodied and non-subjective process (5). Ultimately, then, visual dramaturgy brings into focus the self-understanding and individuality of the spectator, for which Bleeker uses the term “seer” to do justice to the individuality of vision taking place: The term ‘seer’ apart from meaning ‘the one who sees’ and ‘an overseer, an inspector’, is also associated with insight, revelations, prophecy, second sight, and magic. The seer is someone who sees things that are not there: future things, absent things. Seeing always involves projections, fantasies, desires and fears, and might be closer to hallucinating than we think. (18) Returning once more to Patrice Pavis’ statement that “visual dramaturgy is still looking for its theory, its laws, its organisation,” (2014: 22), it should be clear that there is not one single theory of visual dramaturgy. Rather, visual dramaturgy is a dramaturgy in-between different media, disciplines and representational practices that works on the audience (to speak with Barba) in a fundamentally subjective way, as it involves personal realms of thought, desires and projections. Vincent Dunoyer’s virtual duet, then, is at the same time a solo, a duet, and a Duck-Rabbit-like “Solo-Duet”, depending on the subjective choice of the seer regarding “[…] what counts as (invisible) medium and what counts as its (visible) image, and thus [the] shifts between figure and ground” (Röttger 2014: 13). In conclusion, visual dramaturgical practices can be self-referential in various ways but always present an in-between, a metapicture that integrates “[…] aesthetic concepts from different media into a new concept” (Pavis 2003: 49). Lacking the grip of a narrative as a whole, this in-between cannot be reduced to one discourse, to one theory or to an objective meaning. Rather, visual dramaturgy opens up a personal account of thinking, of seeing and of vision. Much like Mitchell’s metapictures, visual dramaturgy as an “in-between” does not “just illustrate theories of picturing and vision: [it] show[s] us what vision is, and picture[s] theory” (Mitchell 1994: 57). The In-Between of Visual Dramaturgy 161 Literature Arntzen, Knut Ove. “A Visual kind of Dramaturgy: Project Theatre in Scandinavia.” In: C. Schumacher and D. Fogg (ed.), Small is Beautiful, Small Countries Theatre Conference in Glasgow 1990, Theatre Studies Publications, Department of Theatre Studies. Glasgow. Scotland. 1991. Barba, Eugenio and Savarese, Nicolas. The Dictionary of Theatre Anthropology: The Secret Art of the Performer. London. Routledge. 1991. Bechtel, Roger. “Visuality in the Theatre: The Locus of Looking.” In: Theatre Journal. 63 (1). 2011. Bleeker, Maaike. Visuality in the Theatre. The Locus of Looking. London & New York. Palgrave Macmillan. 2008. Bolter, Jay David & Grusin, Richard. Remediation. Understanding New Media. Cambridge & London. The MIT Press. 2000. Duneuskaya, Tatsiana. Castellucci’s Tragedia Endogonidia (M.#10 Marseille): Intermedial Image Intervention. Ottawa. University of Ottawa. 2011. Haeghens, Hugo. “Herinneringsarbeid aan een Droom.” In: Etcetera 77. 2001. 59-60. Lehmann, Hans-Thies. Postdramatic Theatre. Transl. Karen Jürs-Munby. New York. Routledge. 2006. Leonhardt, Nic. Piktoraldramaturgie. Visuelle Kultur im 19. Jahrhundert (1869- 1899). Bielefeld. Transcript Verlag. 2007. Marranca, Bonnie. The Theatre of Images. New York. Drama Book Specialists. 1977. Mitchell, W.J.T. Picture Theory. Chicago & London. The University of Chicago Press. 1994. -. “There are no Visual Media.” In: Journal of Visual Culture. 4 (2). 2005 Online at: http: / / www.mediaarthistory.org/ refresh/ Programmatic%20key%20texts/ pdfs/ mitchell.pdf (last accessed 11/ 11/ 2013). Pavis, Patrice. “Dramaturgy and Postdramaturgy.” In: Pewny, Katharina, Callens, Johan & Coppens, Jeroen, Dramaturgies in The New Millennium. Schriftenreihe Forum Modernes Theater. Tübingen. Narr Francke Attempto Verlag. 2014. Röttger, Kati. “Questionner l’“entre”: une approche méthodologique pour l’analyse de la performance intermédiale.” In: Jean-Marc Larrue (Ed.). Théâtre et Intermédialité. Villeneuve-d’Ascq. Presses Universitaires du Septentrion. In press. 2014. Siegmund, Gerald. Abwesenheit. Eine performative Ästhetik des Tanzes. Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag. 2006. T’Jonck, Pieter. “De kijker, de acteur, het stuk, de locatie.” In: Etcetera, 74, 2000. 42-46. Wortelkamp, Isa. Sehen mit dem Stift in der Hand: Die Aufführung im Schriftzug der Aufzeichnung. Berlin: Rombach. 2006. The Dramaturge: A Peripatetical Approach to the Dramaturgical Gestus of Walking Developed in Three Workshops and a Theatre Project Fanne Boland 1. Introduction In this article the function of the dramaturge is examined. With regard to this topic I have, together with director Merel de Groot, set up the Let’s take a Walk laboratory that brings together education, research and the practical work of the dramaturge. This article maps the aims of the research, presents and interprets the most important findings derived from the different parts of the laboratory. Literally step by step, a peripatetic dramaturgical approach emerges. 1 The peripatetic approach results in the development of a concept of the dramaturgical gestus of walking, wherein dramaturgical oppositions such as theory-practice operate through recurring moments of peripety. 2. The Problem with the Function of the Dramaturge “Today we witness both the triumph and explosion of dramaturgy, not only dramaturgy in the sense of dramatic writing, but also of dramaturgical analysis, i.e. the reading and the preparatory work of the literary or 1 This peripatetic approach should be seen in light of the framework of the literary “Verdauungsspaziergang” (walk to stimulate the digestive system), whose history is described by Christian Moser. Instead of basing his concept on largely unreliable or unjust interpretations of the peripatetic-philosophical tradition of Greek Antiquity, Moser returns to Helenistic retorics wherein walking was a means to digest that which was read. During modernity this mental digestion is paired with critical subjectivity which places the process of digestion, rather than the result, centre stage (Gelhaus, Moser, Scheider 2007: 51-81). This article also attempts to traverse such a winding path of an ongoing process of digestion and reflection on the function of the dramaturge. A Peripatetical Approach to the Dramaturgical Gestus of Walking 163 artistic advisor of the director, sometimes called ‘dramaturge’.” With this statement, Patrice Pavis begins his article “Dramaturgy and Postdramaturgy” (2014: 14). In the Netherlands, the simultaneous “triumph and explosion” of the function of the dramaturge may also be witnessed: on the one hand, it is an institutionalised profession, on the other, its definition remains problematic. In the words of Pavis, this duality produces a “rich and varied, but also a confused and tormented landscape.” It is this landscape from which the Let’s take a Walk laboratory is conceived and of which the contours will now be sketched. In the Netherlands the institutionalisation of the profession of the dramaturge can be gleaned from its entry into educational and socioeconomic realms. First, since 2003 it has become possible to graduate as dramaturge at the University of Amsterdam. The dual Master of Dramaturgy provides a programme that educates students to become theatre dramaturges by offering both theoretical and practical courses that not only address the knowledge but above all the skills of the dramaturge. Over time this MA has generated a small but steady flow of dramaturges entering the workforce who are co-determining the profession. 2 Secondly, the trade of the dramaturge has been incorporated into the Collective Labour Agreement of the Theatre since 1979. 3 Through the agreement the Dutch government thus acknowledges dramaturgy as a profession and drafts guidelines for salary and working conditions. In that first Collective Labour Agreement for Actors of 1979-1980 the function of the dramaturge is already mentioned, but it makes an undefined distinction between actors of different statuses, the director and the dramaturge. 4 It is worth noting that later, in 1991, the work of the dramaturge was equated with that of the director, which endowed it with a higher financial rank but obscured the dramaturge’s function, making it almost indistinct from that of the director. This is even more remarkable because, by this time, other functions such as that of the educator, producer and publicity manager did receive a separate mention in the document. In 2003 - not coincidentally the year in which the Master of Dramaturgy started - the function 2 For more information see http: / / www.uva.nl/ onderwijs/ master/ masteropleidingen/ nav/ programmetype/ dual-masters/ item/ dramaturgie.html (last accessed 17/ 07/ 2014). 3 Collective Labour Agreement is the translation of Collectieve ArbeidsOvereenkomst (CAO). For more information see http: / / www.caotheater.nl (last accessed 17/ 07/ 2014). 4 Collective Labour Agreement for Actors 1979-1980 in the archive of the Dutch Association of Performing Arts (CAO voor Toneelspelers 1979-1980, Nederlandse Associatie voor Podiumkunsten). 164 Fanne Boland of the dramaturge gained an exceedingly problematic position as the Collective Labour Agreement was being re-evaluated. A study conducted the previous year stated that the dramaturge’s salary level would deviate from the level of appreciation (Kreffer 2002: 4). Consequently, Berthe Spoelstra and Rezy Schumacher, representing the dramaturgical field, objected that the possible reduction of the financial scaling was based on a lack of insight into the dramaturgical practice and was therefore unfounded (1). Their objections were heard: in the new labour agreement the function of the dramaturge was split into two levels with corresponding salary scales, and explicitly named in social-economic guidelines, and this has been so ever since. 5 Despite the integration of the dramaturge into various institutions, the definition of the dramaturge’s function is far from unequivocal: “The misunderstandings about dramaturgy are numerous: there are misunderstandings about the purpose of the analysis as well as about the role of the dramaturge” (Pavis 2014: 15). These misunderstandings with regard to the role of the dramaturge become clear, in my view, in two “ailments”: first, the dramaturge appears caught between apparent oppositions such as theory and practice, art and science, theatre maker and spectator; second, attempts at definition often result in “anything-goes” descriptions. The following issues are deduced from recent publications concerning the function of the dramaturge. Unfortunately in the Netherlands little has been published on the subject except for interviews with dramaturges about their practice 6 , making publications from neighbouring countries of the utmost import. The most recent Dutch book A Continuous Conversation: The Dialogue of the Theatre Dramaturge [Een voortdurend Gesprek: de Dialoog van de Theaterdramaturg] (2009) was written by Bart Dieho. The book processes interviews with dramaturges from the field, offering a window into the dramaturgical work in the Netherlands. Belgium has a more elaborate “tradition” of essayistic articles and polemics 5 These levels are “Dramaturge 1” (starting salary in 2013: € 2383,- gross) and “Dramaturge 2” (starting salary in 2013: € 3538,- gross), between which mainly the years of experience and artistic responsibility are the determining factors. Both functions entail “research and development, advice and support of director and others” [“onderzoek en ontwikkeling, advisering en begeleiding van regisseur en diversen”]. They are the only functions that officially require an academic level of thinking and working (CAO Theater 39). Thus the labour agreement emphasises the theoretical abilities of the dramaturge in theatre practice. For more information on historical collective labour agreements, see the archive of the Dutch Association of Performing Arts in Amsterdam (NAP). 6 See for example http: / / robbertvanheuven.nl/ archief/ interviews/ index_2.html (last accessed 17/ 07/ 2014). A Peripatetical Approach to the Dramaturgical Gestus of Walking 165 that discuss the dramaturge. 7 Of Looking and of Writing [Van het Kijken en van het Schrijven: Teksten over Theater] (2002) is a collection of the deliberating and opinionated contributions of dramaturge Marianne Van Kerkhoven. In the United Kingdom the function of the dramaturge seems to be advancing, as is apparent from such books as Dramaturgy & Performance (2008) by Cathy Turner and Synne K. Behrndt, which has an introductory, sometimes defensive, tone. In Germany Anke Roeder and Klaus Zehelein’s Kunst der Dramaturgie: Theorie, Praxis, Ausbildung (2011) demonstrates an effort to connect the firm theoretical foundations of German dramaturgy to diverse theatre practices, taking into account dramaturgical education. What is immediately striking in these publications’ attempts to apprehend the dramaturge is that apparent contradictions play an important role. In other words, the dramaturge seems caught between oppositions of theory and practice, art and science, theatre and world, etc. In Dramaturgy & Performance the chapter on the production dramaturge starts with a section entitled “In Between”, which places the dramaturge between theory and practice, between doing research and co-creating a performance, between affirming and questioning the process of creation (Turner and Behrndt 2008: 146). This correlates with Van Kerkhoven’s statement that “The dramaturge represents a position somewhere in-between theatre studies and theatre practice” [“De dramaturge vertegenwoordigt ergens een tussenpositie tussen theaterwetenschap en theaterpraktijk”] (2002: 201). That this position in-between leads to a tricky endeavour is made clear by the wordplay in the title Kunst der Dramaturgie: Theorie, Praxis, Ausbildung [Art of Dramaturgy: Theory, Praxis, Education]. The German word “Kunst” refers both to “art” and “skill”. The title is thus implying that dramaturgy is a tricky combination of theory, practice and education. Dieho employs an enumerative definition of dramaturgy and the dramaturge that indicates that the relationships and exchanges between creator and spectator, content and form, theatre and society (2009: 20) are crucial and for which “arts, science, society and spectator” [“kunsten, wetenschap, maatschappij en toeschouwer”] form the contexts (22). It remains unclear how these in-between positions should be understood: between notions that on the one hand are each other’s opposites and on the other hand are seen to overlap. Descriptions of the dramaturge can get lost in misdirection because of the diverse manifestations of the trade. 7 One such example is http: / / www.sarma.be (last accessed 17/ 07/ 2014). 166 Fanne Boland No two dramaturgs, collaborations or productions will be the same, and the dramaturgical role will always depend on the needs of the particular project. For this reason, it is impossible to describe a representative process, since, due to the very contextual nature of the production dramaturg’s work, all processes will be different. (Turner and Behrndt 2008: 147). Roeder and Zehelein arrive at a similar conclusion when they write: “A conclusion that unites into one concept the different aspects of dramaturgy and the multiple working sphere of the dramaturge, is not possible, neither from a scientific perspective, nor from an artistic one” (Roeder and Zehelein 2011: 269; transl. Jeroen Coppens). Van Kerkhoven goes so far as to state that even the individual dramaturge carries different manifestations within herself when she cites the Dutch dramaturge Janine Brogt: “‘I am certainly not the same dramaturge in the diverse productions.’ This statement about the ‘fluctuating’ function of the dramaturge I can only agree with.” (qtd. in Van Kerkhoven 2002: 199). Thus it has proven difficult to reduce the function of the dramaturge to an essence. It is therefore necessary to stop searching for an essential core and to find an approach that would take the oppositions and variations of the function of the dramaturge as its point of departure. To realise this I initiated a laboratory during the conference PLAY: Relational Aspects of Dramaturgy with director Merel de Groot 8 , which, in the course of a year, led to a travelling series of workshops and a theatre project. In the Let’s take a Walk laboratory the two of us, together with students of theatre studies and dramaturgy, assumed a practical and agile perspective on the function of the dramaturge instead of an essentialist one. We took up the challenge formulated by Van Kerkhoven: “The fight between pinning down and leaving open is a positive fight on the condition that it is taken up time after time. Understanding this dialectic is fundamental to the dramaturgical function” (2002: 202). 8 The performances of director Merel de Groot are situated on the cutting edge of theatre and visual art. De Groot primarily produces singular pieces that result from a curiosity about the workings of theatre, the gathering of people as a proposition, and the relationship of the theatre to the world around it. She is artistic leader of the foundation the Great Movement [de Grote beweging]. With her performance To the world [Tot de Wereld] she won the Ton Lutz Prize for most promising graduating student in theatre directing. She has made performances with ZINA, Noord Nederlands Toneel (Woorden Woorden Woorden Groningen) and Lunchtheater Bellevue & ’t Barre Land (Seks). De Groot also collaborated with dramaturge Jellichje Reijnders. A Peripatetical Approach to the Dramaturgical Gestus of Walking 167 3. Theory and Practice In the first workshop 9 the relationship between theory and practice as a dramaturgical opposition was actuated. Initially, the workshop was intended for students as a practical part of the academic conference PLAY. The point of departure was the question of the (physical) presence of the dramaturge in the creation process. Students were asked to translate their experiences from the conference and the workshop into a “performancelecture” 10 that would concretise the attitude and position of the dramaturge. During the workshop, a collective and quiet walk through the city of Ghent established a twofold method. On the one hand, walking was used as an activity to induce reflection: what do we hear and experience and to what kind of awareness of the dramaturge does that lead? On the other hand, walking also generated new observations: how do people relate to the city and what kind of attitudes and positions could apply to the dramaturge? While the workshop was originally envisioned as a practical element for a mostly theoretical conference, the performance-lectures also had a certain conceptualising and theorising effect. Two examples illustrate the workings of these performance-lectures. The first, entitled The Dramaturge as Scout [De Dramaturg als Padvinder], started off with two students hanging out of the window of the rehearsal room, seemingly looking for something outside. As soon as they found “something” - in this case a small branch, a stone and a piece of paper - one of the two would climb out of the window to retrieve it. Once back inside, the found objects were placed on a piece of paper and assigned a name. Surprisingly, those were not the names the objects would have outside - namely: branch, stone, piece of paper - but a name that reflected the place where it was found - for example the branch became “hedge”, the stone “path” and the piece of paper “grass”. This performance-lecture demonstrated the alternately collecting and signifying attitude of the dramaturge in transferring elements from the outside world into the inside world of the creation process where, in their new composi- 9 Every workshop, with a maximum of ten students, consisted of two parts over the course of two days: the first focused on getting to know each other and sharing ideas while the second was concerned with presenting the findings and reflecting on them. In the interim, the students could prepare the presentations in pairs or groups of three. 10 Merel de Groot and I chose the term “performance-lecture” deliberately, as it carries within itself the apparent opposition between performance and lecture. A “performance-lecture” should challenge the students to not so much leave the scientific format of the conference lecture behind, but to enrich it with an aesthetic consciousness of the temporal and spatial composition of the performance. 168 Fanne Boland tion, they acquire a different meaning. The second example is The Dramaturgical Zoo [De dramaturgische Zoo] in which the presenter duo tried to discover what animal another, unprepared student was representing. While the naming - Is it a monkey? A bird? A fish? - was taking place, the implicated student would react by assuming different postures to meet the implicit demand to “represent an animal”. In this performance-lecture the interaction between naming that which is still becoming, and the direct influence of that act of naming on the process of becoming, became clear. The direct influence in this case is assigning a name, which both precludes possibilities as well as opens up other potential capacities. The performance-lecture demonstrated the ambivalent dramaturgical attitude of determining and through that act opening up new possibilities. The two aforementioned examples demonstrate the emergence of a characteristic dramaturgical movement between collecting and signifying, seeing and naming, or, better yet, action and reflection, through the format of the performance-lecture. Using Aristotle’s treatises on politics and ethics, the “bringing into movement of theory and practice” of both the workshop and the individual presentations can be made explicit, as his conceptualizations of theory and practice render a rigid distinction between the two impossible. This is because for Aristotle theooria is a form of praxis and its highest form, too. It is important to understand that Aristotle makes a distinction between the life of action linked to society, the statesman, and the life of contemplation distanced from the political community, the philosopher (2012: VII 3). Aristotle’s line of thought takes another interesting turn when he tries to determine which form of living is the best, meaning, which one leads to happiness. Happiness for Aristotle is not a state but an activity (2005: 64). One could infer that the life of action would surely lead to happiness (Aristotle 2012: VII 3); however, nothing turns out to be less true for him. Reflection, without any other purpose than itself, aims at the activity of happiness and is that activity at the same time. Theooria, thinking, serves no other purpose than itself and is therefore pre-eminently activity, praxis (Aristotle 2005: X 7). Aristotle discusses theooria in the contexts of politics and ethics, while the Let’s Take a Walk workshops cover the field of art. Nevertheless his reasoning can be significant to the formulation of a workable dramaturgical opposition between theory and practice, not to abolish the age-old interplay between the two notions, but rather to begin to conceive the opposition as a productive paradox. The dramaturgical gestures of seeing, naming and signifying as they emerged from the workshop, should be understood as theooria. Theorising and philosophising, according to Aristotle, occur in “free time”, time without any direct external societal A Peripatetical Approach to the Dramaturgical Gestus of Walking 169 consequence and filled with actions that have only themselves as their goal (2005: X 7). In the creation process the dramaturge represents the “free time” to think for the sake of thinking. Considered in this way, the dramaturge’s practice entails an interaction between poesis and theooria. Not only creation (poesis) is central, as it is for the actor, theatre director, designer and costume designer, but also a practice of contemplation (theooria) within the artistic community, 11 creating a free space and time through which the performance can thrive. 4. The Dramaturgical Gestus The second workshop took place in Wiesbaden, Germany, in June of 2012, during the Neue Stücke aus Europa Festival. 12 This workshop aimed to concretise the dialectical movement of the dramaturge between theory and practice, science and art, action and reflection by way of the concept of dramaturgical “gestus”. Not the actions but rather the attitudes that the dramaturge adopts towards the material and the artistic community during the creation process were the central focus. The “material” in this case was text, because the workshop was embedded in the festival for new European plays. The students were given the assignment to develop performance-lectures that would put forward the possible workings of text. In preparation the students attended performances of the festival and went on walks to observe the expressions and workings of text in the city of Wiesbaden. 13 What can be gathered from the workshop’s results is that alienation plays a crucial role. One of the performance-lectures consisted of a guided tour through an area of the city during which the students would point 11 The “artistic community” can be understood here as synonymous with Kati Röttger’s exposition of the theatre as a “communal art practice” and the role of the dramaturge in that practice, as she writes in her article “Strategies of Peripety for a Dramaturgy of the Future. Transnational Challenges and Differences in Universal Teaching” (2014: 181): “The dramaturge bears this in mind and reminds us that this public essence of theatre that is created in common to happen in community.” The artistic community’s composition varies and is therefore more comprehensive than the notion of “creative team” that usually only designates the director and designers. 12 For more information see http: / / www.newplays.de (last accessed 17/ 07/ 2014). 13 Interestingly, it was in this workshop that there was an unusual incidence of “confusion of tongues”. The combination of Dutch and German students, the English working language, and the performances from all over Europe in their original languages with German synchronised translations, led to an explosive concoction of language issues. This did not inhibit the workshop but brought the urgency of questioning the workings of text and language to the surface. 170 Fanne Boland at and explain elements in their surroundings. At first, this seemed a conventional tour in which the “guides” provide explanations about the city. However, it soon became clear that the text of the “guides” did not completely match the things that they were pointing at. A church tower was described with a style and dimensions that clearly did not correspond to its actual style and size. A tree was assigned the status of a memorial, while it was clearly just an average tree. As a consequence, the participants in the tour became more attentive observers and listeners. The discrepancy between seeing and hearing encouraged the emergence of a more conscious state of observation. Another example was an act on the terrace of a café where the students started addressing the café’s clientele and passersby in different languages. The students’ confusing questions and exclamations provoked agitation and irritation for the users of the terrace and the manager: “Die verrückten Holländer! ” [Those crazy Dutchmen! ]. The disconnect between text and action aroused alertness and consciousness on the one hand, while causing misunderstanding and irritation on the other. In this performance-lecture the students focused on the alienating effect of the text. The findings from both workshops affirm that the notion of “gestus” in the Brechtian tradition is highly suitable for a better understanding of the function of the dramaturge. The social, critical and both physical and non-physical implications of the notion of gestus enable a conception of the dramaturge from a perspective of moving and acting. Originally the notion of “gestus” is one of the principles belonging to Brecht’s concepts of the epic and the dialectic theatre, connected to alienation and the fable. Whereas Brecht applied the notion to elements of the script and the performance, it can also be applied to the creation process of the performance. This is possible if Brecht is considered as a predecessor of the theatre’s move away from drama toward performance as an event, in which creation and performance are understood as closely connected processes (Lehmann 2006: 27). Then the dramaturge can be regarded as an “actor” - in the sense of someone who acts upon, a participant - with a specific “role” in the creation process. Gestus, in Brecht’s sense, is social in that it contains an attitude towards others, a social relation (Brecht 1957: 252). Therefore it is an appropriate term for the function of the dramaturge, as she always relates herself to the others in the artistic community of the creation process, and theatre is an art form in which a community is crucial in both the production and the experiential process. The critical aspect of gestus has been accurately described by Roland Barthes (1977: 73-75). He states that gestus not only makes a social relationship legible but also renders visible what was experienced as self-evident and A Peripatetical Approach to the Dramaturgical Gestus of Walking 171 thus invisible. The alienating distance of gestus allows a space for critique to arise. This is another reason why the notion of gestus is particularly apt for the function of the dramaturge. The dramaturge is representative of the other perspective - an interplay between theooria and poesis - producing a critical distance to the work of the creators. By eliminating/ suspending the obviousness of the material, a greater consciousness of its quality 14 , and thus its potential, can emerge. This makes apparent that the gestus can be interpreted as both physical and non-physical. 15 The attitude of the dramaturge is enclosed in what she does and is therefore not necessarily restricted to her physical presence in the creation process. On the basis of the previous analysis the attempt to comprehend the function of the dramaturge can be redirected to an explicit discussion of the dramaturgical gestus. On the one hand, the focus on the dramaturgical gestus offers the possibility to specify a practical and active perspective of the dramaturge. On the other hand, a new question arises. If there is such a thing as a typical dramaturgical gestus which presents itself in her actions and which is constituted by a movement between oppositions, what would that gestus look like? In other words: how can the dramaturgical gestus be made explicit? It was necessary in the next set of workshops to make the obvious visible in order to arrive at such a concrete elaboration of the dramaturgical gestus. 5. A Constellation of Walking At first, the walking in the theatre project First Movement [Eerste Beweging 16 ] functioned as a methodological tool. The theoretical potential of the constellation of walking slowly became apparent over the course of the workshops. After all, walking entails a moving constellation of body, mind and world (Solnit 2000: 290-291) wherein doing and thinking in relation to the world are brought into operation. This creates an analogy with physical and mental motion: “The rhythm of walking generates a kind of rhythm of thinking, and the passage through a landscape echoes or stimulates the passage through a series of thoughts. This creates an odd consonance between internal and external passage, one that suggests 14 The term quality is not meant as a value judgement but as an assessment of the characteristics of the material. 15 From the text Über gestische Musik it is already clear that Brecht also used the concept non-physically. 16 Produced by Theater Bellevue and Stichting de Grote Beweging, Amsterdam January-February 2013. 172 Fanne Boland that the mind is also a landscape of sorts and that walking is one way to traverse it” (Solnit 5-6). On the basis of the ancient relationship between walking and thinking 17 the workshops gave rise to the hypothesis that the dramaturgical gestus with its social, critical, physical and non-physical aspects could be fruitfully conceptualised within this mobile/ moving constellation. The distinction between place and space and strategic practices from The Practice of Everyday Life (1980) by Michel de Certeau seemed a suitable frame to further develop the gestus of walking. There were two reasons why the Amsterdam-based theatre project First Movement by Merel De Groot became part of the laboratory. The first reason was that walking already played a crucial role in the project which thus offered the opportunity to study the constellation of walking more closely. The goal of First Movement was to get a visual perspective on the city through the exchange of “internal images” and “topical observations” 18 and, from there, to develop a proposition for the city. First Movement was made up of five unique performances consisting of a speech by De Groot, a talk with and among the participants 19 , and diverse short walks in silence through the city of Amsterdam. The second reason the project became part of the laboratory was that it allowed for the engagement of dramaturgy students as dramaturgical researchers, which meant the ideas of the workshops could be tested in actual creation processes. Four dramaturgy students contributed by formulating individual research questions, participating in the performances, publishing blogs and having reflective talks with De Groot. 17 Peripatetic means as much as “follower of the philosophy of Aristotle” as “fanatic walker”. Nevertheless it remains highly speculative whether Aristotle in his Peripatetic School actually did walk while teaching and philosophising. Even without this most famous example the connection between thinking and walking has been unmistakeable since classical Antiquity. See Solnit 2000: 17 but more importantly Gelhaus, Moser and Schneider 2007: 51-81. 18 With “inner images” De Groot meant memories that are stimulated by the observations in the city and codetermine the experience of the city. With “topical observations” she referred to situations in the city which drew the attention of the observer because they conjure a connotation (inner images). At the basis of this approach lies the conviction that the experience of the city is constituted by a continuous interaction between images emerging from the imagination and from reality, and not from a unprejudiced perception. The explication and exchange of this spatial experience could, however, lead to unforeseen connections with and perspectives on the city. 19 Besides regular audience members this project also involved so-called “frontrunners” [“voorhoedelopers”] and their followings: De Groot selected eight different important personalities to talk with them about their inner images and topical observations of the city. These talks were processed into speeches that fueled further discussion during the performances, again placing the exchange between inner images and observations centre stage with the goal of formulating a new vision of the city. A Peripatetical Approach to the Dramaturgical Gestus of Walking 173 The implementation of the concrete act of walking in First Movement can be aptly described on the basis of De Certeau’s analyses/ conceptualisations of walking in the city (1980: 91-110). In the workshops the interaction between “inner images” and “topical observations” during walks was conceived as an interaction between the imagination and reality that constitutes the experience of the city. In the structuralist, Saussurean vocabulary of De Certeau this can be phrased as follows: walking generates an experience of the city which is not a passive use of the place but a productive activity through which the space arises. Place is the visible, legible and rational given part of the city, the grammar as it were. Walking, then, is the physical use of that grammar resulting in a specific language expression that produces an illegible and ambiguous space (De Certeau 1980: 97-100). It is exactly this ambiguous spatial experience wherein memories play an important role that was concretised and shared during First Movement. First Movement awakened a certain consciousness of the experience of the city as, on the one hand, an external “decor” for the walk and, on the other hand, something constituted by the walkers, the users of the city. Moreover, First Movement provided the impetus to further elaborate the idea of the dramaturgical gestus of walking. In his study De Certeau oscillates between two different practices: the tactical practice of walking, doing, writing and speaking and the strategic practice of thinking, theorising, reading and seeing. A strategic practice is based on distance between subject and environment: acting occurs from an external position, like the bird’s eye view of the city. In tactical practices, such distance does not exist: acting happens from an immanent position, reacting to the environment through improvisation, like in a labyrinth (De Certeau 1980: 34-39). The experiences in First Movement indicate that walking as a dramaturgical gestus is not purely a tactical practice, but a practice that makes manifest the perspectives that oscillate between apparent oppositions such as body and world, thinking and doing, theory and practice. Whereas Aristotle utilises a classical distinction between practices in close relation to society and practices with a distance to society, De Certeau paves the way to an understanding of the dramaturgical connection to the community as one that fluctuates. This was precisely the move that students were making during the project. For example, a student would, on the one hand, explicitly take reflective distance by writing a blog about the question: What is First Movement? 20 While, on the other hand, this would have significant influence on the development of 20 See http: / / www.eerstebeweging.blogspot.nl (last accessed 17/ 07/ 2014). 174 Fanne Boland the process, because De Groot, First Movement’s project leader, would read those articles and apply them to her further preparations. Or else a student would study one of the participants, while also becoming closely involved in conversations with her study-object, which thereby influenced the exchange with De Groot. To conclude, walking can function as an analogue practice for the dramaturgical gestus, because it is an oscillatory movement between different perspectives with a constitutive relationship to the environment or the community. The dramaturgical gestus of walking is critical by means of the alternation of perspectives and social by way of the correlating relationship to the artistic community. Moreover, this movement between perspectives can be achieved in a variety of ways, both physical and nonphysical. What still remained inconclusive after the theatre project First Movement is where exactly the productive or constitutive moment in the dramaturgical gestus is located. In the last workshop this issue was scrutinised. 6. Peripety, or the Unforeseen “Walking means: going out, changing viewpoints, leaving one’s safe position. With every step, the walker opens up to the space and strives for the new, the unknown. Walking corresponds to the gestus of experiment - as a step in the unknown, as a penetration in terrain not yet investigated” (Fischer 2008: 28; transl. Jeroen Coppens). One year after the first workshop De Groot and myself organised another workshop in the same city, Ghent. 21 Building on the dramaturgical gestus of walking, the theatre project now attempted to go one step further. As previously described, walking entails a constant alternation of perspectives, in other words, a turning point from one leg to the other. After all, the dramaturge is interested in the future, in a theatre that is still in development. The alternation/ tipping point between different perspectives produces the advancement into the unforeseen that makes possible new performances or realisations. In the workshop, therefore, students were stimulated to enrich their academic perspective with a localised and bodily approach. For this reason their assignment was: try to reach a ten- 21 This workshop was part of the Dramaturgy course at the University of Ghent, which was accessible for students from a range of humanities backgrounds. One student from the Dual MA of Dramaturgy of the University of Amsterdam participated as well. A Peripatetical Approach to the Dramaturgical Gestus of Walking 175 tative vision of the future. Write a speech 22 that contains a proposition to “the theatre” on the basis of your knowledge and memories, but above all your experiences with the city. To what point on the horizon do you want to move the theatre? The assignment was intentionally formulated in an open manner, because we wanted to seize the laboratory as an opportunity to ask those big questions that might be deemed unanswerable in regular scientific education and dramaturgical practice, taking the first step into a still undefined vision of the future. Interestingly, the results of the workshop showed the material connections that the students made on the basis of the walks through the city and that inspired them into making their appeal to the theatre. One group expounded on the unmistakeable layer of dust covering the whole of Ghent, the residue from multiple construction sites. The dust made them implore the theatre to rid itself of the projection screens and microphones and to return to dust: to the collective struggling physicality of the theatre. Another group took the moving current of people through the city as their point of departure. They contrasted the trampling, jumping, dancing crowd with the established ancient buildings of the city. They urged the theatre to imagine the city on the move, as if the buildings were tents that could be folded, packed and put up somewhere else. A non-tragic interpretation of peripety could complement the dramaturgical gestus of walking and clarify the operations of the workshop. Kati Röttger frees peripety from the linearity of the action of the drama 23 and considers it as a moment of reversal that leads to spaces of possibility that include a new distribution of time, space, action and body in an encounter at the “precarious threshold” of the public sphere and artistic creation. These peripetical (not to be confused with peripatetical) moments determine the future work of the dramaturge, argues Röttger: “The work of the future dramaturge would then be to perform the peripetical move […]” (2014: 196). This “peripetical move” is described by Röttger in a way as a dramaturgical movement: “[…] the possible (peripetical) reversal of seeing (theorein) into acting (praxeos) and vice versa. While spectators can become actors and actors spectators, the dramaturge is the one who acts in between, calling up “the other” perspective (theorein), as it occurs in the dramaturgical work of watching and mediating the com- 22 We asked students to answer this question in a speech, because language could offer them, as students in the humanities, a familiar framework and more possibilities for documentation. 23 “If we isolate this very moment of peripety out of the timeline of the drama, we can state that it is the moment of a compression of time that resists continuity and succession” (Röttger 2014: 195). 176 Fanne Boland munal” (2014: 196). Peripety thus allows for an emphasis on the fruitful interruption of the dramaturgical gestus within the continuity of walking. Here I would like to add the cause of the classical peripety, anagnorisis or recognition. In tragedy, peripety is that moment when previously invisible relations are suddenly recognised by the protagonist (Aristotle 2004: 48). In classical tragedy this instigates the further unfurling of events that are determined by fate. In the work of the contemporary dramaturge this would rather lead to a peripetical moment in Röttger’s sense. Seemingly disconnected elements can have a certain relationship and thus open up the possibility of a new situation. The dramaturge helps theatre makers to see and to recognise what they have produced and what new possibilities these materials conjure up. The dramaturge may also endeavour to make connections with the art form of theatre from another perspective - similar to what the students did in the workshop with the material reality of the city of Ghent. In the latter, a fresh look at the constitution of the theatre was brought about by the tension of the encounter between the context of theatre studies and the experience of the city. Peripety as the recognition of (new) relationships is thus an important notion in the dramaturgical gestus, enabling the alternation of perspectives by the dramaturge to be understood as a constitutive value in the creation process. 7. Walking and Action of the Process-Dramaturge In the concept of the dramaturgical gestus of walking the dramaturge is an actor in the most literal sense of the word. To understand the dramaturge as actor is, in a certain sense, to stay faithful to the original meaning of the word dramaturge, as Röttger points out: “drama” comes from the Greek word “dran” which means to do, to act or to perform (2014: 197). By assuming that the dramaturge appears through the constitutive actions of the creation process, a space is opened up to imagine a process-oriented instead of a product-oriented dramaturge. Process-oriented, because next to the process of creation, the performance also works in a processual way. This is meant in the sense of Bourriaud and his “relational aesthetics” in which a work of art is seen as a “lasting encounter” (19), as a “dynamic agglutination” (20), as a “proposal to live in a shared world” (22). Not that we necessarily need a new kind of damaturge but rather that it is important to name and analyse developments of the dramaturgical practice more accurately and also to offer a better-articulated position for her in science and education. My proposition is to think of the dramaturge not as a border-guard between oppositions, but as a walker embodying A Peripatetical Approach to the Dramaturgical Gestus of Walking 177 different practices, processes and thus perspectives that alternate, complement and vitalise each other. Fig. 1: Photographer: Willem Weemhoff Photo: Walking through Amsterdam for the theatre project Eerste Beweging Literature Aristotle. Ethica Nicomachea. Transl. Hupperts & Poortman. Budel. Damon. 2005. Aristotle. Poetica. Transl. N. van der Ben & J.M. Bremer. Amsterdam. Polak & Van Gennep. 2004. Aristotle. Politica. Transl. J.M. Bremer & A.H.M. Kessels. Groningen. Historische Uitgeverij. 2012. Barthes, Roland. “Diderot, Brecht, Eisenstein.” In: Image/ Music/ Text. Transl. Heath, Stephen. New York. Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux. 1977. 69-78. Bourriaud, Nicolas. Relational Aesthetics. Transl. Pleasance, Simon & Woods, Fronza. Dijon. Les presses du réel. 2002. Brecht, Bertolt. “Über gestische Musik.” In: Siegfried Unseld (ed.). Schriften zum Theater. Über ein nicht-Aristotelische Dramatik. Berlin. Suhrkamp Verlag. 1957. 252-255. CAO Theater. Amsterdam: FNV Kunsten, Informatie en Media & Nederlandse Associatie voor Podiumkunsten. 2013. Certeau, Michel De. Practice of Everyday Life. Transl. Rendall, Steven. Berkeley. University of California Press. 1980-1984. 178 Fanne Boland Dieho, Bart. Een voortdurend Gesprek, de Dialoog van de Theaterdramaturg. Amsterdam & Utrecht. Uitgeverij International Theatre & Film Books/ HKU. 2009. Fischer, Ralph. Walking Artists. Über die Entdeckung des Gehens in den Performativen Künsten. Bielefeld. Transcript Verlag. 2011. Gelhaus, Axel, Moser, Christian & Schneider, Helmut J., Kopflandschaften Landschaftsgänge: Kulturgeschichte und Poetik des Spaziergangs. Cologne, Weimar & Vienna. Böhlau Verlag. 2007. Kerkhoven, Marianne Van. Van het Kijken en het Schrijven, Teksten over Theater. Leuven. Uitgeverij Van Halewyck. 2002. Kreffer, J.M.A., Swint, A.D., & Smit, N.A., Salarisschalen CAO Nederlands Theater. Utrecht. Cap Gemini Ernst & Young. 2002. Lehmann, Hans-Thies. Postdramatic Theatre. Transl. Jürs-Munby, Karen. London. Routledge. 2006. Pavis, Patrice, “Dramaturgy and Postdramaturgy.” In: Pewny, Katharina, Callens, Johan & Coppens, Jeroen, Dramaturgies in The New Millennium. Schriftenreihe Forum Modernes Theater. Tübingen. Narr Francke Attempto Verlag. 2014. Roeder, Anke, Klaus Zehelein, eds. Die Kunst der Dramaturgie: Theorie, Praxis, Ausbildung. Leipzig: Henschel Verlag. 2011. Röttger, Kati. “Strategies of Peripety for a Dramaturgy of the Future.” In: Pewny, Katharina, Callens, Johan & Coppens, Jeroen. Dramaturgies in The New Millennium. Schriftenreihe Forum Modernes Theater. Tübingen. Narr Francke Attempto Verlag. 2014. Roeder, Anke, Klaus Zehelein, eds. Die Kunst der Dramaturgie: Theorie, Praxis, Ausbildung. Leipzig: Henschel Verlag. 2011. Solnit, Rebecca. Wanderlust: A History of Walking. New York. Penguin Group. 2000. Spoelstra, Berthe, & Schumacher, Rezy. CAO. Online at: http: / / ltd.library.uu.nl/ doc/ 318/ cao.pdf (last accessed 17/ 07/ 2014). Turner, Cathy & Berhndt, Synne. Dramaturgy and Performance. Hampshire & New York. Palgrave Macmillan. 2008. Strategies of Peripety for a Dramaturgy of the Future. Transnational Challenges and Differences in Universal Teaching Kati Röttger 1. Introduction “How to train future dramaturges? ” Being invited to contribute an answer to this overarching question in terms of “Relational Dramaturgies” is certainly a challenge. In the following article I will take on this challenge to propose programmatic considerations on this issue. That means I will “relate” to the actuality of the question of Relational Dramaturgies by envisioning a possible future of dramaturgy. By “actuality” I refer to what Michel Foucault termed the difference that separates today from yesterday (1984: 34). This difference allows me to open up the field to question the role of the future dramaturge taking two key approaches, firstly, that of an inquery into the future world, and secondly, that of an enquiry of the present. What has to happen in terms of training (and more precisely methods, concepts, urgencies) to equip future dramaturges? Or, put differently: How do we equip current students to become the dramaturges of the future? However the question is formulated, the answer depends on the circumscription of the present historical conditions and practices of dramaturgy. That neither means that I will provide a systematic overview of dramaturgical practices up to now (Pavis 2014: 14-35), nor that I intend to provide any final answer. At this point I would like to stress again the programmatic character of my following considerations. They are mainly meant to open up a space of potentialities to discuss three related topics that are at stake when a dramaturgy of the future has to be brought into focus: firstly, dramaturgy on the threshold between academic and artistic practice; secondly, transnational dramaturgy and its poetics; and thirdly, a dramaturgy of knowledge and epistemologies. All three topics are particularly relevant to the future dramaturge working in the context of what is called globalisation. 180 Kati Röttger Over the following pages I will develop my argument in several steps departing from a notion of dramaturgy that is linked to the question of community. This leads to a preliminary conceptualisation of globalisation that is determined by transnational challenges and the consequences these pose for universities and the arts. Finally I will provide a programmatic proposal for a “dramaturgy of difference in universal teaching” relying on what I term a poetics of peripety to facilitate a space of potentialities. This proposal will be underpinned by some current examples from (educational) performance practice such as the Flying Circus Project of Ong Keng Sen and The Pocha Nostra Project of Guillermo Gómez-Peña. 2. Which Dramaturge? Theatre is a communal art practice. It is constituted by a gathering of performers and spectators in a common time and space. This claim is not at all new. It has been proven more than once from different angles. 1 I am starting with this evident claim, because the following considerations on the current state of the dramaturge and dramaturgical education depart from a notion of dramaturgy that is closely linked to this fundamental point. If we seek to agree on a most general definition of what distinguishes a dramaturge, I propose the following. The dramaturge can be considered as a watcher and mediator of the theatrical art practice, someone who operates at and takes care of the threshold between performers and spectators. At first sight this seems to be a paradox, because the dramaturge is usually present in the creative process of making a performance which happens without spectators (rehearsals) and absent in the theatrical event that is constituted by the presence of the spectators (performance). But this paradox, I would suggest, underlies the very function of the dramaturge. For in some way, the dramaturge substitutes for the (absent) spectator during the rehearsal process. This has two important implications. Firstly, the dramaturge is at once an element and agent in 1 Even before Erika Fischer-Lichte’s often quoted claim that the co-presence of actors and audience is a constituent factor of a performative event (2008) theatre makers like Peter Brook or Jerzy Grotowski, as well as theatre scholars like Arno Paul or Horst-Dieter Klock (1976) and philosophers like Hannah Arendt or Alain Badiou already agreed on this point. To quote Badiou: “Let’s posit that there is theatre as soon as we can enumerate: first, a public gathered with the intent of a spectacle; second actors who are physically present, with their voices and bodies, in a space reserved for them with the express purpose of the gathered public’s consideration […]” (2008: 130). Strategies of Peripety for a Dramaturgy of the Future 181 the same collective process of creation, participating in it. Secondly, he or she watches the artistic process with the “foreseeing” eye of the possible spectator who will constitute the theatrical event. That neither means that the dramaturge has to know the expected audience in advance, nor that he or she has to be able to define or anticipate audience expectations. Such an attitude would even contradict the very idea of art. It would neglect theatre as an art form that provides possible (unexpected) worlds or interrupts everyday experiences. Nevertheless I would claim that the vital need for a dramaturge and genesis of the profession up to now is due to the fact that, following Alain Badiou, theatre is the only art form that “counts on the spectator” (187). 2 This is, I will argue further, why the position of the dramaturge only found its way into the theatre and not into the other arts. One might call it the genuine “relational” aspect of dramaturgy referring to Nicolas Bourriaud’s study on Relational Aesthetics (1998), for he builds his main point on the claim that these aesthetics were born out of the inclusion of spectatorship in the Fine Arts, like in installations and happenings, since the late 20 th century. This defines the shift from art as object to art as event. 3 This is also in line with Badiou’s argument. Unlike other genres such as painting or film, he claims, theatre is not an “object” that survives for eternity. It lives and dies with the moment in which it happens as communal event. In the phrase of Hannah Arendt: it is a practice of inter (homines) esse, thus a practice of the public sphere (1958). It is exactly this precarious threshold, where public sphere and artistic creation necessarily and vividly meet to constitute theatre, which needs careful attention: namely the attention of the dramaturge. 4 Dramaturgy in this sense can be understood as being aware of the public aspect of the art of theatre, the performance. The dramaturge bears this in mind and reminds us that this public essence of theatre is created in common to happen in community. 5 2 Badiou here distingishes between spectators as consumers (like in cinema) and theatrical spectators who’s presence constitutes the very event they are participating in. Only these spectators “count”. 3 I would go so far as to claim that this might be one of the reasons why currently increasing attention is being paid to dramaturgical practices beyond the realm of theatre: it is because the spectator is invading other art forms and is thus blurring the conventional boundaries between disciplines. 4 It is important here to stress that I do not share Badious’s notion of the dramaturge as “that of the policeman of the text who forbids the artist ‘on the spot’ to seize hold of the scenic situation” (2008: 202). 5 Lack of space here prevents me from going into the diverse possible poetological and historical features of dramaturgy and the current interdisciplinary development in the field, or to give an overview of the diverse aspects of current dramaturgical practices. 182 Kati Röttger Yet which community are we referring to here? The traditional concepts of the dramaturge and of dramaturgy are clearly linked to the humanist tradition and epistemology of Western national theatre. Tracing this back to G.E. Lessing’s first considerations of the theme in his Hamburger Dramaturgie and his call for the creation of a German bourgeois national theatre (Deutsch-Schreiner 2014: 40-41), the dramaturge is a phenomenon of the world of modern Europe and of modern theatre, defined by and defining “imagined communities” which are understood in terms of nation, state and society, and enforced, according to the often quoted claim of Benedict Anderson, through print capitalism (Anderson 1983; Röttger 2010). The acts of reading and writing that go with the modern print media define the core task of the dramaturge, facilitating the transmission of the (drama)text to the stage and to a (national) audience in the one national language. 6 The classical virtues of the traditional dramaturge therefore are literacy, erudition and the capacity to analyse and intermediate the transfer from a textual to a performative medium. At this point we meet the first challenge for a dramaturgy of the future: that of globalisation. 3. The Transnational Challenge The European landscape of the arts, culture and higher education is currently undergoing drastic transformations. A number of publications have proven the extent to which these transformations are part of the growing market in cognitive capitalism on a global scale, resulting in the commercialisation of knowledge as well as the immaterialisation of labour. 7 This means that communicative acting [kommunikatives Handeln], not just as a social ability but also in higher educational systems and in the arts, is becoming ever more a question of management. Ideas, personality and creative energy, as well as individual performance are increasingly involved in the production of value, competition and competitiveness, supported by the digitalisation of communication. This process is happening on a transnational scale and defines globalisation as an overarching interconnectedness of human experiences and practices across the globe. Drawing on the work of German sociologist Ulrich Beck, we can see this overarching interconnectedness as being increasingly subordinated to a 6 Yet Lessing’s plays and his reflections on aesthetics also enhance the perspective of visual dramaturgy, a fact that is omitted in most analyses of his work. See Jackob and Röttger 2009. 7 See Lazzarato (2013), Hardt & Negri (2000) and for Theatre Studies Pewny (2011). Strategies of Peripety for a Dramaturgy of the Future 183 “cosmopolitan imperative” under the motto “cooperate or fail! ” (Beck 2011: 1346). Beck’s argument is built on what he calls “risk society”, expanding Benedict Anderson’s concept of imagined communities to propose cosmopolitan communities of global risks, for example of anticipated nuclear, ecological or economical threats. These new imagined communities transcend the borders of the national, and are staged and perceived through the mass communication media that shape our perception of risk. They “establish a link between the most fundamental interest of nations, individuals, and the new unbounded spaces and duties of a responsibility of the survival of all” (Beck 2011: 1352). Beck’s claims rest on a clever turn of the Kantian categorical imperative, the central concept of his moral philosophy directed to the responsible actions of the human individual, into a cosmopolitan imperative that calls for common bounds (transnational cooperation) out of a morality that is not defined by reason but by fear. While Beck restricts his approach to risk communities of a social stance, I want to stretch his imperative to the world of art and academia. This is because the competitive market system works in such a way that projects or “products” of immaterial creative and educational labour (e.g. theatre or “The Humanities”) can only survive in transnational cooperation, 8 while the nation state is shirking its responsibility. 9 4. The Challenge for the University It is therefore crucial to confront the question of how far globalisation intervenes in academia (academic teaching) and the arts (artistic practices). To approach this question I refer to the evaluation of the current state of academia which Bill Readings undertook in his book The University in Ruins (1996). Here he claims: “The decline of the nation state and of culture as a national ideology is changing not only the traditional role of the university, but is also complicating the understanding of the categories which could help us to analyse these changes” (1996: 106, emphasis added). In the present circumstances, the university is under increasing pressure in terms of economic efficiency, marketing and international competition, at the expense of notions of culture and resistance through critique. As it loses its critical potential and cultural value it is no longer possible to conceive of academic education as defined by the cultural 8 See e.g. the calls for networking and transnational cooperation in the EU 7th Framework program. http: / / cordis.europa.eu/ fp7 (last accessed 22/ 08/ 2014). 9 See the illuminating article about recent Dutch cultural politics by van der Meulen (2011). 184 Kati Röttger appropriation of knowledge or the arts as well as by national histories of cultural knowledge. Instead, we are increasingly confronted with the technocratisation of the university on an international level, and systems governed by numbers and accounting systems. 10 With Foucault the crucial question of actuality at this point is certainly to which extent these forms of technological and governmental power exercise forms of disciplinarian and standardising procedures that result in the dismissal of the mature enlightened man of freedom and critique (Foucault 2005: 705). This standardisation of referenceless knowledge, loosened from its critical function and cultural contextualisation, is connected to the increasing internationalisation of student groups as encouraged by the unifying reformation of universities to conform to BA and MA modes after the Bologna-contract since 1999. International Programs like Erasmus Mundus Masters help small disciplines survive the increasing competition of the market economy in education at the university level. They also enhance the student’s chances to experience difference and prepare for new kinds of responsibilities in transnational (educational) communities. In this way at least I regard for example the Erasmus Mundus Master of Arts of International Performance Research (MAIPR), 11 established in 2008, as an opportunity to try out new practices in (transnational) education. Yet this opportunity is also a curse. The problem is that, for us as professors, this development also poses a number of educational problems. To begin, our generation is not trained in international or intercultural educational practices and so we have to find out about them along the way. Secondly, such schemes have no common denominator of knowledge and experience to rely on. Students coming from diverse cultures with diverse notions of theatre and performance, equipped with diverse kinds 10 See also the most recent publication of the well-known poststructuralist and postcolonialist critical philosopher Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, The Aesthetic Education in the Era of Globalization. In a tone which oscillates between despair, cynicism, and hope, Spivak highlights the alarming consequences of this development: “Globalisation takes place only in capital and data. Everything else is damage control. Information command has ruined knowing and reading. Therefore we don’t really know what to do with information. Unanalysed projects come into existence simply because the information is there. Crowd sourcing takes the place of democracy. Universities become adjuncts to what is called international society; the humanities and imaginative social sciences bite the dust” (1). She pleads for the “deterritorialisation” of Schiller’s concept of aesthetic education for the era of globalisation, in the double bind of an abuse of Enlightenment, that is: a reuse of Enlightenment from below (“bottom-up concepts”), at the heart of democracy (4). 11 A joint program between the Universities of Warwick, Helsinki, Belgrade and Amsterdam, running between 2008-2014, financed by the EU, offering around 20 scholarships per year for non-European and European students of Performance Studies. Strategies of Peripety for a Dramaturgy of the Future 185 of knowledge, do not necessarily share any horizon, be it historical or epistemological. Thirdly, there is a lack of appropriate categories to deal with diversity and help us to conceive transnational teaching in terms of equality. This is complicated, as mentioned, by a flawed understanding of the categories which could help us to analyse these changes. Performance Studies do not offer satisfying solutions in terms of concepts or categories. This also applies to an understanding of dramaturgy and the dramaturge. The difficulty lies in the very notions of dramaturgy and the dramaturge, both of which until now have been integral to the history and epistemology of Western national theatres. The urgency lies in the very conditions of the actuality I mentioned in the beginning: the context of globalisation forces us to reflect on practices that go beyond the Western and beyond the national. What does that mean for future dramaturges, and what does it mean for future academic and future artistic practice? 5. What about Performance Studies? The problem of globalisation also haunts Performance Studies. It is necessary to be aware of the specific set of problems that arise in a cultural environment in which “World Performance Projects” are established (see e.g. Roach 2012: 7-9) and international organisations (such as UNESCO) as well as funding organisations make decisions about “world” cultural rights. As mentioned, this process is complicated by the lack of adequate terminologies. Even the well-intentioned approach of Janelle Reinelt to overcome the alleged imperialism of Performance Studies by promoting “international performance literacies” does not overcome the problem in the final analysis (2007: 7-16). Her plea for a true internationalisation of Performance Studies “to include a range of polynational voices” (14) is problematic, because it does not question the very gesture of “inclusion” itself as a hegemonial one. Moreover, it resonates with the difficulty to escape the familiar discourse, because her argument is built exclusively on those Anglo-American voices she tends to decentre. I fully agree with Diana Taylor’s critique on the unease present in the terminology used in much scholarly work on performance practice in a global or intercultural sphere. In many cases this […] highlights an area of concern (the Non-Western) and negates it in the same move. It distances non-Western production as radically other, and then attempts to encompass it within existing critical systems as diminished or disruptive elements. Performance, as Roach points out, is as much about forgetting as about remembering. The West has forgotten about the many parts 186 Kati Röttger of the world that elude its explanatory grasp. Yet, it remembers the need to cement the centrality of its position as the West by creating and freezing the Non-West as always other […]. Domination by culture, by “definition”, by claims to originality and authenticity have functioned in tandem with military and economic supremacy. (Taylor 2003: 11-12) This unease might be mirrored in the attempts to grasp the acts of cultural transfer, to transmit and share in international performance practices through the cumulative taxonomic differentiations between inter-, intra-, cross-, multi-, transor meta-cultural performances. In his recent article on “Intercultural Theatre Today” Patrice Pavis undertakes a critical revision of the diverse concepts that came up in the course of Performance Studies beginning with intercultural theatre in the 1980s and ending with globalised performances today. He detects a continuous state of crisis in theory, caused by troubles in deciding the proper determinations of (national cultural, and other) identities. Not without irony (or despair? ), he concludes his interrogation with a kind of surrender: “What if the intercultural were in fact an interartistic practice, a form of interdisciplinarity, a crossing, a confrontation and an addition of arts, of techniques and of acting modes? ” (2010: 14). And he proposes that we should overcome the terminological and cultural crisis by … rediscovering humour! Diana Taylor proposes to take performance itself more seriously as “a system of learning, storing, and transmitting knowledge”, as a chance to expand what we understand by knowledge itself. “This move”, she goes on, “might prepare us to challenge the preponderance of writing in Western epistemologies.” Performance practice can perhaps offer a starting point to find new conceptual ways for a non-hierarchical sharing and transmitting of knowledge in its “shift of the focus from written to embodied culture, from the discursive to the performative. Instead of focusing on patterns of cultural expressions in terms of texts and narratives, we might think about them as scenarios that do not reduce gestures and embodied practices to narrative description” (2003: 16). In the following I will build on this proposal to outline ways that could perhaps lead towards practices of transnational dramaturgy. But first, I will give some examples from the field of performance and provide some theoretical reflections on the possibilities of opening up space to experiment with shared performative knowledge in an international educational environment. The key question here is how to understand, and how to understand each other, without understanding and without understanding each other. Strategies of Peripety for a Dramaturgy of the Future 187 6. Dramaturgy of Difference The agenda that accompanies these considerations is reflected in my subtitle: “Transnational Challenges and Differences in Universal Teaching.” Difference here relates not only to the difference that separates today from yesterday, as I claimed at the beginning of my article. It is also conceived, by following up Homi Bhaba (The Location of Culture, 1994) in a twofold implication of diversity and equality. The crucial problem here is how far dramaturgical education can be opened up to diversity and equality of dramaturgical knowledge with regard to a communal, international process of creation as well as the theatrical event directed towards a transnational community. This relates to what I termed the “precarious threshold” where the public sphere and artistic creation necessarily meet to constitute theatre as a communal event that needs the attention of a dramaturge. In short, this relates to the educational community (university), the artistic community (creation) and the public community (performance) where the future dramaturge might be at work. What kind of (dramaturgical) knowledge is required to enable a dramaturge to execute the cosmopolitan imperative without forgetting equality and diversity? And how can we then define the communal space which the dramaturge should watch and mediate? A provisional, first answer to these questions is present in the latter part of my subtitle: “universal teaching.” This term relies on Jacques Rancière’s notion of critical pedagogy as developed in The Ignorant Schoolmaster (1991). This book focuses on the question: what if equality? It offers an account of the educational practices of Joseph Jacotot, a French schoolteacher who was driven into exile in 1818 due to the Restoration. Thanks to the Dutch King, Jacotot was given a position at the Flemish University of Louvain, but knowing no Flemish he had to teach in French to Flemish students who knew no French. This peculiar situation caused him to invent an emancipated pedagogy, which became extremely successful in his time. It was a pedagogy that does not depend on the knowledge of the master being transmitted to the students. Rather it is based on the idea that “one can teach what one doesn’t know if the student is emancipated, that is to say he is obliged to use his own intelligence” (15). Perhaps it goes without saying that this idea includes the assumption that everybody disposes of his or her own intelligence but that we have to be given the opportunity to prove it. Education only requires a common thing to be established between the master and the students. In the case of Jacotot this common thing was in the first instance a book. Unable to teach the students in Flemish, he used a bilingual edition of Fenelon’s 188 Kati Röttger Télémaque (1699). The students had to learn by heart the French text by themselves, with only the help of the translation. This was the beginning of an experiment, an intellectual adventure that led Jacotot to experience the success of equality in teaching (65). 12 Such a scheme requires improvisation as a poetic virtue, because it relies on an act of communication. Rancière means by this an act of speaking about the material with which the student is confronted, that can also be a painting or a piece of music. Decisive is that one translates and invites others to do the same. For Rancière this is an act of poetry (65). At the same time it requires trust in the use of one’s intelligence. It is a virtue of intelligence that is less defined by knowing than doing. This “doing” consists of a material approach to a thing in common as a source of material verification that everybody is able to perform. In the case of Télémaque it was necessary to pay attention to what one saw, what one heard, and what one thought about it, and to talk about it: “the form of the letters, the placement or ending of words, the images, the reasoning, the characters […] there was only one rule: [the student] must be able to show, in the book, the materiality of everything he says” (20). Rancière took this idea of universal teaching to develop his claim for emancipation that is defined through equality: “Emancipation is the verification of the equality of intelligence”, namely an “intelligence which makes figures and comparisons in order to communicate its intellectual adventures and to understand what another intelligence tries to communicate to it in turn” (35). It is obvious that this claim in every aspect is at adds with the current developments in the universities that I sketched before. Instead of emancipation as the verification of the equality of intelligence, mechanisms of control, bondage, and pre-formulated expected outputs of knowledge are implemented. Therefore one might ask how the perspective of critical pedagogy could be useful to teach future dramaturges. There is more than one possible answer. One response is that the emancipatory project celebrates the productive yet uncertain ground of “artistic research” - productive in that it celebrates equality of intellect, but uncertain in its claims to “scientific validity” as a discipline, woven into an emancipatory refusal to claim intellectual superiority over others. Rancière’s position chimes with the ethos attributed to the inter- 12 This enlightened enterprise of knowledge was not an isolated philosophical experiment in the eighteenth century. The freedom and success of experimental findings by accident and curiosity also resonated, for example, in the well-known neologism “serendipity” and with continued relevance through the discourse on science in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Coined by Horace Walpole in 1754, “serendipity” means according to the Oxford dictionary “the faculty of making happy and unexpected discoveries by accident.” See Merton 2004. Strategies of Peripety for a Dramaturgy of the Future 189 relationship of art and research, with the incertitude and openness of the connection between these two orientations. Secondly, if the dramaturge does indeed watch and mediate the communal, it is only in this role that he or she can learn to intermediate (communicate) what Rancière termed that which one does not know as it relates to the histories, cultures, places, languages and poetics of other individuals. On the one hand, it could be up to the dramaturge to propose a common thing (a book, a body, an object, a space…? ) to work on in the artistic process; alternatively, it could also be the role of the dramaturge to act as the mediator to keep open the space which in itself is the common creative process. Thirdly, it is in fact not so far-fetched to transpose this critical pedagogy to artistic practice as a communal practice. Rancière himself leads us to this conclusion. He not only states that the power of equality is only one of community (20), but moreover suggests that if a community of equals happens, art happens, as proven by the following quotation: We can thus dream of a society of the emancipated that should be a society of artists. Such a society would repudiate the division between those who know and those who don’t, between those who possess and those who don’t possess the property of intelligence. It would only know minds in action: people who do, who speak about what they are doing, and who thus transform all their works into ways of demonstrating the humanity that is in them as in everyone. (35) However, as there is no such thing as a “possible society”, One must choose between making an unequal society out of equal men and making an equal society out of unequal men. Whoever has some taste for equality shouldn’t hesitate: individuals are real beings, and society is a fiction. It is for real beings that equality has a value, not for a fiction. One need only learn how to be equal men in an unequal society. This is what being emancipated means. But this simple thing is hardest to understand, especially since the new explication - progress - has inextricably confused equality with its opposite. (133 original emphases) This means that if we want the arts and artistic practice to open up and stay open, it is exactly an account of this “possibility space” where equality can happen. This opening up of what I term a “possibility space”, the space of the future dramaturge, comes close to what Jean-Luc Nancy explores as “stage”. It is the stage of a community conceived in terms of “we” that co-appears as a primordial plurality and diversity. This co-appearance happens in the mode of the spectacle. Turning upside down Guy Debord’s notion of the society of the spectacle, Nancy claims, and Hannah Arendt 190 Kati Röttger echoes this, that 13 “there is no society without a spectacle; or more precisely, there is no society without the spectacle of society” (Nancy 2000: 67). In other words, society as something common is constituted as a “being-with” which shares the same space-time. The “with” of the being-with (Mitsein) is crucial here, as it is not meant as an addition of a multiplicity of several individuals. The “with” includes a sharing which is inherent in co-appearing, “that is, in its appearing to itself and to one another, all at once” (67). This co-appearing is not conceived as totality but as equality in the sense that “‘one’ is not ‘with’ in some general sort of way, but each time according to determined modes that are themselves multiple and simultaneous (people, culture, language, lineage, network, group, couple, band, and so on)” (65). This “we” constitutes the stage and is constituted through the stage, where the singular appears one by one and each time in a plurality of aspects which co-appear. When speaking of this stage as a “possibility space” of “opening up” it is important to understand that this is not meant as the space of mimetic representation. “It is a stage in the sense of the opening of space-time for the distribution of singularities, each of whom singularly plays the unique and plural role of the “self” or the “being-self”” as one-of-us (65). It is this idea of being-with, I would suggest, that enables an understanding commensurate with the creation of a possible society. This would be an understanding in which “we understand that there is nothing to understand; more precisely, this means that there is no appropriation of meaning, because ‘meaning’ is the sharing of Being” (98). In a certain way this should be the presupposition for realising equality as ethos and praxis for a dramaturgy of the future. 7. Performance Practice and Pedagogy To briefly explore these possible approaches to the open (in an educational practice for future dramaturges) I will present two examples of contemporary performance practice that expand the limits of the product (the performance) by identifying it with the production process. I have deliberately chosen two “artists’ projects in residency” run by guest scholars who worked for some time with our students in the context of the MAIPR 13 Hannah Arendt claimed the constitution of a common sphere as a “sphere of interest” constituted by the plurality and multiplicity of people through agency between and appearance before human beings, or a space of appearance before each other (1958). Strategies of Peripety for a Dramaturgy of the Future 191 Program in Amsterdam. 14 Although the projects are not strictly dramaturgical education, I have chosen them in the hope of giving inspiration for educational settings for dramaturges of the future in the vein I am proposing in this article. Both artists are well-known for their radical approaches to performance practice and pedagogy. While Guillermo Gómez-Peña and La Pocha Nostra Live Art Laboratory chose to use the body as the primary “thing in common” to enable shared intellectual and emotional adventures for those who attend their workshops, Ong Keng Sen and the Flying Circus Project define their mission through the opening up of the possibility space itself, creating nothing more or less than a “stage” as Nancy would conceive it. 7.1. Guillermo Gómez-Peña and La Pocha Nostra Live Art Laboratory Since 1993 Gómez-Peña and members of the Pocha Nostra performance troupe have conducted what they call cross-cultural, cross-disciplinary and cross-generational workshops. One crucial precondition of their educational projects is radical diversity. Ideally they seek to involve performance artists, actors, dancers and students from diverse ethnic communities, generations and artistic backgrounds. Their objective is to provide a laboratory space for non-textual, embodied performance practice: “It is our desire to cross and erase dangerous borders between art and politics, practice and theory, artist and spectator. We strive to eradicate myths of purity and dissolve borders surrounding culture, ethnicity, gender, lan- 14 Similar experimental artists present at UvA have been: 1. Theorist of Performing Arts and Cultural worker Ana Vujanovic who founded a project called “Deschooling Classroom” to experiment with new forms of performative knowledge transfer: see http: / / www.deschoolingclassroom.tkh-generator.net (last accessed 17/ 07/ 2014). 2. Lina Issa, a performance artist from Lebanon/ Amsterdam. She intervenes in real life biographies with a strategy of replacement. This is probably an extreme way to get to know what you do not now. Her experience as a migrant and her longing to meet “the other” in herself and out there, inform and inspire her artistic practice to a great degree. The focus in her work lies mainly on the physical aspect of displacement as she literally places herself in different situations. Her work process usually takes the form of a social event - a performance, a workshop or a happening. For her performance Where we are not that lasted from 2006 to 2009 she cast a replacement because she was not allowed to enter Lebanon for political reasons. She sent Aitana, a Spanish dancer, to Lebanon for 10 days as a stand-in, messenger and recording device. Her replacement visited different people (family and friends), and traced the places of her memory and what constitutes the idea of “home” to her. Subsequently she did What if, if I take your place? (2009) in Iaspis (Sweden). Arriving in the new city, she placed an advertisement in the newspaper asking people if she could take their place in some situation in their life. She received 33 replies and she took the places of nine people, among whom were a curator, a divorced woman and a garbage man etc. See http: / / linaissa.blogspot.nl (last accessed 17/ 07/ 2014). 192 Kati Röttger guage, and métier. La Pocha Nostra is neither an ensemble nor a troupe. We are more of a conceptual laboratory - a loose association of rebel artists thinking together, exchanging ideas/ aspirations, and jumping into the abyss together.” 15 To give an idea of their working method and methodological approach to shared and emancipatory performance knowledge, here are some fragments of a report from one of our students: 16 In a meeting that same first day, Erika expresses her dislike of classrooms. She prefers no hierarchy of teachers and students. Rather she talks about a community of artists, a ‘clumsy yet functional democracy’ where we can be free and do whatever we like to do, make whatever we want to make, and most importantly cross borders and expand limits to whatever length we want. She puts this into practice by not pointing at people to introduce themselves but letting everybody speak when they want to, as long as their introduction is creative and poetic. For the very diverse but mainly theoretical group this is a difficult job and the exercise ends in silence. Erika tries to ‘not let the energy drop’ and ‘keep us in a flow’, but it is quite difficult and in my case scepticism flourished. The next day Guillermo Gómez-Peña placed us in a circle on the stage of the theatre and we started a similar exercise. He would start a sentence like ‘Performance is..’ or ‘My body feels like..’ and anyone could finish it. This time the group reacted more vividly though still cautiously. Maybe because we were all very impressed by the humour and great rhythm of his performance from the other day. Each morning we would start with this exercise and each morning more students would participate, sentences became longer, more metaphorical and more enthusiastic. […] On the second and third day of the workshop we continued to deepen these exercises, and use each other’s bodies to create border crossing images. The more we did this, the more comfortable we felt. I noticed I had a special bond with all the partners I worked with, because you exchange energies and feel completely dependent on each other for the duration of the exercise. Especially when you had to use your partner’s body as raw material. You were allowed to position it, take off clothes, make insinuating, erotic or violent images, maybe even add props that contradicted their own beliefs. But the process of building up to more complex images and pushing borders all felt very natural, because we were led towards it step by step. This was extremely well done by the La Pocha Nostra members. We were never forced to do anything, you closed your eyes in your own time, tried whatever you wanted. […] Between the first day, when we saw Guillermo’s performance and feared the crazy things we were asked to do this week, and the fifth day, where we were making exactly these pictures and even placing them in public 15 La Pocha Nostra website, see http: / / www.pochanostra.com (last accessed 17/ 07/ 2014). 16 The report is on a five-days’ workshop provided by Guillermo Gómez-Peña, Erica Mott and Saul Garcia López in October 2012 at the Institute of Theatre Studies, University of Amsterdam. For more information, see e.g. Gómez-Peña 2005. Strategies of Peripety for a Dramaturgy of the Future 193 spaces, the group changed a lot. The resistance against their destruction of our methods, by which I mean that we weren’t asked to take turns but should intervene whenever we liked, became too faint. Of course some people were more in the artwork itself, using their bodies as material, and other people rather observed or documented. But the La Pocha Nostra members kept encouraging us to take both roles, to switch from being a performer in one exercise to a creator in the next. On Friday morning the group dynamic reached a high point, though our bodies were exhausted and our unfinished papers troubled our minds, it seemed as if everybody was on top of their game. We created some beautiful static and dynamic performance artworks in unusual locations; we were all performers, creators and observers. We shifted naturally from one position to the other and used the collective authorship to intervene in each other’s progress to perfect the artworks. 17 7.2. Ong Ken Seng and The Flying Circus Project The Flying Circus Project, created in 1993, facilitates laboratories that are not production-specific and instead value the process of artists being together in the spirit of debate and collaboration. It departs deliberately from nothing and creates nothing. Ong Ken Seng insists on the pure act of being-together that happens in limited time-zones (a few days or weeks) at different locations. It is the creation of an open space, where product and process merge, and where all participants are “element and actor of the same collective process.” 18 Ideally, this emerges from the pure potential of being there together to evolve interfaces, to search for new relations between teaching and learning (called alternative universities), to share and redefine knowledge. 19 For example, in January 2010, 29 artists from around the world (among others Tarek Atou, sound artist, Lebanon; Airan Berg, theatremaker, artistic director, Israel/ Austria; Gurur Ertem, artistic director, Turkey; Tim Etchells, artist, writer, performance maker, UK; Nelisibe Xaba, dancer-choreographer, South-Africa) convened in Phnom Penh to engage in a project called AlterU. AlterU was an alternative system of knowledge sharing outside the failed national universities, facilitated by these visiting artists for the benefit of young Cambodians. 17 I am especially grateful to our Dutch student Renske Ebbers for allowing me to publish her report. 18 See the beginning of this article. 19 Check for example: http: / / flyingcircusproject.wordpress.com/ 2010/ 01/ 20/ (last accessed 17/ 07/ 2014). http: / / flyingcircusproject.wordpress.com/ 2009/ 11/ 19/ artist-talk-with-kutlug-ataman/ (last accessed 17/ 07/ 2014). http: / / theatreworks.org.sg/ international/ flying_circus_project04/ index.htm (last accessed 17/ 07/ 2014). 194 Kati Röttger The participants came from classical and traditional dance backgrounds. Knowledge sharing meant sharing time and space, and the creation of a stage, which Nancy, as mentioned, conceives as a “being-with” that shares the “space”-time according to determined modes that are themselves multiple and simultaneous. This knowledge sharing, Ong Ken Seng reports, was encouraged as part of the participants’ daily life together: during breakfast, an auto-rickshaw, at a monument, by the pool, while listening to folk musicians in the village. No intensive training occurred, just singular sessions of interphases. On the last day an open picnic, “Tea Tables,” took place where the visiting artists held informational conversations at different tables, on the grass, in various pavilions. It was very hard to predict, Seng explains, how the experiences would come across for the visitors who normally did not work as community artists. Being called on to respond to the situation in Cambodia was powerful and each of them developed a personal response, making a difference in the world without exactly knowing what they were doing. This project is clearly informed by Jean-Luc Nancy’s notion of worlding (mondialisation), 20 the conception of an opening without usefulness or adequacy of purpose. It resists globalisation in terms of agglomeration, technocratisation and inequality, looking for agency, ethos and opening (ouvrir) as a praxis of work (œuvre) without delivering a clearly defined product: a work of art (Nancy 2007: 14; 54). It is not my intent at this point to judge whether this radically formulated emancipatory attitude of The Flying Circus Project succeeds in realising its claims or not. Rather I am interested in the attitude towards intellectual (or artistic) adventures that experiment with ways of daring to know (! ) and which inspire us to think about emancipatory potentialities in educating future dramaturges. But we still might ask, what dramaturgy are we talking about, and this is my last point. 8. Poetics of Peripety The Poetics of Peripety which I propose in this last section echoes the dramaturgy of difference I implemented in the beginning of this article. If what I call the dramaturgy of difference introduces a difference of today with respect to yesterday, that means it makes a difference in respect to a 20 I am relying here on the manuscript of a lecture about “The Enchantment of Worlding” held by Ong Ken Seng in October 2012 at the Theatre Institute of the University of Amsterdam. See also Nancy 2007. Strategies of Peripety for a Dramaturgy of the Future 195 traditional Western approach towards dramaturgy. To this end, it interrogates the intellectual and institutional, political and ethical conditions for a future dramaturge of emancipated knowledge that resonates with Foucault’s call for Kant’s aude sapere! . This goes along with an interrogation of the strong link between traditional dramaturgy and the Western history of poetics, beginning with Aristotle. Yet it is not my aim to reconsolidate a dramaturgy of the text (drama). Nor do I seek to reclaim the unity of time, space, action and authorship that traditionally comes with it. Rather, in terms of a dramaturgy of difference, I propose a concept of a dramaturgy that, instead of unity, claims the distribution of a plurality of times, spaces, actions, and bodies. This is the only way to develop a dramaturgy that allows us to open up a space of potentialities in and through theatrical practices, where equality can happen. The potentiality that is considered here, has an ethical and an aesthetical component. Concerning the ethical component it allows equality and diversity of embodiments. Concerning the aesthetical component it allows us to take into account the heterogeneity of space and time lines that fit the new order of today’s intense global interactions defined by disjunctures. Both components call for a new poetics. I propose a poetics of peripety. Why peripety? “Peripety” or “peripeteia” means a reversal, a turning point. In Aristotle’s Poetics it is literally defined as “a change by which the action veers round to its opposite, subject always to our rule of probability or necessity” (2008: XI, 20). According to Aristotle, peripeteia is most effective in drama, particularly in tragedy. Here, peripety happens at the climax of a successively constructed line of action that defines the plot. Peripety is the moment that interrupts the continuity of action, because it turns it around (E.g. Oidipus discovers - gets to know - that he killed his father and married his mother). At the very moment of the peripety the action goes neither backwards nor forwards but rather collapses, together with the old systems of knowledge. Nothing is as it was before. The known past and the expected future in the character’s life course (or history) are lost. The peripety is thus the moment of crisis, of break, of rupture, eventually revolution (see Koselleck 1988). If we isolate this very moment of peripety out of the timeline of the drama, we can state that it is the moment of a compression of time that resists continuity and succession. It generates non-continuity and the unforeseen. As such it is a moment of total openness and of a multiplicity of potentialities, including the catastrophe. In a certain way, peripety complies with the event. While actions are defined by intentionality and are connected to aims, plans and motivations, events are non-intentional. Events happen. They occur. As argued 196 Kati Röttger by Foucault, the event involves “breaks/ caesurae which crack the instant/ moment and tear the subject into a multiplicity of possible positions” (Foucault 1976: 106). If we take peripety as the break that cracks the moment and opens up a multiplicity of possible positions, this leads us to the question of a poetology of the event that is informed by peripety. Assuming that the peripetical break opens up a space to manifold potentialities, we can conclude that it generates a multiplicity of material diffusions and distributions. Understood in that way, peripety engenders a conception of performance as event that can be defined by “possibility spaces” of multiple stages, perspectives and distributions of times, spaces, and bodies. This poetology conjures up dramaturgies that consider simultaneities as well as a variety of media beyond text, like rhythm, gesture, image, space and so on, all taking into account (cultural) differences. The work of the future dramaturge would then be to perform the peripetical move enabling the poetical turn that is at stake here. Next to its aesthetical component, it also involves, as I said before, an ethical one, implying a shared community constituted by a “being-with” that includes a sharing consisting in co-appearing, “that is, in its appearing to itself and to one another, all at once” (Nancy 2000: 67). As mentioned, this shared community is not conceived as a totality (that closes up by homogeneity and universal norms), but as equality, namely “‘one’ that is not ‘with’ in some general sort of way, but each time according to determined modes that are themselves multiple and simultaneous (people, culture, language, lineage, network, group, couple, band, and so on)” (Nancy 2000: 65). This “we” constitutes the stage and is constituted through the stage, where the singular appears one by one and each time in a plurality that co-appears. In other words, this consideration of a “we” requires that dramaturgy of difference that is open towards diversity and equality and able to regard a communal, international process of creation as well as a theatrical event directed towards a transnational community. It is related to what I termed the “precarious threshold” where the public sphere and artistic creation necessarily meet to constitute theatre as a communal event that needs the attention of a dramaturge of the future. At this threshold, performance and spectatorship are interwoven in a very specific way. Because the “we” that is constituted through the stage co-appears by means of spectatorship and action. This conceptualisation of the stage allows us to further consider the possible (peripetical) reversal of seeing (theorein) into acting (praxeos) and vice versa. While spectators can become actors and actors spectators, the dramaturge is the one who acts in between, calling up “the other” perspective (theorein), as it occurs in the dramaturgical work of watching and mediating the communal. By acting I do not mean in Strategies of Peripety for a Dramaturgy of the Future 197 the first instance the role playing of the actor, but first and foremost performative, embodied acts. These acts are designated by technè (to bring forth, making) and poesis (to bring forth and making in art) and they define the praxis and ethos of the dramaturge of the future. As such, the peripetical movement consists in transferring them to the realm of the performance and the performance of ethics. So, in terms of “making” the poetics of peripety, in the activity of the dramaturge, 21 the interplay between ethics and aesthetics, and between theorein and praxeos opens up a twofold horizon of potentialities. On the one hand, it engenders the reversal of the intentionality of action into responsiveness, a notion that includes the activity of responding as much as responsibility. Responsiveness would then accommodate a coming about in terms of befalling. On the other hand, these interplays engender the reversal of rehearsing into performance and performance into rehearsal. These peripetical moments of reversal define the praxis and ethos of the dramaturge of the future by opening up a “possibility space” in which the communal can be acted out and watched, a space on the precarious threshold between public sphere and artistic creation, where the two necessarily meet to constitute theatre and accommodate the entrance of the unforeseen, the other. This is a dramaturgy of the future that needs an emancipated dramaturge. 22 Literature Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities. Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London. Verso. 1983. Arendt, Hannah. The Human Condition. Chicago. University of Chicago Press. 1958. Aristotle. Poetics. New York. Cosimo. 2008. Badiou, Alain. “Rhapsody for the Theatre: A Short Philosophical Treatise.” In: Theatre Survey 49 (2). November 2008. 187-238. Beck, Ulrich. “Cosmopolitanism as Imagined Communities of Global Risk.” In: American Behavioral Scientist 55 (10). 2011. 1346-61. Bhaba, Homi. 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Stanford University Press. 2000. Nancy, Jean-Luc. The Creation of the World, or, Globalization. New York. State University of New York Press. 2007. Pavis, Patrice. “Intercultural Theatre Today.” In: Forum Modernes Theater 25 (1). 2010. 5-15. -. “Dramaturgy and Postdramaturgy.” In: Pewny, Katharina, Callens, Johan & Coppens, Jeroen, Dramaturgies in The New Millennium. Schriftenreihe Forum Modernes Theater. Tübingen. Narr Francke Attempto Verlag. 2014. Pewny, Katharina. Das Drama des Prekären. Über die Wiederkehr der Ethik in Theater und Performance. Bielefeld. Transcript. 2011. Rancière, Jacques. The Ignorant Schoolmaster. Five Lessons in Intellectual Emancipation. Stanford. Standford University Press. 1991. Readings, Bill. The University in Ruins. Cambridge. Harvard University Press. 1996. Reinelt, Janelle. “Is Performance Studies Imperialist? Part 2.” In: TDR: The Drama Review 51 (3). Fall 2007. 7-16. Roach, Joseph. “A feeling for Risk. Notes on Kinesthetic Empathy and the World Performance Project.” In: Theatre 42 (1). 2012. 7-9. Strategies of Peripety for a Dramaturgy of the Future 199 Röttger, Kati. “‘What do I See? ’ The Order of Looking in Lessing’s Emilia Galotti.” In: Art History. Journal of the Association of Art Historians 33 (2). April 2010. 378-387. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. The Aesthetic Education in the Era of Globalization. Cambridge. Harvard University Press. 2012. Taylor, Diana. The Archive and the Repertoire. Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas. Durham & London. Duke University Press. 2003. van der Meulen, Sjaukje. “Cultuur als Recht of Cadeau? ” August 2011. http: / / www.wbs.nl/ opinie/ all/ cultuur-als-recht-cadeau (last accessed 27/ 02/ 2013). Poetic Relations with the Real: Notes on the Actuality of Dramaturgy in the End Times Peter M. Boenisch Especially within the Anglo-American theatre discourse, dramaturgy has become the new “performance”. Only a few years ago, British theatremakers considered “dramaturgy” as something foreign: it was “what they do” over there, on the European Continent. Something that was observed from the distance, both with awe and fear. More recently, however, the term began to be prominently used particularly in the context of new and experimental performance practices which interrogate the parameters of theatrical representation, challenge the coordinates of theatrical space and time, or even - somewhat paradoxically - displace the traditional dramaturgic concerns of plot and character. Accordingly, Claire MacDonald attributed to dramaturgy the status of a “keyword”, as defined by Cultural Studies-pioneer Raymond Williams: “words that are significant, but contested, words that are argued over, words whose time is now” (2010: 94). The urgency with which the term dramaturgy has been accommodated by Anglo-American theatre-makers, its appropriation in contexts “where there is no tradition of deploying the term ‘dramaturgy’, and where it appears as an emerging and increasingly significant field” has stimulated, as Cathy Turner and Synne Behrndt suggest, “a drive for people to begin to ask fundamental questions about what dramaturgy is” (2008: 146). Of course, any debate, conference and certainly any book on dramaturgy (like the present volume) must inevitably assume a certain “minimal consensus”: some common denominator that ties together the various incarnations of dramaturgy then and now, there and here. Similarly, any discussion of assumed challenges for contemporary dramaturgic practice must suggest its own understanding of what it actually is that is being challenged. Hence, the present essay makes an attempt to reflect on this very “actuality” of dramaturgy and to understand the very Eigentlichkeit of this practice. The German term here usefully adds another crucial di- Poetic Relations with the Real 201 mension to the direct translation of an action that effectively and really (and not only potentially) happens and to a sense of pressing currency, also reflected in the French term actualité, meaning the news and events of the day: Eigen is something “own” and unique, something that relates to one’s own essential core. Reflecting on what is eigen about dramaturgy, I shall evoke all these senses of currency and of something that is real, rather than merely fictional, as well as something that affects our own self, too. I bring these dimensions of the “actual Eigentlichkeit” of dramaturgy together by developing an understanding of dramaturgy as an “actual” relational practice. Going crucially beyond the prominent notion of relational art by Nicolas Bourriaud, my perspective is informed by a re-reading of the Schillerian aesthetics of play and liberty, aided by the aesthetico-political philosophy of Jacques Rancière and the materialist interpretation of Hegelian dialectics by Slavoj Žižek, both of which salvage the original radical impulse of idealist thought (in Schiller and Hegel, and - as I contend - in dramaturgy, too) from their later bourgeois appropriation and sanitising institutionalisation. Far beyond an interpretative, hermeneutic operation or the organisational design of a fictional narrative, I propose to conceive dramaturgy on this basis as an ultimately “actual” relational dynamics that is inherent in what Rancière terms the “partition the sensible” and that works structurally parallel to the Lacanian Symbolic Order. As such, dramaturgy always is in the world: it occupies the very location, the site, and the moment of (the) play that relates a theatre performance to our actual existence as spectators and which thereby short-circuits the (Lacanian) Real of theatre with our own reality in which we par(t)-take. The current questioning of the notion of dramaturgy may appear less obvious for those who work (and think) within contexts where the established and largely guaranteed funding streams of public state subsidies secure a comparatively stable institutionalised “playing field” for the professionalised dramaturge, as is the case on the European Continent. But even here the field has for some time now begun to change its face significantly: the work of dramaturges no longer takes place between the piles of unread scripts in their offices, to which the infamous Brechtian Messingkauf-dramaturge once referred (Brecht 2002). Instead, even in the context of the German Stadtand Staatstheater-system, project-based work, adaptations and site-specific productions have become staples of contemporary programming far beyond the dominant cities and leading theatres (Roeder and Zehelein 2011). A similar extension of the dramaturgic scope beyond work on canonical classics or new playscripts has 202 Peter M. Boenisch been pioneered in the contexts of festivals as well as the now equally established and institutionalised “alternative” production centres, most prominently the Kaaitheater in Brussels, HAU Berlin, and - in the field of dance - Tanzquartier Vienna and Kampnagel Hamburg. Dramaturges such as Marianne Van Kerkhoven, Erwin Jans, Stefanie Carp, and Matthias Lilienthal exemplify this changing landscape in Continental dramaturgy for the Germanand Dutch-speaking countries (Van Kerkhoven 2002; Jans 2006; Carp 2008; Gritzner, Primavesi and Roms 2009). In the face of enthusiasm for a new concept, as we experience it at present in British dramaturgy in particular (Turner and Behrndt 2010), there are good reasons to pause and apply particular caution. Many years ago, Myriam Van Imschoot, herself an experienced dramaturge in Flanders, gave a more nuanced picture of the daily routines of dramaturgic practice. Enmeshed in a “process of legitimization, validation and control” (Van Imschoot 2003: 57) the function of dramaturgy might easily turn the dramaturge into a Funktionär, as the German term powerfully suggests: into an official operative of THE Theatre as part of the hegemonic order of the “Big Other”. Adopting the authoritative “voice of the Father” and offering a cure for any perceived “lack”, such operative functional dramaturges thereby (albeit perhaps inadvertently) “silence those for whom they are speaking” (Van Imschoot 2003: 62). Especially where the dramaturge is (as it is frequently suggested in the UK) hailed as an “outside eye”, whose allegedly “objective” response mends and improves the production, there is hence far more at stake than just reducing the dramaturge, as Bert Cardullo once quipped, to the role of a “mechanic who fixes the automobile” (1994: 11). Not only in the UK’s as it were “emerging dramaturgic market”, but even (and even more so) in the context of the European continent, the by now comfortable definitions and assumed certainties of dramaturgic institutions and professions must be put to the test. Are our concepts still holding once we expand our radars beyond the metropolitan centres of European culture that usually dominate academic and critical discourses, from Brussels to Berlin, Vienna, London, Paris, Amsterdam, to Athens? And, as the latter place reminds us, how does the current crisis, yet the drama and even tragedy of European reality today disrupt our cherished vision of Athens as the cradle of European culture and Aristotelian theatre? Is it not, first and foremost, up to the dramaturge to respond to all those demands of fiscal austerity, to the necessity of “proving” the value of art and its funding, hence to address the ever more increasing uncertainty about our future, within the theatre profession and beyond, through artistic/ dramaturgic work and through dramaturgic interventions outside the theatre? Poetic Relations with the Real 203 In short, is not dramaturgy the one place in theatre performance to tackle head on what Slavoj Žižek described as the encompassing feeling of our “living in the end times” (Žižek 2010)? The suggestion to think dramaturgy as a relational practice can of course only be a modest response to these changing stakes of dramaturgy, and offers hardly more than prompts towards possible solutions. It is my attempt to come to terms with the demands of and on dramaturgy, which seem to have so radically altered even in the short period of half a decade since Cathy Turner and Synne Behrndt summarised the challenges of what they termed, in the concluding section of their especially for the Anglophone context ground-breaking 2008 book on dramaturgy, “millennial dramaturgies”. Interrogating “what challenges might be emerging for the dramaturge and what kinds of questions are animating the development of contemporary dramaturgies” (Turner and Behrndt 2008: 187), they pointed at the time to the growing invasion of “the real” onto the stage, issues of authenticity, autobiography, and the acknowledgement of the “here and now” of theatrical presentation in performance; also, they considered the “spatial turn” and new site-specific contexts of performance work alongside productions that began to occupy new spaces and places outside the institutional walls and halls; and finally, they referred to the response of theatre, and of dramaturgy, to new digital technologies and new media. In an important way, they thereby demonstrated that the dramaturgic focus had shifted from interpreting and staging texts, from dramaturgy perceived as a translational practice involved in the transition “from page to stage”, towards its post-dramatic incarnation as descriptor for the formal architecture of a performance event. While the aesthetic, creative and artistic challenges listed by Turner and Behrndt are certainly still valid and urgent today, our task is to avoid turning the attention to the performative form into a mere formalism, where, for instance, the site-specificity of a production turns into a narcissistic gimmick or “unique selling point” of the performance product as spectacular event and best-selling commodity on the cultural market. At stake is thus precisely the next level that engulfs all of these formal concerns and that ties them into the wider socio-cultural fabric of our “end times” - and relates, hence, to the very crisis out on our streets. The pitfall to be avoided is the all too easy way out by creating “well-meant plays” that seem to have widely replaced the prior dramaturgic imperative of the “well-made play”. Representing on stage, for example, the present clashes of the Western and the Muslim world, the insatiable greed displayed by the ever richer upper one per cent of our society, tackling in a performance the daily exclusion of ever larger proportions even of our Western 204 Peter M. Boenisch societies from access to regular income (let alone culture), or the daily racism faced by refugees as much as by long established post-migrant communities all of this will remain without any consequence (other than soothing our own conscience) if the dramaturgy solely integrates these burning issues into the machinery of spectacle and mediatised representation offered to our daily consumption. Any such “well-meant” gesture will inevitably remain vain unless it truly turns theatre itself into what Chantal Mouffe describes as an agonistic battleground, “where different hegemonic projects are confronted, without any possibility of final reconciliation” (2007: 3). This openness is, of course, a crucial characteristic of genuine play - a crucial notion to which we shall return in closer attention. Today, the principal concern of dramaturgy is therefore to define the aesthetic value of theatre performance in our “end times” - which by that token is always already an ethico-political value as it insists on the direct relation of theatre (art) and life: a relational dramaturgy, thus, first and foremost rejects any claim of separation of these domains as two. It insists on the very continuity, across the fields of art and politics, of the hegemonic “partition of the sensible”, as Jacques Rancière terms the fundamental socio-cultural organisation of sensual perception (2009a). His aesthetico-political perspective extends, in an important way, the epistemological critique of other approaches, which concentrated more narrowly on the power structure of discourses, as if the logocentric Symbolic Order as prime site of ideology was confined to language and representation alone. Here Rancière offers an important impulse to rethink cultural critique in the face of the current digital condition, where neither theatre nor film (nor necessarily the spoken word) remain the dominant media of a society that has moved ever further away from its old situation in the Gutenberg Galaxy, even beyond Marshall McLuhan’s imagination (1962). Rancière argues from a post-Marxist position (initially developed, later critically departing from his own teacher Louis Althusser) that human perception and cognition, thus the very structures of our senses as such, are always already steeped in politics and ideology. What he terms the “sensible” is not some symbolic fiction of the superstructure but an inescapable materialist “base” for our very “par(t)-taking”, as Rancière terms it, in society: our “structures of feeling”, in the phrase that Raymond Williams once similarly introduced, are indeed always very much structured experiences (1977). The “partition of the sensible” marks the limit which our sense, our senses, and our sensory perception set to what can be thought, expressed, and experienced. This (contingent and shifting) division facilitates and establishes a shared order of perceiving the Poetic Relations with the Real 205 world, thereby opening up our access to and our participation (the Rancièrian “par(t)-taking”) in society, by defining what is, in fact, “the common” in a community, allocating what is really “sensible” i.e. perceivable as “making sense”. The core challenge for theatre dramaturgy today is then to find adequate articulations for this formal relation that inevitably implicates theatre performance in the all-pervasive “partition of the sensible” of our globalised digital media economy. We are well advised to remember the naivety with which postmodern theatre and theory alike proffered what they perceived as radical critique, only to find that their critical deconstruction of subjectivity and everything else played ever so profitably into the hands of a “new spirit of capitalism” (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005). I suggest that a relational understanding of dramaturgy, as developed here, may offer useful reminders that neither the realist imitation of contemporary life nor addressing “issues” (of crisis, austerity, poverty, etc.), even less the now popular staging of “authentic” voices (in the modish “verbatim theatre” or performances that take only the surface idea from Rimini Protokoll’s “theatre of experts”) establishes per se the critical performative “agon” in Mouffe’s term, or what Rancière similarly captures with his term “dissensus” (2010). A first step to tackle this challenge is the close interrogation of our own practice, of the assumed (and accepted) fundamentals of dramaturgy, this legacy of the bourgeois theatre revolution of the eighteenth century. Is it at all still up to the challenges that our advanced global media-economic complex presents? Postmodern critique, in particular, has certainly made us deeply sensitive to the uncanny dark side of bourgeois enlightenment. Van Imschoot’s critical assessment of dramaturgy pertinently articulated this dialectic ambiguity at the heart of dramaturgy, too. Yet, we would be ill advised were we to simply brush aside, in the empty (and, above all, unreflected) gesture of a misunderstood caricature of postmodern deconstruction, all these foundational traditions as nothing but outdated, politically conservative ideology. We should, instead, remember the radical roots of German idealism which György Lukács persistently reminded us of (1954), and which today underpin not in the least Slavoj Žižek’s project of refreshing our understanding of Hegel in the name of an anti-totalitarian, emancipatory materialist political aesthetics (2012). Hegel was of course a contemporary to the first emergence of dramaturgy around 1800, and he similarly has been appropriated and institutionalised since. Following these prompts, we should note that the deeply engrained “enlightened” gestus of dramaturgy, which makes its legacy so highly ambivalent, is at the very same time the sole place from where to start rethinking the actual purpose and potential of dramaturgy. 206 Peter M. Boenisch Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, the central pioneer of dramaturgy and of German “enlightened” theatre culture at large, presented with his influential Hamburg Dramaturgy not only a sustained writing about dramaturgy, but what can in fact be considered a true blueprint of dramaturgy as a genuinely relational practice. The reviews, criticism and theoretical reflections which make up the 104 pieces in the Hamburg Dramaturgy accompanied as weekly publications the activities of the Hamburg National Theatre experiment during 1767 and 1768. They should be seen as far more than contextual publications about dramaturgy, but as genuine dramaturgic practice themselves. Just as the plays, which the Hamburg theatre produced during this time, promoted the emerging canon of bourgeois values and ideology, these writings as dramaturgic address of the public further foster, in their enlightenment spirit, the critical capabilities of the theatre’s patrons. From its inception, dramaturgy was hence characterised by a relational impulse at the intersection of stage art and social reality. As necessary complement of the emerging claim of artistic autonomy that characterised what Rancière terms the “aesthetic regime of art”, a new dominant dispositif that emerged around 1800, it short-circuited the autonomous artistic and the everyday “partitions of the sensible”. In my discussion, I will however not turn to Lessing but to Friedrich Schiller, who for Rancière, too, is the principal herald of the new “aesthetic regime”. He truly embodies the same ambivalence also characteristic for the bourgeois aesthetic practice of dramaturgy. His 1784 lecture on “Theatre Considered as a Moral Institution” [Die Schaubühne als moralische Anstalt betrachtet] (1970: 3-13) remains to the present day the principal manifesto appropriated by the German Bildungsbürgerestablishment to express the self-definition of the institutionalised German Stadtand Staatstheater system. It is all too easily forgotten that much of Schiller’s thought and writing originated from a radical emancipatory impulse, which Rancière seeks to restore (2013). Freedom - or, in the spirit of the time: “liberty” - was the central value that energised many of his tragedies, and equally his aesthetic theory, which was influential for the later Hegel. According to Schiller’s well-known formula from his “Kallias” letters, he perceives aesthetic beauty as one with “freedom in (the) appearance” ([1793] 2003). 1 Our present reflection on “living in the end times” would certainly find some sympathy from Schiller, who wrote his own Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Men (1795), the centrepiece of his aesthetic edifice, in what must have no less felt like end times. The philosophical shock of Kant coincided with the bloody turn of the French 1 All translations from the German are my own, unless otherwise stated. Poetic Relations with the Real 207 Revolution, whose spirit Schiller’s early pieces had resolutely supported so that he was awarded the title of “honorary citizen” of the French Republic. Revolutionary emancipatory thinking became post-1789 as discredited as any reference to communism post-1989. I shall here, however, concentrate on what was perhaps Schiller’s most unlikely attempt to come to terms with such a debilitating (political) reality through the autonomous mediation of art as an answer to the (philosophical) Kantian transcendental problem: his late play The Bride of Messina (1803), a contemporary tragedy into which he reintroduced the Greek chorus. While the play itself, considered from a conventional dramaturgic perspective judging the efficacy of constructing plot and characters, was hardly a success, I suggest a more sideways glance. The common interpretation as a nostalgic devotion, late in Schiller’s life, to some lost ideal of Greek culture obscures the mature radicalism of this experiment. Far from such conservative longing for a lost past, the tragedy with its chorus - and, even more so, Schiller’s essay that prefaced the play for publication - expressed an attempt to position art against a paralysing political and philosophical situation (1970: 104-14). In fact, the Bride of Messina can from this point of view be seen as an experiment in applied aesthetics, or in today’s terminology: as an elaborate piece of “practice as research”. The introductory essay, entitled “On Using the Chorus in Tragedy” [Über den Gebrauch des Chors in der Tragödie], offers instructive corrections against all too superficial conclusions drawn from Schiller’s Schaubühne-essay, traditionally assumed to be his chief legacy to theatre aesthetics and dramaturgy. We find a succinct hint of this other Schiller above all in the distinction of three kinds of theatre art which he offers in his prefatory remarks. Importantly, it becomes quickly clear that these three modes also correspond to three standard approaches to dramaturgy. First, Schiller starts from assessing realism (or “naturalism”, as he interestingly terms it somewhat avant la lettre). For Schiller, it inevitably misses “truth”, which for him remains a principal aim within his idealist conception of art. Realism demands verisimilitude, yet it thereby demands the intransigent simulation of reality that thoroughly effaces its own existence as mediating force. For this reason, realism cannot have any claim on actual truth. It must remain what Rancière describes as a “stultifying” form of art (2009b): Realism wants to make us as spectators forget that we are seeing theatre, and hence also forget ourselves in romantic “suspension of disbelief”. In the end, we are to accept the fiction as autonomous reality, separate from our perceived reality, which means: in place of the reality we experience and live in. This critique resonates well with present-day critical thought from discourse analysis to deconstruction and the Lacanian concept of 208 Peter M. Boenisch the Symbolic Order. Next, Schiller distinguishes the category of fantasy (das Phantastische), which he also rejects. This notion of “fantasy” must be clearly differentiated from imagination (Fantasie), which of course occupies the highest status within Schiller’s aesthetics. Fantasy, however, signifies the other side of reality: a realm where anything is possible, where nothing remains tied to demands of realism and any semblance of reality. In its consequence, fantastic art is equally stultifying. It may evoke in the audience an illusion of liberty, this core touchstone for Schiller’s aesthetics. Yet, as he maintains, this is far from actual freedom, which he understands as “the liberty of mind in the lively play of all of its powers” (1970: 105). Any “true art”, he insists, must “not merely aim at a momentary play; its serious intention is not to excite us with a fleeting dream of liberty, but to genuinely make us free” (106, original emphasis). Fantasy hence is no more than such a “fleeting dream”, and as a result a dramaturgy of fantasy would only ever be even more discouraging, as the audience returns to real life outside the theatre, and remains unable to make any connection. Again, we find resonances with recent critical thinking, in particular a Debordian critique of spectacle, or critique of digital and other “virtual realities” in the wake of Baudrillard’s simulacra. The third category Schiller evokes, however, achieves liberty in the real. He calls it “poetic art”, and the chorus from his Bride of Messina is an attempt to support this “poetic” aim of liberation and emancipation. It becomes evident that Schiller’s proposition was indeed far from a melancholic longing for a lost ideal past. In fact, he tried to point to the future of theatre, and of society, through the past. Schiller stresses that the function of the chorus only fully came into its own for the playwright of his own time - the moment it inevitably becomes what he calls, using a term that would later occupy a key place in Walter Benjamin’s writings, a “foreign body”, a “fremdartiger Körper”. This provides an important prompt for dramaturgy. Schiller importantly draws our attention to how the chorus irritates, halts, and interrupts the effortless progress of the play. Yet, we should also note that at the very same time, this has nothing to do with destroying the play - on the contrary: Schiller also describes the chorus as the “wall” that safeguards the play. The very disruption and irritation of which the chorus is the source is the prerequisite for saving the play from getting absorbed and losing its force. This duality anticipates a central figure of Hegelian dialectics, whose core notion of “sublation” [Aufhebung] equally realises both preservation and neutralisation (Malabou 2005: 144ff.). On the one hand, the strangeness of the chorus sublates the text because it enhances the power, magnitude and efficacy of (in Schiller’s terms) “exalted” theatrical representation: “If one takes Poetic Relations with the Real 209 away the chorus, the language of tragedy at large will sink, or what now appears grand and powerful will then appear forced and exaggerated” (Schiller 1970: 111). On the other hand, the chorus “sublates” the play because it directly participates in the drama as an embodied representation of thinking to which it awards sensory force: it quite literally “gives gravity” to an idea, a material form in performance that awards the idea its “exhaustive presence”, as Schiller terms it (1970: 111). As an intervention, a rupture, an interval, a border that opens up right within the seamless imaginary world of the play, the chorus discloses itself as something that is, paradoxically, both despite of and because of its very artificiality, ultimately real. Alenka Zupancˇ icˇ takes the obvious step of connecting Schiller’s tri-partite discussion with the operations of the Lacanian order of the Symbolic, the Imaginary, and the Real (Zupancˇ icˇ 2006). As a cut through reality, which induces a strictly immanent minimal distance between reality and itself, the Schillerian “Ideal” that he sees realised in “poetic art” is no longer situated on some transcendental plane, and his idealism is to be strictly opposed to utopian escapism. On the contrary, Schiller insists on its impact and efficacy of the created reflexive distance in, as it were, “really” tackling the Real in reality itself. Zupancˇ icˇ points to the prime example of Magritte’s famous Ceci n’est pas une pipe to explain: What is at stake here is not simply that art should not be able to use an element of reality (the factual), but that, if it uses such an element, it is no longer identical with itself - it begins to exist in difference to itself, and as difference to itself. This, and nothing else, is the fascinating meaning of Schillerian ideality. (2006: 207) What Schiller describes as “poetic” intervention opens up what we may also describe with a term made popular by Slavoj Žižek: a “parallax perspective” (2006). Closer to Schiller’s own time, Hölderlin outlined a similar idea in what he termed the (poetic) caesura. The poetic mode, for Schiller, offers us an aesthetic experience of this immanent difference of the thing from itself, where the thing is no longer identical to itself. Equally, the subject begins to relate to itself as difference - not as an imaginary other, as exemplified in the well-known Lacanian concept of imaginary identification in the mirror stage, which essentially constitutes a mis-recognition. The poetic operation allows us to recognise the same in the other, and hence to begin establishing a “real” relation to oneself, facilitated through that minimal, parallax distance, through the “poetic” interruption and interval. This is what Leo Bersani (following the late Foucault) envisions as “new relational modes” based on the “extensibility 210 Peter M. Boenisch of sameness” (Bersani 2010: 118): ways of conceptualising difference in terms other than “othering”, with its implications of hierarchy, superiority/ inferiority, identification, and forceful appropriation - all attempts to exterminate difference, even in the name of diversity and tolerance. The poetic therefore points us to an inherently ethical moment that underpins the poetics and politics of (theatrical) “play”, as Schiller called it in his central aesthetic and quintessentially humanistic notion. As he famously concluded, “one only plays when one is, in the full sense of the word, a human being; and one is only fully a human being when one plays” ([1795] 2009: 64). His notion of “play” by no means refers to harmless, “childish” divertissements nor to playful romantic irony, as it would become popular in European arts a few years later. To think of theatrical play as providing some momentary relief from the hardship of reality or from the pressures of the political state of the (“superior”) “adult” world would mean to reduce theatre as play to being the “court jester” of society. Schiller’s notion, on the contrary, evokes the full sense of the German term “Spiel haben” - to have the tolerance and flexibility in a technical sense, to “play” in order not to get stuck. As agile and mobile mediator, “play” thus makes opposites meet and establishes a link between what first appeared as mutually exclusive poles. Precisely thereby play effects true, actual, formal freedom as that essential condition for a truly human existence, manifest in that all-important “freedom of play”: In a genuinely free society, Schiller saw no need for opposition, separation and antagonisms, or for a contest for primacy and superiority. His aesthetic play hence is a formal regulating function that insists on a necessary third perspective on any perceived binary opposition. Far beyond the evocation of the ludic qualities of performance, and of the stage’s aesthetic unor anti-reality, “play” prepares the ground for a political act. The engagement in play becomes (potentially) emancipatory because it is based on a fundamental equality: the dramaturgy of poetic play establishes a relational positioning that induces a difference that is no longer hierarchically weighted. It is no longer about “understanding” and thereby “commanding”, nor about consuming and thereby turning the other into a commodity, and neither is poetic play about appropriation, ownership, and authority. In a complex way, the poetic perspective is, in Schiller’s argument, truthful not because of any replication of every-day reality, but on the basis that it exactly follows, and even mimetically captures the intervention of the Lacanian Symbolic Order that seeks to separate reality from the Real. In its play, the Symbolic Order “truthfully” splits reality from within. The chorus was Schiller’s, at least in its actual stage performance, not particu- Poetic Relations with the Real 211 larly successful attempt to find a form for this moment of “real play” and to almost enforce it onto “the play” of the drama. Over the past two-hundred years, the evolving practice of dramaturgy - deeply interwoven with the Continental European tradition of public theatre that traces its own lineage back to Lessing’s dramaturgy and Schiller’s “moral institution” - has stepped in to fulfil from off stage this “poetic function” which Schiller sought to realise on stage through the chorus. Schiller had turned, as Hegel would later, to the past in order to overcome both the “things done” of his day and in order to counter an ever more conservative aesthetico-political situation: this was a means to challenge the dominant “partition of the sensible” of his day. While remaining a strictly immanent force, relational dramaturgy today follows the same structural lines, bringing together Schiller’s “poetic function” with the challenges of the globalised media economy of the twenty-first century outlined earlier. As stated, Schiller himself described the introduction of the chorus as an outright necessity for modern, contemporary theatre to meet the demand of new times which were marked by similarly shocking and unimaginable ruptures as those we witnessed in the early years of the twenty-first century. For the theatre of today, a relational (rather than a functional or representational) model of dramaturgy points towards a perspective where dramaturgy is no longer solely defined in terms of the organisation of plots, as structuring the imaginary, as manipulation of fantasies, or simply as the recipe book telling theatre makers how to cook up a “well-made” theatre performance, or how to “repair the motor” of the performance event. Confining dramaturgy exclusively to the framework of representation (corresponding to Schiller’s first category), or (following his second one) in terms of structuring a narrative fiction, defines dramaturgy not in the least as a practice of Uneigentlichkeit: as a practice that isn’t really relevant, as its responsibility ends where the “actually existing reality” begins. Against this, we should insist on what Rancière neatly terms the “politicity” of art (2009a: 26, and passim): a political power that is not realised by representing political content and offering engaged messages, but which is situated right within the very configuration of the sensible as it ties together politics, art, and society. The portioning of the sensible ties together art and the wider socio-cultural political sphere. Art, and theatre in particular, is political - long before any political “content” comes in - on a strictly formal level, as Rancière stresses, “because of the type of space and time that it institutes, and the manner in which it frames this time and peoples this space” (2009a: 23). This minimal definition of 212 Peter M. Boenisch a spatio-temporal organisation of subjects reveals a fundamental dramaturgic operation that structures at the core of its Eigentlichkeit a concrete material base, with equally actual implications. We can translate this figure of making sense, of making visible and “sense-able” into Lacanian terminology, which makes the relational character of this operation even clearer: by structuring the Symbolic and Imaginary “sensible”, the partitioning split of the Real is performed. This reveals the structural parallel between dramaturgy and the working of the Lacanian “Big Other” in structuring reality: it is the very force that implicates performers and spectators alike in the order of the sensible, the force without which there is no “par(t)-taking”, no performance. Dramaturgy is, from this perspective, theatre’s immanent “Big Other”: the formal force which, at its core, contributes to the performance (in the multiple senses of this word) of this fundamental aesthetico-political ideological organisation of our cultural sensorium that far transcends the Symbolic Order and our intellectual understanding, but equally structures - as Lacan and Rancière have shown - both our unconscious and even our very senses “as a language.” This is the crucial point which Myriam Van Imschoot, from a feminist point of view, reminded us of in her key text referred to earlier. Yet, as a result, both as dramaturges and as spectators, we are also potentially put in a unique position to observe, access and unlock this crucial ideological operation: by installing the distanced spectatorial gaze of the observer (again, a quintessential dramaturgic gesture of the bourgeois modern culture of Western enlightenment), the strictly formal “partition of the sensible” is irritated through its reduplication, and a parallax gap appears that marks this formal distance to itself. The poetic play of theatre performance thereby discloses and makes accessible such “really existing” structures of experience, the “actual” processes of partitioning of the sensible. Or, alternatively, it may of course equally use its power of performance and spectacle to cover over the gap, and to make sure that these traces are effaced and remain disavowed or even positively mystified. The dynamics of these relations that constitute “sensibility” hence reveal themselves as the true and actual heart of dramaturgy. It is here where our proposed notion of relational dramaturgy goes most clearly beyond merely transferring Nicolas Bourriaud’s popular concept of “relational aesthetics” from the domain of participatory visual arts to theatre performance (2002). Instead, in the since 1989 rather unfashionable tradition of Marxistand Hegelian dialectic materialism, our perspective foregrounds the crucial importance of relations in the Marxian sense of Verhältnisse. Dramaturgy constitutes relations it, “partitions the sensible”, in Rancièrian terminology, not only on the level of textual and Poetic Relations with the Real 213 discursive concerns alone, but equally relates the autonomous sphere of art directly to the physical, socio-political and organisational weightings and mechanisms. At stake are hence not in the least the particular “relations” of producing theatre in their relation to the dominant “partition of the sensible” of the by now globalised cultural industry and economy of profit and circulation, which conceive theatre functionally as a commercial transaction exchanging the pleasures of entertainment. Where psychoanalysis has now demonstrated for some decades that film can be thought of as the medium that stages the imaginary of society, theatre can therefore be said to operate qua dramaturgic force at the (always “actual”) level of the partitioning of the sensible. The central consequence of being attentive to this fundamental, strictly formal aspect of dramaturgy, which precedes the activity of performance by setting up structures of par(t)taking, is the full realisation that dramaturgy, rather than being itself an all-inclusive “emancipatory” solution, may also create, in Rancière’s chosen term, “stultification”, even and in particular where it considers itself as radical and emancipatory. Resulting from a gesture of enlightenment culture that set out to educate and to improve the audience, dramaturgy thus fully shares the “dialectics of enlightenment”, precisely as it points to a vision of civility in terms of its true, genuine and actual emancipatory potential whose shadow of “repetition”, of forceful drill and enforcement, and of expansive imperialist reproduction of values (both cultural and economic) remains ever present. This is the point that Rancière’s challenge to the fashionable ideology of the “emancipatory spectator” has so usefully developed - notwithstanding all the objections that may be brought forward against his rather one-dimensional concept of “theatre”, which remains abstract from (in particular) concrete contemporary manifestations (2009b). Our principal lesson as dramaturges, teachers, researchers and practitioners is then not to forget that dramaturgy as such does not in itself bear a specific value already, and least of all a specific emancipatory value. Schiller’s mapping of three categories of theatre helps us to develop a tentative systematic overview of the dramaturgic options we have; yet, the realist, fantastic, or poetic mode all directly participate in this crucial division of the Real, performing gestures of exclusion, cancelling what does not make sense, what is discounted as unperceivable, invisible, unspeakable, untouchable. Hence we must cach time anew interrogate the dramaturgic form of performances as it invites or similarly precludes forms of spectatorial “par(t)-taking”. While we usually consider dramaturgy as a projective operation which forms and informs a performance to be, the Hegelian dialectical perspective of “speculative thinking” offers a useful 214 Peter M. Boenisch reminder precisely in its central argumentative figure of the “retroactive positing of the presuppositions” (Žižek 2012). It celebrates the power of what Hegel calls Spirit - which Žižek reads, crucially, from a materialist, non-transcendental perspective - to perceive reality as infinitely changeable, and therefore to remap the coordinates retrospectively. This is Žižek’s minimal definition of a political act. Whereas changing the reality may be impossible, even more so in our own complex globalised crisis of the twenty-first century, our first and in many ways only actual power is to change the way we perceive and relate to reality. There is no escape from the confines of the Symbolic Order: the dramaturgic process at its very heart, which is redoubled on the theatre stage and thereby positioned in difference to itself, allows us however to perceive and (at least potentially) to shift our subjective standpoint. Schiller described this potential of dramaturgy as its “poetic mode”. In its inevitable implications with the partitioning of the sensible, its direct “relationing” of theatre and/ as world, it intervenes not on the level of representation alone, but as a direct cut right through the structural and formal organisation of Symbolic and Imaginary Order of the sensible - thereby short-circuiting the theatrical reality with the (Lacanian) Real. The poetic embodies and gives voice to what we clearly see and perceive in reality yet no place in the functional, dominant economy of the sensible, and which we can only perceive through changing our standpoint and adopting a different configuration of the sensible to make sense of it. It is in this moment that the dramaturgic operation qua dramaturgic “playful parallax”, the structural shift in the spectatorial perspective that is always already written in, has at least the potential of inducing a Rancièrian “dissensus”, of staging an agonistic confrontation without solution à la Mouffe. This may then call into question or even shift the underlying aesthetico-political order of the sensible by offering an alternative map of relations. It does so because theatre is based on a core of dramaturgic relations (between text and performance, the stage and audience, and also between the theatre and the world outside its walls). In a similiar way, the partition of the sensible equally relies on a dramaturgical operation, a complex relational negotiation between socio-cultural as well as economic parameters, which then also relates artists and audiences, spectators and performers, theory and practice, production and perception, the subjects and objects of theatrical performance. Against the false stability of our own perception, the poetic mode of relational dramaturgy induces an irritating moment of interruption, which like the Fremdkörper of the chorus in Schiller’s Bride of Messina, allows for a strictly formal change of perspective that offers new ways of perceiving the very same reality, of Poetic Relations with the Real 215 relating to it and part(t)-taking in it. This is the actual political potential of theatre in the twenty-first century, unlocked by the force of dramaturgy: not an actual intervention in the world, nor the critical interpretation of its Verhältnisse in the theatre, but that strictly formal act of “playing” with our dominant modes of making sense, of structuring the actuality of the sensible and relating to the Real. Taking dramaturgy seriously today must, above all, start from insisting on this actuality, on the playful Eigentlichkeit of dramaturgy as facilitating play in its full Schillerian power: as ultimately committed to liberty as the imperative attempt of making us genuinely free by helping us avoid getting stuck in the midst of our depressing and stifling Verhältnisse. Literature Bersani, Leo. Is the Rectum a Grave? And Other Essays. Chicago & London. University of Chicago Press. 2010. Boltanski, Luc & Chiapello, Eve. The New Spirit of Capitalism. Transl. Elliott Gregory. London & New York. Verso. 2005. 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Oxford & New York. Oxford University Press. 1977. Žižek, Slavoj. The Parallax View. Cambridge. MIT Press. 2006. -. Living in the End Times. London & New York. Verso. 2010. -. Less Than Nothing: Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism. London and New York: Verso. 2012. Zupancˇ icˇ, Alenka. “Real-Spiel”. In: Felix Ensslin (ed.). Spieltrieb: Schillers Ästhetik heute. Berlin: Theater der Zeit. 2006. 200-11. Dramaturgies in the New Millennium brings together original contributions on the topic of dramaturgy in contemporary theatre and performance practices, both from renowned international scholars as well as from emerging academics. Rather than offering a comprehensive overview of dramaturgical practices in the new millennium, the volume maps out possible routes for the (near) future of dramaturgy as a concept and as a practice. Consequently, the volume is built up around three main topics: the shifting historical and economic conditions of dramaturgy, dramaturgy’s facilitation of encounters, and the politics of perception and movement in dramaturgical practices.