The fundamental conceptualisation of what animation actually is has been changing in the face of material change to production and distribution methods since the introduction of digital technology. This re-conceptualisation has been contributed to by increasing artistic and academic interest in the field, such as the emergence of Animation Studies, a relatively new branch of academic enquiry that is establishing itself as a discipline. This research (documentation of live events and thesis) examines animation in the context of performance, rather than in terms of technology or material process. Its scope is neither to cover all possible types of animation nor to put forward a new ‘catch-all’ definition of animation, but rather to examine the site of performance in character animation and to propose animation as a form of performance. In elaborating this argument, each chapter is structured around the framing device of animation as a message that is encoded and produced, delivered and played back, then received and decoded. The PhD includes a portfolio of projects undertaken as part of the research process on which the text critically reflects. Due to their site-specific approach, these live events are documented through video and still images. The work represents an intertwining, interdisciplinary, post-animation praxis where theory and practice inform one another and test relationships between animation and performance to problematise a binary opposition between that which is live as opposed to that which is animated. It is contextualised by a review of historical practice and interviews with key contemporary practitioners whose work combines animation with an intermedial mixture of interaction design, fine art, dance and theatre.

Democracy and tragedy were intrinsically linked during the time of the Athenian city-state. Yet this symbiosis, vital as it was then, is largely forgotten today. The dearth of serious political discussion is all the more puzzling since political scientists and international relations scholars write extensively on tragedy and democracy, often via a return to ancient Athens. However, these efforts have largely neglected the intrinsic links between democracy and tragedy; preferring instead to focus on either democracy or tragedy. Exploration of their essential links has, by and large, become confined to studies in philology and cultural history. The objective of this Thesis is to explore the contemporary political relevance of the ancient symbiosis of democracy and tragedy. It argues that the most politically important insight of this symbiosis today stems from tragedy’s so-called multivocal form: its ability to bring a variety of – otherwise marginalised – stories, characters and voices onto the public stage and into democratic debate. In particular, this Thesis explores two novel lessons that tragedy’s multivocal form can potentially teach contemporary democrats seeking to extend the institutions and procedures of democracy in the age of globalisation. The first is the understanding that the idea and practice of democracy should not be solely concerned with the institution of order in political life. Tragedy teaches us the lesson that while order is necessary for a stable and productive communal existence sites of disorder too provide insights into dilemmas posed by political instability, inequality, exclusion, and flux. A truly democratic order must seek to include and give voice to democratic disorder. Given this, the second lesson that this Thesis highlights from its study of Athenian tragedy’s multivocal form is the need to draw on both factual and fictional sources of knowledge in an effort to negotiate and overcome contemporary democratic dilemmas. Only by broadening the scope of reality, through a resort to fiction, can democrats hope to legitimate a variety of – otherwise marginalised – stories, characters and voices today.

This thesis argues for the centrality of incidental music in early twentieth-century music history, based on a study of Swedish and Finnish theatre music between 1908 and 1926. The central claims made are firstly, that incidental music is an integral part of music history in this period, supporting a narrative about modernity that does not focus exclusively on "high art" concert music. Second, the Nordic countries were part of a cross-continental discourse concerning modernity that did not revolve solely around, or stem from, central European capital cities such as Vienna or Paris. Third, dramatic literature was fundamental to the development of twentieth-century music in Sweden and Finland. Through an examination of productions with music by Jean Sibelius (Svanehvit, 1908, and Scaramouche, 1924), Wilhelm Stenhammar (As You Like It, 1920), and Ture Rangström (Till Damaskus III, 1926), the thesis demonstrates that the early 1900s in these countries were characterised by stylistic plurality. For the first two decades of the 1900s, when Sibelius composed the majority of his works, multiple modes of expression where referred to as 'modern' with no clear hierarchy between them. By the 1920s, however, 'modernism' was emerging as a term consistently used to refer to atonality and concurrent theatrical styles dominant in central Europe. Rather than adopt these stylistic languages, Stenhammar and Rangström used 'modernism' as a category to define themselves against, presenting themselves as modern but not modernist composers.

The question of animals and performance defines the crossroads of the academic fields of Critical Animals Studies and Performance Studies, giving rise to the proposition of inter-species performance. But are all performances that integrate animals into the production inter-species? Or are there different manners of collaboration? In 2008 and my horse, Katrina, and I rode across Canada. Though this event was not undertaken as a performance endeavour, the production that emerged can be understood as a uniquely collaborative human/equine performance – The Ride. The Ride presented a meeting through the middle of an inter-species partnership that was performance in its foundation of physical communication and learned cooperation between a human and a horse. The Ride was an event that “became” a performance due to its active, reciprocal human/equine exchange, and the experiential interaction of a host of audience/participators throughout the course of the journey. Through embracing the positive, expansive qualities of equine alterity, and recognizing both the human and equine perspectives at play within the event, The Ride presented a performance that was fundamentally inter-species.

[pt] Em uma perspectiva interdisciplinar entre os estudos de literatura e os estudos teatrais, esta dissertação propõe um olhar atento sobre a linguagem e a sonoridade no trabalho do diretor teatral norte-americano Robert Wilson nas três décadas que separam duas de suas realizações cênicas: Deafman Glance (1970), peça marcada pela ausência de palavras e sons, e Monsters of Grace II (2013), sua primeira obra radiofônica. A partir de pressupostos teóricos do teatro pósdramático e do teatro performativo, investigam-se o processo de aproximação de Wilson à linguagem oral, bem como novas abordagens do uso da voz no teatro. Objeto central da pesquisa, a peça Monsters of Grace II ganha uma análise detalhada, seja no contexto de produções na intersecção entre teatro e rádio, seja como dispositivo para investigar as possibilidades materiais e corporais da experiência radiofônica. / [en] From an interdisciplinary angle that takes in both literature and theater studies, this thesis turns its gaze on both language and sound in the oeuvre of American theater director Robert Wilson in the three decades that separate two of his works: Deafman Glance (1970), a play characterized by the absence of words and sound, and Monsters of Grace II (2013), his first work for radio. Wielding theoretical propositions from postdramatic and performative theater, this analysis investigates the process by which Wilson came to reconcile himself with oral language, as well as exploring new approaches to the use of voice in theater. The central object of this study, Monsters of Grace II is examined in greater detail, be it in the context of productions at the crossroads between theater and radio or as a framework by which to investigate the material and corporeal possibilities of experimentation in radio.

À travers l’analyse d’une quinzaine de pièces issues du répertoire contemporain (1991-2017), cette étude vise à penser la dynamique du ravissement à l’œuvre dans les écritures dramatiques pour rendre compte d’un réel catastrophique. Plutôt que déplier des situations par le biais d’outils de distanciation critiques, elles opèrent un mouvement qui suspend le sens des gestes des protagonistes, ravit la possibilité de leur compréhension pour mieux enchanter le réel. L’échappée s’opère par le négatif pour faire surgir l’espoir à partir du désespoir. Ce mouvement paradoxal qui fait de la défaite la brèche par laquelle inquiéter la tyrannie de la réalité peut se penser comme passage d’une situation de sidération à une fascination qui dessine une ligne de fuite vers un point d’utopie. Le ravissement, à partir notamment de la pensée de Maurice Blanchot, Georges Didi-Huberman et Roland Barthes, peut être conçu comme échappée d’un réel insaisissable qui fait de l’ignorance le site d’une réinvention du réel par le poétique. Dans les œuvres de Marguerite Duras et Didier-Georges Gabily, la ravissante opère une suspension de toute herméneutique et de toute résolution dramatique. Dans les œuvres d’Ivana Sajko, Dorothée Zumstein, Claudine Galea et Marie Ndiaye, la fascination implique une mise en crise du sujet fasciné. Dans une deuxième partie est explorée l’échappée du réel à partir du négatif. Les œuvres de Sarah Kane servent d’appui pour penser la tension vers un centre utopique, puis l’étude est étendue à des pièces du répertoire français contemporain, de Samuel Gallet, Magali Mougel, Lancelot Hamelin, Mariette Navarro et Philippe Malone. / Through the analysis of about fifteen contemporary plays (1991-2017), this thesis opens a reflexion on the dynamic of rapture in dramatic plays and how it reflects a catastrophic reality. Rather than developing dramatic situations by critical and distancing means, they procede in a movement that suspends the meaning of the gestures of the characters, and rapts the possibility of their comprehension to better enchant reality. Escape is depicted in a negative way to let merge hope from despair. This paradoxal movement transforms defeat into a breach through which the tyranny of reality is troubled, and is raised from a situation of sideration to one of fascination, thus pointing towards utopia. The notion of rapture is based in particular on the works of Maurice Blanchot, Georges Didi-Huberman and Roland Barthes. It can be seen as an escape from an elusive reality that transforms ignorance into the site of a reinvention of reality by poetic means. In the works of Marguerite Duras and Didier-Georges Gabily, the ravishing figure suspends hermeneutics and dramatic resolution. This study is extended to plays by Ivana Sajko, Dorothée Zumstein, Claudine Galea and Marie Ndiaye where fascination implies a situation of crisis for the fascinated subject. The second part is an exploration of how negativity can lead to escaping from reality. Sarah Kane plays are a support to consider the tension towards an utopic centre, and the study is developed to contemporary french plays by Samuel Gallet, Magali Mougel, Lancelot Hamelin, Mariette Navarro and Philippe Malone.

Queer people of color in the United States are perpetually under siege politically, psychically, economically, physically, and affectively in the twenty-first century under capitalist white supremacist heteropatriarchy. Radical Self-Care, connects radical artivist performance in Austin, Texas with the theoretical genealogies of queer of color critique, women of color feminism, queer studies, and performance studies in order to propose a program for queer of color survival, sustainment and political revolt. Radical self-care is the holistic praxis that names the confluence of two distinct but inextricable processes developed in the first two chapters of this thesis. In chapter one, I take up the Generic Ensemble Company’s workshop production of What’s Goin’ On? as a case study in order to theorize the ‘performative of sustenance,’ a mechanism of queer worldmaking and queer world sustainment defined by its erotic and utopian affects. Chapter two, through a discussion of reproductive rights activism at the Texas state capitol, reformulates the concept of ‘parrhesia,’ the Socratic practice of ‘free speech’ taken up by Foucault in discussions of the care of the self, into a performance praxis of speaking truth to power with the potential to interrupt hegemonic systems of oppression. The final chapter explicates the ways in which these two mechanisms converge and operate as a dyad in the holistic process of radical self-care through an analysis of Fat: The Play, a devised work that premiered in Austin by and about fat queer femmes. Ultimately, Radical Self- Care aspires to offer queers of color a methodology of queer world sustainment that is also a program of political intervention, grounded in solidarity politics, into those systems of oppression that too often characterize queer of color existence as a project of survival rather than a project of flourishing. / text

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