No description available.

Drawing on the work of Walter Benjamin, Jacques Derrida and Samuel Weber, the thesis discerns a theoretical description and demonstrative performance of theatrical iterability as the structural crisis of meaning and mastery in mediated self-relation. In this context, the concept of a politics of rehearsal imposes itself as a modality of acting, which demonstratively affirms, exposes and aggravates a constitutive breach in self-presence qua mediation. The thesis links this modality of rehearsal to a concern with the political effectiveness of bearing certain effects of virtuality, possibility and potentiality. As a repetition that maintains a simultaneous reference to the future and the past, the rehearsal is further associated with an attitude of ex-appropriation that follows the task of inheritance as a perpetual re-work of mourning. In actively resisting all limited tendencies towards closure and non-sharing in the transmission of cultural history, the politics of rehearsal becomes the model attitude of an amateur’s participatory desire. With brief recourse to Bernard Stiegler the thesis develops the figure of an “amateur” who perpetually seeks for renewed possibilities of a transforming and transformative participation in the socio-individual de-construction of a precarious ethos from within an affirmed position of limited security. It finds amateurs at work and play in the context of Benjamin’s writings on Bertolt Brecht, Franz Kafka and the German Baroque Trauerspiel, as well as the performance practices of Yvonne Rainer, Goat Island and Every house has a door. In their overt exposure of a body’s inextricable relation to the archive, these experimental theatre and dance practitioners are found to employ a method and style of appropriative restrained, which seeks to demonstratively re-launch a cultural inheritance by aggravating its future response-ability. The thesis analyses their compositional strategies of interruption, citation and virtualisation as an amateur’s appeal to the participatory coming of the negative infinity of justice as infinite perfectibility.

The aim of this practice-as-research project is to contribute to the emerging field of ‘socially engaged scenography’ through the creation of site-specific walking-performance pursued in tandem with theoretical inquiry giving particular emphasis to notions of pilgrimage for rites of passage. These notions are however, reframed and reworked through the lens of the concept of the feminine sublime, which allows me to work with notions of transformation in such a way that is non prescriptive and open-ended. The practical elements of the thesis embraced two specifically designed site-specific landscape walking-performances. The underlying subject matter of those performances was biological childlessness-by-circumstance and the ‘missing’ life-event of biological motherhood. The Gathering (2014) revealed the day-to-day and seasonal workings of Hafod y Llan, an upland sheep farm in Snowdonia, Wales. It was evolved through an extended period of research at the farm. In the performance the reproductive cycles of the ewes became a metaphor for human fertility and infertility, biological and non-biological motherhood and other pathways to, and types of, mothering and parenting. Warnscale: A Land Mark Walk Reflecting On Infertility and Childlessness (Warnscale) (2015-on-going), is a self-guided walking-performance specific to the Warnscale fells in Cumbria that is mediated through a published multi-layered walking-guide/art-book and aimed at women who are biologically childless-by-circumstance. This practice-as-research project proposes that by emplacing ‘missing’ life-events, for which traditional rites of passage or ceremonies do not exist, into a rural landscape scenographic-led walking-performance can enable participants to reflect upon, re-image and transform, even in the smallest of ways, their relation to and understanding of those ‘missing’ life-events. I argued that this ‘transformation’ is achieved through an applied use of the theoretical concept of the feminine sublime, which I interpreted and evolved into six scenographic principles. I then applied these six principles to the creation and performing of The Gathering and Warnscale, which, I suggest, functioned/function as ‘socially engaged contemporary scenography’. The six principles were developed through a close study of Dorothy Wordsworth’s (1771-1855) approach to, way of engaging with and writing about landscape (her ‘mode’) documented in her Grasmere Journals (1800-1803). This ‘mode’ can, I suggest, be understood and analysed through the concept of the feminine sublime and offers a counterpoint to the ‘masculine’ or ‘transcendent sublime’, which was dominant in the Early Romantic period in which she, and some of her female contemporaries who also informed the principles, were writing. This ‘mode’ parallels my scenographic-led process. To be clear: the concept of the feminine sublime is not about the female gender but a sensibility that manifests as a way of engaging with, walking through, or dwelling in and observing the landscape. My written thesis reveals that the performances had personal (for participants) and wider social effects in relation to the underlying subject matter of biological childlessness-by-circumstance. This is evidenced in the way they enabled individuals to transform positively their personal experiences of that ‘missing’ life-event and in their contribution to the growing networks of communication about this social issue, which carries the potential for social and cultural change, in matters relating to the underlying subject.

This thesis reopens the conversation about the role of art and the artist in relation to society in the contemporary moment. It does so by attempting to reconfigure the relationship of art to politics, the social and ethics. My perspective in writing is that of an artist who wants to rethink and nuance for herself through her own work, by looking at that of other artists and by engaging with recent debates how an artwork may have the potential to effect change in the current economy. I started with these questions: Can the kind of work contemporary artists Tino Sehgal, Jérôme Bel and I make and present in theatres and galleries effect change in the contemporary moment? Where can the potential to effect change in, what is referred as neoliberal capitalism, might be located? What kind of artwork has the potential to effect change?’ Attempting to nuance the role that art can play in society, I examine the specific economy of relations that Sehgal’s, Bel’s and my own work produce within themselves and with the economies in which they are embedded. I suggest that the kind of work Sehgal, Bel and I make and present in theatres and galleries can effect change in the contemporary moment when the economy of relations the artwork produces within itself (the sociality the work creates through its materiality, dramaturgy and relation to the spectator) and with the economies in which it is embedded (the manner in which it is critically situated in relation to its place of presentation and the economies of dance, theatre, art and neoliberal capitalism) creates tension between art, politics, the social and ethics by ‘supporting the “other”’: by questioning its role in these economies and by creating spaces of decision, affect and creative possibility. However, I also emphasise that change requires the actions towards it by multiple actors who are part of multiple iv spheres and who attempt to make it a reality; it also requires that we first pause and think about what dreams we have for the future and our ethics of relation, negotiate the answers, make decisions, organise and act, with the belief that we can change things. Art, I conclude, can play a role not only in reminding us that we can change things, but it can imagine new worlds and poke us into action.

This thesis is an investigation into Italian experimental theatre practices in the late 1970s and early 1980s commonly referred to as ‘New Spectacularity’, of which it considers the socio-cultural background, the philosophical perspectives and the aesthetic contribution. Conscious of traversing rarely trodden ground, this research takes as its subject the New Spectacularity per se while also considering questions regarding its memory and its theorisation. As such, alongside a careful analysis – in some cases the first – of the theatre it takes as its subject of inquiry, this work is invested in drawing up methods and ways of thinking able to do justice to the complex panorama the work exists within. These concern the study of spectatorship in the historical and of the atmospherical quotient of visual theatres, the investigation of the circulation of images as an intermittent movement, and the consideration of affective stances from which the works of art of an era may be crafted in the past as well as reflected upon in the present. These methods and ways of thinking are formulated alongside a study of the Neo-Spectacular stage in an aim to not only shed light on a neglected yet pivotal moment in Italian theatre, but to also be of use to wider discussions concerning performance in its complex and intertwined travelling alongside postmodern philosophy and culture.

No description available.

This study sits at the intersection of two fields of academic enquiry into performance practice: audience reception of scenography and the rise of ‘immersive’ theatre. Using my own scenographic practice as a tool, I illuminate the understanding of audience experience of scenography in environmental performance and question how scenography might act as an agent for audience immersion. I examine the nature of sensory and imaginative engagement in the context of performance installations in black-box studio spaces where audiences are central to the composition. This practice-based study is composed of two parts: the presentation and development of a series of three performance installations (VOID/ROOM, If anyone wonders why rocks breakdown, and it all comes down to this…) and this supporting written thesis. In this thesis I present an original model of audience immersion that elucidates how audiences might become entwined with the scenography of performance. My three-part model of audience immersion consists of interlinking concepts expressed as Immersion as Landscape, Immersion as Weather and Immersion as Journey. The main theoretical perspectives have been developed through my readings of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Drew Leder and Tim Ingold. As part of my findings, I explain how ‘mindfulness/awareness’ developed through Ellen Langer, Eleanor Rosch, Evan Thompson and Francisco Varela can act as a mode of audience engagement that might afford deeper relational encounters between the participant and design material.

This practice-based study uses a series of three scenographic performances to investigate the nature of communication between scenography and audience. Structured using iterative cycles of action and reflection, the trajectory of the three performances begins by drawing on recognisably mainstream professional practice (The General's Daughter), through a scenographic experiment aimed specifically at enfolding the audience (Homesick) to engaging and involving the audience through scenography and creating a new form of performance (Forest Floor). Although the potential impact of scenography has long been recognised in professional theatre practice, this is the first piece of practice-based research which examines the particular contribution of the scenographic and the way it works on its audiences. Scenography is inseparable from the performance event yet its particular material qualities draw on languages of the stage that appear to speak simultaneously with, but separately from, the textual and the gestural. This investigation focuses on the visual, spatial and somatosensory dimensions of scenography and on ways of capturing and theorising the experience of viewing scenography. The study shows that audience members register scenography as a multisensory experience. The polysemous nature of scenography allows it to become a site for imaginative projections, where audiences draw on their own feelings, experiences and their creativity leading to unique responses within the collective experience of a scenographically-crafted performance environment. I propose that scenography works as an agent of exchange, provoking intersections of imagination where individuals can reflect on and playfully explore propositions of what it means to be in the world. This leads to the instigation of a new form of scenographic performance and an expanded view of the creative implication of audiences.

This submission for PhD by publication is primarily concerned with the scenographic role of light, especially in relation to; historiography and dramaturgy, embodiment and the use of projected digital light in performance. There is an emphasis on the ability of light to make meaning, its impact on the experience of audiences and its role in the choreography of space. The research encompasses writings on contemporary and historical uses of light in performance and practice-led, collaborative research with digital light that was part funded through the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). The research also embraces associated concerns relating to collaborative design processes and the creative use of technology within the performance domain. The title of this submission reflects both the nature and scope of the research of a series of outputs created over the decade 2004-2014 and published between 2005 and 2015. The monograph Light: Readings in Theatre Practice (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013) forms a significant, central core since it focuses on the ways in which light is used as a fundamental aspect of dramatic presentation and provides a range of new insights in thinking about lighting as a creative performance practice.

This thesis will investigate the creation and development by two British directors, Glen Walford and Bob Carlton, of the use of the actor-musician in small-scale touring, popular theatre community and subsidised repertory with a strong community base performance practices from 1960 to 2000. It will argue that the actor-musician had been established in touring community theatre companies, where distinctive working methodologies had evolved. Using previously unpublished archive material and new interviews; this is the first dedicated academic study to identify the work of these directors as a distinctive and innovative practice, which has one key strand of musical theatre performance in Britain since the 1960s. It locates this new body of practice in a diverse tradition of socially engaged and politically informed theatre that evolved through times of financial stringency, it will argue nonetheless that the work of these two directors has primarily creative or artistic validity which was driven and underpinned by social and political concern. The thesis will demonstrate that the two directors investigated represent the key line of continuity in the field of actor-musician practice. Each of these directors has worked and continued to work in very distinct styles and contexts and utilised the actor-musician in differing ways. The thesis will employ case studies in order to demonstrate ways in which the potential and range of the actormusician was developed in: classic plays, including Shakespeare reworked and extant musicals; new work that has been specifically conceived and created for actor-musicians. In conclusion it will evaluate the continuing significance of this practice within British musical theatre.