Affective Movements, Methods and Pedagogies 9780367437336, 9780367437343, 9781003005377

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Endorsements
Title Page
Copyright page
Dedication
Contents
List of figures
Acknowledgements
A Preface: Affective realness
List of contributors
Affective movements, methods and pedagogies: Introduction
PART I: Affective movements
1. Affective leanings in performance
2. Drop in the Ocean: On walking with water as affective activism
3. Vogue femme as affective anti-oppression education
4. Accelerating a blaze of very tender violence: Ten experiments in writing with performance and activism
5. Sinking feelings and hopeful horizons: Holding complexity in climate change theatre
PART II: Affective methods
6. Affect and audiencing Rimini Protokoll's win > < win
7. Devising creativity in Hong Kong: An affective performance methodology
8. Poetic becomings in scenic art for young children
9. 'Come all savage creatures': Becoming Bakkhai in the southwest of Western Australia
10. The Six Viewpoints and the art of waiting (to become art)
11. Sitting with it: Liveness and embodiment
PART III: Affective pedagogies
12. Performatively unsilencing Australian history: A First Nations history curriculum
13. Affect and discovery: Transformative moments of confrontation in performative pedagogies
14. 'They call teachers by their first names!': An ethnodrama of pre-service teachers visiting innovative schools
15. Etudes and empathy: Towards a pedagogy of empathy
16. The dramaturgy of spaces in the post laboratory
Index

Citation preview

AFFECTIVE MOVEMENTS, METHODS AND PEDAGOGIES

Affective Movements, Methods and Pedagogies invites readers to think with affect about performance, pedagogies and their inherent activist, embodied and collective natures. It works across multiple spheres to help readers understand how to deploy affective approaches rather than to simply think with affect theory about traditional methods. The book is structured and curated across three main thematic sections: affective movements, methods and pedagogies, each of which treats the core explorations of affect and performance through a different perspective. It is concerned with the ways performance and theatrical methods work with and through a theoretics of affect. The sixteen chapters include work that models theoretical practices in writing, and demonstrates how theorising affect and its methods is itself a performative practice. The contributors offer rich examples from diverse geopolitical as well as disciplinary contexts, innovative methods, and finally, intersectional theoretics. This collection will be of interest to higher education students exploring methodologies, and academic researchers and teachers in the fields of performance studies, communication, critical studies, sociology and the arts. Anne Harris is Associate Professor, Principal Research Fellow and Australian Research Council Future Fellow at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia. Anne writes and researches in the areas of critical autoethnography, education, gender, creativity and creative methods. Stacy Holman Jones is Professor and Director of the Centre for Theatre and Performance at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. Her research focuses broadly on performance as socially, culturally, and politically resistive and transformative activity.

‘Affective Movements, Methods and Pedagogies is both timely and necessary. The collection provides an exciting international multi-perspectival mapping of affect methodological studies. The engagement with affective approaches from a performance studies focus instigates multiple dimensions of new inquiry and enhances pedagogical practice. I shall definitely be checking out my bookseller for a copy when the publication date comes around!’ —Dr. Ken Gale, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, University of Plymouth, UK ‘Affective Movements, Methods and Pedagogies brings together a diverse group of dedicated emerging and established scholars and practitioners who are all committed to the need for interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approaches to performance and other arts-driven work and research creation. Their playful and collective wisdom has resulted in a rich collage of perspectives and practices from seven countries, showing how affect theory can enact practices that disrupt modernist and humanist ideologies and their attendant rationalist and anthropocentric logics. This book is not a blueprint, nor is it a collection of feelgood stories, rather the authors have explored, from diverse perspectives and understandings, the ways in which bodies produce affects, and affects produce bodies. As such it is an essential resource for scholars interested in researching affect theory and performance and their practices.’ —Professor Emerita Annette Gough, School of Education, RMIT University, Australia ‘Affective Movements, Methods and Pedagogies is a vibrant, urgent collection of essays from across the disciplinary spectrum. Together these essays call us, as scholars, teachers, performers, practitioners (or all of, more than, these), to fresh, immersive engagements with affect and to new ways of thinking and doing.’ —Professor Jonathan Wyatt, Centre of Creative-Relational Inquiry, University of Edinburgh, UK

AFFECTIVE MOVEMENTS, METHODS AND PEDAGOGIES

Edited by Anne Harris and Stacy Holman Jones

First published 2021 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2021 selection and editorial matter, Anne Harris and Stacy Holman Jones; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Anne Harris and Stacy Holman Jones to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record has been requested for this book ISBN: 978-0-367-43733-6 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-367-43734-3 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-00537-7 (ebk) Typeset in Baskerville by Taylor & Francis Books

This book is dedicated to all the ephemerality and preaccelerations of performance-making that will never—and should never—be captured.

CONTENTS

List of figures Acknowledgements A Preface: Affective realness

ix xi xii

Bryant Keith Alexander

List of contributors

xv

Affective movements, methods and pedagogies: Introduction Stacy Holman Jones and Anne Harris

1

PART I

Affective movements

9

1 Affective leanings in performance Stacy Holman Jones and Anne Harris

11

2 Drop in the Ocean: On walking with water as affective activism Jess Allen

25

3 Vogue femme as affective anti-oppression education Pamela Baer

41

4 Accelerating a blaze of very tender violence: Ten experiments in writing with performance and activism Alys Longley

60

5 Sinking feelings and hopeful horizons: Holding complexity in climate change theatre Sarah Walker and Fleur Kilpatrick

83

viii Contents

PART II

Affective methods 6 Affect and audiencing Rimini Protokoll’s win > < win Joanne ‘Bob’ Whalley and Lee Miller 7 Devising creativity in Hong Kong: An affective performance methodology Anne Harris and Kelly McConville 8 Poetic becomings in scenic art for young children Maybritt Jensen 9 ‘Come all savage creatures’: Becoming Bakkhai in the southwest of Western Australia Vahri McKenzie and Kathy Boxall

105 107

118 133

142

10 The Six Viewpoints and the art of waiting (to become art) Tony Perucci

158

11 Sitting with it: Liveness and embodiment Anna Hickey-Moody

173

PART III

Affective pedagogies

189

12 Performatively unsilencing Australian history: A First Nations history curriculum Kathryn Gilbey and Rob McCormack

191

13 Affect and discovery: Transformative moments of confrontation in performative pedagogies Mary-Rose McLaren and Scott Welsh

205

14 ‘They call teachers by their first names!’: An ethnodrama of pre-service teachers visiting innovative schools Alys Mendus, Michael Kamen, Adaire Kamen, Sarah Buchanan, Abigail Earle, Abigail Luna and Kelli McLaughlin

219

15 Etudes and empathy: Towards a pedagogy of empathy Alison Grove O’Grady and Thomas De Angelis

234

16 The dramaturgy of spaces in the post laboratory Tatiana Chemi

246

Index

262

FIGURES

2.1 Jess Allen, Drop in the Ocean, SPILL Festival 2018, Ipswich. Photograph by Guido Mencari. 2.2 Drop in the Ocean, Aberystwyth 2015. Photograph by Sara Penrhyn Jones. 2.3 Jess Allen, Drop in the Ocean, SPILL Festival 2018, Ipswich. Photograph by Guido Mencari. 3.1 Hand performance. 3.2 Holding a pose. 3.3 Owning a pose. 3.4 Bianca striking a pose. 3.5 Learning the catwalk. 3.6 Twysted demonstrating the duck walk. 3.7 Moving bodies in/toward new compositions. 3.8 Pam falling. 3.9 Bodies in movement. 4.1 Publicity material for El Otro País Que Eres/The Other Country That You Are; design by Eduardo Ceró Tillería, photography by Augusto Dominguez. 4.2 Publicity material: Basta Ya de la Represión. 4.3 Basta Ya de la Represión, Band-Aid Art Works, photographer Máximo Corvalán-Pincheira. 4.4 Basta Ya de la Represión, Band-Aid Art Works, photographer Máximo Corvalán-Pincheira.

26 29 35 47 47 49 49 52 53 54 54 55

66 67 68 74

x List of illustrations

4.5 Documentation from Mapeo de Bordes Porosos: Máximo Corvalán-Pincheira, with Alys Longley and Macarena Campbell Parra (translations). 4.6 Documentation from Mapeo de Bordes Porosos: Máximo Corvalán-Pincheira, with Alys Longley and Macarena Campbell Parra (translations). 4.7 La justicia es un mar con otro nombre/Justice is a sea with another name. Anonymous graffiti, library at Parque Salvador, Santiago, photographer Alys Longley. 5.1 Sonya Suares with the delegates who saved their islands. 5.2 Jonah (Max Paton) and the Whale (Chanella Macri). 5.3 The vote. 7.1 Performing Hong Kong. 7.2 Soundscape brainstorm. 7.3 Co-devising the script. 10.1 ‘The Famous Tony + Kelly Dance’, Kelly Dalrymple-Wass (L) & Author (R), Viewpoints in Action Workshop, Fresno, CA, July 2004. 10.2 The Six Viewpoints, a horizontal structure of theatrical materials, developed by Mary Overlie. 10.3 Mary Overlie waiting for a gesture to become art at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, February 2017. 16.1 Odin Teatret’s planimetry, ground floor. 16.2 Odin Teatret’s planimetry, first floor.

75

76

79 84 88 98 119 126 127

160 162

165 258 259

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We thank Bryant Keith Alexander for your inspiration and generosity, Hannah Shakespeare for your editorial support, leadership and companionship, and Tasha and Murphy for your affective leanings.

A PREFACE: AFFECTIVE REALNESS Bryant Keith Alexander

In the moment of writing this preface for Affective Movements, Methods and Pedagogies, we are in the midst of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic; an unprecedented infectious disease risk for all persons. The pandemic is making an affective impact on the world—not just as a reification of globalisation, relative to the interdependence of world populations and economies with migratory flows that have environmental impacts (that we so often theorise without the embodied manifestations of human impact). Now made real in the material affectedness of illness, death, fear and trauma transported through the very air we breathe and tactical relations we struggle to maintain. A material affective realness under the regimes of COVID-19 made manifest in the necessary shifting modalities of human social engagement: social distancing as a practical polemic, restrictive physical contact, and the wearing of protective masks that muffle the sentiments of everyday exchanges, hiding access to facial expressions—while restraining the communicability of the virus. People around the world are either sequestered and quarantined alone, or with families engaging the intensity of forced and extended cohabitation. Or they are enacting the vagaries of everyday social exchanges behind plexiglass walls, body coverings, wearing plastic gloves to mediate and modulate the detritus of human exchange. All quickly realising more than ever (short of the last and lingering reminder of HIV/ AIDS)—that the human body, like non-human subjects and objects are all fomites, capable and likely to carry infection. On the nightly news, we see sympathetically broadcasted images of people touching glass on windows with only the visual access to vulnerable others on the other side—including children and the elderly; communicating affection without contact, expressing care without contamination, and emotionally connecting through differently engaged mediated affective approaches (like Facetime, Zoom and Skype). We are all teaching and learning new methods of activating affect, while engaging the cultural prophylactic agency

A Preface: Affective Realness xiii

of performance. An agency of contact that is potentially procreative, yet a protective pedagogy of social awareness; a virtual connection beyond the proscenium that simulates the affect of intimacy as a practiced sterile penetration (Alexander 2004).1 This is how I enter the dialogue of affective movements, methods and pedagogies—through the cloistered reality and relativity of COVID-19. But with a strong belief in the emancipatory ways to think about affect through performance and performative praxis with crisscrossing lines of activity and analysis. Performance as a work of imagination and as an object of study. Performance as a pragmatics of inquiry. Performance as an optic and operation of research and as tactics of intervention. Performance as an alternative space of struggle in the everyday, always sutured to affect and made accessible through affect (Conquergood, 2002, p. 152). In the ways in which COVID-19 as pernicious virus, with dubious origins, has penetrated the performativity of daily sensibilities. And, has forced us all to focus differently and creatively on relational orientations and to revisit affect as activist tool, affect as mode and method of a deep critical reflexivity. Along with engaging affect as reflective and refractive mirror of seeing self and society. I also come to this project with a deep commitment to the performance of pedagogy and pedagogical performativity as critical enactment. The questions of performance and that of pedagogy are co-informing dramatistic processes: who, what, when, why, where and how in a grammar of motives to explore the crafted intentionality of human activity (aesthetic or otherwise, Burke, 1969). Buttressed against the notion of pedagogy as “a term which signals the practical synthesis of the question ‘what should be taught and why?’ With considerations as to how that teaching should take place?” (Simons, 1992, pp. 55–57). Which reinforces that pedagogy, like affect, is political, evoking “a range of options for practical actions defined and legitimised by a particular way” of seeing/knowing/doing and expressing with purpose in time/place/space (Simons, 1994, p. 131). Each question of dramaturgical inquiry prompts the probabilities of a close scrutiny of intention/action/effect; while also deploying new theories of affect as pragmatic prisms of experiencing, self across cultures and borders. Maybe seeing affect not just as emotional response or expression, but a criticality of knowing and showing; affect as social awareness and social activism; affect as tools of interpretation and translation, affect as archive and repertoire (Taylor, 2003)—as a means of storing and transmitting knowledge, and affect as possibility and potentiality (Muñoz, 2006). So, the timing of such a project as Affective Movements, Methods and Pedagogies in the current cultural milieu (and what follows) is amazingly important. This as we begin to reimagine the “new normal” of a post-COVID-19 world. With the necessary recognition that the presumed “normal,” has/had-always/been a reality of exclusion for differently oriented others. In what ways does the examination of affective movements, methods and pedagogies here and now begin to further queer the presumptions of everyday ways of emoting and performing? Thus, contributing to the plurality of approaching the world and its subjects for what is to come and beyond, in a new affective realness.

xiv A Preface: Affective Realness

Note 1 I am also mindful that protests against COVID-19 beach closures in California also challenge this construction in relation to affect as tool of activism, and the breeching of protocols and cautions of social distancing in closely cloistered pockets of protest. A situation in which the affect of activism makes vulnerable health issues at the sake of the right to be on public beaches.

References Alexander, Bryant Keith. (2004). “Bu(o)ying Condoms: A Prophylactic Performance of Sexuality (or Performance as Cultural Prophylactic Agency).” Cultural Studies/Critical Methodologies, 4. 4: 501–525. Burke, Kenneth. (1969). A Grammar of Motives. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Conquergood, Dwight. (2002). “Performance Studies: Interventions and Radical Research.” The Drama Reviews, 46. 2: 152. Muñoz, Jose Esteban. (2006). “Stages: Queers, Punks and the Utopian Performative.” In Handbook of Performance Studies, eds. D. Soyini Madison and Judith Hamera. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Simons, Robert. (1992). Teaching Against the Grain: Texts for a Pedagogy of Possibility. New York: Bergin & Garvey. Simons, Robert. (1994). “Forms of Insurgency in the Production of Popular Memories: The Columbus Quincentenary and the Pedagogy of Countercommemoration.” In Between Borders: Pedagogy and the Politics of Cultural Studies, eds. Henry A. Giroux and Peter McLaren. New York: Routledge. Taylor, Diana. (2003). The Archive and the Repertoire. Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

CONTRIBUTORS

Bryant Keith Alexander [email protected] is dean of the College of Communication and Fine Arts as well as a professor of Communication and Performance Studies. He is an active scholar, lecturer and performer with publications in leading journals — along with major contributions in such volumes as the “Handbook of Critical and Indigenous Methodologies” (SAGE), “Handbook of Performance Studies” (SAGE), “Handbook of Qualitative Research” (SAGE, Third Edition/Fifth Edition), “Handbook of Communication and Instruction” (SAGE), “Handbook of Critical Intercultural Communication” (Wiley-Blackwell), and “Handbook of Autoethnography” (Left Coast). He is the co-editor of “Performance Theories in Education: Power, Pedagogy and the Politics of Identity” (2005, Erlbaum), author of “Performing Black Masculinity: Race, Culture, and Queer Identity” (2006, Alta Mira), and “The Performative Sustainability of Race: Reflections on Black Culture and the Politics of Identity” (2012, Lang). Jess Allen [email protected] is an artist and aerialist from Mid-Wales. She has a PhD in quantitative biology from Aberystwyth University (2002) and a PhD in contemporary performance from the University of Manchester (2018). In between she trained as a dancer, latterly with an MA Dance Making and Performance from Coventry University. She has worked as landscape and conservation officer for local government, dance lecturer (improvisation/somatic practice), community arts facilitator and as aerial performer for Full Tilt Aerial Theatre and inclusive (disabled/nondisabled) companies Blue Eyed Soul and EVERYBODY dance. She now works for Syrcas Byd Bychan, teaching aerial circus (corde lisse, sling, aerial yoga) at near-zero-carbon Small World Theatre.

xvi Contributors

Pamela Baer, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), University of Toronto [email protected], is the Research Manager on the LGBTQ Families Speak Out project, and has recently completed her PhD in Education at the University of Toronto. Kathy Boxall [email protected] is Professor of Social Work and Disability Studies at Edith Cowan University’s South West Campus in Bunbury, Western Australia. Her research focuses on the perspectives of health and welfare service users and their involvement in research, policy, practice and education. Kathy also has a particular interest in inclusive research design and the development of collaborative research methodologies, including approaches which are not textbased, or dependent on words. Sarah Buchanan, (Round Rock, TX, USA) [email protected], is a recent class of 2020 graduate from Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas. She has obtained a Bachelor of Science in Education with a focus on Elementary (EC- 6th grade) and Special Education (EC- 12th). She is currently applying to Early Childhood Special Education positions. She hopes to utilize her experiences to create a positive classroom community focused on supporting each student’s individual needs. Tatiana Chemi, [email protected] PhD Associate Professor, Department of Culture and Learning at Aalborg University, Denmark. She investigates artistic learning and creativity. She is author of published articles, books and reports, among the others: The Art of Arts Integration, Aalborg University Press, 2014; Behind the Scenes of Artistic Creativity, with J. Borup Jensen and L. Hersted, Peter Lang, 2015, A Theatre Laboratory Approach to Pedagogy and Creativity: Odin Teatret and Group Learning (Palgrave, 2018). She is co-editor of Arts-based Methods and Organisational Learning: Higher Education Around the World, Palgrave, 2018, and Arts-based Methods in Education around the World, River, 2017. She initiated the book-series The Arts, Creativities and Learning Environments in Global Perspectives at Brill/Sense, co-edited with A. Mitra and C. Zhou. In 2013, Aalborg University Press named her Author of the Year. Her work focuses on artistic creativity cross-culturally, arts-integrated education and theatre laboratory. She leads the Erasmus+-funded project: Artists-Led Learning in Higher Education. Thomas De Angelis, University of Sydney [email protected], is a working playwright, whose recent works include “Unfinished Works” (Seymour Centre; 2016), “The Worst Kept Secrets” (Seymour Centre; 2014), and “Jack killed Jack” (Sydney Fringe Festival; 2012). Thomas is the artistic director of Bontom, a theatre company that produces original Australian work for the stage. In 2019, Bontom produced “The Other Side Of 25” at The Old 505, “Chorus” at The Old Fitz, “Homesick” at The Old 505, and “The House at Boundary Rd” at The Old 505. In 2017, Thomas was awarded the ATYP Rebel Wilson

Contributors xvii

Scholarship, and developed “Come On! The Lleyton Hewitt Musical” as part of his residency. After graduating with a Bachelor Degree in Arts/ Law, he attended NIDA (National Institute of Dramatic Arts) in 2015 to study a Master Of Fine Arts (Writing For Performance). He is the co-creator and dramaturg for an original site-specific opera, “Chamber Pot Opera” (Queen Victoria Building; 2016), which toured to the Adelaide Fringe Festival (2017), and then internationally to The Edinburgh Festival Fringe (2017). In 2018, Chamber Pot Opera toured to St Petersburg, Russia as part of The International Summer Festival of The Arts. In 2019, Chamber Pot Opera completed its last ever production in the Playhouse Ladies Bathroom at The Sydney Opera House. Since 2018, Thomas has lectured in ‘Australian Film and Theatre’ at The University of Sydney. Abigail Earle Downs [email protected] is from Jacksonville, Texas, the former tomato capital of the world. She graduated Southwestern University with a Bachelor of Science in Education. She’s currently a secondary English teacher. She aspires to be the change through inspiring her students to love literature and see its worthiness and the places it can take them. Kathryn Gilbey [email protected] is a proud Alyawarre woman from the great Sandover Region in the Northern Territory up in to Western Queensland. She is currently the Director of the Graduate School at Batchelor Institute and a passionate practitioner of and advocate for First Nations research. Anne Harris [email protected] is Associate Professor, Principal Research Fellow (RMIT University), and Australian Research Council Future Fellow. Anne writes and researches in the areas of autoethnography, gender, creativity, performance, and video. Anne has produced over 100 articles/chapters and 18 books, is series editor of Creativity, Education and the Arts (Palgrave), and the Director of Creative Agency, a transdisciplinary research lab at RMIT University, focusing on creativity and creative making practices within a community of artists and scholars for social change (www.creativeresearchhub.com) Anna Hickey-Moody [email protected] is Professor of Media and Communication at RMIT University, an Australian Research Council Future Fellow 2017-2021 and an RMIT University Vice Chancellor’s Senior Research Fellow 2017-2021. Her books include “Deleuze and Masculinity” (Palgrave 2019), ‘Imagining University Education: Making Educational Futures’ (Routledge, 2016), Youth, Arts and Education’ (Routledge, 2013), ‘Unimaginable Bodies’ (Brill/Sense Publishers, 2009) and ‘Masculinity Beyond the Metropolis’ (Palgrave, 2006). Anna has also edited 8 collections of essays. She teaches and supervises in the areas of arts practice as method, youth, disability, masculinity, and the cultural politics of schooling and aesthetics.

xviii Contributors

Stacy Holman Jones [email protected] is Professor in the Centre for Theatre and Performance at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. Her research focuses broadly on performance as socially, culturally, and politically resistive and transformative activity. She specializes in critical qualitative methods, particularly critical autoethnography and critical and feminist theory. She is the author of more than 80 articles, book chapters, reviews, and editorials and the author/editor of 13 books and is the founding editor of Departures in Critical Qualitative Research. Maybritt Jensen [email protected] is Associate Professor in Scenic Art at the Institute of Early Childhood Education at Oslo Metropolitan University. She is currently engaged in affective theories in performance studies in Early Childhood research. Her work with scenic communication on several theatre productions and workshops has contributed to her art-based research on experimental theatre performance for a very young audience. Furthermore, her yearlong practice-led research includes developing circus with children in Early Childhood Education Curriculum. Adaire Kamen [email protected] is a New York based playwright, performer, and theatre educator. She graduated in 2014 from Fordham University with a Bachelor of Arts in Theatre. Her plays have appeared in the New York Fringe Festival and the United Solo Festival. She is also a producer, writer, and curator for the annual Halloween short play event, The Bite Sized Theatrical Spooktacular. Michael Kamen [email protected] completed a Ph.D. (1991), in Science Education, exploring creative drama in teaching science. Michael began his teaching career in a democratic school. He earned an Undergraduate degree in Elementary Education (SUNY, Stony Brook), a Masters in supervision and administration (Bank Street College of Education), and a Doctorate (The University of Texas). He is a professor at Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas and has over 30 years of experience educating pre-service and in-service teachers. His scholarship and teaching interests include the pedagogy of play, primary/elementary school inquiry mathematics and science, and innovative schools. Fleur Kilpatrick is a playwright, theatre director, PhD candidate and lecturer in theatre and performance at Monash University. Her play Whale has won the 2018 Max Afford Award, the 2019 Helen Noonan Award. Her opera Daphne premiered with Co Opera in 2019 and in 2018 she had her mainstage debut with Terrestrial at State Theatre Company. In 2016 her play Blessed won the Jill Blewett Award and premiered at Poppy Seed Festival and in 2015 she won the 2015 Melbourne Fringe’s Emerging Playwright Award for her play The City They Burned, which performed at Melbourne Fringe and Brisbane Festival.

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Alys Longley [email protected] is an interdisciplinary artist working with choreography and creative writing as expanded fields. She's an experienced interdisciplinary artist and has worked closely with scientists, geographers, poets, visual and fashion-based artists. She recently led 18 Horas Entre Nosotros/ 18 Hours Between Us - a series of performances and public research events in Santiago, Chile/ Auckland, New Zealand. In 2019 she presented the work Extracción de Lealtades/ Extractive Loyalties while a research resident at the School of the Art Institute, Chicago. Her book The Foreign Language of Motion was published in 2014 with Winchester University Press’s Preface Series and her book Radio Strainer was published in 2016, these artist-books both emerged out of choreographic projects for theatre and film. Her edited books include Undisciplining Dance in Nine Movements and Eight Stumbles (2018, Cambridge Scholars Press, with Carol Brown) and Artistic Approaches to Cultural Mapping, Activating Imaginaries and Means of Knowing (2018, Routledge, co-eds N. Duxbury and W. Garrett Petts). Alys's work has been performed in NZ, Australia, UK, Germany, Portugal, Vienna, Croatia and Chile. Alys is an Associate Professor in the Department of Dance Studies, University of Auckland, New Zealand. Abigail Luna [email protected] is a recent class of 2020 graduate from Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas. She has obtained her Bachelor of Science in Education, specializing in Early Childhood - 6th grade, as well as Special Education Kindergarten - 12th grade. As she strives and searches for a full-time teacher position, she is eager to use her theatre experience in the classroom to enhance learning and engage her students. Kelly McConville, RMIT, [email protected] (M.Ed), is an educator and PhD candidate at The Melbourne Graduate School of Education (MGSE) at The University of Melbourne, and an Associate Researcher at RMIT University. A published author in the fields of performed research and ethnodrama, her research interests lie in how performance can be used in a variety of ways to interrogate and communicate aspects of cultural and professional identity. Kelly is guest-editor for the upcoming special issue of the Journal of Artistic and Creative Education (JACE). Rob McCormack, PhD, [email protected] now retired, has been a second chance adult educator for over 35 years. He has a strong interest in linguistics, philosophical hermeneutics, and rhetorical theory and practice. From 1998-2003 he worked with a team of Indigenous educators to co-design and deliver two Institute-wide higher education transition units—Public Communication and Indigenous Histories—that combined ancient european rhetoric and Indigenous oral practices and pedagogies at Batchelor Institute of Indigenous Tertiary Education, Northern Territory. These units were well-received by students. Since then, he has worked with PhD students to improve their academic and research literacies at Victoria University, Melbourne.

xx Contributors

Vahri McKenzie, Edith Cowan University [email protected],is an educator, artist and scholar, with expertise across a number of creative arts practices including contemporary performance and creative writing. Vahri’s interest in creativity as a phenomenon that can be taught and learned, experienced and shared has led to artistic research with an emphasis on embodied collaboration and multidisciplinarity. Vahri is Honorary Senior Lecturer within the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts at Edith Cowan University. See vahrimckenzie.com.au. Mary-Rose McLaren is an associate professor in the College of Arts and Education at Victoria University, Melbourne. She teaches in the Diploma of Education Studies and chairs and teaches in the Bachelor of Early Childhood. She is also a poet and theatre practitioner, writing, directing and acting in community theatre. She has a particular interest in cross generational theatre work, and the power of Drama to generate transformational experiences for those making, and those watching. Kelli McLaughlin [email protected] is a graduate of Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas with a Bachelor of Science in Education. She is currently a Special Education Teacher at Newton Collins Elementary in Del Valle ISD and a passionate advocate for her students. Alys Mendus [email protected] completed a Ph.D. (2017), in performing School Tourism, an autoethnographic rhizomatic journey in search of the ideal school around the world. Alys embodied her scholarship in Freedom to Learn from the University of Hull by living itinerantly in a van whilst in the U.K. and then travelling to 180 schools in 23 countries. She now lives in Australia with her partner and is very busy having fun with their one year old daughter, Ginny, working as a Casual Academic for Southern Cross University and writing a book about School Tourism for Brill/Sense. Lee Miller [email protected] is a Research Fellow at The University of Plymouth, with experience in the design and development of bespoke training packages to postgraduate research students for Arts & Humanities Research Council and Erasmus funded projects. In 2015 he completed his 200 hour Yoga Alliance training, and works as both an academic and yoga teacher. Their book Between Us: Audiences, Affect and the In-between, published in 2017 by Palgrave Macmillan, celebrates spaces which cause an affecting, and bodies affected. Bob and Lee completed the first joint practice-as-research PhD to be undertaken within a UK arts discipline in 2004, and they make performance, installation, performance text and objects to international audiences. Alison Grove O’Grady, University of Sydney [email protected], is a Senior Lecturer and lead academic accreditation and curriculum in the

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combined degree in secondary education at the University of Sydney, Sydney School of Education and Social Work. Her research focuses on the role of empathy in creative pedagogy and its relationship to education and teacher professional learning. Alison’s work explores the tensions regarding the areas of empathy, access and equity facilitated through creative practices and pedagogies. She also researches in interdisciplinary spaces particularly in ways that creative pedagogies and theatre making can support and generate transformation in curriculum and other contexts. Her recent book O’Grady, A. G. Pedagogy, Empathy and Praxis: Using Theatrical Traditions to Teach. Springer Nature., captures much of her work in this field. She is a passionate teacher and life- long learner. Tony Perucci [email protected] is a scholar-artist and Associate Professor of Performance Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He gives lectures and leads workshops widely on The Viewpoints. His scholarly writing on the Viewpoints has appeared in Performance Research and Theatre Topics and in his book, On the Horizontal: Mary Overlie and the Viewpoints (Michigan, forthcoming). He is also the author of Paul Robeson and the Cold War Performance Complex: Race, Madness, Activism (Michigan, 2012). He has adapted and directed numerous works for the stage, and recently performed in Mary Overlie’s final work, Brain to Brain at Danspace/St. Marks-on-the-Bowery in New York City. Sarah Walker is a writer, critic and fine artist. Her work uses humour and theatricality to explore catastrophe, disaster and existential dread. She was runner-up in the 2019 Calibre Essay Prize, and is an arts reviewer for the Australian Book Review, where she was named the 2020 Victorian Rising Star. She has been a finalist in the international MTV RE:DEFINE award, the fortyfivedownstairs Emerging Artist Award, the Darebin Mayor’s Writing Award, the Maggie Diaz Photography Prize and the National Photographic Portrait Prize. She has presented at international conferences addressing critical autoethnography and visual pedagogies, and attended residencies across Australia and the globe. She is currently developing works with the NGV, The Unconformity Festival, City of Moreland and Arena Theatre. She has an MFA from RMIT. Scott Welsh is an academic, playwright and poet with an interest in creativity, social constructionism and education. His PhD involved the writing of a play. He has sold his poetry on the street throughout Australia, been published spasmodically and had his plays performed many times at La Mama Theatre, Fringe Festivals and academic conferences. He has written and performed a play about Charles Manson, his own autobiography as a street poet and recently a play about a community supermarket. He currently teaches various subjects, including script-writing, sociology, Academic and Professional Learning and is a research supervisor at Victoria University, Melbourne, Australia.

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Joanne ‘Bob’ Whalley [email protected] is a Lecturer in Dance at University of Roehampton, where she teaches postgraduate dance and choreography students. In 2015 she completed a BSc in Acupuncture, and she specialises in palliative care. Her PhD students explore grief narratives, empathy and affective exchange, concepts of with-ness and witness.

AFFECTIVE MOVEMENTS, METHODS AND PEDAGOGIES Introduction Stacy Holman Jones and Anne Harris

While affect theory has been applied across disciplines since the work of Silvan Tompkins (1962), it now intersects with increasingly diverse theoretic frameworks including posthuman, new materialist and feminist approaches. However, the possibilities afforded by non-dualistic, inchoate, and unforeclosed models of thinking-doing leave the work of methodological innovation—with a few notable exceptions (e.g. Knudsen & Stage, 2015; Myers 2015, Jackson & Mazzei, 2011)— largely under-explored. For example, Britta Timm Knudsen and Carsten Stage’s (2015) edited collection Affective Methodologies proposes inventive research strategies for the study of the affective and fluctuating dimensions of cultural life, providing usefully broad and diverse applications of affect theoretics in different disciplines. It redefines and extends the work that affect theory can do in methodological ways. Likewise, Antje Kahl’s (2019) work innovative and emergent affective qualitative and post-qualitative methods offers new ways of considering the value of different kinds of data ‘lives’, as well as the differing ways in which data performs itself (Kahl 2019). This volume contributes to affect studies by weaving together affective methods, pedagogies and movements across multiple spheres, offering readers examples of affective approaches to research. Specifically, the volume focuses attention on documenting performance-based approaches to methodological innovation, addressing the dearth of print scholarship that de-centres constructivist notions of human agency (and exceptionalism) and cultural production, despite the abiding commitments of theatre and performance to foregrounding materiality, bodies, and situated knowledges in our methods (Brisini & Simmons, 2016). In addition, we have paid special attention to diverse global perspectives, drawing from seven countries across both the global north and south. Elin Diamond, Denise Varney and Candice Amich do similar work in taking a global approach to scholarship on performance and affect, though here we more directly address the need for

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inter- and transdisciplinary approaches to performance and other arts-driven work and research-creation (Diamond et al., 2017). Erin Manning traces the provenance of the term ‘research-creation’ as a call to new onto-epistemologies in academic labour. In Against Method, she advances its contribution beyond its instrumental Canadian funding scheme origins, into what she calls an ‘inherent transversality’ (Manning, 2016, p. 27). For Manning, ‘making multiple sense is research-creation at work’ (p. 27). Research-creation is the opposite of the demand for singularity, codification, and relentless intelligibility that stultifies imaginative education or research. Manning challenges the academy’s long-held interest in dividing our labour (in this case, once again, between ‘theory’/‘practice’, or academic/‘art’) while also looking beyond that critique to wonder about the dynamism of creation itself. She asks us to consider how ‘method’ and ‘ology’ might work together, taking us to new places, and to ask what happens when we refuse to foreclose meaning as a form of play. We know that play, slippage and its performative embodiments are also frequently relational and spiritual practices. In this volume we collectively wonder about how these playful, corporeal and risky practices can be re-turned to academic work, relationships, and research-creation commitments. Building on the belief that the power of theatre and performance lies in its ability to ‘address something beyond the form itself’ (Ackroyd, 2000, p. 2), this volume is concerned with the methods-and-theoretics of affect and performance together, and its attendant pedagogical power. Where Judith Ackroyd has argued that the uniting element of applied theatre, drama, and performance studies is its intentionality (in McCammon, 2007, p. 949), we argue that theory can expand the traditional ways in which theatrical making has been understood and performed. The work in this collection is ‘projective’, rather than descriptive, enacting a practice that disrupts modernist and humanist ideologies and their attendant rationalist and anthropocentric logics (Brisini & Simmons, 2016, p. 192). The chapters include work that models theoretical practices in the writing, and demonstrates how theorising affect and its methods is itself a performative practice. Authors focus their attention on performance events or intra-actions (Barad, 2007) as the expressive and affective engagement of bodies both human and more-than-human in relationship and, at times, in conflict. This book explores the following questions:




What every day or extraordinary practices might shift collective or individual attention to/through affect theory, especially in relation to performance and its role in social life and learning? How is affect theory uniquely positioned to expand methods, disciplines, and to explore the body’s capacity to ‘move and affect other people and other things’ (Vannini, 2015, p. 9)? How might diverse theorisations of affect intersect with applied theatre, performance studies and drama research and be newly imagined through performing theoretical work?

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Affective Movements, Methods and Pedagogies is structured and curated along the three titular explorations: movements, methods and pedagogies. Part I, ‘Affective movements’, focuses on how affect theory offers new considerations of movement and mobilities, in both applied and theoretical contexts. In this section, the body moves, and is moved, through sensory and collective ‘fields of experience’ (Manning, 2016). The essays in this section problematise human experiences in the context of the non-human world that surrounds and intersects with them. From activist performances to anti-oppressive education, this section leverages affect theory in order to find the performative in everyday movements, charting the relationship between bodies and affect, and the ways in which bodies produce affects, and affects produce bodies. In Chapter 1, Holman Jones and Harris explore the capacity of performance to affectively lean into (and lean away from) non-dualist and posthuman constructions of bodies, minds, feelings and politics. In proximity to an ‘audience’, embodied performance experiences can be shared, for those willing to ‘lean in’ to the precarity and thrill of performance. Leaning in to fear, to improvisation, to the pulsing preacceleration (Manning, 2016, p. 13) of the body doing its thing in relation to other bodies causes binaries fall away: no longer are ‘they’ out there while ‘I’ am inside the blinding light, no longer are they are relaxed while I am tense, no longer are they watching my internal struggle from the outside. Chapters by both Jess Allen (Chapter 2) and Sarah Walker and Fleur Kilpatrick (Chapter 5) explore the power of performance to affectively motivate audiences toward action/activism regarding the climate crisis. For Walker and Kilpatrick, this is focused on South Pacific islands and the affective distancing made possible by (often globally northern) perceptions that the ocean-based climate crisis is happening ‘over there’. Their audience-implicating climate fable demands that spectators become uncomfortably involved and implicated. Jess Allen’s Drop in the Ocean, a six-day walking performance in six widening, concentric circles, also demands engagement from strangers who are invited to engage with water, memory and sensory-driven affective responses. The next two chapters, Pam Baer's (Chapter 3) and Alys Longley's (Chapter 4) both explore the corporeal aspects of text-based performance in different geopolitical contexts. For Baer, it is in an urban Canadian context working with LGBTIQ+ young people and voguing their performative way into relational encounter with ‘the other’. Longley’s examination of the Chilean protests of 2019 uses Kathleen Stewart’s evocative, fragmentary approach to non-fiction, Erin Manning’s event score, Lisa Robertson’s poetic evocations of texture and space, and Claire MacDonald’s writing in the expanded field, to make sense of performative activist engagements in a larger social movement. Part II, ‘Affective methods’, explores the ability of an affective lens to expand the processes of performance and other body-based methodologies in contemporary performance. In ‘Affect and audiencing Rimini Protokoll’s win > < win’ (Chapter 6), Joanne ‘Bob’ Whalley and Lee Miller explore how affective exchanges function in co-creative or co-constitutive processes in live performance.

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Through a consideration of Jacques Rancière’s emancipated spectatorship, Karen Barad’s intra-action, and John Fiske’s notion of audiencing, they navigate the messy entanglement of audience and performer as co-‘prosumers’, no longer the binarised passive and active participants in performance events. In ‘Devising creativity in Hong Kong: an affective performance methodology’ (Chapter 7), Anne Harris and Kelly McConville look through the lens of intercultural performance devising drawing on a collaborative devised theatre project in Hong Kong as a case study. They remind us that while creating place-based performance works in research contexts may be nothing new, doing so in ways that attend to the affective dimensions are. This chapter shares Harris’s study on culturally-specific forms of creativity—its practices and discourses—across higher education, and creative and cultural industries, throughout East Asia and Australia, offering possibilities for expanding the depth, relationships and affective resonance of large-scale international research projects. Chapters by Maybritt Jensen (Chapter 8), Vahri McKenzie and Kathy Boxall (Chapter 9), and Anna Hickey-Moody (Chapter 11) all use case studies of performances in which the affective impact is particularly felt through the specifics of place, time and bodies. Maybritt Jensen, in ‘Dramaturgy and entanglement with children 0–3 in theatre’, invites readers into the world of performance with/for young children, and the nonhuman collaborators in those works. She explores how human and non-human elements can be given equal attention and can by that be considered as active parts in the artistic event and open for other readings than representation and symbolisation. Props, costumes, audience seats as well as audience practices and concepts of children are elements in theatre for young children that are often overlooked, and here Jensen brings into focus this affective communication present in such performances. In ‘“Come all savage creatures”: becoming Bakkhai in Western Australia’, Vahri McKenzie and Kathy Boxall track the affective dimensions of participation in an applied theatre version of Euripides’ Bakkhai, developed collaboratively with artists and a community ensemble in the south west of Western Australia. Their analysis shows how Bakkhai’s corporeal and sensual studio methods established affective relations between participants, the play-world, and the proximate morethan-human world. In ‘Sitting with it: Liveness and embodiment’, Anna Hickey-Moody discusses the Back to Back theatre production The Shadow Whose Prey The Hunter Becomes (2019), arguing that through affects of everydayness, performance reminds viewers that human life is set to a time that is uncontrollable, ultimately rendering all people—like ensemble members with intellectual disabilities—vulnerable. Finally, Tony Perucci’s ‘The six viewpoints and the art of waiting (to become art)’ (Chapter 10) considers Mary Overlie’s six viewpoints through six ‘hands’ as occasions for thinking through The Viewpoints. Here viewpoints are not method, but are instead an approach for what Erin Manning terms, ‘the affective tonality of nonconscious resonance and moving it toward the articulation, edging into consciousness, of new modes of existence’ (Manning, 2016, p. 7). Following Gilles

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Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s theorisation of ‘minor’ languages, literatures and sciences that unsettle the force and fixity of ‘major’ forms from within, Manning calls this movement between affective tonality and articulation a ‘minor gesture’ Manning, 2016). Through this theoretical lens, Perucci posits The Viewpoints approach as both a theory and practice of the minor gesture, one that holds anarchic and liveness possibilities for all. Lastly, Part III turns our attention to ‘Affective pedagogies’, considering the ways affect is present in both formal and informal pedagogical settings, encounters, and atmospheres. The chapters in this section move between diverse classroom experiences, geopolitical contexts, and approaches to acknowledging and indeed leveraging the affective power of bodies learning together, and the radical potential embodied there. Two chapters address head-on the pervasive racism that continues to impact students and teachers in toxic affective circulations, in classrooms as well as through curricular reification of dominant whiteness. In ‘A First Nations history curriculum: performatively unsilencing Australian history’ (Chapter 12), Kathryn Gilbey and Rob McCormack draw on their experiences with a unit of study developed by a team of First Nations and Western academics and senior students at the turn of the 21st century for Indigenous students transitioning into higher education studies. The chapter highlights what a ‘performative contradiction’ it is to attempt to develop curricula that is both affectively liveable yet academically effective for First Nations students within a settler colonial education system. Importantly, First Nations staff and students found these performatively grounded units so compelling they managed to keep them alive for well over a decade. Alison Grove O’Grady and Thomas De Angelis, in ‘Etudes and empathy: towards a pedagogy of empathy’ (Chapter 15), discuss a funded project entitled ‘The Huddle’, that offered new ways for pre-service teachers to engage students in more humane relationships and encounters in classrooms. The original remit for ‘The Huddle’ was a response to increasing incidents of racism in Australian schools that had been identified by the Human Rights Commissioner in 2017, Professor Gillian Triggs, in the wake of a recent scandal involving Indigenous footballer Adam Goodes, and the widespread cultural, political, and educational repercussions that followed. In ‘The point of creativity: transformative moments of confrontation in performative pedagogies’ (Chapter 13), Mary-Rose McLaren and Scott Welsh employ the form of a play to structure their chapter, drawing on journals, reflections and performances of over six hundred students in a Diploma of Education Studies course, and on their own reflective notes. Building on a range of performance theories, the authors invite their students to devise an ethnographic performance that tells the story of their class. The power of affect, as a corporeal and emotional sensory experience, to shift the ways in which students view themselves, others and the world, is related by the authors. The collectively written ‘“They call teachers by their first names!” An ethnodrama of pre-service teachers visiting innovative schools’ (Chapter 14) represents

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the kind of multidisciplinary and multi-perspectival knowledge creation that both performance studies and affect theory invite us into. Here, Alys Mendus, Michael Kamen, Adaire Kamen, Sarah Buchanan, Abigail Earle, Abigail Luna and Kelli McLaughlin share a tour around several New York City ‘innovative’ schools. The authors frame an ethnodrama collaboratively created by several pre-service teachers at Southwestern University (Texas), a New York playwright, and two academics, through Brian Massumi’s articulation of affect as a two-way relationship, in which one simultaneously has an ability to begin ‘opening yourself up to be affected in turn’ (Massumi, 2015, p. 4). This chapter argues that the co-creative work of visiting the schools, working together, writing and performing an ethnodrama, those involved are ‘becoming teachers’ in a different capacity. Finally, in ‘The dramaturgy of spaces in the post laboratory’ (Chapter 16), Tatiana Chemi looks at the pedagogical practice of theatremaker Eugenio Barba’s long-term theatre laboratory Odin Teatret, which offers opportunities to redefine artistic practices as complex epistemological undertakings and to rethink pedagogical ‘studio’ practices in embodied, affective, and collective sensory ways. Taken together, these sixteen chapters represent diverse perspectives and understandings from seven different countries, and from a wide range of disciplinary enmeshments. By bringing together bodies of knowledge in affect theory and performance and theatre studies, we hope you find new ways of thinking with both practices and doing with these theoretics that urge you on toward deeper, and more sustained, engagements in global research work, which our precarious and performative time so desperately needs.

References Ackroyd, J. (2000). Applied theatre: Problems and possibilities. Applied Theatre Journal, 1. Retrieved from www.intellectbooks.com/applied-theatre-research-back-issues. Brisini, T. & Simmons, J. (2016). Posthuman relations in performance studies. Text and Performance Quarterly 36 (4), 191–199. Barad, K. (2007). Meeting the universe halfway: Quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Coleman, R. (2017). A sensory sociology of the future: Affect, hope and inventive methodologies. The Sociological Review, 65(3), 525–543. doi:10.1111/1467-954X.12445. Diamond, E., Varney, D. & Amich, C. (eds). (2017). Performance, feminism and affect in neoliberal times. New York: Springer. Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. (1987). A thousand plateaus. New York: Continuum. Jackson, A.Y. & Mazzei, L.A. (2011). Thinking with theory in qualitative research: Viewing data across multiple perspectives. New York: Routledge. Kahl, A. (2019). Analyzing affective societies: Methods and methodologies. London: Routledge. Knudsen, B.T. & Stage, C. (eds) (2015). Affective methodologies: Developing cultural research strategies for the study of affect. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Manning, E. (2016). The minor gesture. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Myers, N. (2015). Rendering life molecular: Models, modelers, and excitable matter. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Massumi, B. (2015). Politics of affect. Malden, MA: Polity.

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McCammon, L.A. (2007). Research on drama and theater for social change. In L. Bresler (ed.), International handbook of research in arts education (pp. 945–964). Dordrecht: Springer. Spinoza, B. (2001). Ethics (trans. W.H. White). London: Wordsworth. Tompkins, S. (1962). Affect imagery consciousness, volume 1: Positive effects. New York: Springer. Vannini, P. (ed.) (2015). Non-representational methodologies: Re-envisioning research. New York: Routledge. Wyatt, J. (2019). Therapy, stand-up, and the gesture of writing. New York: Routledge.

PART I

Affective movements

1 AFFECTIVE LEANINGS IN PERFORMANCE Stacy Holman Jones and Anne Harris

Introduction: leaning in Most performers know all too well the experience of standing backstage waiting to go on, and feeling the cold, clammy, where-can-I-run escape fantasy of ‘I can’t do this, get me out of here’. The flashing certainty that I might need to use the toilet, that my breath will come too short and shallow to project any words much less emotions, or the certainty that no one who may be in the audience out there will connect with what I have to offer. That physical contraction of knowing that the harder I fight against the nerves, the more insistent they become; what is sometimes called ‘stage fright’, when described in the language of emotions. But this apprehension, like all affective experience, is grounded in the body. In his ‘Confessions of an Apprehensive Performer’, Ron Pelias (1997) writes of his body: First, it had the shakes—the hands fluttering, the kneeing knocking, the voice quivering. How can my body act without my intent? …Then, it was the pounding—the heart racing rhythm to the rapid speech and the breath disappearing in mid-phrase. Now, it goes deaf; it goes blind. (p. 32). In proximity to an ‘audience’, these embodied experiences can be shared by those of us willing to ‘lean in’ to the precarity and thrill of performance. Leaning in to fear, to improvisation, to the pulsing preacceleration1 (Manning, 2009, p. 13) of the body doing its thing in relation to other bodies. Binaries fall away: no longer are ‘they’ out there while ‘I’ am inside the blinding light, no longer are they are relaxed while I am tense, no longer are they watching my internal struggle from the outside. What we think of ‘as performance’ is the field of experience and affect passing between and among us, together. The distance between bodies, smells, temperatures, words, movements of the performance, is coloured and set in motion in space. Space, that defining and core component of performance, can

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be measured in distance, but also in the changing affect between bodies-in-performance: forces vibrating, emerging ‘from surfaces, recombining with lines, folding, bridging, knotting’ (Manning, 2009, p. 13). Performance is a coming together that celebrates the ability of bodies to move and be moved through practice and in proximity (Harris & Holman Jones 2018). When we lean on one another, as Manning might put it, performance is an affective negotiation of bodies worlding. Pelias stays with us, using the apprehensive and pulse-racing experience of performance to consider how ‘bodies place themselves in relationship to other bodies’ (2016, p. 9). He writes, ‘When bodies tilt toward each other, they may begin to move in the same rhythm, with the same pulse. They may sense themselves in an empathic encounter, each understanding and feeling with the other’ (2016, p. 9). Through the practice of attunement—the embodied work of tuning in to one another through the occasion of performance—‘presence turns space into place’ and ‘calls for a negotiation of bodies’ (2016, pp. 44, 9). We wonder about the non-binary possibilities of leaning in rather than staying or going, about how bodies are both soothed and stressed by leanings and leanings-in. How might a leaning be/come both an event and also an affective inclination, a moment of connection in which bodies come into contact? To consider performance as affective inclination is to call attention to performance’s relational force, and to look to affect studies and posthumanism for a language of inclination-as-relation. For example, Rosi Braidotti (2019) asks us to reconsider notions of ‘a’ subject in/of performance as ‘an autonomous capacity’ defined not by ‘rationality, nor our cerebral faculties alone, but rather by the autonomy of affect as a virtual force that gets actualized through relational bonds’ (p. 38). Braidotti also urges a decoupling of affect from individualized emotions, as meaningful expression of psychological states and lived experiences. Affect needs to be de-psychologized, and to be de-linked from individualism in order to match the complexity of our human and nonhuman relational universe. This relational process supports a thick and dynamic web of interconnections by removing the obstacles of individualism. (Braidotti, 2019, p. 38) Similarly, Manning’s writing on movement, in its changing force and direction and becoming elastic in relation to an other body, whether linked by touch or at a distance, turns our attention to performance as ‘relational shape-shifting’ (Manning, 2009, p. 13). Approaching performance as inclination allows us to consider performance as a more-than-human set of relations and the value of performance to creating sustainable ecologies. If performance is a form of sociality in which ‘some performing bodies appear to be saturated with the terror of precarious life’ (Diamond et al., 2017, p. 2), affective leanings in performance are a ready lens through which the effects of sexism and misogyny, human exceptionalism, and cultures of terror can be not

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only seen, but felt and understood in both empathic and embodied ways (Harris & Holman Jones, 2019a, 2019b). In this chapter, we ask how, taken together, performance and affect studies gives posthuman ethics breath and flesh by expanding understandings of matter, discourse and enactment as they move in relational embodiment.2 This chapter also seeks to extend affect scholarship and its ability to reconceptualise the political promise of the collective and spatial relations through the lens of performance.

Affective moves: touching feeling in performance terms Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s Touching Feeling (2003) is foundational to our understanding of affect and/as performance. Her work demonstrates how transdisciplinary ‘making work’ can alter onto-epistemological formations of meaning, linking thinking-as-doing-theory with making-as-thinking work. For example, in her exploration of shame as affect, Sedgwick draws on the nine ‘categorical’ or independent affects in Sylvan Tompkins’s formulation, concluding the list of affects with: Shame, it might finally be said, transformational shame, is performance. I mean theatrical performance. Performance interlines shame as more than just its result or a way of warding it off, though importantly it is those things. Shame is the affect that mantles the threshold between introversion and extroversion, between absorption and theatricality, between performativity and— performativity. (Sedgwick, 2003, p. 38) Following Tompkins’s argument that ‘shame is the exemplary affect for theory’ (Sedgwick, 2003, p. 115) due to how it ‘floods’ our senses—pinking our cheeks and bowing our heads in the highly social dance of seeking and being denied recognition and affirmation—Sedgwick explores the conjoined and corporeal relationship of affect, individuality and sociality. She writes, ‘That’s the double movement shame makes: toward painful individuation, toward uncontrollable relationality’ (p. 37). This double movement extends affects and their so-called opposites: ‘Without positive affect, there can be no shame … only something you thought might delight or satisfy can disgust’, in which ‘both these affects produce bodily knowledge’ (p. 116). Bodily knowledge is at the core of performance and, even now, informs the rituals of performance in the digital age. That is, digital cultures and practices have not removed the need for performance but rather show us new ways in which relationally affect is not only possible but essential. Using Sedgwick’s formulation of shame as an occasion for understanding the vibration between (self) absorption and theatricality, we consider how affects which might be experienced between performers and audiences help map the space between bodies, but also the limits of performance of the outside/inside as relational and embodied event.

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Sedgwick pursues non-dualistic thought in her exploration of emotion through theories of affect in a project she terms touching feeling. Ann Cvetkovich (2012) pursues a similar non-binary mode of theorising in her ‘public feelings project’3 on depression. Cvetkovich notes the oft-cited separation between affect as a pre-personal/social force or intensity and emotion as a social understanding or categorisation of how affects assemble and move in/through relationality.4 This tradition follows the work of Gilles Deleuze and others’ critical efforts to expand the vocabulary we have for accounting for emotional and sensory experience embodiment, particularly in psychology and cultural studies. Such projects distinguish ‘between affect and emotion, where the former signals precognitive sensory experience and relations to surroundings, and the latter cultural constructs and conscious processes that emerge from them, such as anger, fear, or joy’ (Cvetkovich, 2012, p. 4). Cvetkovich’s own work seeks to offer us a ‘generic’ term and site of inquiry5 that not only encompasses affect, emotions and feeling, but also includes impulses, desires, and feelings that get historically constructed in a range of ways (whether as distinct specific emotions or as a generic category often contrasted with reason)—but with a way recognition that this is like trying to talk about sex before sexuality. (Cvetkovich, 2012, p. 4) Like Sedgwick, Cvetkovich takes feeling as the central focus of her work, and explains that her affection for it comes from its ability to acknowledge ‘the somatic or sensory nature of feelings as experiences that aren’t just cognitive concepts or constructions’ (p. 4). She favours feeling ‘because it is intentionally imprecise, retaining the ambiguity between feelings as embodied sensations and feelings as psychic or cognitive experiences’ (p. 4). Cvetkovich’s affect allows an integration of body and mind (as does much work in performance studies, including that of Dwight Conquergood, 2002 and José Esteban Muñoz, 2009). Both Sedgwick and Cvetkovich’s projects draw our attention as well as the inseparability and radical relationality of physical, emotional, psychological and experience. In these considerations of affect, feeling is inextricably tied up with touching, for as Sedgwick notes, the sense of touch ‘makes nonsense out of any dualistic understanding of agency and passivity’ (Sedgwick, 2003, p. 14). We would extend this to performance, in particular the ways performance demands that we lean on and toward one another, making nonsense out of any dualistic understanding of body and emotion, or of audience and performer. Take Sedgwick’s inspiration for writing Touching Feeling: photographer Leon A. Borensztein’s photographs of textile artist Judith Scott and her work. In Sedgwick’s description, Scott leans in and on her large, body-shaped sculptures constructed out of yarn, consumed a moment of ‘haptic absorption’ (Sedgwick, 2003, p. 23). The affect that saturates the touch inspired by leaning in/on becomes multiple and diffuse—a collection of feelings and relations caught up in a ‘transaction of texture’ (p. 22). And while the

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subject of the photo might be Scott’s relation ‘to her completed work’, the ‘intense presence’ of the photo also includes the viewer’s/audience relation to the many possible feelings embodied in an experience of that touching embrace (p. 22). Similarly, Cvetkovich (2012) explores her interest in the non-dualistic work affect theory allows us to do in the context of live performance and in particular works in which ‘ordinary activities take on aesthetic significance through repetition and intentional framing’ (p. 112). The entanglement of the everyday and live performance is a feature of much of the live art made by women beginning in the 1970s and carrying through to today. For (one among many) example, dancer Trisha Brown, whose dance work is remarkable for how it calls attention to beauty and flow of natural, everyday movements. Her Set and Reset (1983), a collaboration with visual artist Robert Rauschenberg and musician Laurie Anderson, uses repetition to investigate the affect of improvisational movement. The piece was ‘made through improvisations that were then remembered, repeated, recorded, perfected, elaborated upon. She wanted to make movement whose impulses remained ‘live in the moment’, bridging, rather than holding separate, movement and structure (Rosenberg, 2016). Brown’s non-dualistic approach created works that affectively collapse the distinction between body and emotion, touch and feeling, audience and performer. The intensity and texture of Set and Reset is described with strikingly affective terms by New York Times dance critic Alastair Macaulay (2013), who writes, ‘This is a dance whose currents you feel kinaesthetically as you watch; you feel it on your very skin, like running water.’ Brown’s compositions also expand ideas about what constitutes performance space, both by framing nontraditional and unused spaces (rooftops, streets, and domestic spaces) as theatres and by using more than the horizontal plane of the stage (staging works on the sides of buildings and up the walls of galleries). Her Walking on the Wall (1971/2010), in which dancers climbed ladders placed at opposite ends of a gallery, slipped into rope harnesses, and then walked, skipped, and ran along the gallery walls, pushed—and breached—the limits of architectural and stage space (Levin, 1997). This work transformed not only the dancer’s but also the viewer’s understanding of movement, space and performer-audience relations. It required all involved to literally lean into new ways of dancing (including asking audience to move through the space to accommodate and make way for the dancer’s movements) and to share in the everyday ritual of the work (Goldberg, 2015). This focus on the repetition of daily activities in ways that take on the force and reverence of ritual and the affective connections these performances have to touch and feeling is tied to the work of another non-dualistic affect scholar, Kathleen Stewart. Writing on ‘ordinary affects’ and how a politics might be sparked by an everyday encounter, Stewart (2007) suggests the language of performance is ‘the ordinary affect in the textured, roughened surface of the everyday. It permeates politics of all kinds with the demand that some kind of intimate public of onlookers recognize something in a space of shared impact’ (p. 39).

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She goes on to say that ‘People might be touched by it, or hardened to its obnoxious demands … However it strikes us, its significance jumps’ (Stewart, 2007, p. 39). While Stewart is not writing about theatrical performance, the demand that an intimate public of onlookers instantiates an audience who come together in a ‘space of shared impact’ suggests that the political potential of affect lies in its affective and performative possibilities. We take up these political possibilities through a consideration of Sarah Ahmed’s concept of sticky affects.

Sticky affects and performance Elin Diamond (2017) argues that affect theories focus our attention on ‘skinlevel intensities’ that pass ‘between and among bodies, human or [more than] human’ (p. 259). Her words conjure Sara Ahmed’s ‘sticky affects’, or what sticks and sustains connections ‘between ideas, values, and objects’ (Ahmed, 2004/ 2012, p. 29). Sticky affects don’t reside ‘in’ us but rather circulate as a ‘form of relationality, or a ‘with-ness’, in which the elements that are ‘with’ get bound together’ (p. 91). Diamond uses the idea of stickiness to focus attention on how ‘affect-rich performance creates sites and events where theory—and stickiness— can happen’ (Diamond, 2017, p. 259). If we think of affect-rich performance as a ‘chain of effects (which are at once affects) … in circulation’, our focus on leaning shows how we both lean into and away from ‘with-ness’ and how, through these leanings, performance creates a ‘transference of affect’ (Ahmed, 2004/2012, p. 91). Ahmed writes into the connections of political and everyday performance affects as she considers feminist anger. As a performative ‘against-ness’, the challenge for feminists is achieving ‘up take’ of our anger a legitimate emotion, rather than having it blocked or dismissed by an addressee. An excellent example of feminist anger as ‘against-ness’ that places accepting relationality (in the form of ‘uptake’) at the centre of performance is Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s 2012 Misogyny Speech. In the speech, Gillard addresses the sexist and misogynist remarks made against her directly to Tony Abbott, leader of the opposition party6. She says, in part: ‘I will not be lectured about sexism and misogyny by this man. And the government will not be lectured about sexism and misogyny by this man. Not now, not ever.’ She goes on to detail the sexist and misogynist statements Abbott made about and toward her—and by extension, the women of Australia—denouncing the ‘double standard’ his criticism and similar statements made by a member of his own party represents. Her performance illustrates the challenge of feminism and feminist anger-against articulated by Ahmed: The challenge for feminism is to accept that the conditions in which we speak are not of our making. Such a recognition would not signal the futility of naming our anger—but it would mean recognizing that the reception of that act might sustain the conditions that compelled the act in the first place. (Ahmed, 2004/2012, p. 177)

Affective leanings in performance 17

Gillard’s speech, as Denise Varney (2017) writes, demonstrates the circulation of affect and how standing-against can effectively ‘recirculate’ the ‘the hateful affects directed at Gillard into a resistant and transgressive act’ (p. 25). Varney’s analysis draws on Diamond’s definition of cultural performance as ‘embodied acts, in specific sites, witnessed by others (and/or the watching self)’ (Diamond, 1996/ 2015, p. 1). Varney reminds us that Among the many performative and affective excitements of the speech and its circulation are the revitalization of the political as cultural performance and the potential of the cultural to be made political in a lived mediated theatre. (Varney, 2017, p. 35) This kind of ‘lived mediated theatre’ is a performance of the everyday that bubbles up into affective events, or leanings. It is at once a workday encounter, a public address, a theatrical soliloquy, and an affective spark that passes between bodies not only in the Parliamentary chamber, but beyond. Gillard’s repetition of ‘I will not be lectured about sexism and misogyny… Not now, not ever’ is an example of how performativity comes to rest on a performance7 (Diamond, 1996/2015, p. 5): its ‘performative iterability is linked to repetition, to the very fact that signs must be repeatable, and with them, forms of conventions’ (Ahmed, 2004/2012, p. 93). The workings of performativity are grounded in the repetition and recirculation of signs-as-acts in ways that consolidate an orientation or position (a with-ness or against-ness) whilst repeating past associations (p. 195). Ahmed notes that signs, objects and speech become ‘sticky’ within a ‘history of articulation’ in which repetition accumulates ‘affective value’ in their association with other signs and bodies. She also extends the performativity of emotions as ‘signs’ not only grounded in repetition of past associations, but also that circulate as sticky relations which ‘operate precisely where we don’t register their effects’ (Ahmed, 2004/2012, p. 195). The ‘stickiness’ of Gillard’s Misogyny Speech is perhaps most evident in the verbatim choral composition Not Now, Not Ever 8 created by composer Rob Davidson and performed by the Australian Voices choir, directed by Gordon Hamilton. After hearing Gillard’s speech, Davidson says he was moved to create the composition because it struck me that behind the politics there was a lot of personal feeling being communicated. I wanted to put a frame around this slice of time, to heighten my perception of what was being said behind the words, in the intonation of the voice, and in the dynamics of what was being said in interjections and reactions. (Australian Voices, 2014) Stickiness depends, then, on relationality, or the ‘shared witnessing’ of the feelings implicit in the performative, which show us how ‘language works as a form of

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power in which emotions align some bodies with others, as well as stick different figures together, by the way they move us’ (Ahmed, 2004/2012, p. 195). The Australian Voices performance of Not Now, Not Ever, in which Gillard’s words travel through the voices and bodies of so many other Australians—men and women, young and old, white people and people of colour—demonstrates how anger that was once directed against Tony Abbott and his speech circulates and moves into a ‘bigger critique of ‘what is’’ and in doing so, ‘opens itself up to possibilities that cannot be simply located or found in the present’ (Ahmed, 2004/2012, p. 176). Losing the ‘object’ of Gillard’s anger opens up the affective capacity of a performance ‘to move, or to become a movement’ (p. 176). Thus, the capacity to move and become a movement resides in the unforeclosed nature of live performance, which creates an occasion and space for literally, temporally and spatially leaning in, and as such is a political and relational act. Both Gillard’s and Australian Voices’ performances create an ‘affect of space’ in which the dualisms of the personal and the political and everyday life and theatre are blurred. As with Braidotti, performance studies scholar D. Soyini Madison (2010) shows how affect moves beyond individualism and into ‘the sense of being transported to a place where you begin to feel the pain of a location—an affect of space’ (p. 126). Performance—as explored and developed through the emplaced, ethnographic encounters at the heart of Madison’s work—is ‘always grounded in a specific “location” and what goes on inside that location, the place of that location becomes a “practiced space”’ (p. 126). Through relational engagement—‘experiences, inventions, memories, and desires’—we make place into practised space, an affective, ‘living organism comprised of immeasurable meaning and emotions (Madison, 2010, p. 126). Madison attends to the political potential of losing the sticky ‘objects’ of our anger offered by leaning into affective understandings of live performance: where performers and audience members – in a shared temporality – encountered and engaged ‘the dynamic oscillation between corporeality and signification.’ It was the affect of sentiment, pleasure, displeasure, and emotion conjoined with corporeality and signification that created and enhanced the … presence that is always already ontologically linked to live performance. (Madison, 2010, p. 212) Though how does a global pandemic that has seen the shuttering of venues and the wholesale move of performance to digital spaces transform and transmute the affective possibilities of live performance?

Field attention and posthuman performance In Performing Proximity, Leslie Hill and Helen Paris ask, ‘How close can you get in performance?’ (Hill & Paris, 2014, p. 81). They query the notion of ‘public’ space

Affective leanings in performance 19

(‘often 20 feet away from each other’), blurring this with what is usually considered ‘Personal space…the space in everyday life where unwanted contact can feel inappropriate’ in the context of close-up, immersive theatre (p. 81). They note the unwanted ‘in-your-face’ closeness of the subway in rush hour or in a tightly packed lift … ‘improper’ closeness from which, in everyday life, we perform escape strategies. The interaction between performer and audience member … is different; there is an entreaty, a desire and an expectation. There is something at stake. The audience is asked to meet the gaze of the performer and to allow themselves to be touched, asked to participate. (Hill & Paris, 2014, p. 82) In the era of social distancing and pandemic performance, affect gives us a language to articulate the performative porosity that ‘exists between ourselves and the world that allows the movement of affect from an environment, a thing or person, into another person’ (Bennett, 2019, p. 110). This porosity of movement from one environment, person and thing into another is playfully illustrated in famed stunt woman Zoe Bell’s Boss Bitch Fight Challenge video,9 which begins with Bell lamenting that due to COVID-19 isolation, she is ‘missing playing with her friends.’ From there, the video explodes into a 5-minute montage of well-known Hollywood women performers and stunt experts battling it out, virtually. The video is fun, full of pop culture film and performance references, and selfconsciously ostentatious—so much so that we might dismiss it as patronising and full of its own privilege. However, to do so would be to miss the physical mastery and razor-sharp choreography required to kick and punch through the static and boredom of isolation. It is also a resounding celebration of affective intensity and vitality. The women in the video are, after Stewart, punched by a force and try to take it on, making themselves its object, and then passing it on.10 Not unlike the entreaty and expectation of live performance, the video creates what Donna Williams has described as resonance, writing, ‘when you resonate with an object or surface it is not so much that you have reached out for that object or surface but that it has, somehow, reached into you’, and you are obliged to respond (Williams, 1998, loc. 603). In both live and digital contexts then, affective performance invites us to consider what Manning calls ‘the dance of attention. Not human attention, but field attention’ (Manning, 2016, p. 42). Manning explains this as an ‘event’s attention to its own development’, or what is felt as ‘the lived intensity of the event’s capacity to create a field of experience’ (p. 42). Performance encompasses both an anticipatory gathering of potentialities—bodies leaning in, waiting to be actualised through an unfolding practice—and the traces and reverberations of actions that linger long after the performance is over. These leanings and lingerings—of tone, emotional residue and traces of movement—in turn provoke their own, ‘adjacent forms of experience’ (Manning, 2016, p. 74). It is possible, even necessary then,

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that through braided practices of speech and embodiment, one may enter into relational performative experiences in a multitude of ways simultaneously, none of which requires ‘fixing’. The liminality of live and digital performance create what Walter Benjamin has called the threshold, a kind of temporality that is liberated from the linear and the fixed. Maggie MacLure describes the threshold as a liminal event between ‘knowing and unknowing, that prevents wonder from being wholly contained or recuperated as knowledge’ (MacLure, 2013, p. 228); threshold as a verb, a doing, a temporality without linearity that moves us beyond representation (Harris 2014, p. 102). Wherever it occurs, performance is an affective field (of) attention; a practiced space, rather than simply or only bodies moving for/to/ around other bodies. Thinking performance as field attention also asks us to consider affect as that which brings together the social and the biological under the banner of posthuman performance: a dynamic encounter between bodies in/as an emplaced and always-material event (Thrift, 2008). The contribution performance scholars can make to the posthuman project of ‘unshackling our lived relationship with the rest of Being from dominating, unequal and abusive instrumentalizations rooted in the ‘logic’ of human exceptionalism’ are many, particularly in ‘tracking the various material affects of bodies’ and patterns of movement and force (Brisini & Simmons, 2016, p. 193). Such inquiry must be a ‘projective enterprise, rather than a descriptive one, if it is to enact the fullest manifestation of its disruption to the anthropocentric and abusive cultural practices—rooted in the legacy of humanist ideation—of contemporary Western capitalism’ (p. 192). For example, Craig Gingrich-Philbrook (2016) uses posthuman performance to examine the ways human beings both exercise and deny their relationships with animals, technologies and environments in his consideration of the execution of the healthy giraffe, Marius11 by the Copenhagen Zoo. Gingrich-Philbrook considers his/human ‘imbrication’ (as overlapping existence as well as the successful closing of a wound) with Marius/animal a performative process that provides protection and flexibility for ‘becomings as biological ‘ideas on the move’’. It is also an act of suturing flesh together, staggering its fine layers to stitch and heal what has otherwise been divided, perhaps in an act of violence, or at the very least, the ideological hubris that insists on injurious division between one kind of creature and all of the others. (Gingrich-Philbrook, 2016, p. 203) Posthuman approaches to the affective in performance such as Gingrich-Philbrook’s draw field attention to the ‘radical interconnection’ of our shared world not as an escape strategy, but instead as an encounter where something—indeed, everything—is at stake (Brisini & Simmons, 2016, p. 195).

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Conclusion: Meaning on the move Affective performance scholarship ‘keep[s] meaning on the move’ (Jackson & Mazzei, 2012, p. i). In this essay, we’ve explored affective performance as the ability of bodies to move and be moved through practice and in proximity. We’ve aimed to show how affect studies and posthumanism moves performance scholarship beyond individual-collective, body-mind, and agency-passivity dualisms and leaning into a more world-focused consideration of affective performance and performative affect. As a socially engaged and embodied set of practices that aims to use performance to improve lives and create better worlds (Nicholson, 2014), affective leanings must be grounded in the understanding that ‘affects have specific effects [because] it makes no sense to talk about them outside this understanding’ (Probyn, 2010, p. 72). We must also recognise that ‘Leaning with others, then, becomes a personal comfort and a political force…we need to stand with others in kinship for our own and others’ benefit’ (Pelias, 2016). When we do, the effects of our affective leanings in performance advance non-dualistic understandings of agency, feeling, and relationality for the wellbeing of the planet and all who reside here.

Notes 1 In Relationscapes, Erin Manning (2009) develops the concept of preacceleration in relation to movement (including, but not restricted to, dance). She writes, ‘To move is to engage the potential inherent in the preacceleration that embodies you. Preaccelerated because there can be no beginning or end to movement. Movement is one with the world, not body/world, but body-worlding. We move not to populate space, not to extend or embody it, but to create it … Preacceleration: a movement of the not-yet that composes the more-than-one that is my body. Call it incipient action’ (p. 13). 2 Karen Barad’s (2016) articulation of agential realism in particular, and a substantial body of research on the so-called ‘affective turn’ (including Blackman & Venn, 2010; Clough, 2007; Gregg & Seigworth, 2010; Thrift, 2008 and Wetherell 2012) addresses the inter-relatedness matter, discourse and performance. Britta Timm Knudsen (2020) writes that much affect scholarship orients itself around a ‘non-representational, prelinguistic point of departure … [wherein] affects [are] precognitive and prelinguistic intensities hitting the body beyond or alongside discursive patterns’. Knudsen also sees the scholarship of Julia Kristeva as foundational to the current ‘turn’, in which affect performs a kind of ‘rediscovery of the extralinguistic body as a critical corrective to the predominant linguistic turn in the humanities and social sciences throughout the 20th century’, with multiple peaks including during the 1920s and 30s, the 1960s, and the 1980s (Knudsen, 2020). Knudsen’s useful survey includes social constructivists who explicitly critique the precognitive ‘camp’ or approach (including Blackman, 2012; Leys, 2011 and Wetherell, 2012) ‘as well as predominantly feminist discourse-oriented scholars’ (such as Ahmed, 2004/2012; Berlant, 2011; Butler, 2009; Gregg, 2011; Gregg & Seigworth, 2010), ‘who look at strategic uses of affect to keep someone or something out of or in place within a given political logic or system’ (Knudsen, 2020). 3 This and other ‘public feelings projects’ have been developed out of collaborative writing groups and conferences in the US (Austin, Chicago, New York) and Canada (Toronto) and their ‘salon-like gatherings in which thinking can be speculative and feelings both good and bad are welcome’ (Cvetkovich, 2012, p. ix). 4 Theories of affect that call our attention to pre-personal, pre-verbal experiences of force, intensity, or the capacity to move and be moved draw on Gilles Deleuze and

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5 6 7

8 9 10 11

Guittari’s (1980/1987) distinction between affects and emotions. This distinction is reflected in affect studies scholarship that extends from Deleuze (in particular) to other thinkers. For example, Brian Massumi (2002) writes that emotion is the ‘capture of intensity, whereas affect always escapes’ (pp. 35–36). Laura Cull (2012) notes Deleuze’s distinction between ‘emotion, an owned, fixed experience belonging to an individual subject’, and affect, ‘a particular kind of “encounter” between bodies’ (p. 192). Sarah Ahmed (2004/2012) distinguishes affect from emotion by highlighting how ‘Emotions in their very intensity involve miscommunication, such that even when we feel we have the same feeling, we don’t necessarily have the same relationship to the feeling’ (p. 10). For Marla Carlson (2017), ‘affect is an ‘energetic dimension’; emotion a ‘selective activation or expression of affect from a ‘virtual co-presence’ of potentials on the basis of memory’ (p. 139). Carlson also considers a potential shift from affect to emotion as characteristic of theatre versus performance (p. 141), though as we suggest in this chapter, aligning our work with non-dualist constructions of affect and performance allows us to focus on the relational and inseparability of body, mind and feeling. More in keeping with Barauch Spinoza’s drawing together of affect, feeling and emotion. Julia Gillard’s 2012 ‘Misogyny Speech’ was voted the ‘most unforgettable moment in Australian television history’ by Guardian newspaper readers in 2020. The speech can be viewed in its entirety at: www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCNuPcf8L00 Diamond’s clear and helpful writing on the links between performance and performativity comes together in this oft-cited line: ‘The point is, as soon as performativity comes to rest on a performance, questions of embodiment, of social relations, of ideological interpretations, of emotional and political effects, all become discussable’ (Diamond, 1996/2015, p. 5). A video documenting the performance can be viewed at: www.google.com/search?client= safari&rls=en&q=australian+voices+not+now+not+ever&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8 As discussed by Janssen (2020), the Boss Bitch Fight Challenge video can be viewed at: www.flicks.com.au/news/stuntwoman-zoe-bell-kicks-quarantines-arse-in-star-studdedboss-bitch-fight-challenge/ This line is adapted from Stewart (2007), who writes of a ‘subject who is literally touched by a force and tries to take it on, to let it puncture and possess one to make oneself its object, if only in passing’ (p. 116). Marius, a healthy young giraffe, was executed because his ‘genes were well represented among the captive giraffe population in European Zoos’ (Schwartz, qtd. in GingrichPhilbrook, 2016, p. 200).

References Ahmed, S. (2004/2012). The cultural politics of emotion. New York: Routledge. Australian Voices. (2014). Not now, not ever. Retrieved from www.google.com/search?client= safari&rls=en&q=australian+voices+not+now+not+ever&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8. Barad, K. (2016). Queer causation and the ethics of mattering. In M.J. Hird & N. Giffney (eds), Queering the non/human. New York: Routledge, 311–338. Bennett, S. (2019). ‘Affecting objects: The minor gesture within a performative, artistic research enquiry’ in (Eds.) Boyd, Candice P. and Christian Edwardes, Non-representaitonal theory and the creative arts. London: Palgrave, 103–116. Berlant, L. (2011). Cruel optimism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Blackman, L. (2012). Immaterial bodies: Affect, embodiment, mediation. Walnut Creek, CA: Sage. Blackman, L. & Venn, C. (2010). Affect. Body & Society, 16 (1), 1–6. Braidotti, R. (2019). Posthuman knowledge. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Brisini, T. & Simmons, J. (2016). Posthuman relations in performance studies. Text and Performance Quarterly 36 (4), 191–199.

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Butler, J. (2009). Frames of war: When is life grievable?London: Verso. Carlson, M. (2017). Mapping Abramovic, from affect to emotion. In E. Diamond, D. Varney & C. Amich (eds), Performance, feminism and affect in neoliberal times. London: Springer, 133–146. Clough, P.T. (2007). The affective turn: Theorizing the social. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Conquergood, D. (2002). Performance studies: Interventions and radical research. TDR: The Drama Review 46 (2), 145–156. Cull, L. (2012). Affect in Deleuze, Hijikata, and Coates: Becoming animal in performance. Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism 26 (2), 189–203. Cvetkovich, A. (2012). Depression: A public feeling. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Deleuze, G. & Guittari, F. (1980/1987). A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia. B. Massumi, trans & foreword. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Diamond, E. (2017). Feminism, assemblage, and performance: Kara Walker in neoliberal times. In E. Diamond, D. Varney & C. Amich (eds), Performance, feminism and affect in neoliberal times, 255–268. Diamond, E. (ed.). (1996/2015). Introduction. In Performance and cultural politics. New York: Routledge, 1–12. Diamond, E., Varney, D. & Amich, C. (eds) (2017). Introduction. In Performance, feminism and affect in neoliberal times. London: Springer, 1–12. Gillard, J. (2012). Misogyny speech. Retrieved from www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0LFKwfvvNY. Gingrich-Philbrook, C. (2016). On the execution of the young giraffe, Marius, by the Copenhagen Zoo: Conquergood’s ‘Lethal Theatre’ and posthumanism. Text and Performance Quarterly 34 (4), 200–211. Gregg, M. (2011). Work’s intimacy. Cambridge: Polity. Gregg, N. & Seigworth, G.J. (eds) (2010). An inventory of shimmers. In G. Gregg & M. Siegworth (eds), The affect theory reader. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1–28. Harris, A. (2014). Virtual embodiment as/and the threshold of love. Departures in Critical Qualitative Research 3 (2), 97–109. Harris, A. & Holman Jones, S. (2019a). Activist affect. Qualitative Inquiry. https://doi.org/ 10.1177/1077800418800753. Harris, A. & Holman Jones, S. (2019b). The queer life of things: Performance, affect and the more than human. Lanham, MD: Lexington. Harris, A. and Holman Jones, S. (2018). Creativity, intimate publics and the proxemics of pop up poetry performance. In S. Burgoyne (ed.) Creativity in Theatre: Theory and action in theatre/drama education. London: Springer. 89–104. Hill, L. & Paris, H. (2014). Performing proximity: Curious intimacies. New York: Palgrave. Goldberg, M. (2015). Trisha Brown by Marianne Goldberg. Retrieved from http://trisha brown.brynmawr.edu/2015/10/23/trisha-brown-by-marianne-goldberg. Jackson, A. & Mazzei, L. (2012). Thinking with theory in qualitative research: Viewing data across multiple perspectives. New York: Routledge. Janssen, E. (2020). Stuntwoman Zoe Bell kicks quarantine’s arse in star-studded ‘Boss Bitch Fight Challenge’. Retrieved from www.flicks.com.au/news/stuntwoman-zoe-bell-kicksquarantines-arse-in-star-studded-boss-bitch-fight-challenge/. Knudsen, B.T. (2020). Rhythms, gestures and tones in public performances: Political mobilization and affective communication. In A. Fleig, & C. von Scheve (eds), Public spheres of resonance: Constellations of affect and language. New York: Routledge. Retrieved from https://books.google.com.au/books?redir_esc=y&id=jvqzDwAAQBAJ&q=point+of+ departure#v=onepage&q=knudsen&f=false. Levin, J. (1997). Pursuing the unimaginable. The Los Angeles Times, 27 April. Retrieved from www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-04-27-ca-52813-story.html.

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Leys, R. (2011). The turn to affect: A critique. Critical Inquiry 37 (3), 434–472. Madison, D. S. (2010). Acts of activism: Human rights as radical performance. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Macaulay, A. (2013). Pure dance, pure finale. The New York Times, 25 January. Retrieved from www.nytimes.com/2013/01/27/arts/dance/trisha-browns-long-career-and-last-da nces.html. MacLure, M. (2013). The wonder of data. Cultural Studies Critical Methodologies 13 (4), 228–232. Manning, E. (2016). The minor gesture. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Manning, E. (2009). Relationscapes: Movement, art, philosophy. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Massumi, B. (2002). Parables for the virtual: Movement, affect, sensation. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Muñoz. J.E. (2009). Cruising utopia: The then and there of queer futurity. New York: New York University Press. Nicholson, H. (2014). Applied drama: The gift of theatre, 2nd ed. London: Macmillan International Higher Education/Red Globe Press. Pelias, R.J. (2016). Leaning: A poetics of personal relations. New York: Routledge. Pelias, R.J. (1997). Confessions of an apprehensive performer. Text and Performance Quarterly 17 (1), 25–32. Probyn, E. (2010). Writing shame. In G. Gregg & M. Siegworth (eds), The affect theory reader. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 79–90. Rosenberg, S. (2016). Set and Reset: Trisha Brown’s postmodern masterpiece. Retrieved from www.youtube.com/watch?v=4juID0hSyaw. Sedgwick, E.K. (2003). Touching feeling: Affect, pedagogy, performativity. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Stewart, K. (2007). Ordinary affects. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Thrift, N. (2008). Non-representational theory: Space, politics, affect. London: Routledge. Varney, D. (2017) ‘Not now, not ever’: Julia Gillard and the performative power of affect. In E. Diamond, D. Varney & C. Amich (eds), Performance, feminism and affect in neoliberal times. London: Springer, pp. 25–38. Wetherell, M. (2012). Affect and performance: A new social science understanding. Walnut Creek, CA: Sage. Williams, D. (1998). Autism and sensing: The unlost instinct. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers. Kindle version.

2 DROP IN THE OCEAN On walking with water as affective activism Jess Allen

A diminutive, dreadlocked, waterproofed woman walking along a rural footpath carrying two buckets of water with an antique yoke. Me. A stranger walking towards me from the opposite direction. You. We take each other in. Scanning and categorising: gender, age, appearance, intent and purpose, dangerous or safe? Then, as the distance between us narrows, I smile, we make eye contact and I ask: Would you like to make a wish? Before incredulity has time to form in the air between us, I go on quickly: All you have to do is take a stone from the water in this bucket (gestures left), and hold it in your hand for at least 30 seconds, while I invite you to think of a six things about water, before you make your wish and place your stone in this bucket (gestures right) … Drawn perhaps to the uncanny incongruity of this anachronistic tableau, this surreal offer, the mundane instructions, you find yourself accepting. Peering in to the water of the left bucket, you choose a rounded pebble with a thin band of quartz. As you return to standing I notice you shaking the drops of water off your wet hand. I continue: As you hold the stone in your wet hand, I’m going to invite you to bring into mind these six things … your first memory of water … your favourite memory of water …

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a negative or alarming memory of water, if you have one … your last encounter with water today (not including the bucket) … the last time you heard water mentioned on the news … and the last thing: your favourite sound of water and how it makes you feel … Between each of these thought-provocations is a pause, a breath. You might remain silent. Or you might nod, speak, or smile to signal that you’ve located each memory before I move on. I continue: And now, as you hold those thoughts together in your mind, as you hold the stone in your wet hand … as you let them percolate through, wash over you … I invite you to make your wish. And when you’re ready, I invite you to place your stone and your wish into the water of this bucket. You reach forward, place the stone in the right bucket; perhaps gently and consciously, or perfunctorily thrown in with a small splash. Thank you very much. You might offer a comment about the experience, share one of the memories you were thinking of, ask more about the work. We might have a long

FIGURE 2.1

Jess Allen, Drop in the Ocean, SPILL Festival 2018, Ipswich. Photograph by Guido Mencari.

Drop in the Ocean 27

conversation triggered by a reminiscence. Before we part, I offer you a handstamped card with an image and a web address on it. ‘But,’ I always add, ‘you might prefer to keep this as a mysterious encounter …’ We thank each other again and walk on.

Introduction Described in the opening provocation is an imagined version of a one-to-one encounter from the durational performance work Drop in the Ocean: a six-day walk in six widening, concentric circles around a focal point; the ripples around a drop ((((((.)))))). It has been performed four times between 2013 and 2019—in Hereford, Ipswich, Aberystwyth, and Abercych, UK—for over 300 participants. Drop is part of a small oeuvre of works1 that comprise the (mostly) rural, relational, eco-activist, pedestrian performance practice that I call tracktivism: walking (along tracks) with activist intent. Tracktivism uniquely combines long-distance walking art with one-to-one performance. It takes the carefully considered mise en scène and cultivated intimacy of the latter, and recreates it repeatedly, in series, with audience-participants randomly recruited along the route of a walk. As the solo artist-performer, I walk—often in costume and/or carrying something unusual—along a carefully determined route until I meet someone whose curiosity is sufficiently piqued to engage with me. I then offer them a brief, guided (often sensory) experience, typically based on a familiar cultural ritual. The moment of (typically) one-to-one encounter—or what I call the intervention—of earlier tracktivist works took the form of conversation on an ecological theme—climate change, renewable energy, food miles—akin to the mode of Wallace Heim’s ‘slow activism’ (Heim, 2003). This is a form of dialogic practice art (Kester, 2004) in which a slowly unfolding conversation between participant and activist performer, loosely guided by the latter, becomes an ‘indirectly persuasive medium’ that seeks to bring about a particular ecological realisation in the former (Heim, 2003, p. 183). But Drop marked a significant turn in my making methodology towards a more mysterious, sensory encounter; one apparently without activist purpose at all. The Drop wishing intervention is simply an invitation to attend. It asks the participant to pause and call forth memories relating to their personal engagement with water. Each of these provocations has been carefully drawn from my own experiential learning about and appreciation of water, reframed as questions for others. The brief immersion of the hand is intended to offer a sensory engagement with its materiality, and the wet stone held in the palm as a means, momentarily, to ‘grasp’ it. The thought provocations invite a focus inwards to retrieve memories and sensations, but also outwards through listening and thinking to other places and times. In retrieving such memories, there is a sense of thinking-feeling backwards, while at the same time, the gesture of wishing invites participants to reach their focus forwards. Thus for those participants who are fully engaged by its (poetic) possibilities, the Drop intervention may both open and

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contain multiple, shifting perceptions of scale, self, sense, place and time. Significantly, the encounter happens unexpectedly, outdoors, amidst everyday routine and at random along the route of my long walk. This gives rise not only to a broad demographic cross-section of participants, but also to a sense in some respondents of our meeting being all the more meaningful or enchanting for so nearly not happening at all. In the writing that follows, I give an account of my journey as practitionerperformer—and artist-activist—through the devising and realisation of this work, with a specific focus on this moment of one-to-one encounter. I identify the key critical frames through which the work might be theorised and understood as eco-activist performance, with a focus on Jane Bennett’s enchanted materialism in which she makes a beguiling argument for the eco-ethical potential of the ‘affective force’ that arises from enchanting encounters and which may be ‘deployed to propel ethical generosity’ towards the more-thanhuman world (Bennett, 2001, p. 3). In this way, I arrive at my own formulation ‘affective activism’ to describe how I perceive the Drop intervention to operate; a one-to-one encounter between participant and eco-activist performer that eschews the directional transmission of knowledge about ecological problems in favour of an affective transaction that may (however indirectly) affirm a sense of ecological connection.

Drop in a bucket ‘I couldn’t get you to the ocean,’ she said. ‘But there was nothing stopping me bringing the ocean to you.’ (Gaiman 2013, p. 217) The title Drop in the Ocean has multiple resonances. It is a reference to the walks’ concentric circular aesthetic which are suggestive of the global repercussions that emanate from the thrown stone of our everyday local actions. It also references the idea that small and seemingly banal acts of care, like the offer of a wish to stranger, may have cumulative power to transform. But underlying all this is a contrapuntal pessimism; the undertow of my deeply uneasy relationship with (conventional) eco-activism. Not long before the devising of this work I experienced a crashing loss of faith in environmentalism which, almost in a single moment, revealed to me that the environmentalist rubric ‘save the planet’ was an astonishingly hubristic human delusion, which omits the qualifier ‘from ourselves, for ourselves’. I realised that my beloved environmentalism had become, as Paul Kingsnorth puts it with eloquent rage, ‘an entirely human-centred piece of politicking, disguised as concern for the planet’ (2017, p. 68). Navigating a disillusionment so like my own, Kingsnorth argues persuasively for some ways in which we lapsed environmentalists might reroute our activist urges into ‘the things that make sense to [us] right now’ that we can still do ‘with some joy and determination’ (p. 147).

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I grew up and live in rural mid-Wales. My sense of the world and my place within it, certainly my environmentalism, have been whetted and shaped by significant, sensory encounters with water. Swimming in rivers, walking behind waterfalls, running around reservoirs, daily paddling in the sea as a child, or enveloped by the iodine tang of a creeping sea fog: uncanny, enchanting or (trans)formative physical encounters with water have been amongst the purest sources of my own ‘joy and determination’ for as long as I can remember. So, when faced with devising a new eco-activist performance work about water at the height of this inconvenient loss of faith in environmentalism, I wondered if I could devise a kind of transitory, haptic, and perhaps enchanting ‘experience’ of water in (a) performance; something akin to some of my own formative experiences of water in ‘nature’.2 Of course, to navigate the logistics of my peripatetic practice as a walking artist, I would also need some portable way of facilitating it, in miniature, consensually and repeatedly on a long-distance walk. In the section epigraph from Gaiman’s 2013 magical realist novel The Ocean at the End of the Lane, his character Lettie Hempstock has persuaded a body of water with magical powers—‘the ocean’—into a bucket. She does this in order to carry it some distance and perform a spell that will release a boy held captive by a malevolent force. So it occurred to me that, by some similar magical-realist logic, I might carry water to participants—the ‘ocean to you’—with a yoke and buckets. This tableaux would form the portable mise en scene of the work; the container within which I could then offer a (literally) immersive encounter. The yoke itself was chosen to present a striking visual image—in contrast to the everyday clothes, waterproofs and walking boots I’d otherwise wear—intended to pique

FIGURE 2.2

Drop in the Ocean, Aberystwyth 2015. Photograph by Sara Penrhyn Jones.

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curiosity, signalling my presence as a performer and inviting my audience into encounter. (A significant component of tracktivism has always been the importance of participants choosing to approach me and not vice versa.) The walk as a mobile medium—the vehicle for facilitating encounters in all my work so far—is chosen to tread the contour lines of a randomised demographic of participants; bringing activist performance to an unlikely audience and offering an unexpected encounter amidst the routines of everyday life. And the wish was chosen as the basis for the sensory encounter because it is a recognisable, secular ritual that nonetheless has about it something of the magical; or at the very least, a gesture of hope. By the simple invented rule requiring the participant to fetch a stone from the water in order to make it, the wish would ‘non-coercively’ persuade them to have a momentary tactile engagement with water, but without labouring the point or becoming an off-putting demand. In this way it could remain largely subliminal background to the softly spoken offering that accompanies it. In combination then, I hoped these elements would give rise to an experiential totality that might perform some kind of affective eco-activist alchemy.

Emancipated environmentalism I must acknowledge briefly here my initial, intense discomfort—as a former placard-waving activist—that this ambiguous offering could ever be perceived as activism, or even that tricky hybrid activist art. But, as prominent critic of the latter Jacques Rancière usefully reminds us, while activist art may usefully ‘rework the frame of our perceptions’, there remains ‘no straightforward road from the fact of looking at a spectacle to the fact of understanding the state of the world; […] from intellectual awareness to political action’ (Rancière 2009, p. 75). As such, even in the most overt message-driven activism, there can be no guarantee that an unambiguous ‘message’ will be perceived by an audience, let alone acted upon. I have found partial resolution to this troubling conundrum in Rancière’s (related) thinking around ‘intellectual emancipation’ (Rancière, 1991, 2009) that underpins much of his philosophy. Whether applied to pedagogy or theatrical spectatorship, this notion rejects any kind of intellectual hierarchy such as that traditionally perceived to exist between teacher and ‘ignorant’ pupil, or artist and ‘uninformed’ audience. In his alternative schema, there is no direct transmission of knowledge or message, but rather the emancipating teacher/artist only strives carefully to create the conditions that leave the pupil/audience free to work it out for themselves. More recently, Dee Heddon and Sally Mackey have drawn from this to coin the formulation ‘emancipated environmentalism’: a provocation to activist performance-makers to work in new, more nuanced ways to address ecological crisis, which ‘demand the participation of the spectator’ whilst embracing the inevitable uncertainty of outcome (Heddon & Mackey, 2012, pp. 172–177). This pedagogical schema thus became the critical frame within which the Drop intervention could operate; I could more confidently follow my instincts, relinquishing

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a sustained rational-linguistic focus on facts or statistics, in favour of a brief sensory encounter that could create a transient affective ‘container’ for participants’ own ecological learning to take place.

Enchanted materialism In this move toward the sensorial and even mysterious, I had also been inspired not only by my own childhood experiences of ‘nature’ but also by my reading of the extensive literatue on enchantment. Over the last two decades, the term—and its companion ‘re-enchantment’—has appeared with increasing regularity in both critical and popular literature (e.g. see Elkins & Morgan, 2009; Landy & Saler, 2009; Macfarlane, 2015; Monbiot 2013, 2014) and often in the context of reawakening our engagement with, and ethical response to, the more-than-human world. For example, enchantment makes a brief appearance in the conclusion to Monbiot’s critique of the eco-activist tendency to focus on ecological crises and threats. He draws from recent studies in evolutionary psychology which posit that threats trigger an instinctive survival response that strongly ‘promotes extrinsic values (an attraction to power, prestige, image and status) while suppressing intrinsic values (intimacy, kindness, self-acceptance, independent thought and action)’ (Monbiot, 2014, n.p.). Thus, when faced with threat, we are encouraged to suppress concern for others and focus on our own interests, the opposite response to that required for altruistic action. The answer, he argues, lies not in ignoring the threats, but in a more concentrated focus on the affirmatory; ‘on the love and wonder and enchantment that nature inspires’. To me this suggests that it would behove eco-activist performance-makers not only to focus on ‘wonder at nature’ as thematic content for their work, but also to explore the ways in which they might consciously effect enchantment as a feeling state in their audience. Perhaps the most robust theorisation of enchantment and its eco-ethical potential is Jane Bennett’s ‘enchanted materialism’ (2001), the compelling precursor to her better known ‘vital materialism’ (2010). In The Enchantment of Modern Life (Bennett, 2001) she begins by offering a comprehensive catalogue of the various guises of enchantment as a ‘mood’, ‘condition’, ‘feeling’, ‘comportment’, but also an ‘affect’ or ‘force’ that, throughout, remains determinedly secular. These evocative descriptions coalesce to form a vibrant picture of enchantment as both a state of ‘wonder’ or ‘exhilaration’, but also a force capable of engendering it; something that might both reside in, excite, or exist between material bodies. To be enchanted, she proposes, is to be both ‘struck and shaken’ by the ‘extraordinary that lives amid the familiar and the everyday’ (pp. 4–5). Thus it must be provoked by a surprise; an encounter with the unexpected that gives rise to a pleasant feeling of having been charmed, but at the same time as one experiences the ‘slightly off-putting sense of having [also] been disrupted or tripped (up)’. Despite this apparent conflict, she considers that in enchantment these sensations are present in ‘just the right measure’ to ultimately bring about an ‘energising feeling of fullness or plenitude—a momentary return to childhood joie de vivre’ (p. 104).

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Beyond this useful phenomenology of enchantment, however, is her beguiling argument for its ethical relevance. Her principal thesis is that enchanting encounters with matter or complexity in which we may become momentarily aware of our own complex materiality, give rise to an awareness of shared materiality and complexity, that may be tempered with an uncanny sense that it possesses a vitality and agency of its own that is just beyond our ken. This may in turn give rise to a ‘hyperecological’ (p. 157) sense of our ‘implication’ in a suddenly decentred world, but also she argues, a greater sense of ‘attachment’, her term for a feeling of ‘being connected in an affirmatory way to existence’ (p. 156). She proposes that the former might encourage us to consider our receptivity and responsiveness to other material forms, while more radically, the latter propels us to act: to expend our own resources—our time and energy—in service of more-than-human others. That enchantment should necessarily guide us down this kind of behavioural cascade is, Bennett freely owns, a ‘tenuous and unstable’ proposition (Bennett, 2001, p. 157). But she defends her thesis as a deliberately speculative ‘weak ontology’, that is significant for its foregrounding of the (all too often neglected) ‘affective dimension’ of political and ethical theorising. For ‘ethical commitments must overcome somatic inertia if they are to become ethical acts, and that overcoming requires an organisation of affective intensities’ (p. 154). Enchantment, she believes, is one such intensity that can supply the ‘joy [to] propel ethics’ (p. 4). As such, her narrative is unapologetically—albeit, as she admits, ‘unfashionably’—affirmatory; intended as an antidote to the prevailing tendency towards cynicism in the humanities. While it is important to acknowledge that affects—and indeed ecology—can and should equally be discussed in terms of the negative or dark (Morton 2010), Bennett’s focus (and mine, here) is on particular, ‘positive’ affects and how such ‘affective catalysts’ may literally move us (in both senses) and enhance ‘human relational capacities’ for ecological good (Bennett, 2010, p. xii). Having here introduced Bennett’s theorisation of enchantment as an affective force with eco-ethical potential, I now come on to consider (i) the ways in which she proposes enchantment might be effected; (ii) how I have drawn from this in the construction of the Drop performance encounter; and (iii) how the latter was perceived in practice, drawing from selected participant reflections.

Enchanting encounters While Bennett is aware that enchantment is a ‘precarious concatenation’ (Bennett, 2001, p. 104), it remains her contention that moments of enchantment comprise an ‘uneasy combination of artifice and spontaneity’, and as such they may be ‘cultivated and intensified by artful means’ (p. 10). These may be summarised as: (i) the timing of the enchanting encounter—or the appearance in time or place of the unexpected—giving rise to a requisite element of surprise; (ii) the juxtaposition of the unfamiliar with the familiar, or a foregrounding of the former

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against the latter; (iii) the use of techniques for sensory stimulation including the potent sonority of the voice for ‘en-chanting’ through sound/listening; and (iv) the grounding of the encounter in the material world through the presence of or allusion to intriguing material things. In short, the enchanter must be able to construct situations in which the senses are enlivened, materiality is evoked, and the familiar is subtly shifted in some way. Each of these elements coalesce in the Drop wishing intervention: in the unexpectedness of the encounter and its offer; the uncanny tableau of the yoke and buckets and its juxtaposition with the quotidian; the tactile encounter; and the litany of provocations softly spoken by the performer. As such the potential for the intervention to function as both a source of and container for enchantment is clear. Indeed that this did occur for many participants is evidenced in many of the remarks they made.3 While some rich reflections about water that inevitably emerged postwish, it was more usual for participants to offer a meta-commentary about the experience that I had offered. In this sense, the affective experience was seemingly more potent or noteworthy than any thematic content (a point to which I return below). No participant feedback was ever requested—formally or informally—to preserve the anonymity or ephemerality of the experience for those who desire or perceive it. But in the immediate wake of the wish, most participants spontaneously expressed surprised pleasure or delight: ‘this is wonderful!’; ‘this is neat!’; ‘this is MAD! I’m just standing outside my own back door!’. Some tried to give me money or food, or asked to accompany me and help carry the yoke. Some offered more expansive or emphatic statements: ‘I really needed that, thank you’; ‘I’ll never forget this’; ‘I’ll cherish this’. Some felt drawn to comment on the sound of my voice as ‘mesmerising’, ‘soothing’, ‘lyrical’. Others described a felt sensation: ‘I was just thinking about jumping into water on a hot day and the stone got colder in my hand!’. And sometimes I also received online feedback in the days or even weeks after the event, which offered richer insights. For example, Jane wrote in an email that ‘there was an element of fairy tale about the experience that I find difficult to put into words and it is probably better not to try. But there is definitely something buried back in a childhood consciousness …’. Her comment that it might be ‘best not to try’ to find words to describe the encounter—even as she has chosen to reflect on it—suggests it was something she had experienced outside of language; a felt sense that eludes a more conscious naming but evokes a ‘childhood consciousness’ and which should not be fixed. Another participant Kate reflected that: in an intense week it was a moment of calm - of reflection and connection… Both to the global issues embodied and expressed by water but also to myself especially in that intensely personal moment of making a wish and dropping the stone into the bucket of water at Castle Green next to the river - where I happened to meet you. That moment of stopping and being with you and taking a moment to be still and gather myself into a wish was very special. (Kate, email)

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Here, I am drawn to notice her repeated use of the word ‘moment’—‘of calm’, ‘of making’, ‘of stopping’, ‘to be still’—which renders almost tangible the space (temporal, mental, emotional) that was created and held between us, even in the very public place (a park thoroughfare near the city centre) where we met. In Heim’s theorisation of slow activism—the one-to-one conversational performance form introduced above—she posits that a slow activist performance encounter might be more persuasive for taking place within an ‘occasion of character’. This is her term for a situation subtly constructed from a few carefully chosen aesthetic elements that is sufficiently ‘characterful’ to contextualise and colour the encounter that takes place within it (Heim, 2003, p. 194). Such an occasion is an aesthetic ‘bracketing’ in everyday life which brings activist resonance to that encounter precisely because it is ‘a suspension of the ordinary, more at ease with the playful and emotive and the possibility of change’ (Heim, 2003, p. 197, emphasis added). The affective (and perhaps also ecological) potency of such encounters that take place unexpectedly within—and invite us to think beyond—the everyday is also suggested in Daisy’s reflection: Just as I was in a hurry to collect [my daughter] from school there in my path was a very lovely mermaid fairy inviting me to make a wish and imagine places and times with my favourite element—Water. […] A very beautiful moment on the street outside my house, I think I will never forget it. (Daisy, Facebook) Like Kate, who describes thinking about water as a connector between global issues and self in a moment that became ‘very special’, Daisy finds herself invited to recall personal experiences with this element at a remove in space and time from the/our present, in a moment that becomes ‘very beautiful’. And also, like Jane’s reflection, there again is a nod to the magical, mythical or fay. What these, and other, reflections seem to suggest, is that a significant component of the experience is the spatial bracketing but also the perceptual shift the encounter offers; of slowing down and being invited to reflect on water, amidst the ‘intensity’ or relentlessness of our quotidian commitments as adults. Writing of the affective potential of her own activist work, US street artist Swoon (Caledonia Curry) describes how: [i]n that moment of surprise […] it’s almost like you create a little opening into that childlike part of [us] that’s usually ground down by the relentless gruelling details of every day—and if you can break that open then there is that feeling of a lot more possibility, the world is stranger, there’s a lot more going on than you thought five minutes ago. (In Parry 2011, p. 28) In other words, the power of an unexpected, enchanting encounter with activist art in public space might be its ability not only able to create a spatio-temporal

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interstice in everyday life, but also to open a perceptual space in the viewer; and crucially one that might be filled not with activist knowledge but with something difficult-to-name but that could be openness, possibility, connection, a childlike lack of cynicism. Indeed, for Bennett this is at the root of the ethics of enchanted materialism: it is just this pleasurable shock arising from a sudden awareness of ‘the extraordinary that lives amid the familiar and everyday’ (Bennett, 2001, p. 4) that gives rise to a conviction that one is ‘connected in an affirmative way to existence [and] under the momentary impression that the natural and cultural worlds offer gifts […] remind[ing] us that it is good to be alive’ (p. 156).

One-to-one activism The one-to-one performance form is highly significant to the activist ‘ambition’ and affective potential of this work if affect/enchantment rather than language/ dialogue is its ‘medium’ since, as Bennett (2001, p. 104) reminds us: ‘in enchantment a new circuit of intensities forms between material bodies’. Participant Carol wrote in an email: I remember being enchanted and engaged with your performance […] feeling bathed in attention. […] what you were offering felt very real, a precious gift and I took it very seriously. I was surprised by the strength of this transaction.

FIGURE 2.3

Jess Allen, Drop in the Ocean, SPILL Festival 2018, Ipswich. Photograph by Guido Mencari.

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Here I am drawn to her sense of having been ‘bathed in [my] attention’, and that a ‘transaction’ had passed between us that surprised her with its strength. This signals the peculiar and well-documented ability of one-to-one performance to forge an affective connection between performer and audience-participant in a short space of time. As Adrian Howells—the late and much-respected pioneer of the form—put it so well, this is the ability of that form to forge an ‘accelerated friendship between two initial strangers’ (Iball, 2012, p. 41). Howells’s work was often long-durational and explored extremes of intimacy/proximity, touch and sensory experience, verging at times into therapeutic territory. It was expressly designed to bring about ‘change, transformation or catharsis’ in the participant through a ‘concentrated focus and attention on the individual moment of encounter’, giving rise to the ‘aesthetically controlled incitement or production of emotional intensities’ (Heddon & Johnson, 2016, p. 12). There is a reciprocity to this inter-action too, which also requires of the performer to be present, open and, very often, vulnerable. For one Drop participant, it was this aspect of the work that was perceived as actively political or ecological in itself. In email feedback Mark, who I had met by the River Wye, observed: I love that people such as yourself render the self open to all manner of questioning. People or society play it safe and live within parameters that reflect a majority characteristic so as not to risk repulsion. Embarking upon your adventure last week is an example of stripping back the protective layers so as to see, feel and envisage a possible future. Here he seems to be indicating that there is something in the overarching form and performance of the work itself—in an openness to venture forth and facilitate encounters with strangers, perhaps—that could be, at least for him, legibly contributing to wider activist meaning; in some way prefiguring a positive (social) ecology. He goes on to conclude that the experience ‘enabled me personally to sense the potential in life through water’. This last sentence perfectly (and, I admit, gratifyingly) indicates exactly the kind of sense-realisation I was so hoping the work might ultimately effect, precisely by—according to the logic of emancipated environmentalism—leaving space for it to bubble up. In a recent essay Tim Ingold cites a story that Scottish poet Andrew Greig tells about his mentor Norman MacCaig whose ‘eye and heart were drawn to animals’ at the same time as he was consciously resistant to learning concrete facts about them. He feared that knowledge of things like Latin names, habitats and breeding patterns would ‘obscure their reality’ and believed that ‘sometimes the more you know the less you see. What you encounter is your knowledge, not the thing itself’ (cited in Ingold, 2016, n.p.). To this, Ingold responds poetically: I think Greig has touched on something quite profound […] Does knowledge actually lead to wisdom? Does it open our ears and eyes to the truth of what

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is there? Or does it hold us captive within a compendium of our own making? […] Might it be because we know too much that we seem so incapable of […] responding with care, judgment and sensitivity? (Ingold, 2016, n.p.) Through the guided ‘tasks’ of the Drop wish, I am inviting others to attend to our relationship with the more-than-human, but without offering a litany of facts about it, without offering judgments, or foregrounding our implication in ecological crisis. For indeed, as Bennett says ‘how could such sickly subjects inspire the kind of careful attentiveness that ecological living requires?’ (Bennett, 2001, p. 91). In this way, I hoped that participants would simply be moved to ‘encounter the [more-than-human] thing itself’ within their own remembered, experiential understanding of it, and not simply abstract or activist ‘knowledge’.

Affective activism What I have been working towards throughout my narrative above—and the practice journey it describes—is that realisations about ‘ecology’ might be effected in others through an affective encounter with an activist performer. That is a care-fully facilitated one-to-one performance event that takes place unexpectedly in an everyday context and which seeks to foreground a joyful sense of possibility which may or may not also engender a momentary awareness of our enmeshment with the more-than-human world. I call this affective activism because, if the medium of conventional eco-activism is knowledge, then the currency of this exchange is affect. If the audience of the former is largely an anonymous multitude, the audience of/for latter is an individual human being who I greet face-toface. And if the singular intention of the former is to effect the conscious understanding of an ecological problem or a necessary behavioural change, the openended hope of the latter is to arouse a felt sense of wonder or possibility. For any form of activism, the problem will always remain that to achieve tangible results requires the turning of ‘understandings’ or ‘felt senses’ into actions. For Bennett, the affective force she calls enchantment is what she believes is necessary to ‘encourage the finite human animal […] to give away some of its own time and effort on behalf of other creatures’. She concedes the pervasive problematic that there is no guarantee this will happen given that ‘affective energies are unruly and protean’ and that a certain degree of discipline will always be required to act in service of others. But ‘a sensibility attuned to enchantment […] does make it more possible’ (Bennett, 2001, p. 156). As such, the kind of enchantment that can produce any kind of tangible benefits for ‘ecology’ would be part of a practice, rather than a singular event. But, my contention is that in an affective activism, such events might open the possibility for a return to those sensations. In my own practice, the everyday location in which a performance encounter took place might be regularly revisited and hold something of the memory of encounter; functioning as a spatial mnemonic. And/or the

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invitation to attend might itself be read as an ‘offer’—a permission to pause, remember, reflect on ‘ecology’ even in the midst of the everyday grind– that could have resonance beyond our meeting. As participant Carol’s feedback went on to conclude: ‘I was surprised by the strength of this transaction. In your offer you had merely made a suggestion, a granting of permission perhaps but it felt strangely profound’ (Carol, email). Again, Heim usefully offers another poetic coinage ‘slow contagion’ to describe the potential for subsequent efficacy that may arise from slow activist performance. While the encounter itself cannot necessarily be reproduced, the methods and the ethos bringing the situation into being can be adapted, experimented with in other contexts, not only by the artists but also by the public participants, who have already mutually created the event. It is an experience which makes further experience possible. (Heim, 2003, p. 187 emphasis added) In this way I would argue for the validity of an affective activism that is content to participate in a longer-term process of effecting change—or to effect action that is deferred—precisely because it affectively seeds ideas in such a way that they are better able to ripen and mature. In making this coinage—marrying something typically so concrete (activism) with something indisputably abstract (affect)—I remain acutely aware that, as Anderson cautions, ‘we must be careful about the exaggerated trust we place in our theorizations of affect’ and instead ‘offer concepts that are equal to the ambiguity of affective and emotive life’ (Anderson, 2009, p. 78). After all, to invest intention in such an ‘unruly’ force is at best ill-advised or at worst ontologically troubling (Shouse 2005). But in an emancipated environmentalism—the framework from which I have taken succour—the very point is to relinquish control over outcomes. As Rancière puts it, with reassuring nonchalance: ‘whoever emancipates doesn’t have to worry about what the emancipated person learns. He will learn what he wants, nothing maybe’ (Rancière, 1991, p. 18). This offers a useful critical caveat for a practitioner of affective activism who must focus instead on carefully constructing the conditions in which an affective (possibly enchanting) transaction may take place, and relinquish control of its outcome since, as Bennett similarly maintains: the ethical value of enchantment resides in its ability to persuade without compelling, to structure experience without insisting that this structure is the one that must be duplicated again and again. (Bennett, 2001, pp. 27–28, emphasis added)

Notes 1 Tilting at Windmills (2010), All in a Day’s Walk (2012–2013), Drop in the Ocean (2013–2019), Trans-missions (2015), Water Treatment Walks (2016); documented at http://jessallen.org. uk. See also Allen and Penrhyn Jones (2012).

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2 Nature is a problematic term since it is so often used in binary opposition to culture, in doing so reinscribing a mis-perceived separation between (‘cultured’) human and the (‘natural’) non-human. In classical conceptions, nature was reified as transcendent, a position that is inconsistent with contemporary understanding of a decentred, interconnected ecology, as Timothy Morton succinctly argues: ‘to have “ecology” we have to let go of “nature”’ (Morton, 2010, ‘Introduction: Critical Thinking’). Throughout his writing, Morton capitalises ‘Nature’ to draw attention to the very ‘unnaturalness’ of the conception (Morton, 2010, 2013) at the same time as breaking down our deeply ingrained misperceptions by ‘denaturing’ it, ‘as one would do to a protein by cooking it’ (Morton, 2013, ‘Introduction’). Since any compelling alternatives have yet to make their way into language however, ‘nature’ or ‘natural world’ remain convenient descriptors for plant and non-human animal life, typically in the conglomerations and habitat matrices which they have evolved to form. I use the terms here in inverted commas to signal my unease. 3 Participant feedback was not formally requested or collated; rather each encounter was recorded by me, from memory, in field notes.

References Allen, J. & Penrhyn Jones, S. 2012. Tilting at windmills in a changing climate: A performative walking practice and dance-documentary film as an embodied mode of engagement and persuasion. RiDE: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance, 17 (2), 209–227. Anderson, B. (2009) Affective atmospheres. Emotion, Space and Society, 2, 77–81. Bennett, J. (2001) The enchantment of modern life: Attachments, crossings and ethics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Bennett, J. (2010) Vibrant matter: A political ecology of things. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Elkins, J. & Morgan, D. (eds). (2009) Re-enchantment. Abingdon: Routledge. Gaiman, N. (2013) The ocean at the end of the lane. London: Headline. Heddon, D. & Mackey, S. (2012) Environmentalism, performance and applications: uncertainties and emancipations. RiDE: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance, 17(2), 163–192. Heddon, D. & Johnson, D. (2016) Introducing the work of Adrian Howells. In D. Heddon & D. Johnson (eds), It’s all allowed: The performances of Adrian Howells (pp. 10–41). London: Live Art Development Agency. Heim, W. (2003) Slow activism: Homelands, love and the lightbulb. In B. Szerszynski, W. Heim & C. Waterton (eds), Nature performed: Environment, culture and performance (pp. 183–202). Oxford: Blackwell. Iball, H. (2012) Towards an ethics of intimate audience. Performing Ethos, 3(1), 41–57. Ingold, T. (2016) The maze and the labyrinth: Walking, imagining and the education of attention. In E. Schraube & C. Højholt (eds), Psychology and the conduct of everyday life, Hove: Routledge. Kester, G. (2004) Conversation pieces: Community and communication in modern art. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Kingsnorth, P. (2017) Confessions of a recovering environmentalist. London: Faber & Faber. Landy, J. & Saler, M. (eds). (2009) The Re-enchantment of the world: Secular magic in a rational age. Redwood City, CA: Stanford University Press. Macfarlane, R. (2015) Landmarks. London: Hamish Hamilton. Monbiot, G. (2013) Feral: Searching for enchantment on the frontiers of rewilding. London: Penguin. Monbiot, G. (2014) Saving the world should be based on promise, not fear. The Guardian. Retrieved from www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jun/16/saving-the-worldpromise-not-fear-nature-environmentalism.

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Morton, T. (2010) The Ecological thought. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Kindle version. Morton, T. (2013) Hyperobjects. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Parry, B. (2011) Rethinking intervention. In B. Parry, M. Tahir & S. Medlyn (eds) Cultural hijack: Rethinking intervention (pp. 10–39). Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. Rancière, J. (1991) The ignorant schoolmaster. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Rancière, J. (2009) The emancipated spectator. London: Verso. Shouse, E. (2005) Feeling, emotion, affect. M/C Journal, 8(6). Retrieved from http://journal. media-culture.org.au/0512/03-shouse.php.

3 VOGUE FEMME AS AFFECTIVE ANTI-OPPRESSION EDUCATION Pamela Baer

Introduction In this chapter I will reflect on the ways that artist-educators and young people with LGBTQ2S+1 parents collaboratively engaged in a voguing dance workshop during an applied theatre research project. The research had two points of focus: the first was to explore how youth and artist-educators used theatre to collaboratively learn about themselves, each other, and the world around them; and the second was to unpack how young people from LGBTQ2S+ families used theatre and performance as a form of advocacy by sharing their stories and experiences through their artwork. Working with artist-educators and youth, this research explored the interpersonal and relational aspects of theatre creation by facilitating affective encounters through aesthetic arts-based learning. What follows is an analysis of the possibilities of applied theatre work, and specifically vogue femme dance, to support youth from LGBTQ2S+ families in challenging heteronormative2 and cis-normative3 embodiments. I begin with a brief introduction to the dance form of vogue femme, including its histories, current practices, and the importance of teaching this uniquely queer and subversive art from to young people from LGBTQ2S+ families. I then review the theoretical and methodological underpinnings of the research and position anti-oppression education as an embodied and affective site of queer possibility. Finally, I explore how vogue femme as an affective and collaborative performance provided opportunities for youth participants and artist-educators to reimagine their bodily horizons through embodied encounters with failure, the unknown, and the power of striking a pose.

Vogue femme with Twysted Miyake-Mugler Voguing is a dance of survival for many queer and trans folx4 of colour (Jones, 2018). It is a way to tell one’s story through a relational and embodied

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emergence. For many, voguing is an outlet, a way to express oneself when societies expectations of who one should be feel too narrow (Livingston, 1990). Butler (1993) has argued that voguing can reinforce the gender binary through its categories of gender ‘realness’, and hooks (1992) has argued that voguing often glamorises the white ruling-class through its embedded affinity for stardom and spectacle. My argument here challenges these ideas by suggesting that voguing subverts gender, class, and race through its opening of embodied possibilities by asking the question: How can we move and live differently? Turning towards difference is a queer shift away from the status quo towards a reimagining of what is possible within a body’s ability to be and do. Therefore, I argue voguing does both/and: it reinforces and subverts within the same moment of performance. Performance understood in this way is distinct from performativity, because the former lies within the confines of artistic expression, which may or may not align to the way performativity works to discursively define bodies (Butler, 1990). I first met dancer and workshop facilitator, Twysted Miyake-Mugle, as a youth participant in a filmmaking workshop I was facilitating for LGBTQ2S+ youth and seniors in Toronto. At the time, Twysted was interested in producing a Canadian version of the film, Paris is Burning (Livingston, 1990), which is a documentary film that chronicles ballroom culture, from which vogue femme emerged, in New York City in the 1980s. Twysted had the desire and passion to share the story of his ballroom community in Toronto, and to engage a wider audience in understanding the importance of chosen family, self-expression, and self-love for young queer and trans youth. In 2019, he was quoted in NOW Magazine saying, ‘What Toronto can take from ballroom is that we need to celebrate everyone’s differences and make everyone feel that they are celebrated. That’s what makes us special’ (Price, Simonpillai & Grier, 2019). Twysted’s bio states: At the age of 16, he was introduced to an entirely new form of dance that embraced the femininity of black gay men, something he had never been exposed to before: the art of Vogue. Twysted began teaching himself how to vogue and connected with the international ballroom scene. He joined the Canadian House of Monroe as a founding member … In January 2013, he was inducted into the NYC Iconic House of Miyake-Mugler as the First International member. (November 2017) Given this embedded position within the community and his passion for this expressive practice, I turn to Twysted’s description of voguing, which he explained at the beginning of the workshop he facilitated for the group: So, the style of dance that I usually teach, it is called voguing … vogue is a really, really fun, expressive dance … voguing started in the 1970s. It started as almost like a ‘pop and locking’, if you guys know break dancing. We do a

Vogue femme as affect 43

lot of pop, pop, poppy movements. But … instead of popping, like whatever, we pop from pose, to pose, to pose, and we set it up as trying to be like you are posing on a cover of a magazine … which is why they call it voguing … The thing about voguing is there is no correct way of voguing. You have your people that are more shy and you have your people that are more dramatic … It all just goes by the way that you feel about yourself in the moment … so, you can never really predict how it is going to turn out, right? … and then throughout the 80s, you started seeing more of the trans women take on voguing and made it more feminine … and they introduced vogue femme as we know it now with the pirouettes and the dips and stuff like that is because they took voguing to [a] feminine place … today I am going to teach you guys a little bit about vogue femme … I am going to keep it really simple but it is still going to be cute ….OK. So, um. 5 simple elements. (laughs) … They might look hard, but when you do it, it is simple. Except for one of them. There is one element that is going to be a little hard…have an open mind. And, let’s do this. (Video transcript, 15 March 2018) Through Twysted’s introduction, it is clear that voguing is a queering of dance and of art. It is a subversive performance form that emerged from within queer and trans communities of colour as a way of expressing and subverting identity/ gender through playful movement. Twysted states that there is no right way to vogue and that one can never predict how it is going to turn out. Unlike traditional forms of dance where the outcomes and moves are predicted and expected, Voguing is about being in a constant state of becoming; to vogue is to become (Ellsworth, 2005). The movements, sequences, and poses are relational to the other performers, and to the audience. To strike a pose, even within a structured choreography, is unpredictable because it is a personal expression of how one feels in that moment. The affective and collaborative performance of vogue is one that opens up possibilities by allowing folx to move through and beyond their performativities to an imagined queer futurity that is not defined by normative technologies of affect (Muñez, 2009; Zembylas, 2015). These technologies—as a disciplinary power— create limits of what is deemed legitimate; much like performativity, technologies of race, gender, and/or sexuality are produced in the affective realm of everyday life infiltrating and governing our bodies on a daily basis (Zembylas, 2015). Being encouraged to play with gender through a facilitated dance workshop was a queering of traditional approaches to dance education because it asked participants to strip away inhibitions while allowing the music to facilitate movement as an affective release of inner possibilities (Sloan, 2018). Twysted facilitated a half-day workshop with the research group which included two youth participants Bianca and Sasha,5 my co-facilitator Sadie EpsteinFine—who like the youth participants identifies as queer spawn, and myself—a queer parent. At the time, Bianca was 10 years old and in grade 5. She described

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herself as warm, poofy haired, tallish, dramatic, beautiful, musically gifted, and quirky. Sasha was 13 and in grade 8. She described herself as weird, unique, and amazing. Together we learned the elements (hand performance, catwalk, duckwalk, dips, and floor performance) and learned a routine that incorporated them all. Learning to vogue was a capacity building workshop in a uniquely queer art form created by, and most often performed by, LGBTQ2S+ folx of colour. With participants from diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds it was important that each participant saw themselves represented in the artistic facilitation team and in the art we were using in our applied theatre work. Voguing with Twysted was one of many ways we explored the diversity of LGBTQ2S+ culture and representation within the applied theatre workshop.

Living differently as affective anti-oppression education Affect as a theoretical concept addresses the pre-cognitive realm of feeling and emotion. Following a Spinozian tradition, ‘Affect arises in the midst of inbetweenness: in the capacities to act and be acted upon’ (Seigworth & Gregg, 2010, p. 1). It is an intensity of sensation that circulates between bodies, both human and non-human (Massumi, 1995). Affect contributes to a body’s ability to think, feel, and act as it sticks, binds, and pulls apart bodies in a constant and ephemeral state of motion (Ahmed, 2015). Affective intensities impact our body's ability to move, to touch, and to feel, and in doing so, police everyday life. In order to ‘live differently’, a collective reordering of these intensities is necessary. This reordering is an uncomfortable encounter with difference that queers the status quo by putting the body, along with desire, touch, emotion and feeling at the centre of transformation and inquiry. Kumashiro (2000) believes that to live differently is the goal of anti-oppression education because imaging a queer futurity based on our available discourses is not-yet possible. First, we must move and live differently in order to make new ways of being thinkable. It is through this approach that bodies can engage with the unknown and work to live in new ways. Engaging embodiment in this work can facilitate possibilities that are not yet known through rational thought, voguing can be seen as a way of freeing bodies to move and think in new ways. The study of affect engages a site of inquiry beyond the epistemological question of what a body ‘is’ (as shaped by social structures), by drawing on ontological and material ideas when asking what a body can ‘do’ (Ahmed, 2015; Springgay, 2008; Zembylas, 2015). This is an important shift because, as researchers, we are no longer bound by language’s overwhelming perpetuation of violent and harmful discourses. Instead, we can explore how that violence shifts, evolves, and circulates across and between bodies, finding potentialities for transforming ways of being with one another. ‘In the bleak, post-post-modernist landscape where “agency” seems lost forever’ (Boler & Zembylas, 2016, p. 22) there is a need to understand how the elusive becomings of everyday affects can contribute to tangible change.

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A useful concept for thinking about the circulation of affect is Sara Ahmed’s (2015) ‘economies of affect’. Ahmed does not believe that affect resides within bodies, signs, and objects but rather is in constant circulation between them. She states: ‘Signs increase in affective value as an effect of the movement between signs: the more signs circulate, the more affective they become’ (p. 45). The circulation of affect attaches itself to signs that are in constant movement and they gain affective value as they are circulated more and more. This stickiness means that signs with a high affective threshold will be producing encounters more regularly and governing the relationship of those encounters. Therefore, the way that bodies intra- and inter-act in the affective realm becomes determined by dominant signs and objects creating technologies of affect through what feels ordinary. Ahmed uses the example of hate as an affective economy; when hateful encounters are perpetuated they work to ‘materialize the very surface of collective bodies’ (Ahmed, 2015, p. 46). As hate circulates through speech, emotion, and action, it produces an affective economy that is both material and social, where the subject is simply a momentary landing point, not a destination or point of departure. Hate becomes more powerful as its circulation increases. This produces a society of control wherein signs with high affective value, such as hate, racism, or heteronormativity, dominate our intra-actions becoming normalised forms of subjugation as they are circulated in-between bodies. Ahmed believes that through our inattention, that which is seen as ordinary is in fact gaining affective value as it works to control bodies through dominant ideologies and technologies that govern our encounters. Attuning to the movement of ordinary affect provides an opening to understand these force-relations, their impact on individuals, communities, and societies, and to attempt to collaboratively reinvent the potentiality for different kinds of encounters. Voguing provided this opportunity for bodies to come into and out of contact with one another as affective intensities circulated, punctured participants’ bodily horizons, and facilitated openings for new ways of moving and being to emerge. According to Ahmed (2006) bodily horizons are the boundary of what a body can reach, the limit of what a body can do, and what it can feel. When participants work to realign and disrupt their bodily horizons, they shift towards realising their bodies can reach new limits, and that they can live in new ways. The bodily horizon sits at the threshold of what is currently possible. When this threshold is punctured and new horizons are created, new possibilities for living differently can emerge.

Applied theatre as research-creation This research used participatory and collaborative processes as a research-creation methodology, which positioned young people and artist-educators as coinvestigators and co-creators in understanding their life experiences through their intra-actions, ordinary affects, and entangled encounters (Anderson & O’Connor, 2013). The creative process unfolded during a three-day applied theatre workshop with youth (aged 10 and 13) who have at least one LGBTQ2S+ parent.

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Together, artist-educators and youth developed performance work that draws on the life experiences of these young people. I chose to use applied theatre as a research-creation methodology for a number of reasons. Most importantly, I am responding to a call from Lather and St Pierre (2013), who assert, ‘the ethical charge of our work as inquirers is surely to question our attachments that keep us from thinking and living differently’ (p. 631). Using applied theatre practice as a research methodology questions these attachments. Belliveau and Lea (2016), ‘encourage artist-researchers to position their art-making not as an appendix or a companion piece, but instead at the heart of their research’ (p. 189). It was in taking up this call that I engaged as an artist, educator, participant, and researcher within this project. Working collaboratively through an applied theatre process meant that creation became a proposition for knowing as it evolved from our intra-actions with personal narrative, material objects, and other moving bodies. It is impossible to know exactly how the creative process will unfold, and as post-qualitative researchers suggest, it is important that we do not try to predict outcomes, but rather, enter into the mangle and allow intensities to bubble up (Jackson, 2013; Lather & St Pierre, 2013; Manning 2015). In order to come to know the world through the material beings with which bodies intra-act, we must first accept that intra-actions are unknowable, evolving, and uncertain (St Pierre, 2013). Material agency creates unpredictable encounters that emerge through a process of becoming (Holbrook & Pourchier, 2014; Springgay, 2012; St Pierre, 2013). These relational encounters shift and change from moment to moment as new elements engage, new materials are created, and new understandings become (un)known. In an argument Against Method Erin Manning (2015) states: ‘Thought is not what organizes an event post-facto, nor is it what articulates an event in language. Thought, instead, is a key aspect of the appreciation that drives an occasion to express itself as this or that in experience’ (p. 60). This is exactly what unfolded as the group learned to vogue together exploring movement and feeling through our affective relationality.

Striking a pose as affective pause In Figure 3.1 the group is learning about hand performance, one of the five elements of voguing. Movement here was not about bodies on a trajectory from point A to point B. Instead, it was about bodies that exist in relational movement with other people and things (Manning, 2015). This form of embodiment is a way of knowing through the body as it moves in relation with the wider. To engage the senses in a political becoming is an act of interference and disruption of the status quo: it is a queering of everyday affects by tuning into the ephemeral and sensational (Airton, 2013). When research-creation explores bodies in movement and creates opportunities for spontaneity, there is potential for new thought to emerge (Manning, 2015). Striking a pose (as seen in Figures 3.2 and 3.3) became an embedded and relational emergence of power and knowledge creating

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FIGURE 3.1

Hand performance.

FIGURE 3.2

Holding a pose.

unpredictable compositions of embodied knowing through which an unsticking of affective signs materialised (Ahmed, 2015). The choreography we learned had a section with four consecutive poses. The way the poses manifested in our bodies were not predetermined as part of

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FIGURE 3.3

Owning a pose.

the choreography, but rather, new compositions emerged each and every time we rehearsed our movements. They were an embodied reaction to the moment, and to the poses that came before and after. The movement between the poses was fast paced, and that energy moved through our bodies towards a moment of stillness in connection to the beat, to one another, and to the choreography. The poses were an instant capture of a particular movement, a pause in the dance. It was a moment to understand movement between and beyond bodies, and a chance to hold affective energy as it coursed through our bodies before being released back into the room with a new pose. The pace meant that the poses were not predetermined or planned, but rather they were a body’s response to the moment of movement and engagement. Although they were different each time, poses could be big, bold positions: in one instance Bianca dropped to the floor like a cat, one leg bent, one leg straight, a hand on her hip and a hand on the floor, and then popped up again to a hip jutting pose in the next beat. Other times, a pose was shy with a peek of an eye over a hand. Then again, poses returned to bigger-than-life movements with a head tossed back, a hand on a hip, a hand in hair, knees bent, arms thrust in the air, ready to pounce, hands on knees. Faces were teasing and playful. The poses were simultaneously shy and fierce, and proud and bold. They reflected momentary feelings and embodied pre-cognitive expressions of emotion. There was no time to think about what it meant or how it felt, or how race, class, and gender, for that matter, were intersecting in our enactment of a glamourous pose. Rather, striking a pose was an instance where the affective signs that uphold race, class, and gender could potentially be released (Ahmed, 2015).

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To engage in the art of voguing is an opportunity to move and feel and be in a way that feels glamourous without fear of persecution because of the way your body is read. Bailey (2011) states that: ‘the Black body is read through and within a visual epistemology, where gender and sexual hierarchies are corporeal, ballroom members refashion themselves by manipulating their embodiments and performances in ways that render them visible and remarkable within the ballroom scene’ (p. 380). Ballroom and in turn voguing is an opportunity to perform race, class, and gender not as a marginalising affective encounter, but as an embodied release of power and opportunity. The more poses were rehearsed, the more playful participants became in their ability to strike a pose. It was when participants let their bodies take the lead that the unsticking of technologies of affect was the most profound (Ahmed, 2015; Zembylas, 2015). The heteronormativity and racism that seemed to inhibit participants’ ability to move through their everyday life was being pushed out through openings in their bodily horizons (Ahmed, 2006), and reclaimed as queer possibility through bold proclamations of embodied self-love, self-acceptance, and playful movement (hicks, 2017). Striking a pose provided the embodied pause in which this affective release could take place. Striking a pose is a power stance and holding that power while playing with gender and emotion facilitated openings across bodies. This can be seen in Figure 3.4, where Bianca is serving up classic voguing power in her side hip and

FIGURE 3.4

Bianca striking a pose.

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hair flipping pose. These openings were the affective exchange of the politics of sensation. Twysted spoke of vogue femme as a way of deconstructing gender, revealing that he likes to pretend that he has long flowing hair and is wearing high heels when he vogues: these things represent the persona that he takes on in his movement. We were each encouraged to find a persona for ourselves. Elements of my own personality emerged that I would likely not express in any other environment. My body moved as high femme,6 slightly shy, and very expressive/ playful, and other than ‘shy’, I would not normally use any of these words to describe myself. It was an unexpected emergence of difference, an insight into the possibilities of my own embodiment and performativity. The repetition of choreography provided the space to fail, and an opportunity to learn through the thresholds of performance. Continuous movement uncovered new openings and new possibilities while continuing to push emergent becomings further and further. Manning (2016) suggests, ‘in its movement, the minor gesture creates sites of dissonance, staging disturbances that open experience to new modes of expression’ (p. 2). By engaging in minor gestures that had us moving in new ways, affect was pushed and pulled between our bodies in unexpected ways. This provided opportunities for affective signs to puncture our bodies (Ahmed, 2015). I use the term, ‘punctured’ to describe the immediate embodied reaction that participants’ bodies had when they came into contact with something that challenged and destabilised their current way of being or knowing or doing. I argue that these openings facilitated moments of connection and sensation, which led to new ways of being. In this case, the puncturing of bodies through our engagement with movement created a bodily disruption—an opening—through which new possibilities were imagined (Ahmed, 2006). As affective signs circulated differently, they attached to bodies, and took on new meaning through new sensation (Ahmed, 2015). For example, participants spoke repeatedly in the workshop about their encounters with homophobia and cisgenderism at school. They had both been expected to explain their families, identities, and their parents’ gender presentations over and over again. There was a lot of pain that circulated through these stories. When given the opportunity to move differently, to challenge cisgenderism in the way that bodies move through dance, these stories took on new meaning. Their affective currency unstuck from participants’ bodies as we collectively worked through movement to redefine the horizons of what is possible for our bodies, our genders, and our performativities (Ahmed, 2006). While as a researcher I witnessed these embodied shifts take place as youth participants tried on different gender performances during the voguing workshop, there was very little reflection time dedicated to the relationship between movement and cisgenderism within our conversations. Youth participants weren’t given the chance to think deeply about their embodied encounters with voguing in a way that provided me access to their insights. So, while I can review footage, to dive deeply into a meaning making process feels as if I am inscribing an experience onto participants. Therefore, in order to provide deeper evidence for how voguing challenged cisgenderism I am going to position my own

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body as participant. As a collaborative process of research-creation, wherein I participated fully in all activities throughout the applied theatre workshop, this positionality feels appropriate. I mention above that the compositions that emerged from my own embodiment during voguing felt high femme. Based on the video footage of the workshop, this interpretation could be debated because my ability to translate a feeling into a movement is limited. So, in the footage I look clumsy and often took on the role of the fool in order to bravely engage with the unknown (Gray, 2019), but inside I was motivated by my own understandings and interpretations of glamour. What surprised me is that in my everyday life my own embodiment of glamour often challenges the gender binary, I find joy and comfort in masculine and androgynous formal wear, movement, and positionalities. Yet, when positioned as being on the cover of vogue magazine through movements I associate with drag and ballroom culture; I was suddenly pouting my lips, blowing kisses, and embracing my curvy hips as they moved from side to side. I felt sexy through a femme embodiment. My prompt embrace of cisgender performativity within the context of vogue might suggest that this dance form does not subvert cisgenderism, that, as Butler (1993) has previously suggested, voguing in fact reinforces cisgenderism. Yet, by creating an opening where I could move beyond my everyday performance of gender and play with the possibilities of gender expression through movement, regardless of their alignment with my own identities; possibilities for subverting and challenging my body’s attachments to the gender binary were facilitated. Manning states: In our everyday movements, especially in relation to movements that have become habitual, a movement might nonetheless feel completely volitional. When this is the case, what has happened is that we’ve experienced a sense of déjà-felt, in the event. This déjà-felt occurs in the interstices of the conscious and the nonconscious, directing the event to its familiarity-in-feeling. (Manning, 2016, p. 19) My gender expression had become habitual. Through the process of learning to vogue, striking a pose, and finding a subconscious persona, I was able to embody my own internalised cisgenderism, to display my deeply held assumptions about gender through playful movement, and in doing so I was able to affectively engage in a release of these learned beliefs about gender. Voguing with its embedded affinity for movement that is read as highly feminine was able to provide a space where we could queer our understandings of gender by playfully engaging in the (un)expected. The way that bodies move is defined by marginalising technologies of affect as they come into and out of contact with signs that have high affective currency (Ahmed, 2015; Zembylas, 2015). Voguing asks participants to shed those affective infiltrations through embodied movement and to create bodily compositions that do not adhere to gendered categories. Unlike many traditional dance forms,

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voguing does not have gendered roles. Instead, it is an artform that has each person moving, breathing, and feeling beyond the binary. Thus, through the art of voguing participants (myself included) redefined our affective relationships with gender and each other by moving our bodies differently and challenging the marginalising encounters of affective cisgenderism.

Movement + sensation = living differently Perhaps the best example of movement and sensation as a form of living differently came as we tried to learn the ‘catwalk’ and the ‘duckwalk’. The catwalk is the travel element of voguing, meaning it is how you move from one location to another within the choreography and while staying in character. Twysted said doing the catwalk is ‘not walking but it is so much like walking’. A voguer begins on their toes in a seated position with their torso up. Then, they take small steps that almost cross one another, while staying on their toes with bent legs (Figure 3.5). This was not an easy move to master and the group stumbled into one another as we attempted to catwalk, failing again and again. Once we added the arms (which we extend and lift in opposite directions from the legs) our catwalks became sloppy and our focus narrower as we tried to master this new way of moving. Walking in a new way realigns a body’s ability to move. When a body’s ability to move is limited, an acute awareness of ‘its capacities for recuperation,

FIGURE 3.5

Learning the catwalk.

Vogue femme as affect 53

restructuring, reharmonisation’ (Boal, 2002, p. 49) materialises. The catwalk movement demanded that we recuperate from our failure. It required us to restructure our approach to walking, insisting that our bodies reharmonise within themselves and with one another in order to master the choreography. This reordering of our bodily horizons facilitated new understandings about how our bodies move and engage with the world around us (Ahmed, 2006). The duckwalk facilitated a similar embodied becoming. In Twysted’s words, the duckwalk is ‘the enemy’. The voguer must sit low over their heels and kick their legs straight out in front of their body while bouncing on their toes (Figure 3.6). Attempting the duckwalk resulted in laughter as bodies crashed to the floor over and over again. As a form of ‘muscular alienation’ (Boal, 2002) and movement as sensation, the duckwalk offered opportunities for participants ‘to feel more of what [the body] touches’, understand the ‘mechanised ways of walking and moving’, and ‘experience how our bodies, externalis[e] emotions’ while, ‘feeling and discovering new ways of structuring [our] muscles’ (Boal, 2002, p. 50). The challenge of engaging in the failure of trying to re-learn the thresholds of our bodily possibilities is that maintaining focus and pushing through the failure required an immense amount of discipline. In the case of the youth participants, both the catwalk and the duckwalk facilitated movement away from the task at hand. Distracted engagement led to the need to stop, start, and re-focus again and again. This collective movement saw us coming together as a community. As we each worked to overcome the challenge of mastering this move, we engaged and disengaged in our own ways and in our own times. My inability to master these movements (as seen in Figures 3.7–3.9) led to the young participants trying to teach me, but my older, less flexible, less than a year post-partum body,

FIGURE 3.6

Twysted demonstrating the duck walk.

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FIGURE 3.7

Moving bodies in/toward new compositions.

FIGURE 3.8

Pam falling.

was not as willing to engage in moving in the way it needed to if I was to master the art of voguing. Pushing through the collective challenges and finding our own paces and resiliencies as individuals and as a collective meant that with each repetition, the confidence in the room grew. Each rehearsal of the choreography became its own performance as the group played with and learned the elements and form of

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FIGURE 3.9

Bodies in movement.

voguing, and opened up new bodily horizons in relationship to one another (Ahmed, 2006). Reworking of bodily horizons through movement can be seen in Figures 3.7–3.9. It is a subtle re-ordering or our bodies through minor gestures, which can sometimes be hard to capture, interpret, and understand due to their subtle nature. Manning (2016) states that ‘the grand [gesture] is given the status it has not because it is where the transformative power lies, but because it is easier to identify major shifts than to catalogue the nuanced rhythms of the minor [gesture]. As a result, these rhythms are narrated as secondary or even negligible’ (p. 1). Throughout the voguing workshop minor gestures, the small re-positioning of bodies in an attempt to replicate a movement or a sensation, were not negligible, but rather the very foundation of how our bodies moved and connected through dance. The performance without a formal audience became a moment of collaborative meaning-making where everybody took on the role of performer and audience as the group worked towards a relational emergence of affective performance. Together our bodies moved, intra-acted, reimagined, and shared an unspoken, but very expressive and embodied story. It was in the inbetweeness of the movement that the performance came to fruition. Voguing is hard work. It was hard on participants’ bodies and this meant that they sometimes disengaged, got distracted, and sought out other brief activities to do. But that movement away from what is hard and then back again created a deeper affective reflection on how bodies came into and out of contact through movement. By engaging with this expressive art form, participants came to understand the thresholds of how their bodies moved, and in turn, pushed them to move differently. Here is Twysted and Sadie reflecting on the voguing workshop: Everybody vogues different. Like, literally. And, that is the beautiful thing about voguing. It is personal expression, which is why everybody vogues totally different.

TWYSTED:

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There is something so creative when you all move together in a room. It feels good, right? SADIE: Yeah. TWYSTED: It’s, like, empowering, almost. SADIE: Yep. (Video transcript, 15 March 2018) SADIE:

TWYSTED:

When bodies are punctured as they come into contact during collaborative and relational performance, openings are created that facilitate movement both towards and away from one another. This invites recognition of similarities and differences across bodies and becomes a building block for participants to understand themselves as individuals and as agents of change within the wider world. As an affective collaborative performance, vogue femme worked to redefine ways of being and doing through movement as a relational encounter (Airton, 2013; Manning, 2016).

Conclusion: moving towards an imagined queer future Movement through voguing in Twysted’s workshop pushed at our bodily horizons. It was a site of community building, where the group’s failure to successfully replicate the dance moves built a relational space of relative safety in which bodies could work to imagine new ways of being and doing. Voguing as an emerging encounter for participants took them to the edge of their bodily horizons and required them to move in unpredictable ways by unsticking familiar affects and facilitating movement towards the unknown (Ahmed, 2006, 2015). Participants were able to subvert their preconceived ideas about how they moved through space, how their bodies intra-acted with the world around them, and how they engaged in a performativity of race, class, and gender on a daily basis. Participants took risks with how they moved and could feel the difference in their bodies when they performed. They recreated what they had seen in popular culture through dramatic dips and pursed lips, but they also subverted these representations with their own embodied ideas of what it means to experiment with identity in an open forum. By exploring the thresholds of possibility for young people from LGBTQ2S+ families this chapter demonstrated the potential that art holds in pushing at those boundaries. Through movement, performance as a political and educational tool brought forward opportunities to advocate for ways of living differently. Vogue Femme positioned the bodies of the performers in dialogue with one another, calling for an affective exchange of uniquely queer possibilities. Through expressive movement these young people challenged everyday intensities, such as cisgenderism, and the impact they have on their bodies ability to move. This created both tensions and releases dependent on the context in which their bodies are moving/navigating/living. Through connection to one another, to the art, and to the wider world, participants were able to embody

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ways of living differently. This movement created opportunities to explore how their bodies came into contact with the thresholds of performance and brought forward openings through which others could be invited to move in unison with them. This collective movement towards the unknown was an invitation to affectively (re)engage in how we queer the spaces through which bodies move and imagine a future where bodies are not defined by heteronormativity and cis-sexism but are free to move, and play, and respond, in unique and unpredictable ways.

Notes 1 I use the acronym LGBTQ2S+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer, and two-spirit) with the intention of including people who identify as transgender, transsexual, two-spirit, questioning, intersex, asexual, ally, pansexual, agender, gender queer, gender variant, and/or pangender. I recognise that the names people use to describe their gender and sexual identities are fluid, evolving, and in a constant state of becoming. I use this initialism recognising its limits and with deep respect for all names and identities that people choose to describe the ways they are living gender and sexual diversity. 2 Heteronormativity is a social bias that privileges heterosexuality and assumes that all people are heterosexual. 3 Cisgender is a person whose gender identity and expression aligns with the sex they were assigned at birth. Cissexism is the belief or assumption that cis people’s gender identities and expressions are more legitimate than trans people’s gender identities and expressions. 4 Folx is an alternative spelling of the word folks that recognises people that live beyond the gender binary. 5 Pseudonyms (chosen by participants) are being used here to protect the confidentiality of youth participants. Photos of all participants (youth and artist-educators) are included throughout the narrative. These images create a boundary around confidentiality as participants are identifiable in the photos. All participants (and their parents) consented to the use of photos in research dissemination. 6 High femme is a term used to describe a queer person who expresses extreme femininity as defined by cultural norms.

References Airton, L. (2013). Leave ‘those kids’ alone: On the conflation of school homophobia and suffering queers. Curriculum Inquiry 43(5), 532–562. Anderson, M. & O’Connor, P. (2013). Applied theatre as research: Provoking the possibilities. Applied theatre research, 1(2), 189–202. doi:10.1386/atr.1.2.189_1. Ahmed, S. (2006). Orientations: Toward a queer phenomenology. GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 12(4), 543–574. Ahmed, S. (2015). The cultural politics of emotion (2nd edition). New York: Routledge. Bailey, M. M. (2011). Gender/racial realness: Theorizing the gender system in ballroom culture. Feminist Studies, 37(2), 365–386. Barad, K. (2003). Posthumanist performativity: Toward an understanding of how matter comes to matter. Signs, 28 (3), 801–831. doi:10.1086/345321. Belliveau, G. & Lea, G. W. (Eds.). (2016). Research-based theatre: An artistic methodology. Bristol: Intellect. Boal, A. (2002). Games for actors and non-actors (2nd edition). New York: Routledge.

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Boler, M. & Zembylas, M. (2016). Interview with Megan Boler: From ‘feminist politics of emotions’ to the ‘affective turn’. In M. Zembylas & P. A. Schutz (eds), Methodological advances in research on emotion and education (pp. 17–30). Cham: Springer International Publishing. Butler, J. (1990). Gender trouble: Feminism and the subversion of identity. New York: Routledge. Butler, J (1993). Gender is burning: Questions of appropriation and subversion. In Bodies that matter: On the discursive limits of ‘sex’ (pp. 121–140). New York: Routledge. Ellsworth, E. A. (2005). Places of learning: Media, architecture, pedagogy. New York: RoutledgeFalmer. Gray, J. (2019). Working within an aesthetic of relationality: Theoretical considerations of embodiment, imagination and foolishness as part of theatre making about dementia. Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance, 24(1), 6–22. doi:10.1080/13569783.2018.1535270. hicks, b. l. (2017). Gracefully unexpected, deeply present and positively disruptive: Love and queerness in classroom community. In D. Linville (ed.), Queering education: Pedagogy, curriculum, policy. Occasional Paper Series, 37, (pp. 1–16). Bank Street College of Education. Retrieved from https://educate.bankstreet.edu/occasional-paper-series/vol2017/iss37/9. Holbrook, T. & Pourchier, N. (2014). Collage as analysis: Remixing in the crisis of doubt. Qualitative Inquiry, 20(6), 754–763. hooks, b. (1992). Is Paris burning? In Black looks: Race and representation (pp.145–156). Boston, MA: South End Press. Hultman, K. & Taguchi, H. L. (2010). Challenging anthropocentric analysis of visual data: a relational materialist methodological approach to educational research. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 23(5), 525–542. doi:10.1080/09518398.2010.500628. Jackson, A. Y. (2013). Posthumanist data analysis of mangling practices. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 26(6), 741–748. Jones, J. (2018, June 6). An oral history of voguing from a pioneer of the iconic dance. Retrieved from www.huffpost.com/entry/cesar-valentino-vogue-alvin-ailey_n_5b11857 ce4b02143b7cc4b63. Manning, E. (2015). Against method. In P. Vannini (ed.), Non-representational methodologies: Re-envisioning research (pp. 52–71). New York: Routledge. Manning, E. (2016). The minor gesture. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Muñoz, J. E. (2009). Cruising utopia: The then and there of queer futurity. New York: NYU Press. Massumi, B. (1995). The autonomy of affect. Cultural Critique, 31, 83–109. doi:10.2307/1354446. Mazzei, L. A. (2013). Materialist mappings of knowing in being: Researchers constituted in the production of knowledge. Gender and Education, 25(6), 776–785. Kumashiro, K. K. (2000). Toward a theory of anti-oppressive education. Review of Educational Research, 70(1), 25–53. Lather, P. & St Pierre, E. (2013). Post-qualitative research. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 26(6), 629–633. doi:10.1080/09518398.2013.788752. Livingston, J. (Director) (1990). Paris is burning. Motion picture. USA: Miramax. Muñoz. J.E. (2009). Cruising utopia: The then and there of queer futurity. New York: New York University Press. Price, N., Simonpillai, R. & Grier, C.V. (2019). Black futures month: Five Torontonians want to make 2019 the year for change. Retrieved from https://nowtoronto.com/api/ content/dcaab844-2412-11e9-8a52-120e7ad5cf50. Seigworth, G. J. & Gregg, M. (2010). An inventory of shimmers. In M. Gregg & G. J. Seigworth (eds), The affect theory reader (pp. 1–25). Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Sloan, C. (2018). Understanding spaces of potentiality in applied theatre. Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance, 23(4), 582–597. doi:10.1080/ 13569783.2018.1508991.

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Springgay, S. (2008). Body knowledge and curriculum: Pedagogies of touch in youth and visual culture. New York: Peter Lang. Springgay, S. (2012). ‘The Chinatown foray’ as sensational pedagogies. Curriculum Inquiry, 41(5), 636–656. St Pierre, E. A. (2013). The appearance of data. Cultural Studies Critical Methodologies, 13(4), 223–227. Zembylas, M. (2015). Rethinking race and racism as technologies of affect: Theorizing the implications for anti-racist politics and practice in education. Race, Ethnicity and Education, 18(2), 145–162. doi:10.1080/13613324.2014.946492.

4 ACCELERATING A BLAZE OF VERY TENDER VIOLENCE Ten experiments in writing with performance and activism Alys Longley

Prologue This chapter engages with projects and art works that extended what I understand performance can be, entangled with activism. I discuss artworks whose bodies I have co-formed and artworks whose bodies have shifted the potentials of my (becoming) body, over 2018 and 2019. Running inside these performances were seams of affect that undid the known, making space for new permissions to be given and accepted, in their specificity, their intimacy, their throw of touch, blaze and safety. This chapter is written in the first person, and attempts to do so in a way that does not place humans at the centre of the world. It attempts to enunciate an ‘I’ wherein words are extensions of a fuzzy, morphing ensemble of molecules. An ‘I’ that creates sense from its spine to its fingerprints to its ecological bleed as one moment swells into another. That considers a body as an always-moving-haven for encounters, a product of a flow that moves far beyond any comprehensible form. This chapter consists of a series of experiments in writing with the affect of language, through deliberate entanglement with stylistic approaches drawn from writer-researchers Kathleen Stewart, Lisa Robertson, Erin Manning, pavleheidler and Tru Paraha. Such writing methods make space for minor ontologies and practices that resist the normative, to generate spaces of activism, imagination and possibility. Each of the ten fragments constituting this chapter attempts to accelerate the blaze of performance and its affects through the resource of writing. Poetic, choreographic and somatic approaches to language move between clarity, ambiguity, darkness and suspension—each a re-orientation toward how body, ecology and other can be reconfigured by creative-activist events.

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Each time, there is recognition of how the spaces we exist in consume us, move us, move through us, transform us into an accelerant within a set of circumstances that are largely out of our control. The sensory practice of style reconfigures differently in each of the ten parts of this chapter. Its forms are sometimes made out of resistance, other times out of momentum. This chapter deliberately engages a personal and relational tone—proposing that language excavated through rich collaboration is ignited by spontaneous intensities and enabled by everyday acts of negotiation, care and trust. Such analysis is very different to the academic essay— it’s an analysis that emerges through space, duration and instability—through non-sense, through things being un-made as well as made. Experiencing performances such as Tru Paraha’s 5th Body, Unstable Nights or workshops by Keith Hennessey and Michael J. Morris, or collaborations with artists such as Macarena Campbell-Parra, Máximo Corvalán-Pincheira, pavle heidler or val smith is an intense kind of intimacy that untethers language from its schooling to invent nonnormative curricula. Such writing can be a kind of activism, enabling imagination to move beyond the known.

Unstable nights Mumok Hofstellung, Vienna, 25 July 2019 This transdisciplinary, ‘open evening of deviations and recoveries’ created by Vladimir Weber, Claudia Hill, Julian Weber and Roberto Martinez (2019), with guest artists joining the collaboration each night, feels like a performance made of fragments of score and action and task. It’s one of those loose-leaf works where the borders are porous, it’s a rough gallery-performance space (in a separate building to the refined spaces of mumok art museum) for uncontainable events to happen-in. A tent is rigged in the centre of the room, clay sculptures and handwritten texts at one end of the space, sound and lighting boards off to the side. Materials strewn all around. I can’t tell performers from audience. There are people who move with the surety of performers but who don’t seem to be quite in or under the work, and I wonder are they younger dancers whose desire to perform brims through their pores? This work seems to be moving through a series of open- ended possibilities that are specific in their purpose and instruction, but could go to many places depending on who is there, what the materials do and how spaces unfold into each other. A large steel plate forms a floor at the centre of the room. He takes lighter fluid and writes in beautiful cursive handwriting to cover the entire plate: in my bed, in public toilets, near the water, in the darkroom, on my rooftop Another performer watches the slope of handwriting unfold, and begins to sing the words in their process of sense-making, sometimes mistaking them for other words and then correcting. His voice arrives as melody, an almost overwhelming beauty in its singularity of tone, at once high and low, at once loud and soft, at

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once a surround of vibration and an invitation. As the plate is filled with words and enveloped in sound, the lights descend and the fluid is lit and the letters blaze and this newly-formed song reaches a crescendo and the language is blazing orange and yellow and gold, it flames beyond its surface, licking the air, igniting the room, producing actual heat, travelling further than language, further than music, much further than its materiality, yet also much much further than its abstraction. There are these human bodies writing and singing and making lights move, and holding spaces and attending and caring, and allowing fire at a public event, allowing fire that could potentially blaze out of control, allowing fire that could catch. There are these non-human bodies forming the stuff of this world, pliable or unpliable, forming roof and ground, producing the space, density and tone of this shifting world, giving and withholding spaces of rest. The blaze is contained within its intended steel surface, and so very brief. As the intensity of heat consumes its accelerant, the heat de-escalates and gold turns to orange turns to yellow turns to purple, and words become shapes, become fluid buoyant ghosts, otherworldly forms, bruised and depthless flickers of remains, light-in-falling, and then a series of incoherent scars on steel. And the theatre lights come up and the piece moves on. But the ignition of these soaring, flickering poetics, a voice turning the petrol shapes of another’s handwriting into song in real time, is still alight in the endless rotation of these bones.

Ordinary Affects The front cover of Kathleen Stewart’s book Ordinary Affects (2007) shows a tree on fire and a bunch of kids near it, one of them holding a petrol can. Young and inventive. Inhaled by a situation and igniting a situation. The shape of the tree is very clear, its leaf-less branches flaming, vulnerable. Stewart’s book presents a series of short written pieces that reflect on those moments where something ignites—a realisation, an accident, a series of events. Each time, there is recognition of how the spaces we exist in consume us, move us, move through us. I don’t know how to categorise Stewart’s texts. Are they stories? Anthropological fragments? Prose-pieces? Examples of experimental poetics? The back cover description of the book describes it as: a series of brief vignettes combining story telling, close ethnographic detail, and critical analysis (in which) Stewart relates the intensities and banalities of common experiences and strange encounters, half-spied scenes and the lingering resonance of passing events. (Stewart, 2007) These texts vary in length and structure. Some evoke a singular and very precise emotional affect in very few words. In other texts the structure and coherence of a narrative throws out a sense of irresponsibility, of being untethered from a certain

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kind of sense-making that haunts academic, journalistic, and critical writing, to unapologetically cut to the nub of its subject. Stewart’s words cut to the affect, to the overwhelming way in which affective states blaze, catch, ignite, destroy, light-up, transform: ERUPTIONS Things flash up—little worlds, bad impulses, events alive with some kind of charge. Sudden eruptions are fascinating beyond all reason, as if they’re divining rods articulating something. But what? (Stewart 2007, p. 68) Affective states do their work inside our bodies, across our lives, and through the spaces we live, on individual to global scales. They blaze—mostly intangibly— through public and private spaces. They sing through the endless rotations of our bones. Stewart (2010) describes such writing as a process of ‘worlding’: In the everyday work of attunement to wording, spaces of all kinds become inhabited. Modes of existence accrue, circulate, sediment, unfold, and go flat. I am asking how questions of form, event, viscerality, and circulation open and problematize attention to the ways that forces take form as worlds or dissipate (or get stuck, fester, shelter something …). How do rhythms and labours of living become encrusted and generative? How do we now describe the activity of sensual world making, and what kind of theory is being built in this way? What happens if we approach worlds not as the dead or reeling effects of distant systems by as lived affects with tempos, sensory knowledges, orientations, transmutations, habits, rogue force fields…? (Stewart, 2010, p. 446) Through approaching anthropology as a process of worlding, Stewart attunes to the singularity of a situation. What approaches to language are summoned when we focus on quality, rhythm, force, relation and movement? How might the rhythm of an event move into writing, so that time itself is ignited into passages of words that move spaces, enflame feelings? Stewart’s concentration of text into short fragments of intensity enable a very different logic and embodied experience of reading to the argumentation of the essay. The writing provokes feeling and dwelling with a singular affect. Such writing can engulf sense and shift it, momentarily or forever. The lighter fluid is style.

Despertando/Waking up I performed in the Auckland, New Zealand activation of Un Violador en Tu Camino/A Rapist in Your Path in Aotea Square on 7 December, 2019 (Yébenes &

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Franchino, 2019). A week before this I was living in Santiago, developing the sitebased performance El Otro País Que Eres- a part of the 18 Horas Entre Nosotros project which has led me to work in Santiago every year over 2017, 2018 and 2019, working with practices of rough assembly. We have focused on the following principles:









Porous boundaries between creative disciplines Points of connection across Pacific ontologies that question the idea of the nation state Flows of decolonising practices across the Pacific Ocean Creative experiments, critical discussions, tactics for decolonising Resistances large and small that open up space for imagining Spaces of translation and mistranslation as creative strategies Art as a practice of imaginative space-making Movements that spill ideas beyond disciplinary boundaries

The expectations for our project in 2019 were dramatically interrupted by what Chileans called at the time the ‘despertar social’ or ‘la situación social’—the waking up of Chile. We didn’t know what to call what suddenly happened from 14 October 2019—no one did—it is (ongoing at the time of writing) a people’s uprising, a resistance movement against economic and class oppression, a saying no to neoliberal politics, a refusal to compromise with dictatorial powers in government, a demand for justice, and a demand for recognition of the human rights of all Chileans. The feminist, activist work A rapist in your path came to international recognition in October 2019, in Santiago, Chile, during this period of intense violence and activism. Created by the feminist activist group Las Tesis, this remarkable performance /social movement/global protest has been widely documented in the global media (Yébenes & Franchino, 2019; Merelli, 2019; Islas, 2019). A rapist in your path distils feminist analysis by Argentinian anthropologist Rita Segado into a chant with physical gestures such as running on the spot, crouching hands to head, and pointing straight ahead on the word ‘tu’/‘you’. It has become an activist resource against sexual abuse and the institutions that enable rapists to commit sexual abuse (Merelli, 2019). By naming the police as rapists and making themselves vulnerable to military weapons, the massive collectives of feminist performers contributed to some deescalation of the violence of the front line of the protests, engaging art to disempower the Chilean armed forces, while simultaneously raising international awareness of the crisis in Chile, where rape was being used to disempower women from protesting. Internationally, its message was and remains strong for women everywhere, as there is immense power in refusing to allow women to be blamed for the sexual abuse committed against them. The key refrain in this chant is addressed directly to policemen (specifically the Carabineros de Chile, but the address has stretched universally to social institutions that protect sexual

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abusers): ‘el violador eres tu/the rapist is you’. This chant also names the rapist (el violador) as the state, the president, and the institutions of power that enable sexual abuse; the men who are meant to protect women, girls and vulnerable people but who systematically fail to do so. Performances of A rapist in your path spread like wildfire through the already burning streets of Santiago, where metros, supermarkets, drugstores, corporate buildings and other symbols of neoliberal economic violence were literally torched and smouldering. The work of Las Tesis brought a new weapon to the fight for political and economic reform. This body is so tender / somehow after landing in Aotearoa NZ a few days ago you are still there in Santiago / still moving in relation to the epic scale of such generous and ethical violence against a corrupt status quo / still feeling everything is somehow being rewritten / that everything is in a bewildering flux / connections rewired/an undercurrent of terror from an unimaginable brutality—we are asking / can these disappearances be possible? / Proof is far too close. A woman passes me a black blindfold and I tie it on. I have practiced the words in my faulty Spanish, repeating again and again, for the three-times-fast repetitions of the performance action: Y la culpa no era mía, ni dónde estaba, ni cómo vestía / And the fault wasn’t mine, not where I was, nor how I dressed … / El violador es tú / The rapist is you. I’m entering a collective body of resistance whose voice reaches across large swathes of the world / I’m a cell in a body of return/ returning the blame back to where it belongs / my eyes beneath the blindfold wince with the remembered wrench of the tear gas / wrench to witness my colleagues despair as the institution tells her the abuse, after which she had just had an abortion / does not constitute serious misconduct / I become part of a collective body of resistance alongside women and men in massive protests in Latin America, women in detention for performing this work in Turkey, alongside the female politicians who performed it in the Turkish parliament. My blindfold is symbolic, as are the costumes of many of the women performing around me, whose clothing tends toward the black and the ‘provocative’. We are holding the right for women to wear the clothes they choose to without fear of abuse. The blindfold expresses our solidarity with the people of Chile and the many protestors who have been shot in the eye (Larsson, 2019). In the comments section of a New York Times article entitled Police are Blinding Protestors, We Spoke to the Injured (MacDonald, 2019), a writer named Togo comments, ‘They shoot us in the eye because after years of injustice we finally opened them.’

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Publicity material for El Otro País Que Eres/The Other Country That You Are; design by Eduardo Ceró Tillería, photography by Augusto Dominguez. Copyright Alys Longley 2019

FIGURE 4.1

El Otro País Que Eres your train was lost between / the singular and the collective / each platform means standing in for these someone elses / so many vowels come from singular, interior bruises / but this roaring millions-strong body of refusal/is a kind of violent mending / shredding as the wound closes / it’s surprising how tear gas can be ignored in the right company private dreams are crossing neighbourhoods in bacterial swells/ lemon pieces / bravado / melted public amenities/hallucinatory celebrations/ the transformation of endless compromises / to infinite waves of resistance the other country that you are / these contagious forces that feel like emotions/ and move us in bewildering riptides, weaving a mesh of routes through a mesh of neighbourhoods / where the singular and collective bodies are just so deeply confused/ as to be indistinguishable The state that we are exhaled by place / We stand in for others / we wonder if the logic of bullets has formed our grammar / which now needs urgent medical attention / from student doctors wearing makeshift medic uniforms/ we break the language a little with the sound of pans and spoons, endlessly calling us / untethered/together Extracellular punctuation, singular rules cross every cordon/ bound for misapplication/ into mass disobedience / the water canon looks so beautiful from far away/ as swells of solidarity break and bloom / you couldn’t ever prepare your heart for this / epic sharing / across the other countries we all are (Longley, 2020).

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Basta ya de represíon/Enough of repression The most recent project that has emerged in association with 18 Horas Entre Nosotros is an action where twenty thousand miniature band aid art works, each printed with the words ‘Basta Ya’ (Enough Now) are distributed in downtown Santiago in January 2020 during an artist-led protest marking One Hundred Days of Resistance. The group organising the #BastaYa action (of which Máximo Corvalán-Pincheira is a core member) is identified by the terms ‘Basta ya de represíon/ Enough of repression’ and ‘Cultura en resistencia/Culture in resistance’. This Friday, January 24, a march for arts and culture is convened at 17 pm from the plaza de la aviation. We are a group of artists in mobilization with the current social situation that is lived in Chile. Along with inviting you to the March, we call to be part of an action where we will deliver and launch twenty thousand patches in the journey of the March. (Cultura en resistencia, 2020) In the last few months we have witnessed how the population has been violated in different ways. This artistic action folds to the need for healing: heal the eyes, bodies, institutions, nature, indigenous territory, the country. (Basta ya de represíon, 2019)

Publicity material: Basta Ya de la Represión. Copyright Máximo Corvalán-Pincheira, 2020

FIGURE 4.2

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FIGURE 4.3

Basta Ya de la Represión, Band-Aid Art Works, photographer Máximo Corvalán-Pincheira.

Donna Haraway discusses the important work of finding alternatives and forms of resistance to the ‘cynical, well-funded, exterminationist machine’(Haraway, cited in Weigel, 2019), and suggests one pathway to do this is in developing ‘emergent systematicities’ that respond to the ‘ need to develop practices for thinking about those forms of activity that are not caught by functionality, those which propose the possible-but-not-yet, or that which is not-yet but still open’ (ibid.). I think about resistance as creating form. Of the scale of twenty thousand small gestures of healing, care, and resistance. The making of space for. The feeling of the breath rising up is enabled by the diaphragm dropping down. Falling into rising, push into pull, resistance into enablement, unknowing into knowing. To make space-for-change. A stepping-back-but-holding-space, safety and risk, borders and openings, preventions and constraints, the spilly fractures of emergence. These locks and these permissions. How can practices of art making, performance writing, teaching, community involvement and other kinds of research entangle with activism? How do creative practices and the languages we draw in and around them hold or make space for value systems—languages of neuro-diversity, queer orientation, more-than-human recognition of the vitality and needs of diverse bodies and ecologies? For spontaneity and affect? For a viscerality of touch that sparks feelings that can’t translate to words? Sites of creative studio practice are hubs for the development of systematicities. They are places to test worlds—to imagine what a body is outside of majoritarian currencies, systems of value, and functional responsibilities. In performance we can engage processes of suspension, experiments in duration, and time to process experiential potentialities.

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Such studio practices hold resources for the resistance of extractive or proprietorial economies—instead of individualist brilliance and a commodity-obsessed mode of production, there are studio practices that focus instead on generating momentum, attention, generosity, listening, care and contagion of new ideas.

Queering somatics Style can be a kind of touch—a reaching beyond content into relation. Somatic practice enables a focus on attunement, respectful touch as a mode of sensing into the open, endless question of what a body can be, what bodying consists of right now in its moment of changing, co-extensive with ecologies, atmospheres, waterbodies. In this, my sense of somatics is inflected by practitioners such as Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, who writes that ‘What we often call weakness is often not a lack of structure but a lack of process. When that process is actualized, we experience strength. Process is based on relationship’ (Bainbridge Cohen, 2019, n.p.). A somatic approach to writing can be evidenced in the multi-modal writing practices of artist pavleheidler, whose writing is a kind of regular incineration of the hetero-normative—and a persistent enabling of the resources of embodied logics, activist questioning that queers spaces in various scales and ways. These small interruptions gently flame a set of potentialities. As a somatic practitioner, there’s a tenderness and care in how pavle activates a provocation through the body of a form. —poetry, the effort to see in a thing meanings other than the obvious, stereotypical one. poetry, the effort to take more time than the least amount of time. poetry, the effort to engage in ways other than the most efficient. poetry, patience. poetry, suspension. poetry, speculation. poetry, relationship. maybe: poetics. maybe: poiesis. maybe: the will to. (heidler, 2019a) pavle writes of poetry as a kind of suspension (heidler, 2019a), a place to allow meanings to fall differently, to find new angles of insight in all those accelerants of letters and words and phrases. pavle’s writing could take the form of a piece of writing on a blog, a two hour long conversational podcast on the topic of time, a provocation on social media, an instagram image, handwritten words as a provocation or a sign or a poem, a photograph, 10 seconds of dancing in a loop, a long vimeo link of improvised simultaneous moving-talking. It could be an edited writing project or a suggestion people gather together to participate in the showing of someone’s work. What pavle does with style makes possible an acceleration of practices, concepts, values, support structures and poetics. It makes way for further experiments. It touches outward by giving attention. In his book Negotiations Gilles Deleuze writes of style;

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One’s always writing to bring something to life, to free life from where it’s trapped, to trace lines of flight. The language for doing that can’t be a homogeneous system, it’s something unstable, always heterogeneous, in which style carves differences of potential between which things can pass, come to pass, a spark can flash and break out of language itself to make us see and think what was lying in the shadow around the words, things we were hardly aware existed. (Deleuze, 1995, p. 141) I think about using pavleheidler’s writing as a model for dance artists. I think about writing that ignites the movement of choreo-logics, which brim with feeling, ambiguity, viscerality, relationality, spatiality and texture. pavle’s The Process of Materialisation of Fiction is a body of work, intended for those who have to work quickly, and transition frequently between aesthetic environments and organisational power structures. This work is intended to be rewarding for queers looking to articulate strategies that are to help maintain spaces of heightened or specific attention for as long as necessary; folk working to hold spaces of fluid but persistent nonviolent resistance. It is also intended for those who love a good challenge or are interested in nuanced articulation and precise execution of movement, sound, dance, and word. (heidler, 2019c) When pavle describes their writing process, they hop between style and form with the momentum of the flow of a concept, in a following-that-isn’t-quite-aknowing—but that generates a sensation of ease and freedom. You pretend. You skate. You flow across. You are a fluid rather than a solid. You are the movement rather than the ground. You have to work hard to be properly disrespectful. To let go into momentum. To let the spark out to the page with all the fear of what you don’t want yourself to say. The emergent words might be dirty, might be dark. This is a practice of making-it-up. It spurns clear explanation, reasoned analysis or useful summary statement. Studio practices create techniques for fine-grained experiences of feeling and sense-making, such as moving with the fluid tenderness inside the bones or the travel of oxygen from centre to periphery. The melding space where the sensorial and the imagined fold is a space of ignition, a space of movement, and a space that can be slippery to approach with words. Erin Manning’s Relationscapes discusses ‘the necessity for language to create new parameters for thought in the passage from feeling to articulation’ (Manning, 2009, p. 5) Through concentrating on states where moving-thinkingfeeling are in immanent, elastic processes of relationality, Manning opens space to consider thinking that occurs outside of the contours of language and articulation. Manning theorises the travel of thought through movements’

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relational unfolding as philosophy and dance spur new textures of thought into emergence. We look to processes of recombination and randomness that allow permission to throw set-ideas-of-what-a-body-is out the window, and start again. Manning evokes these processes as events wherein sensing and feeling open incipient potentialities for becoming, ‘through feeling, thoughts’ affective tonality is foregrounded’(Manning, 2009, p.220). Studio practices create techniques for finegrained experiences of feeling and sense-making, such as moving with the fluid tenderness inside the bones or the travel of oxygen from centre to periphery. To release into falling, to understand the simultaneity of resistance and give. Choreographic artist and educator val smith, working with queer somatics, suggests practicing queer kinesiology by abandoning our skeletal maps, to take pleasure in making anatomical language up. So you start renaming. You begin with a knee composed of the interstellar fabricator, the common-place spoon lift, the cosmo-hypenated fluids. In this practice you can imagine your bones newly— the pop-up float ventricle, the calendula-gold artery; the most exquisite gutterspasm muscle. I want a joint named for a house-plant. I want the affects to smudge like pigments, to blend affect to trigger expansion. The insides of your body are entirely endless. There are no limit to its fictions, to its recombinations, to its resources.

Resource What resources are necessary to enable thinkers-through-performance to write of their work in a way that moves with its’ momentum and tonality? Quantum physicist and cultural theorist Karen Barad names the resource of poetics as enabling language to stretch into places where there are no words and literally create a new way of framing how we see ourselves in the universe. The following quote is from a conversation filmed between Barad and Jack Halberstam at a symposium; What I find is that I can’t just give a linear narrative account like this, like before when I was doing quantum field theory I felt like I was holding on to the trunk of a tree, and climbing, and the way I’ve described it to other people is that quantum field theory is so strange and so little philosophy of quantum field theory has been done that I feel like I’m way out on the really fragile part of the leaves and maybe like an inchworm hanging over the void trying to describe this, and so poetics has been for me the only way I can get to rigour, as best I can in trying to speak the equations as I understand them happening. (Barad, 2018) The notion of rigour here may relate to precision and cadence—I think of Barad’s poetics, phrases such as ‘different structures of nothingness’, and ‘vacuum

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fluctuations’ of existence, held within a ‘frothy soup of indeterminancy’(Barad, 2018). Barad’s talk, On Touching: The Alterity Within, discusses the nature of the electron: its identity is the undoing of identity, its very nature is unnatural, not given, not fixed, but forever transitioning and transforming itself … Ontological indeterminacy, a radical openness, an infinity of possibilities, is at the core of mattering. How strange that indeterminancy in its infinite openness is the condition for the possibility of all structures and their dynamic, reconfiguring stabilities and instabilities. (Barad, 2018) For Barad, poetic style is a vital resource in writing with the kind of radical indeterminacy she is exploring in quantum field theory. The elasticity and dynamics afforded by poetic form provide crucial resources in communicating the unsettling vibrancy of electrons pulling away from the givens of culture and physics. Poetics assist Barad’s work as it unsettles definitions of touch, and thus unsettles taken-for-granted assumptions around sensation and sensing as physical experiences. Barad’s poetics blur distinctions between bodies, so the agency of matter can be felt in its travel, in its inflammatory force, disrupting normative conventions of embodiment, time and agency. Lisa Robertson’s book Occasional Works and Seven Walks from the Office of Soft Architecture also engages poetics to dismantle humanist conventions. The sensuality of terms attract and repel, creating intensities. Poetics make explicit intangible currencies of affect, revealing how bodies are moved by the texture and instance of every day spaces: We lend mobility to the plants and deny for awhile each species’ propriety. The surface of us overlaps with other phyla. Walking and parading we mix the surface of the earth, though we might intend that march’s purpose as co-ordination. Colour marks exchange. It is border-work. Mixture is our calling. (Robertson, 2011, p. 121) Here, the event of reading undoes something. Suddenly the force of colour itself is named, the multiple strata of its intensities taken seriously, brought into focus. Colour receives belief in the form of a name. ‘Blue’ … The name bloats and travels and drifts with arcane logics. It can appear as though colour, like an army, is made from memory and fear and lust. (Robertson, 2011, p. 124–125) Robertson offers resources for reorientation—conventional narratives wherein humans act on a pre-organised world fall away, allowing present

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histories to surge into everyday life. The disruptive and lively style of Robertson’s writing is choreographic in how it slides the imagination through space, drawing connections between textures, sites and politics. The infectiousness of this reminds me of the way in movement concepts travel virally between dancers. I wonder whether such slides of imagination are enabled in the way writing is taught at universities. How much space for imagination and spatial or textural intelligence are held by conventional academic writing formats? Maori philosopher Carl Mika asserts that academic clarity reflects a problematic Eurocentric, colonial project which must be resisted through practices that allow sensing beyond analytic and explanatory registers; ‘We have to be mindful of the problem of clarity that our academic work calls for, and disrupt it’ (Mika, 2017, p. 14). Poetic, experimental, and performative writing can provide alternatives to explanatory or descriptive clarity, making a space for distillation of affective, felt, or non-binary logics. But what are the alternatives to writing with clarity? In Mistranslation Laboratory, which was performed in Santiago, NZ and Portugal in 2017 and 2019, we engaged a choreographic writing process where writing was improvised as a modality of dance improvisation, in duet performances where one writes and one moves, and in which the performance score involves text being written, spoken and remembered before the audience. Every vertebra is an elegant cup, a criss cross bundle of quickening light, every syllable your elbows say crosses the face of the clouds, the blind seas of distance reach sadly & lovingly, heart-told monstrous, inverted. i had to shield my eyes from the light. It said so much more than my peripheries could take (Longley, 2019b) In placing listening and attending at the heart of our artistic methods, poetic language created a ground for collaboration. The affect of audience attention, time constraint and space all shaped physical and written vocabularies. We performed writing process as embodied and graphic improvisation, a site of play and a mode of relationship. Poetic encounters resisted any construction of authorship as an individual practice, instead framing writing as visceral, collaborative, a tidal etching of interstitial vocab. Another means to resist the imperative of clarity is to let go of colonial enlightenment discourses and move in obscured, ambiguous spaces.

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5th Body Tru Paraha’s choreography 5th Body (Paraha, 2017) burns through the space, leaving the room in a subtly different galaxy. Paraha’s artistic research is orientated by darkness and black out states, in relation to Matauranga Ma-ori concepts of te po—the night, and te kore, the void. The hours of darkness are times of speculation, of imagining, of incipience, where feeling is stronger than clarity, when forms are emerging and in processes of formation. The edges of forms bleed into other things. Dark hours can be hours of unknowing or knowing differently. Paraha’s research engages with ‘the dark, occult movements of choreography provoking an engagement with concept horrør and speculative philosophy’ (Paraha, 2019, p. i). As a choreographic research project, Paraha’s work opens out space for considering what can happen when we orient from the frame of darkness rather than visuality, moving with things we can feel, but perhaps not ever fully know, when we question what it is that our bodies are and open our curiosity to the otherthan-human forces that are undeniably part of our worlds. In Paraha’s case, this foreign language within language attunes audiences and readers to more-thanhuman and horror-inflected cadences of unknowing: Choreographic practice c ll ps s into states of blackOut wa-nanga (philosophical searching, the dark unknowing). Obliterative scores recede and e ((((((((ho; sound, language – deforming from blacknyss. (Paraha, 2018, p.49)

Basta Ya de la Represión, Band-Aid Art Works, photographer Máximo Corvalán-Pincheira. Copyright Máximo Corvalán-Pincheira

FIGURE 4.4

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Paraha’s research slips between choreography, philosophy, transcultural poetics and performance writing. Each slip is a resource that carries choreographic experimentation to artworks-on-pages so the written form of artistic research ripples with vitality. Every unaccountable surface ripples as if italicized. (Robertson, 2011, p. 124) Paraha draws on the cosmo-genealogies of darkness articulated by Ma-ori scholar Hone Sadler (2007, p.37–38), which recognise precise gradations of uncertainty in spaces of darkness, from Te Po- Mä (The White Darkness) to Te Pomangu (The Black Darkness), Te Po- Whakaruru (The Sheltered Darkness) to Te Potangotango (The Intense Darkness), from Te Põ Maui (The Left Handed Darkness)

FIGURE 4.5

Documentation from Mapeo de Bordes Porosos: Máximo CorvalánPincheira, with Alys Longley and Macarena Campbell Parra (translations).

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Documentation from Mapeo de Bordes Porosos: Máximo CorvalánPincheira, with Alys Longley and Macarena Campbell Parra (translations). Copyright Máximo Corvalán-Pincheira, Alys Longley, Macarena Campbell-Parra

FIGURE 4.6

to Te Po- Matau (The Right Handed Darkness). These also reflect the darkness that is necessary in order to bring Te Ao Marama—the world of light and knowing, into being. Artistic experimentation is a destabilising practice, in which even the definitions of what can constitute a body, or a sense of humanity can become uncertain. So, too, the concept of what constitutes a book can be unsettled, extended and opened.

Coastlines of translation in the Mapeo de Bordes Porosos project The above maps blur boundaries between paragraph, description, drawing, provocation, memory, layering of voices and statement of hope. After we made the

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work Mapeo de Bordes Porosos/Mapping Porous Borders in Chile and NZ in 2018, Máximo Corvalan-Pincheira, Macarena Campbell and I were reflecting on our interdisciplinary process. For Máx writing, drawing and artistic map-making can be pretty much the same thing. The drawing and the text fall together in a poetics of affect. Coastlines of translation move into place through responses by Macarena and myself, around the edges of a poetic land mass. My translation of Máximo’s writing keeps recurring through various iterations of our project: I want to trace the pulse of the idea, to turn the map upside down so that the South becomes shoulder blade, it’s more than the existing South, we try these lines and drawings, rules and attempts, why not think the world upside down? To cross significant borders, with significant results, in the flesh, today, rewriting our stories, our maps, trying to loosen those lines that were written from violence, enunciate them, and open them to other bodies, with other passages of gesture, crossing also the imagination of the body—finding yourself in an imaginary world, with continents, oceans, histories, islands, countries, birds, trees, animals, flowers, smells, colors, music of all people imaginable. I want to trace the pulse of the idea, to turn the map upside down. (Corvalán-Pincheira, loose translation by Longley, 2019a) These maps are artistic maps, creative experiments that can extend definitions of both mapping and writing. They present imaginative propositions, for a world yet to come. Dance artist/ scholars such as Ann Daly (2004) and Jude Walton (2008) explore books as proprioceptive, performative objects which expand notions of both performance and writing. Claire MacDonald considers how practices of writing are expanding in relation to new technologies and hybrid-forms. We might now talk about ‘writing in the expanded field’, a field in which writing’s conventional autonomy—that is its objectivity, its truthfulness and its transparency—is in question, as writing has opened out fully into its material and conceptual contexts … in this expanded field language has weight, and it has material and visual ‘freight’. It has graphic presence that also ‘carries’ meaning. Language can act as a form of dynamic exchange, a powerful conduit between the material and metaphysical or conceptual. (MacDonald, 2009, p. 100) Working with graphic forms and design-based approaches to the page provides options for a translation or reworking of intensities—weight, touch, tonality, atmosphere. Passages of brittleness or flow, absence and presence can travel through visual and multi-media practices engaging scale and rhythm in graphic ways. We can see writing as bigger, looser, more porous and less prescriptive. Writing’s horizon has moved … Its edges have become ragged. It has burst a

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little at the seams under the pressure of changing technologies of sight and sound and inscription; under the pressure of the flow of new kinds of communication that mix the spoken and the inscribed; that mediate between the stable and the unfixed; that enable everyone to become an editor, a publisher, a curator of print. (MacDonald, 2009, p. 92) Taking seriously paper, binding, colour, texture, image, legibility and illegibility as resources in process-based choreographic and theatrical experimentation allows space for ambiguity between text, drawing, object and poetic fragment of language. Moveable scraps of time enter further iterations, allowing things to mean differently, to create alternative systems of listening, response, provocation and resistance. The Mapeo De Bordes Porosos project exists in multi-modal forms— installation, theatre performance, video, photography, poetry, critical reflection. You can drop into our digital archive to experience how this performance research merges film, sound, poetics, image and writing (Longley, 2020).

More than a million acts of generative violence Chile’s recent swells of mass resistance against the neoliberal state have led to millions of acts of violence—tender violence, creative violence, disruptive violence, brutal violence—violence against the extractive status quo, violence against activism and activists. I experienced this as a performance of epic scale, which will continue until an acceptable resolve is found. I am overwhelmed by the willingness of millions of Chileans to live in a state of dramatic instability in order to make real political change for all. Months after travelling from Chile to NZ, my body remains entangled with the people and forces moving Chile into a new political space. I see a news report of Un Violador en Tu Camino creating a media storm at a Harvey Weinstein trial in NY (Garcia, 2019). The courage of the Chileans is infectious. Our bodies move abstract values into material forces. We are witness to and participant in a breaking apart of the world, in a redreaming of what can be and a reckoning with what we are up against. Can practices of connectedness and collectivity exist between disparate artist communities during times of immense global instability? Friends are untethered from their past everyday existences by ecological and social crises. We’re asking: How can we be with you? How can we make these acts of resistance with you? How can we realise that your resistance is our resistance? That your disappearances are our disappearances. That the tools you make to rewrite your cities can also be our tools? Keith Hennessey and Michael J Morris’s Impulstanz workshop The Spiral of Fortune (7 of Birds) A laboratory of Political Witchcraft was a 5-day workshop in which

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I participated in the (European) summer of 2019 (Hennessey & Morris, 2019). Day four was fake healing day, inflected by the work of Adrienne Maree Brown. Here Hennessey and Morris created events of intimacy and consented experimentation beyond the edges of the real, the edges of the body, the edges of the known, at the very outer-edges of what medicine can be. I worked in a trio with two strangers, who went ahead and introduced my body to made-up forms of healing of which I knew nothing, and of which they performed without explanation, without language. It sounded like a murmuration. It felt like intemperate flames of possibility streaking the spine with care. There was something intimate and something spiritual and something else. Afterward I jumped on my bike and rode to a show and barely thought of it again. I said to my friend Kristian, ‘yeah, we did fake healing, it was pretty cool’. But the bees pollinated the inside of bones, the nectar travelled, the practices initiated a random cross-country blooming.

La justicia es un mar con otro nombre/Justice is a sea with another name. Anonymous graffiti, library at Parque Salvador, Santiago, photographer Alys Longley. Copyright Alys Longley

FIGURE 4.7

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Epilogue The performances and activist actions at the heart of this chapter were largely overwhelming, disorientating, deeply moving and deeply challenging. This chapter attempts to match the affect of these events with an embodied approach to language. The writing of Kathleen Stewart, Lisa Robertson, Erin Manning, and Tru Paraha have been rich resources in allowing the blaze of these artistic experiences to move from body and space to word and page. The permissions and strategies I drew from these authors included employing tactics of fragmentation, or bluntness, or somatic tenderness, or material practices of writing, to expand the field of what writing can do. Just as the performance events discussed in this chapter resist the normative to generate spaces of activism, imagination and possibility—performance writing can also translate the affects of moments and the qualities of worlds, in all their complexity and viscerality. In Santiago’s Parque Salvador, on the stainless steel boards protecting the public library (closed for many months since October 2019), an anonymous piece of graffiti reads ‘La justicia es un mar con otro nombre/Justice is a sea with another name’. I think of how the work of performance makers and teachers contributes to the movement of waves of justice, stretching between worlds. How can we cross oceans through our artistic practices? We pick up each other’s tools and face the studio. We have a pen and a camera and some friends. The room is daunting and the task is bigger than we are. In beginning we hope for a kind of ignition of affect which we can ride, so that momentum takes us. This is more than nothing. Every attempt is something. There is so much at stake and so many people with us, in millions of acts of creative, tender violence, falling and rising with the world.

References Bainbridge Cohen, B. (2019). Process is based on relationship. Retrieved from www.bodym indcentering.com/process-is-based-on-relationship/?fbclid=IwAR25_h1pnCn_0JfO1CE x3my14ZIYZO-p6t86oVyVHUW8_LmGMH5Q7g5Ma2w. Barad, K. (2018, March). On touching: The alterity within, reach out and touch (somebody’s hand): Paper presented at the conference Feel Philosophies, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. Retrieved from www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7LvXswjEBY. BBC News. (2019). Las Tesis feminist protest song of Chile goes global. BBC News, 13 December 2019. Retrieved from www.bbc.com/news/av/world-50751736/las-tesis-fem inist-protest-song-of-chile-goes-global. Corvalán-Pincheira, M. (2019) Viente Mil Parches Curita. Facebook, 25 January. Retrieved from www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10158143796008991&set=a.1015015 1773573991&type=3&theater. Campbell, M. Corvalán-Pincheira, M. Longley, A. (2018a). Mapeo de Bordes Porosos. Live performance, Contemporary Ethnography Across the Disciplines, Museu de la Memoria Y Los Derechos Humanos, 23 November, Santiago, Chile.

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Campbell, M. Corvalán-Pincheira, M. Longley, A. (2018b). Mapeo de Bordes Porosos. Live performance, 18 Horas Entre Nosotros Symposium, Old Folks Association Hall, 8 December, Auckland, New Zealand. Cultura en Resistencia (2019). #bastaya#bastayaderepresíon. Media release, Santiago, 25 January. Daly, A. (2004). When writing becomes gesture. Austin, TX: Wollemi Pine Press. Deleuze, Gilles. (1995). Negotiations 1972–1990. Trans. H. Tomlinson. New York: Colombia University Press. 1995. Garcia, M. (2019). The rapist is YOU: Feminists revolt outside Harvey Weinstein’s trial. Vice News, 11 January. Retrieved from www.vice.com/en_us/article/bvgzp3/the-rapistis-you-feminists-revolt-outside-harvey-weinsteins-trial. Haraway, D. (2019). Feminist cyborg scholar Donna Haraway: ‘The disorder of our era isn’t necessary’, The Guardian, 20 June. Retrieved from www.theguardian.com/world/ 2019/jun/20/donna-haraway-interview-cyborg-manifesto-post-truth. heidler, p. (2019a). Poetry. Facebook, 15 May. Retrieved from www.facebook.com/pavle heidler/posts/10157305255152164:1. heidler, p. (2019b). writing, or creating in general? Facebook, 2 July. Retrieved from www. facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10157440082267164&set=a.10152940233162164&type= 3&theater. heidler, p. (2019c). The process of materialisation of fiction. Retrieved from https://pavle heidler.wordpress.com/the-process-of-materialisation-of-fiction. Hennessey, K. and Morris, M. J. (2019) The Spiral of Fortune (7 of Birds): A laboratory of Political Witchcraft, dance workshop, Impulztanz Festival, Austria, 29 July–2 August. Islas, A.M. (2019) Chile Quiénes son Las Tesis | El Violador eres tú | Cómo nació ‘Un violador en tu camino’, Noticieros Televisa, 12 December. Retrieved from www.youtube. com/watch?v=_utq2Y7nXPw. Larsson, N. (2019). Beaten, mutilated and forced to undress: Inside Chile’s brutal police crackdown against protestors, The Independent, 27 January. Retrieved from www. independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/chile-protest-police-violence-nudity-humanrights-a9294656.html. Longley, A. (2020). Mapeo de Bordes Porosos and El Otro País Que Eres Digital Archive. Retrieved from https://alyslongley.wixsite.com/mapeodebordesporosos. Longley, A. (2019a). El Otro País Que Eres. Live performance, 275 Manuel Montt, Santiago, 28 November. Longley, A.(2019b). Mistranslation Laboratory. Live performance, Experimental Dance Week Aotearoa, Auckland, New Zealand, 4–9 February . Longley, A. (2018). Fungi Drift. Live performance, Votive Poetics International Symposium, Curator Lisa Samuels, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand, 28 August. MacDonald, B. (2019). Police are blinding protestors, We spoke to the injured. New York Times, November. Retrieved from www.youtube.com/watch?v=rF1sQatbwf0. MacDonald, C. (2009). How to do things with words: Textual typologies and doctoral writing. Journal of Writing in Creative Practice 2 (1): 91–103. Manning, E. (2009). Relationscapes: Movement, art, philosophy. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Merelli, A. (2019). Learn the Lyrics and dance steps for the Chilean feminist anthem spreading around the world, Quartz, December 3. Retrieved from https://qz.com/ 1758765/chiles-viral-feminist-flash-mob-is-spreading-around-the-world/. Mika, C. (2017). Dealing with the indivisible: A Máori philosophy of mystery. St Paul St Symposium 2017. Retrieved from https://stpaulst.aut.ac.nz/__data/assets/pdf_file/0008/ 124829/Symposium-2017-Online-Publication_FINAL.pdf.

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Paraha, T. (2019). Speculative chøreographies of darkness. Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Auckland. Retrieved from https://researchspace.auckland.ac.nz/handle/ 2292/49320. Paraha, T. (2018). Colluding with darkness. Performance Research, 23(2), 49–54. Paraha, T. (2017). 5th Body. Choreographic performance, Votive Poetics Symposium (Curator Lisa Samuels), University of Auckland. Robertson, L. (2011). Occasional work and seven walks from the office of soft architecture. Toronto: Coach House Books. Sadler, H. (2007). Ma-tauranga Ma-ori (Ma-ori epistemology). International Journal of the Humanities, 4(10), 33–45. Stewart, K. (2007). Ordinary affects. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Stewart, K. (2010). Atmospheric attunements. Environment and Planning D, 29, 445–453. Walton, J. (2008) Still moving still. Paper presented at the World Dance Alliance Conference, Brisbane, Australia. Retrieved from www.ausdance.org.au/resources/publica tions/dance-dialogues/mind-body-connections.html#walton Weber, Vladimir., Hill C., Weber, J. and Martinez, R. (2019). Unstable nights. Transdisciplinary performance, ImpulzTanz Festival, Mumok Hofstellung, Vienna, 22–26 July. Weigel, M. (2019). Feminist cyborg scholar Donna Haraway: ‘The disorder of our era isn’t necessary’. The Guardian, 20 June. Retrieved from www.theguardian.com/world/2019/ jun/20/donna-haraway-interview-cyborg-manifesto-post-truth. Yébenes, J. and Franchino, J. (2019). Las mujeres de Nueva Zelanda alzan la voz contra el machismo, Latidos Magazine, 9 December. Retrieved from www.latidosmagazine.com/ 2019/12/09/protesta-feminista-latinas-nz/?fbclid=IwAR0K1WFgea-S2666dK9gIAWMY Y9FEKRyi4fieqzT0DLSwNbjxaoYt3-adBg.

5 SINKING FEELINGS AND HOPEFUL HORIZONS Holding complexity in climate change theatre Sarah Walker and Fleur Kilpatrick

Introduction The problem of how to communicate climate change in a way that provokes prompt, decisive and effective action is one of the key problems of our times. In 2015, the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research noted that most discussions around climate change focus on rational transmission of information. This approach, the report suggests, is failing on every level, from politics to the public. Instead, its authors recommend, ‘more dialogical forms of communication’ are needed (Rayner & Minns 2015, p. 3). They note that ‘immersive, experiential activities’ that encourage empathetic and emotional care are much more effective in ‘shifting perceptions beyond climate change as a vague and theoretical issue to one which might have real and serious consequences for participants and their communities’ (pp. 14–15). These discoveries identify the theatre and its use of participation and affect as key locations for a revolutionary transmission of narratives of climate change in a way that creates real and authentic concern and behavioural change. This chapter considers the use of these methodologies in Fleur Kilpatrick’s theatre work Whale, which premiered at Northcote Town Hall in May 2019. We have worked together for more than twelve years. Our work explores difficult and urgent concepts such as climate change, asking who or what is considered worth caring about, and how it is possible to elicit care for disenfranchised people, places and environments. We consider the ways that interactive theatre can use fiction as a tool to bring distant realities and power imbalances into the physical and psychic proximity of the audience. Whale provided a testing-ground for the coalescing of these interests, in addressing real audiences about real issues through the conceits of the theatre.

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Whale’s methodologies were centred around the idea of shifting the concept of climate change from distanced information to a physical event occurring to and around the audience. It used affect, play and participation as defamiliarising strategies to create a sense of investment in climate change as an event, and to encourage audience members to challenge existing social narratives around the issue. Whale was committed to movement towards Braidotti’s notion of affirmative ethics and the cultivation of hope (Braidotti, 2019). It approached climate change, the locus of terror and apocalyptic thinking, and demonstrated the flimsiness of our current lumbering reactions to it. Instead, it offered a method of engagement that prioritised complexity, care and possibility. Whale took an issue conventionally framed as hopeless and demanded a turning towards hope, change and multiplicity.

From check-in to sacrifice: Act One On arrival, the audience of Whale were directed to a check-in desk. Here, they were given a lanyard, coloured according to their comfort with audience participation. The ethics of interaction in the theatre revolve around the necessity of consent, and so audience members with red lanyards were assured that they would never be brought onstage or asked to respond directly to a question. The plastic pocket on each lanyard contained a small stone, along with a sheet of paper displaying a number, indicating how many people that particular audience member was there to represent, and a series of short facts about their island (‘You

FIGURE 5.1

Sonya Suares with the delegates who saved their islands.

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have three times more tourists than residents’, ‘You contain the entire population of a certain species of turtle’, for example). The audience was immediately positioned as delegates for individual islands. The provided facts created a sense of investment, and encouraged them to identify with a dematerialised, fictionalised home. Inside the theatre, the host, identifying herself as actor Sonya Suares, was also wearing a lanyard: SONYA:

My number As you’ll see here is 24.5 million Approximately I am here representing Mainland Australia Hello I’m really proud to be here And—honestly– Really proud that Australia is hosting this and stepping up Taking our place as a global leader So on behalf of Australia Welcome

As live photographs were taken and displayed on a large projection screen by Sarah Walker, Sonya welcomed the delegates and outlined the premise of the show: that in order to stop something as huge and terrible as climate change, a sacrifice was needed. One island would be chosen to sink beneath the waves, killing everyone on it instantly, and ending climate change. We would finally be free. Three delegates, islands 89, 8780 and 0, were pulled from the audience and given speeches to deliver defending their islands. They made their case. ‘We aren’t the problem’ argued tiny island 89. ‘You will feel bad if you kill this many people’, said island 8780. ‘Don’t sacrifice nature to save your own skins’, argued island 0, home to a whole species of penguin. The audience was called to come forward one by one and cast their stone into the hand of the delegate they wanted to send down. 90 people stood up and voted, and the island with the most votes was brought forward and sacrificed. Are you ready? Say ‘yes’ LOSING DELEGATE: Yes SONYA: You’re very brave I’m going to lead our losing delegate to the centre of the stage SONYA:

She does Where a beam of light will find them It does And this sound will start to grow

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It does The delegate will look up Trying to memorise life while they still have it The sound will crescendo Sound crescendos Our delegate will take a deep breath And the water will take them Lights snap to black Oceans roar This was the end of Act One.

Given circumstances and the critical midpoint ‘Given circumstances’ is a rarefied concept closely associated with naturalism and the framework for actor training created by Konstantin Stanislavski. As its premise, it asks the actor to envision the character they are playing as a real human being who exists beyond the duration of the scene (Stanislavski, 1936/ 1989). It asks, what are the ‘facts’ of the character: what is this character walking onstage with? What has just happened to them? Where are they? When are they? When creating theatre that operates beyond the realms of naturalism, Fleur re-appropriates this term. In theatre of climate crisis, the first priority is not that a character is believable or fully-formed, but that the audience has an experience that leads them to interrogate their affective responses and thus conceptualise climate change. Far more important than what a character is entering a scene with is what the audience walks into theatre of climate crisis carrying, where ‘theatre’ is a meeting point between a play and an audience. This question, more than plot, character or imagery, was Fleur’s starting point in the creation of Whale: how do people feel about this terrifying thing that is happening in their lifetime? They are scared but also acclimatised. They have been living with this for so long. It is a bit like those surreal days gathered around a relative’s death bed: held in this state of suspended, anticipatory grief, but at some point also, you check your emails. You eat. You wonder how they are getting on without you at work. We exist in this unwieldy moment in the Anthropocene that has spawned a new family of psychological terminology: ‘climate anxiety’, ‘eco-paralysis’, ‘climate grief’ and ‘arrested mourning’ (Lewis, 2018). Massumi articulates the creeping feeling of fear, the ‘anticipatory reality in the present of a threatening future’ (Massumi, 2009, p. 54). Whale acknowledges the lingering threat that characterises the present, like a sub-audible hum underlying every moment. The fear of climate change is the ‘affective fact’ that exists within all of us, always (Massumi, 2009, p. 54). And yet, there is the shopping to be done. These are the given

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circumstances of a theatre of climate change: unresolved distress, the mundanity of catastrophe. The everyday-ness of these default settings is why so much fiction of climate change (cli-fi) is set in the future, post-, after a turning point of epic proportions. In traditional naturalistic modes of storytelling, all stories must have a beginning, middle and an end. Right now, present-tense climate narratives are set in a perpetual middle, Whale included. The beginning is off-stage—the industrial revolution, perhaps, or colonisation—the end, a series of terrifying predictions. To sit in this middle place is to sit in a place that defies conventional narrative structures: the present tense is anticlimactic, problematic in its absence of drama. That we currently sit in the slow slump to global loser-dom, without access to an ending, necessitates modes of storytelling defined by the absence of what came before: non-naturalistic, post-dramatic and post-colonial. Fiction has power in these complex spaces. Fiction can provoke radical empathy by creating a sense of proximity to real issues. Climate change is very real and very much happening today (IPCC, 2018) but perhaps the most brutal fact of it all is that the people who will suffer the most are already suffering and our community seems to, on the whole, have accepted this as part of our global truth: somewhere far away, people are suffering and we can do nothing about it. In 1917, theorist and critic, Viktor Shklovsky wrote ‘habitualisation devours work, clothes, furniture, one’s wife, and the fear of war … and art exists that one may recover the sensation of life; it exists to make the stone stony’ (Shklovsky, 1917, p. 12). Today, fiction has the power to make us re-realise the horrific facts we have become acclimatised to. It can remove the kilometres; make global neighbours your actual neighbours. Whale makes land loss and community destruction a problem that exists and potentially is solved in your suburb. What would this look like if it happened here and not there, it asks. How would we react if these choices we make implicitly—to carry on and keep this government—were being made explicitly? In a vote. To set climate fiction in the present tense means not only telling stories of fear, but also of hope. As Whale’s dramaturg, Roslyn Oades commented in development, cli-fi theatre gives us the opportunity to rehearse our ultimate failure or, possibly, our success. Each night, the lines, ‘We’ve done it. We’ve saved the world’ felt powerful. Fiction does have a certain magic when utilised in stories of epic, unwieldy proportions and no story is more epic or unwieldy than that of climate change. Philosopher Timothy Morton frames climate change as a ‘hyperobject’, a thing ‘massively distributed in time and space relative to humans’, which is so large, mobile and dematerialised that it becomes impossible to grasp (Morton, 2013, p. 1). Fiction can provoke a sense of proximity to this issue. Whale makes land loss and community destruction small enough to fit into our performance space. It makes a solution—albeit a problematic one—fit in there too. We exist in a critical moment where change is both possible and urgent, and Whale responds to this crisis point, using present tense, personal responsibility and humour to suggest the possibility of an affirmative future.

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FIGURE 5.2

Jonah (Max Paton) and the Whale (Chanella Macri).

Going deep: Act Two and the Whale The structure of the production shifted dramatically at the beginning of Act Two, where actor Chanella Macri, dressed in a water-patterned jumpsuit, took to the mic and announced herself as the Whale. WHALE:

Hi I’m the whale Titular role You might have some questions About me About my presence here

The sacrificed delegate reappeared as Jonah, caught in the Whale’s belly, as the town hall meeting dissolved into a world of strange, theatrical possibility. As the Whale, Chanella felt tonally akin to the characters native to the films of New Zealand film director Taika Waititi: endearingly straightforward, unflappable and a little baffled by the humans in the audience. She answered audience questions with frustrating simplicity, cared for Jonah, and finally, seeing that none of the humans had done anything to help, sacrificed herself, describing in granular detail the process of her own beaching and decomposition as Jonah was left onstage. The show ended every night with Jonah—so recently an unsuspecting audience member—making an impassioned, improvised speech about what we needed to

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do to save the world, as music slowly rose underneath them and drowned them out. I need you to say these words Exactly Say ‘I know how to save the world’ JONAH: I know how to save the world WHALE: Thank you Now tell them how WHALE:

Sound covers Jonah’s response While the content shifted nightly, the moment functioned to promote the realisation that the path to climate response is possible. We know what must be done. The next step is to do it. This moment was both a symbolic and actual passing of the mic to the audience; a transfer of power and control over who may speak from the playwright to the crowd.

Comedy, parties and play as defamiliarising tactics The production was guided by the desire to create a sense of defamiliarisation (Brecht & Bentley, 1961), where the audience is alienated from and encouraged to re-approach habits of thinking and behaving around catastrophe and disaster. For a long time in art, this kind of moment of estrangement was most identified in the sublime—experiences that involve a confrontation with an inner abyss, allowing the transcendence of the human (Morley, 2010). But recent criticism suggests that comedy can also be used as a powerful disarming tactic, where a moment of cathartic laughter forces the audience to reconsider social cues and habits. This is the harnessing of affect, where bodily reaction meets social conditioning and encourages intellectual reflection. Simon Critchely refers to this tactic as ‘the unheimlich manoeuvre’, where the strangeness of reality is exposed through comedy (in Diack, 2012, p. 84). Walter Benjamin writes that ‘there is no better start for thinking than laughter’, and that ‘convulsion of the diaphragm usually provides better opportunities for thought than convulsion of the soul’ (Benjamin, 1934/2013, p. 91). The art world as well as the pop culture industry has tended to be suspicious of the unruliness of laughter, situating it as lesser, un-serious. Comedy, then, must be a cunning methodology, and Whale was a cunning work. It was constantly, uncomfortably funny. Sonya, as the host, was often absurdly flippant about the importance of what the audience was gathered to do. The first act existed in an awkward, embarrassing, half-baked town hall space where nobody was quite prepared and everyone was flying by the seat of their pants. The energy created was one of a light-hearted community effort, and the simulated disorganisation of the event helped to coalesce the audience as a sort of

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community. The fracturing of this community through the selection of delegates, the way that the audience was turned on itself, situated them in a game world where the rules were clearly fake, but they also had uncomfortable resonances with real-world decision-making. The comedy in Whale slowly gave way to moments of profound, heartbreaking sadness and anger, and when the audience member-turned-Jonah at the end was asked to describe how to save the world, but was drowned out by sound, it was a literalising of the fact that we know how to fix things; the problem is that we’re not doing it. Whale’s use of humour shifted throughout the production. In Act One, it was a disorienting gesture. It cut through the work, undermining the content, creating space. Laughter is an affective reaction, containing the shock of surprise. It forces space for itself. It is the gasp that draws attention back to what provoked it. Sonya’s callousness in the face of murdering an island and its delegate created laughter, and then reflection. 8780 how are you feeling? Say ‘I didn’t expect to be up here’ 8780: I didn’t expect to be up here SONYA: Say ‘defending my right to breathe’ 8780: Defending my right to breathe SONYA: Yeah we’re all surprised mate It feels like there should be enough air and clean water to go around right? Say ‘right’ 8780: Right SONYA:

In Act Two, laughter became reorienting. The Whale was funny in a way that was generous, encompassing. Her deadpan reactions to audience questions were imbued with thoughtfulness and a desire to connect. (‘How big are you?’, they would ask. She would pause for a few seconds, calculating, then beam. ‘Really, really big.’) She was kind to Jonah in a way that was a little awkward, but always attempting to understand. She spoke about the loss of her child and the joy of swimming deep in the same breath. She was the embodiment of Manning’s culture of affirmation, which contains the grief of a shifting climate, but still makes room for ‘love, and laughter’ (Manning, 2016, p. 211). Braidotti, too, argues that it is essential to address the conditions of the posthuman convergence ‘not only intellectually, but affectively and to do so in an affirmative manner’ (Braidotti, 2019, p. 9). This is the space of complex reorienting, of acknowledging the multiplicity of things. In this space of complexity, there is possibility. There are new ways of considering the world and how we may relate to it. In Act Two, a human could stand onstage next to a character who was both beside them and all around them. WHALE:

To address a few FAQs

Questions appear on a screen

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Who are you? I’m a whale Already said that Next QUESTION: Where are we? WHALE: This is my stomach Next QUESTION: Why are you in your own stomach? WHALE: This is where I do a lot of my best thinking QUESTION:

WHALE:

Tassos Stevens, artistic director of British theatre company Coney, describes play as a radical act, where the space between the real—this is a pen—and the imaginary—but let’s agree that it’s a sword—is profound and exciting (Stevens, 2013). When we agree to rules in a play situation, we become empowered to recognise the ways in which the rules of our real lives are also constructed and agreed to. His writing could be considered a kind of semiotics of play. In Whale, the ‘what if’ rules of engagement existed to ask deeper questions—what are the rules that we agree to in talking about climate change? And what if we stop agreeing to them? As it progressed into Act Two, Whale also relied to a substantial extent on frustration as a means to encourage the drive towards meaningful action. The production purposefully endowed the sacrifice of a delegate and an island with planetary significance, and built the moment of sacrifice into a ritual of great meaning. In the immediate wake of this event, though, the production denied the space for grief and processing to the audience. The people who had just voted to abandon one of their own were washed in coloured lights, a bad PowerPoint animation congratulating them on saving the world, lukewarm punch and a party whose celebration felt deeply strained. The perfunctory minute’s silence offered by Sonya once she realised that she had forgotten to recognise the importance of the sacrifice felt cheap and distasteful. In this way, comedy shifted in the work from being a method for inviting the audience in, to one for eliciting irritation. This strategy, of diminishing the importance of human life, of prioritising boxticking over emotion, of favouring logic over the messiness of feeling, created a rift between Sonya and Sarah and the audience. As the production progressed and the Whale offered a new approach, they increasingly became a symbol of the ignorance and inflexibility of logical, rational processing and unquestioned authority.

Using lies to reveal the truth In Act Two, the centre of dramatic tension shifted offstage, into bank. It existed in the minds and bodies of the audience as they from fiction, danger from safety and complex global issues from simple solution. The more Sonya dismissed and diminished the

the seating sorted fact our overly tension on

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stage, the more it was felt in the audience. This disjunct between truth and fiction impacted much of the lighting and sound design throughout Act Two. While Sonya continued to placate the audience, loud sound and flashes of light sought to act on the bodies of the audience. The gulf between the official narrative and the embodied experience widened throughout the second half of the show, until finally they snapped apart, the roof began to fall in, and Sarah and Sonya evacuated the theatre, leaving the audience alone with the Whale. The reality of climate change is both more subtle and more devastating than what Whale depicts. The agonising cultural complexities of moving communities to higher ground, the unwillingness of many island nations to be situated as canaries in the coalmine of the climate catastrophe, and the complicated political machinations surrounding the issue are all absent. The hollow simplicity of Whale’s sacrifice-as-panacea and repeated mistruths formed a hole in the centre of the production that had to be confronted by the audience’s active complication of the narrative. The production used lies and purposeful misinformation to provide space for the audience to question its authority. It is worth mentioning here that Whale is not alone in simplifying narratives of climate change, particularly in relation to the cultural impacts of inaction. This happens in the real world too. In her paper ‘Wishful Sinking’, Carol Farbotko speaks of the erasure of real, complicated Pacific Islands and the narratives that turn them into imagined ‘Western mythologies of island laboratories’ (Farbotko, 2010, p. 47). With islands being transformed into litmus tests for climate catastrophes, the theoretical versions of these islands ‘appropriate the space of an already marginalised population’ (p. 47). In the real world, this erasure happens insidiously, unnoticed and unquestioned. In Whale, the erasure and simplification is overt; a provocation to restore complexity to an issue that is as much a cultural catastrophe as an environmental one. Sonya constantly reassured the audience, ‘This is a play. It’s not real.’ This metatheatrical conceit, the showing of the structure of theatrics, the breaking of the fourth wall, began to clash with another primary tension of the production— that between truth and fiction. SONYA:

In this play the oceans are rising In this play the world is on the brink of a tragedy In this play our politicians have given into industrial lobbies again and again And because of that In this play People are going to die Imagine that

But of course, we know that these are facts that Sonya is presenting as fiction. If the oceans really are rising, and our narrator is lying to us, then what else is real in this play?

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Just as Whale’s obvious simplification of land loss draws attention to the complexity of the issue and its faux-resolution amplifies the fact that we do not have a solution, so too do Whale’s fictions act as Trojan horses for facts. The fictional pleas for made-up islands carry with them a truth, re-realised and re-felt by the act of an audience member having to sort the fact from fiction. As ‘delegates’ tell you that they aren’t the problem and they deserve to live, Australian audiences may well hear the pleas of real delegates who have come to this country many times to plead for their own homes: When it comes to high tide you can see the tide everywhere. It seeps through the whole island … It is difficult to determine who is listening and who is not listening. I believe they have heard our message so many times but we keep on pushing and advocating for Tuvalu and Kiribati and low-lying atolls so that leaders of Australia and other industrialised countries will continue to hear our voice. (Maina Talia from Tuvalu, 2014 to Julie Bishop and Greg Hunt, in McGrath, 2014)

Mocking the major and gesturing towards the minor By coming to the theatre and testing responses to climate disaster, Whale allowed the audience to rehearse for the future. By practising our reactions to an imminent but as-yet unexpressed cataclysm, we invoked the possibility of alternative reactions into the space. We practiced doing what we are told, and then we practiced letting things fall apart. The structure of Act One was a parody of what Manning refers to as the ‘major’—the accepted model for decision-making, importance and change (Manning, 2016). The town hall meeting place was a stand-in for institutions such as governments and corporations, the entities that enact force and power, and their sweeping pronouncements and misguided responses to catastrophe. According to Manning, ‘[t]hese grand gestures…are often seen as the site where true political change occurs, but in fact the grand gesture only upholds the status quo’ and ‘choreographs the field around a truth that seeks to justify the it is’ (pp. 221–222). Fleur wrote the epitome of the grand gesture: a brutal sacrifice to save the world. Act One is a world bounded by its own limits. Sonya embodied the status quo, the bodies seeking to solve problems through power and sublimation of responsibility. The audience was given the choice of three islands to sink. There was no space to ask what might happen outside of these options. This is what Braidotti calls ‘the closing down of the horizon of possible actions’ (Braidotti, 2019, p. 130); an essentially negative relationship to chaos. Manning states that ‘no grand gesture can settle the score’ (p. 223). So it is in Whale. The sacrifice fails. Nothing changes. Only the emergence of the Whale, the inherent other, shifts the world in a meaningful way. Act Two allowed for the emergence of the ‘minor’—the gestures of care, of complex thinking, of empathic connection. The Whale was the central site of

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these gestures, enacting them, receiving them. She revelled in her own indeterminacy (wild, both human and animal, thinking at an oceanic scale) and precarity. In her, we find ‘new forms of existence’, new ways of thinking, new paths to hope (Manning 2016, p. 2). Act Two was an offering of an alternative, a reordering of experience. The Whale was the embodiment of the affirmative cut that is the minor gesture—she represented an entirely different mode of being (Manning, 2016). The Whale represented hope. She asked, what else is possible?

Breaking down the rules of the well-made play The role-playing in the work was complex: Sonya and Sarah were nominally playing themselves, though their roles were mostly scripted. Fleur’s voice as the absent playwright was a constant presence, a force against which Sonya increasingly balked. Manning notes that participation cannot coexist with the notion of the creative individual at its centre (Manning, 2016). Whale took on this notion directly, constantly referring back to Fleur, as the creative genius behind the project, the one with the answers, the one who could solve the issues. The all-seeing, all-knowing and omnipotent hand of the playwright was challenged throughout the work, with Sonya eventually having an audience member text Fleur, demanding answers. Fleur’s response was an admission that, yes, we haven’t solved this yet, and that her control is minimal and falsified. SOMEONE READS TEXT:

Hi name Nice to hear from you Yeah we haven’t saved the world yet Sorry I understand how that can make for a bit of an unsatisfying night in the theatre

The playwright transformed from a being so powerful she might save the world to texting her failure from her couch at home, too cowardly to even come and see her own play. Her presence in the work tacitly asked the question many of us who are artists and writers are constantly battling: can I even change anything? Is my work of use? In this moment of global crisis, what is the point of me? The structure of Whale itself demonstrated what happens when we change tactics. The shift between Act One and Act Two was a shift of paradigm from the rules-based, structured, patriarchal, logical power of Act One, where Sonya told the audience what to do and say and feel. Act Two was a space of multiplicity, of listening and of care. Chanella, as the Whale, represented a new form of power, a power that exists in uncertainty and responsiveness. Theatremakers Rachel Perks and Bridget Balodis talk about queering the space of theatre by undermining the traditional three-act structure and making room for the unknown, for the

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possibility of many things being true (Tong, 2018). Act Two of Whale was a queer form of care and of power, where not knowing became a form of radical listening and the status quo fell away. Its humour, too, was gracious and generous, a laughing-with rather than the laughing-at of Act One. Act Two was a utopian space, where the world as it is shifts into a world that could be. Its form undermined the very existence of Act One and the barbaric process that we put our delegates through. WHALE:

This is my home Thanks for coming and stuff It’s pretty much Water So I hope you’ve enjoyed that I guess that might seem pretty simple compared to your lives It’s really hard to say why the place you live is special It’s just my favourite place It’s where every other whale before me has been born and swum and died for the last 50 million years So I’m pretty into it

In her simple description of her ocean, the Whale both echoed and made monstrous the speeches of the delegates in Act One, with their PowerPoint slides and digs at their neighbouring islands. If Act One represented the height of rationalism, where problems must be solved through detached, scientific balancing processes, Act Two marked a shift to a heterogeneous state where, as Estelle Barrett suggests, ‘distanced observation is replaced with aesthetic awareness’ (Barrett, 2013, p. 64). The second half of Whale prioritised subjective processes: ‘the interaction between the body as nonhuman (as matter), embodied experience, language and thought operating in social contexts’ (Barrett, 2013, p. 64). These are alternate forms of knowing; interpersonal and reactionary.

Participation and the anti-spectacle Whale hinged around the way that affect impacts the body’s capacity to act (Shouse, 2005), both literally and in the sense of taking on a role. It forced the audience to take part, to literally become actors in the fabricated town hall meeting to save the world. In doing so, it created a state where participants were made deeply aware of their own physical and intellectual responses to given stimuli. Whale’s audience was constantly placed on-edge. It mobilised the impact of the actor breaking the fourth wall and looking directly at the audience, eye to eye. Just when the audience was settling into a state of pure observation, Sonya would point at an audience member, ask them a question, draw their attention

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to their individuality, their electric presence in the space. To have an actor bring the attention of a whole room to you is an alarming experience. The audience members would react physically—they would start, sit up, grimace. This occurred, too, when Sarah photographed audience members whose faces were projected on-screen. As audience members recognised themselves being observed without realising, they would experience a moment of confusion, of slight panic. This moment of sudden pre-conscious horror, the body’s reaction before the brain kicks in, provided the essential affective intensity around which the production revolved. In the moment of being seen, of being singled out and asked to respond, the audience became primed in a state of readiness for action. This occurred on a small scale, through audience questioning, as well as in moments of crescendo in the production—the realisation that the audience would have to vote to sacrifice one of their own, and the sacrifice itself. Whale sought to weaponise this moment as a profound political and social force, and doubly drew attention to it through frustration. Throughout most of the play, whenever Sonya asked an audience member a question, she answered it for them (‘I’m really excited, actually. Are you? Say “yes”.’). The production structured this interaction specifically—an affective jolt, followed by a frustrating silencing of the individual’s actual intellectual and emotional responses and thoughts. By harnessing this moment of affective crisis, and by refusing to allow the audience member to act in a way that felt authentic, the production built up a tension that erupted in the sacrifice of the losing delegate. Through hundreds of micro-interactions, the audience was taught that affect would be followed by frustration. This coding was designed to be irritating, to encourage the drive towards real, meaningful action. Initially, the ramifications of being silenced were minimal, as Sonya asked questions about her own performance and party snacks. Towards the peak of Act One, though, the audience was denied agency around the sacrifice of one of their own, and purposefully corralled into a performed politics that prioritised the terrible exercise of power. This autocracy vanished when the Whale entered the stage and almost immediately opened the floor for questions, responding directly and authentically to the audience members as individuals. As Act Two progressed, and the ridiculous logic of the sacrifice fell away, space was opened up to connect the urge for action with the need for real and authentic responses. Throughout the production, we relied on the process of what Elizabeth Walden (2011) calls ‘reflexive mimesis’, whereby a work evokes a two-fold reaction—firstly, a sudden, pre-thought affective, empathetic reaction, followed by the arrival of questioning—of asking, why did I react like this? In Whale, we encouraged the audience to reflect on these moments of intensity, on the body’s readiness to act, and to consider the broader ramifications of this process. This was a methodology of provoking anxiety and then asking the person to use it. If affect is ‘the body’s way of preparing itself for action in a given circumstance by adding a quantitative dimension of intensity to the quality of an experience’ (Shouse, 2005,

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n.p.), then Whale sought at all times to add urgent intensity to the greater experience of living in climate crisis, to ask its audience to prepare, physically, and intellectually, for real and authentic action in the face of disaster. It asked them to cultivate bodies ready to receive affect, and ready to act on that intensity. It asked them to be as ready to act in the circumstances of grand global policy as they were when asked to offer chips to their neighbour. We attempted to harness an affective response to a particular condition—suddenly becoming public and visible to others—and extrapolated this urgency to climate issues. Whale constantly drew attention to the power of this affective jolt—notice what it feels like, this rush of shock and adrenalin. Now use it. Tomkins suggests that affects are ‘aroused easily by factors over which the individual has little control’ (Demos, 1995, p. 54). The audiences in Whale were constantly at the brink of this loss of control. In a society where climate issues in particular feel as though they put us in a situation where our agency is minimal, Whale’s controlled placing of the audience in an out of control environment formed a ground for testing affect and our reaction to it. These reactions changed across the course of each performance. Whale moulded the audience from a state of cynicism—where the shock of being called on provoked eye rolls and hammed-up nervousness—to one of serious harnessing of the jolt that comes with having to step up. By the end of the production, when the person playing Jonah was asked to give a grand speech about how to save the world, the audience member always took it seriously. Their impassioned speeches called on us to listen to women, to dissolve governments, to tear apart corporations. They were delivered with control and with fire. There was a sense of harnessing of power, of looking to the future with hope. This moment characterised the production’s urging towards an affirmative ethics, rooted in movement rather than despair (Braidotti, 2019). Whale also worked deeply with the idea of empathy through embodiment, where to act a role forces you to identify with the role. The moment at which the votes were counted, and the sacrifice was chosen, always contained an exhale, a vocalisation. A sense of relief and guilt that the second act, in its breaking down of the rules of engagement, developed into political questioning: who is really going down, and who are the ones making that choice? Rather than presenting a production that occurred in front of the audience, Whale was an event that happens to, with and by the audience. The audience’s experience was a putting-on of stories that were not their own. In the performing, though, they experienced a hybrid form of embodied story. The stage space was a collapsing of identities, where knowing became physical rather than intellectual. Whale took real tensions and cast the audience in a dual role where they were both acting as representatives of islands whose existences are fragile, actively inhabiting the fears around rising sea levels; and as the privileged, mostly white, mostly educated, mostly rich and mostly polluting decision-makers who occupy the seats of power making the choices that determine whether island nations live or die.

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FIGURE 5.3

The vote.

Raising the stakes: the vote and embodied decision-making The vote was the central emotional hinge of the production. In the moments before the three delegates were called out, every person in the audience was a person who might be sacrificed. While the selection of delegates was rigged, so that 89, 8780 and 0 would always be the numbers chosen, the audience was unaware of this conceit, and so the sense of uncertainty in the room was real. As Sarah pulled the numbers out of a hat, an electric burst of nervous laughter rippled through the theatre, alongside groans from the delegate chosen. By creating a moment where the continued existence of each island came into doubt, Whale took the ridiculousness of the production’s town meeting conceit, the thought that ‘this would never happen around here’, and encouraged a second thought: ‘but it is happening somewhere’. By locating an audience in the emotionality of an experience other than their own, they were forced into an engagement with the real issues occurring elsewhere. As soon as those three numbers were called out, though, the rest of the audience was endowed with terrible power. They became the decision-makers, the holders of the power of life and death. As the vote occurred, the drama ceased to occur with and to the performers, and became entirely enacted by and to the audience. The audience wielded their power and sacrificed one of their own. The affective reactions in this moment were multiple and often contradictory. Some voters laughed as they cast their votes. Others averted their eyes and apologised. One delegate, realising that her pile was growing and that she would be sacrificed, quietly cried as people placed stones into her hands. The vote represented a

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moment in which an event was happening not only in the narrative of the play, but actually, physically, to the participants in the space. The open nature of the vote introduced a moment of real stakes and real decision-making into the room, bringing a rush of attendant feeling. 8780 nearly always lost the vote and was sacrificed. Island 0, the island containing only penguins, never went down. Chanella’s experience backstage with the person sacrificed each night demonstrated these complexities. At a post-show Q&A, Chanella, herself a Pacific Islander woman, spoke about the experience of sitting backstage and waiting to hear who was voted down, and being deeply saddened every night when tiny islands were sacrificed over the island of penguins. She spoke about how hearing white Australian audiences justify voting down the delegates, she was horrified at how many people called 8780 a big island. ‘8000 people is nothing’, she said. In the party sequence, several audience members were asked who they voted for and why, and the answers were all the same—‘I killed the one with a lot of people. They were more at fault. I couldn’t kill the penguins. They were so cute.’ In the foyer after the show, however, these conversations started to fracture. ‘I just realised that penguins can swim.’ ‘I just realised that 8000 people is actually tiny.’ The show created a space where the audience members were made to occupy the positions of power, and in doing so, enacted that power in cruel and flippant ways. In conversations with audience members after the production, it was repeatedly revealed that voters wanted to punish someone. They knew that humans were responsible for climate change, and they felt a compunction to punish the largest possible number of people. This response perhaps indicated a referral of the sense of political impotence experienced by individuals who believe climate science but feel powerless to act in order to effect real change. Across the season, about ten people refused to vote. Everyone else did what they were told. As the structure of the show collapsed, they were given the space to notice that they had acted in keeping with the status quo, and to wonder why. Walter Benjamin prioritises the artwork as a model for turning ‘consumers into producers’ and ‘spectators into collaborators’ (Benjamin, 1934/2013, p. 89). This shift, from a passive observation of a work, to an engaged interactivity, provides a sense of group meaning-making, and of having something to do which begins onstage and aims to trickle into social and community spaces. The mayor of Darebin was one of the abstainers from the vote. She found Fleur after a show and asked, ‘What would you do if people rebelled? If they stormed the stage and demanded something different?’ Fleur said, ‘I guess then we’d stop the play. We’d open the doors onto the street and send them out into the world. Some things are more important than finishing the play.’ The mayor thought about this. ‘You know,’ she said, ‘it only takes 10% of the population rising up in an act of civil unrest to bring a government to its knees. That seems pretty achievable. Maybe I should go and get arrested.’

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Affect and the non-human A whale is a significant and emotive being to place in the midst of this very human story. A whale is and has been many things. Once it was a monster—the ‘here be dragons’ part of the map—then it became an industry, an oceanic oil mine to power kingdoms (Hoare, 2008). Perhaps whales are such magnets for human myth-making because the sheer size of them provokes a strong affective response. They are a full-bodied shock, every time. Even if you have seen whales many times before, their dinosaur-like scale and their ability to explore the deepest, darkest parts of our planet and the manner in which they appear and disappear in an opaque ocean, provokes a visceral and abstract sensation. In his book Leviathan, or, The Whale, Philip Hoare describes the moment when a whale disappeared beneath his boat as a combination of existential and physical displacement: ‘In that one motion, my entire presence is undermined. I feel, rather than see, this eighty-foot animal swimming below. Knowing it is there tugs at my gut’ (Hoare, 2008, p. 28). Today the whale is a symbol of nature’s scale and power and, simultaneously, a symbol of its vulnerability. Just as the polar bear’s identity has tipped from powerful killer to delicate, drowning victim in need of a saviour (Mooallem, 2013), so too is the whale on a journey from a symbol of awe to a symbol of guilt. In conversation with one of the production team’s scientific advisors, Rebecca Giggs reminded us that this giant, deeply intelligent creature only has a voice underwater. This makes this species a living embodiment of the need for humans to advocate for it on the comparatively small but disproportionately powerful parts of our planet where decisions are made: dry land. In creating an embodiment of nature, and in striving for what Haraway (2016) terms a ‘response-able’ relationship with the non-human, Whale sought to expand the field of thinking about the impacts of climate change beyond the populations we normally think of. The Whale became an elegant symbol for the profound interrelation of the human with the planet, and the impacts of human behaviour on the broader ecology. By placing a whale onstage and giving her a voice, Whale flattened the hierarchy of importance in the climate debate, drawing on thinking around the ontology of objects and new materialism (Morton, 2013). Chanella’s role fractured the space to allow the entry of the narratives that we do not hear— the systems, individuals and species shattered by climate change. Where the delegates acted as stand-ins for those at the periphery of global policy, the Whale acted as a coalescing of what it is to have trauma and pain abstracted and disregarded. Just as factual whales carry in them our cast-aside plastics and toxic waste (Giggs, 2015), our fictional whale is burdened with our discarded Jonah, which she must carry for us: a physical manifestation of our inadequate response to the peril of our planet. Brennan writes that ‘[t]he transmission of affect means that we are not self-contained in terms of our energies. There is no secure distinction between the “individual” and the “environment”’ (Brennan, 2004, p. 6). Whale took this theory literally, asking the audience member to be attuned to the

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transmission of affect not only between humans, but between the non-human and the human. Through the personification of the Whale, the production suggested that by attuning ourselves differently, we may find a new source of affect, a jolt of urgency and intensity in the natural world—in the sea, or weather, or animals. When we listen to the Whale, we open ourselves to the idea that we might develop a new relationship with the environment itself, and open ourselves up to transmission of messages from it. This strategy is associated with our continued interest in anthropomorphism, and the ways in which humans require the non-human to take on charismatic, human-like qualities in order to elicit our understanding and care. In ecological activism, the polar bear is often given as an example of a ‘charismatic animal’ whose expressions and needs are legible to humans. The image of a polar bear stranded on a tiny ice floe evokes much greater sympathy than a call to care about a beetle or a species of grass. Jon Mooallem writes in Wild Ones, ‘In the twenty-first century, how species survive, or go to die, may have more to do with Barnum than Darwin. Emotion matters. Imagination matters’ (Mooallem, 2013, p. 22). We have created a world where, just as animals must compete for food and habitat, so too must they compete for ‘cultural carrying capacity’: human willingness to tolerate and help them survive in a world in which even wildness is now a curated state of being (p. 21). The whale has often been co-opted as an animal that is read in human terms; as having a culture, a soul, song and processes of love and care. The Whale is immediately recognisable and charming, and her appearance in Whale placed her in human spaces, above the ocean, speaking human language. As Sonya and Sarah’s influence faded across Act Two, her presence marked a less rational, less logical, less human mode of thinking.

Deep feelings Whale created an activated space in order to mobilise its audience as citizens of a world in climate crisis. In walking the line between hope and despair, it sought to create a space for change, action and rage, and a reappraisal of the rules that we agree to socially and politically. It was a reminder that the unique gathering of humans, stories, rules and codes of the theatre is a space of electric potential, where activism and academics can come together to advocate for profound and lasting change. In a field where despair and grief hold power, Whale was devoted to the cultivation of affirmative ethics, of a hopeful relationship with its content. By drawing deep and sustained attention to the body’s reaction to input, it urged its audience to notice the ways in which the world outside the theatre made affective demands of them. By frustrating their ability to respond to these moments of intensity and urgency, it fermented the drive toward personal, individual and impactful action. In the explosion of form that occurred in Act Two, Whale enacted an affirmative mode of being, one that prioritised complication and care. It moved toward a state where audiences could speak freely and could turn deeply towards the non-human. In doing so, it held out the minor gesture as

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a real and meaningful subversion of the lumbering, thoughtless status quo. Whale allowed a room full of people to practice responses to climate catastrophe, and moved them towards the rehearsal of action and responsiveness. In doing so, it urged them towards radical hope—a hope that we will all need for the work ahead.

References Barrett, E. (2013). Materiality, affect, and the aesthetic image. In E. Barrett & B. Bolt (eds), Carnal knowledge: Towards a ‘new materialism’ through the arts (pp. 63–72). London: I.B. Tauris. Benjamin, W. (1934/2013). The author as producer. In M.W. Jennings, B. Doherty & T. Y. Levin (eds), The work of art in the age of its technological reproducibility and other writings on media (pp. 79–95). Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Braidotti, R. (2019). Posthuman knowledge. Medford, MA: Polity Press. Brecht, B., & Bentley, E. (1961). On Chinese acting. The Tulane Drama Review 6(1), 130–136. Brennan, T. (2004). The transmission of affect. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Demos, V.E. (ed.) (1995). Exploring affect: The selected writings of Silvan S. Tomkins. New York: Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge. Diack, H. (2012). The gravity of levity: Humour as conceptual critique. RACAR, Canadian Art Review 37(1), 75–86. Farbotko, C. (2010). Wishful sinking: Disappearing islands, climate refugees and cosmopolitan experimentation. Asia Pacific Viewpoint 51 (1), 47–60. Giggs, R. (2015). Whale fall. Retrieved from https://granta.com/whale-fall/. Haraway, D.J. (2016). Staying with the trouble: Making kin in the Chthulucene. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Hoare, P. (2008). Leviathan, or The whale. London: Fourth Estate. IPCC. (2018). Global warming of 1.5°C. An IPCC Special Report on the impacts of global warming of 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels and related global greenhouse gas emission pathways, in the context of strengthening the global response to the threat of climate change, sustainable development, and efforts to eradicate poverty. Retrieved from www. ipcc.ch/sr15/. Lewis, J. (2018). In the room with climate anxiety. Retrieved from www.psychiatrictimes. com/climate-change/room-climate-anxiety. Manning, E. (2016). The minor gesture. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Massumi, B. (2009). The future birth of the affective fact: The political ontology of Threat. In M. Gregg, G.J. Seigworth & S. Ahmed (eds), The affect theory reader (pp. 52–70). Durham, NC: Duke University Press. McGrath, C. (2014). Pacific nations urge climate change action, ask Australia for help. Retrieved from www.abc.net.au/news/2014-2005-27/pacific-countries-make-climatechange-appeal/5481050. Mooallem, J. (2013). Wild ones: A sometimes dismaying, weirdly reassuring story about looking at people looking at animals in America. New York: Penguin Press. Morley, S. (2010). The Sublime. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Morton, T. (2013). Hyperobjects: Philosophy and ecology after the end of the world. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Rayner, T., & Minns, A. (2015). The challenge of communicating unwelcome climate messages. Retrieved from https://tyndall.ac.uk/sites/default/files/publications/twp162.pdf.

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Shklovsky, V. (1917/1965). Art as technique. In L.T. Lemon & M.J. Reiss (eds), Russian formalist criticism: Four essays (pp. 3–24). Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press. Shouse, E. (2005). Feeling, emotion, affect. M/C Journal, 8 (6). Retrieved from http:// journal.media-culture.org.au/0512/03-shouse.php. Stanislavski, K. (1936/1989). An actor prepares. New York: Routledge. Stevens, T. (2013). Make believe by Jimmy Stewart. Retrieved from http://allplayall.net/? p=78. Tong, J. (2018). The dramaturgy of queer. Retrieved from https://witnessperformance. com/the-dramaturgy-of-queer. Walden, E. (2011). Reflexive mimesis in contemporary visual culture. Emotion, Space and Society 4, 35–41.

PART II

Affective methods

6 AFFECT AND AUDIENCING RIMINI PROTOKOLL’S WIN > < WIN Joanne ‘Bob’ Whalley and Lee Miller

This chapter will consider the piece win > < win, by Berlin-based performance company Rimini Protokoll, as a means to explore the potential for complicity in affective states between audience and performer, especially in works that might be understood as co-created or co-constitutive. By focusing upon work that requires an audience for completion, we seek to negotiate what Jones and Stephenson (1999) refer to as the ‘complicity of the audience’ in not only in the making of meaning, but also in the wider entanglement of shared affect. The decision to focus upon co-creative, or co-constitutive processes in live performance allows us to foreground the potential for messy entanglement of audience/performer subjectivities, and reflects a gradual move in theatre and performance from an assumed passivity, towards a more complicit engagement. Recent explorations of immersive performance, and the academic writing which has followed, has sought to point to the potential when audience and performer are no longer kept apart. While there are doubtless arguments to be made for such an interactive turn to open up a more ‘democratic’ approach to performance, that is not the focus of this chapter. Rather than consider work which relies upon or develops a specific type of audience/performer interaction (an area already rigorously considered by academics such as Welton, 2011; Chatzichristodoulou & Zerihan, 2012; Machon, 2013; White, 2013; and Hill & Paris, 2014), this chapter will explore the potentially messy hinterland of intra-action in performance. Before moving on, it is necessary to reflect briefly upon the potential concern that arises from co-creative/co-constitutive performance practices, specifically in relation to the hierarchies of power at play within the performer/audience dynamic. Evidently these will differ dependent on the type of performance work, the venue, the geographic location of the venue, etc. As with any questions of democracy and empowerment, no matter the layout of the venue, nor the

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intended level of interaction, in the performer/audience relationship simple equality is impossible. Instead, we understand the audience/performer relation as para-social, an uneven interpersonal relationship, in which one party will have significantly more information about the other. The experience, while not onesided as such, is certainly uneven. Even in immersive and interactive performances where work is often constructed in such a way to mitigate against it, culturally speaking, the power is held on one side of the intersubjective exchange, which complicates further what is happening in the gap in-between. However, for the purposes of this chapter we must park this debate, and focus instead on the potential for entangled agencies that spring from understanding a performance exchange through the filter of ‘intra-action’. A Baradian neologism, it explores the way that we experience the world as a negotiation between ontological and epistemological framing. We understand the play in-between these two as an agentic space: the intra-, emerging from within the conjoined relationship between concepts and things. Intra-action smears the ontological and the epistemological, as a result of ‘entangled material practices’ (Barad, 2007, p. 56). In a publication that explicitly foregrounds an interrogation of the term ‘affect’ it is perhaps somewhat redundant to spend too long on a consideration of its meaning. Nevertheless, given that we focus upon an installation by Rimini Protokoll which removes the human-animal performer from the equation, it is probably useful to briefly sketch an understanding of the term, in order that we might unpack how it pertains to the potential of win > < win. When attempting to find a definition of affect, Brian Massumi turns to the originator of the term, Baruch Spinoza: [t]he concept of affect that I find most useful is Spinoza’s well-known definition. Very simply, he says that affect is ‘the capacity to affect or be affected’. This is deceptively simple. First, it is directly relational, because it places affect in the space of relation: between an affecting and a being affected. It focuses on the middle, directly on what happens between. More than that, it forbids separating passivity from activity. (Massumi, 2015, p. 91) In this understanding, Massumi positions affect as proto-political in that it requires an openness, one that demands an agent to be both in and of the world. Despite the apparent simplicity of the observation, in this figuration to experience affective states is to recognise them as the result of a distributed responsibility, to see oneself in relation to other constitutive entities. The implied extension of the self offers the capacity to move beyond the limits of our (human) bodies and the solipsism that might imply. This, along with Barad’s assertion that when bodies intra-act, they do so in a co-constitutive manner, is central to understanding the very real potential for an affective exchange when audiencing Rimini Protokoll’s win> < win offers a model of what can happen to the concept of affective exchange when the relationship between spectator and the performer is radically

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unsettled. By foregrounding the non-human animal as ‘performer’, the piece interrupts normative experiences of intersubjectivity in performance, opening itself up instead to the deliberate in-between of intra-action. In order to make this case, a case built upon our own experiences of both making and watching a wide variety of live performance practice, we will develop the concept of ‘audiencing’. First surfaced by John Fiske, he offers the concept of as a means to understand audience engagement as a sensorial, self-determined, and resistant action. He notes that ‘[w]hen audiences are understood as textual subjects […], they are seen as relatively powerless and inactive’ (Fiske, 1987, p. 61). The significant phrase here is ‘they are seen’. Fiske is not positioning the viewer as passive, only that she is seen to be so. In her introductory essay to the 2010 edition of About Performance, an issue subtitled ‘Audiencing: The Work of The Spectator in Live Performance’, Laura Ginters observes that despite the fact that in ‘all but the rarest cases, spectators are the largest number of contributors to the live performance event’ (Ginters, 2010, p. 7), audiences have been largely omitted from theatrical scholarship. In terms of writing specifically aimed at addressing theatre audiences, ‘spectators have historically been the least studied and the most generalised of all participants’ (p. 7). This tension is explored in detail by Jacques Rancière, first in his article ‘The Emancipated Spectator’ and then his book of the same name: There is no theatre without spectatorship […. b]ut spectatorship is a bad thing. Being a spectator means looking at a spectacle. And looking is a bad thing, for two reasons. First, looking is deemed the opposite of knowing. It means standing before an appearance without knowing the conditions which produced that appearance or the reality that lies behind it. Second, looking is deemed the opposite of acting. He who looks at the spectacle remains motionless in his seat, lacking any power of intervention. (Rancière, 2007, p. 272) When discussing the concept of ‘audiencing’ Ginters rightly asks ‘why does this “corporeal presence but […] slippery concept” (Kennedy, 2009, p. 3) have an etymology based in the visual in the singular and the auditory in the collective?’ (Ginters 2010, p. 8). The etymology of performance reception is predicated upon reception, not contribution. Rancière’s call is for an emancipation from the externality of spectatorship, and the resulting internalised responses, ‘“[t]he more man contemplates, the less he is,” Debord says’ (Rancière 2007, p. 274). By equating visuality to externality, and externality as a movement towards an imagined or projected other, Rancière offers a perspective on the potential for a loss of agency. Of course, Rancière’s consideration goes beyond a simple binary. When discussing Jeremy Deller’s The Battle of Orgreave (2001), Claire Bishop observed that ‘the binary of active versus passive hovers over any discussion of participatory art and theatre, to the point where participation becomes an end in itself’ (Bishop, 2012 p. 37). Developing

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this thinking, she goes on to reference Rancière, reminding her reader that the acceptance of a passive / active binary is to enter into a stalemate. Bishop’s use of Rancière unsettles the simplicity of visuality equalling passivity; examples abound, not least Mulvey’s conceptualisation of the male gaze, a viewing strategy that despite critique, remains an active way of understanding the power inherent in looking. To look is to have power, it is an agency unto itself. When focusing upon work that is co-created through a triangulation of an arts collective (Rimini Protokoll), performers (in this instance a tank of jelly-fish) and the wider audience, it becomes interesting to consider how affective exchanges function in co-creative/co-constitutive processes when non-human performers function as a lens through which audience members are able to witness themselves and one-another. Audiencing explicitly affords space for the body to know and to speak. In order to unpack this, it becomes necessary to offer a certain level of description. Installed in the basement level of MAAT’s kunsthall which sits on the backs of the Tejo in Lisbon, the installation was accessed through a sliding door opened by gallery attendants every nine minutes. Depending on the timing of your arrival, you would either be shown into the space to the left, or the right. It is important to note that although we were to subsequently become aware that there were two spaces, this was not immediately evident upon first encountering the work. While both spaces mirror one another, the initial experience of watching the work was to assume a singular experience. As it transpired, the two spaces were a mirror image of each other, with both containing two curved benches on a rake; the front row had three seats, the back row had six. Each seat had a pair of headphones connected to a switch labelled ‘PT/EN’, allowing the listener to choose between Portuguese or English language versions. In front of the benches was a wall which, at first glance, seemed to contain a round mirror. Once the audience settled, the piece began with a slight dimming of the lights, and the following text: Relax. You are looking at human beings. Crown of Creation. They are characterised by erect posture and bipedal locomotion, high manual dexterity, and heavy tool use compared to other animals, and a general trend towards larger, more complex brains and societies. You are one of them. Do you like what you are seeing?

The mirror encouraged at those in encouraged

became the locus of attention, with the text offering a narrative that a gentle interrogation of social interaction, sanctioning open staring the room, using the mirror as a mediating device. The text then the audience to look at one another, and begin to gently interact:

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Crown of creation. How long have you been on this planet? Put your hand up and indicate your age with your fingers. I see. Who of you do you think will live the longest? Point your finger at that person in the mirror. Aha, we have a winner. And who among you will die the soonest? Point your finger at that person in the mirror. What kind of world will you live in? What will life be like fifty years from now? Cover your eyes with your hands. After a few more moments, and prompts to imagine how the world will look in ten, fifteen, twenty, thirty, fifty years in the future, we are encouraged to uncover our eyes. The room is now fully dark, and the mirror is revealed to be a fish tank, filled with jellyfish that gently float around in a clockwise direction. After some more text, the lighting state changes and the room beyond the ‘mirror’ becomes visible, and with it the audience who you realise has been watching your actions. Unsure if we are in this together, implicated in one another’s prognostications, this is often the moment where participants would leave. Perhaps their exit was as a result of the unwelcome reveal, or perhaps they were simply spurred by boredom. Whatever the driver, it was hard not to get up and follow. We sat with the piece on numerous occasions over the summer of 2018, and if there was a common moment of egress, this was it. That moment of revelation, the point at which we realise we have been observed, soon shifts to a moment of complicity. Under normal circumstances, and by this we mean in a piece which offers human-performers as a strategy for the development of affective states (see Whalley & Miller, 2017), any anxiety that we might have felt as the result of an audience member leaving would be mitigated by the realisation that we were not the cause of the departure. If a fellow audience member appears to take offence at work we are witnessing, any awkwardness is simply social. In the case of win > < win the awkwardness is ours alone. We (and this is collective here, the we who author this piece of writing, the we who made up the temporary community of the audience, the we that includes the intra-action of Rimini Protokoll, jelly-fish performers, and witnesses) are responsible for the shared affective state in the room. The complicity of the audience expands to include a shared responsibility towards those who need to leave—for whatever reason. A new audience is led in to the room beyond the mirror/tank, and we become time travellers; not in the sense that we imagine our future (but yes, why not that too), but because we realise that we are seeing a moment from our own past. We watch as headphones are put on, as toggles are flipped from English to Portuguese or back again, we see our past but realise that those who recently departed

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have already had this realisation, that our new understanding is in fact nothing of the sort. Everything we experience has happened already. There is no interlocutor; the work is just one audience slowly becoming aware of another audience, only for them to leave, be replaced by another, and for the cycle to loop on; as infinite as the jellyfish that separate and connect us. The future is not just what happens after the Anthropocene, some distant moment where the waters are too warm, and their inexorable rise replaces the crown of creation with this fourstomached ravenous but witless jelly. No, the future is the moment that you step outside the room, the future is the moment you realise you have been observed, the future is when you put the headphones on, the future has already happened. But let us park for a moment the elegance of the looping structure of the work. Let us park the questions we might have about the potential for affective exchange when you are unaware you are witnessed. Let us instead dwell with those who choose to leave. Not to project onto them intentions, but simply to ask what their departure means for a piece which requires the presence of two audiences for the work to exist. If our continued presence is an example of audiencing, then what is their departure? Hall ([1973]1980) talks about the pleasure to be gained from negotiated and oppositional readings. Is leaving a form of oppositional reading, and if so, what is the pleasure to be gained from going? Perhaps the pleasure comes not from leaving, but from not staying. Perhaps in the light of open texts and audienced practices, ‘resistant’ is not a rejection of dominant readings, but of dominant behaviours. This is probably too simplistic, but the departure does something interesting to the assumed pliability of the audience expected by Rimini Protokoll, one that opens up ethical questions. By the time you know you are ‘seeing’ you also know you have already been seen. Maybe we are leaving so we don’t have to be tethered to our own body—shucking off our future selves through a moment of resistance. Whatever the reason, what becomes clear is that in audiencing, refusal doesn’t have to be a yes/no binary. This recognition, and the attendant neologistic turn which moves audience from noun to verb, reminds us of the space opened up between passive and active, and it is with this move that we begin to question if audiencing might offer more than a development of active-readership, but be positioned as a performance-practice in its own right. In keeping with much of the recent scholarship on immersive performance, we understand the audience as having real affective significance. Audiencing is to move beyond opening up space in which resistant readings afford the spectator space to actively contribute to their own experience, it becomes a process of production. The moment that we accept audiencing as a foundational element of those practices that can be understood as co-creative or co-constituitive, we believe that any act of completion becomes an act of creation. As we ‘audienced’ win> < win 113

Perhaps it is too obvious to state that the audience is important. But hidden in those few words are complex layers of ownership, patronage, politics, and sociocultural baggage that would take more time to unpick than we have at our disposal. In any case, our intention is not to consider the socio-cultural as much as it is to explore the grounded experience of being a member of an audience. For a more detailed overview of audience theory, we would point you to the slim volume Theatre & Audience by Helen Freshwater, who offers a useful consideration of the potential for discomfort afforded by the ‘expert witness’, especially if that critical voice asserts a totalising response, which can, in the words of Elin Diamond generate ‘a fictitious but powerful sense of community that buttresses but also conceals the narcissistic claims of the critic’ (Diamond in Freshwater, 2009, p. 9). The shift from noun to verb of audiencing invokes knowledges that range from procedural/implicit/tacit understandings, to declarative/explicit modes of knowing that place experience in a grounded context. Between these two is the ‘gap’, where the audience exists on a daily, moment-to-moment basis, negotiating between these dynamic processes. Our experience of win > < win refigures the relationship between the microcosm and the macrocosm; between the human body and its environment; the audience and the performance. We experienced a reversal of the usual expectation, where the performer is considered the ‘human body’ and the contextual location of the audience and their bodies, is seen as the environment. Audiencing win > < win allowed us to identify tentative and competing narratives which afforded us as spectators a valuable space in which to generate a deeper understanding of the space for affective exchange in and amongst audiences, and recognise in the absence of a standard interlocutor, this sharing shifted radically the tenor of our experience. We were able to more explicitly understand our position as audience being part of a network, a series of agentic assemblages which serve to co-create artistic practice. Audiencing (especially if we are thinking about it as an emerging artistic practice) functions as something more slippery, something more like the in-between-ness of Stuart Hall’s negotiated reading, where active engagement with texts that require completion does not necessarily devolve into immediate and unquestioning capitulation to instruction. The idea of co-creation is a vexed one. In most artistic practice, we recognise that collaboration does not require an even, 50/50 split of activities for all parties to be valued. We don’t count the number of lines, or the number of steps and offer a threshold beneath which this performer is no longer an actor, no longer a dancer. Collaboration requires a range of people, contributing a range of skills. Hierarchy is often implicit. If the presence of an audience is required to activate an artwork, if an audience is necessary for the work to complete itself, then spectatorship transcends the ocular and auricular that traditional terminology implies (SPECTator, AUDience), and the potential for understanding generated ‘beyond, beneath and beside’ (Sedgwick, 2003, p. 125) the practice and the audience emerges.

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For Rancière, the co-created text is a return to the sensibility of classical antiquity, in which: the ‘being apart’ from the stage was enveloped in the continuity of the ‘being together’. The signs displayed by the representation, signalled the being together of the community addressed by it, and thus the universality of human nature. (Rancière, 2009, p. 61) This sense of community as central to the generation of meaning, is something that Rancière believes has returned in light of more radically open texts that require active involvement from the spectator. Perhaps unsurprisingly, phrases such as ‘co-creator’ abound when discussing an audience’s relationship to open texts. These shifts in understanding how an audience responds to the material presented to them, or perhaps more accurately, how an audience activates such texts inevitably leads to questions of democratisation and empowerment. As immersive and interactive performance practices become more familiar to mainstream audiences, what an audience is or perhaps does, inevitably becomes of increased interest to academics and cultural commentators alike. To return to Rancière: [e]ven if the playwright or director does not know what she wants the spectator to do, she at least knows one thing: she knows that she must do one thing—overcome the gulf separating activity from passivity. (Rancière, 2009, p. 12) We are not suggesting that simply to be more involved is to have more control, or that the invitation to engage is tantamount to the creation of a democratic space, rather that there are certain scenarios in performance practice that utilise an audience for more than reception. To return to win > < win, our shared audiencing of this work instils a sense of collective responsibility. That the work is so explicitly in dialogue with the emergence of the anthropocene, and exemplifies climate through an intra-action with the jelly-fish performers, moves us far beyond an active/passive binary. Through the intra-action of audiencing, win > < win points to a co-constitutive process far beyond the co-creation of an installation; it points to the wider ecological narratives driving the work. As such, this activity occupies a different resonance than more established viewing practices. We are not suggesting that these are new processes, and rather than conceiving of the relationship between the audience and the performance as a binary split, it is more helpful to think about the relationship in terms of a continuum. To try to untangle this, it is useful to consider two pieces from the practice of Marina Abramović; Rhythm 0 and The Artist is Present. When Helen Freshwater writes about Marina Abramovic´’s 1974 piece, she refers to ‘the now infamous Rhythm 0’ (Freshwater 2009, p. 62), an indication of the almost mythical

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status of work which could be seen as the apotheosis of audience/performer—but also audience/audience—antagonism. Over the six hours of the piece’s installation, Abramovic´ had her clothes cut off, cuts made in her skin, and eventually a loaded gun placed in her hand and pointed at her head. Evidently, these actions, and the subsequent fight that broke out as the audience split into factions—those wanting to see the experiment through to its logical conclusion, and those who wanted to protect the performer—exemplify an audience trying to work out their role in the exchange. Whatever the eventual outcome, it was the presence of the audience that allowed the work to happen. Without them, the piece could not exist. Apparently in stark contrast to this piece stands The Artist is Present (2010), a work that, for Abramovic´ at least, is typified by communication, collaboration, and mutual trust. We have already offered an extensive critique of our experience of this work (see Whalley & Miller, 2017), and see no need to return to it here. Instead, we wish to consider the space opened up by Abramovic´’s open scorebased practice, as a means to exemplify the resistance of binary thinking when it comes to audience—performer, or audience—audience interaction and affective exchange. Rather than figuring those audience members who choose to engage in audiencing as occupying a more complex position than those that choose not to, it is more appropriate to see these positions like the witnesses of Rhythm 0; part of a continuum of responses necessary to complete the work, even if that completion comes from refusal and the ultimate ‘failure’ of the work. For the spectator engaged in audiencing, whether through active participation, outright refusal, or some admixture of the two. Which brings us back to the two bodies that we occupy, our experiences of audiencing, and the claim we wish to make for it as an arts practice in its own right. As practitioners of audiencing, we have come to think of our bodies as the site of emancipation, and have begun to reflect upon the ‘training’ (intentional and otherwise) which has led to an ongoing change at the humoral level, allowing for a somatic shift that impacts our intersubjective experience. Simply put, we have come to realise that when we are audiencing, we are not reading the work; we are making it. Of course, this statement is somewhat blunt, but we offer it here as our attempt to untangle the manifold experiences of creative knowledge exchange, and better understand our role as audience through the prism of practice. To invoke Levinas and the contingency of language, ‘language refers to the position of the listener and the speaker’ (Levinas, 2003, pp. 11–12). The neologistic turn of audiencing, the borrowing from Fiske, and the avowal that to audience is to practice, allows us to move beyond the normative power-dynamics of co-creation. By positioning the practice of audiencing as an activated moment of artistic practice in its own right, central to the production of certain types of work, we move beyond the apparent imbalances alluded to above. If we see audiencing as artistic practice, we are better able to position it within other narratives of affective exchange. By formalising the position of the co-constitutive participant through language, by framing her engagement as both agentic and

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generative, the space for affect exchange opens up. By invoking the work of Martin Buber, Crossley positions these exchanges as part of a complex series of relational engagements; with one’s own corporeal self, with the environment it occupies and through dialogue with other subjectivities: [t]he body-subject responds to an environment. It is in dialogue with its environment and this dialogue is irreducible. Its actions can no more be understood without reference to ‘its environment’ than ‘its environment’ can be understood independently of the perception-action which gives that environment its nature […] Subjects stand together in an I–Thou relation. Their actions interlock and engage, each motivated and coordinated by and through an orientation to the other, but without conscious positing and reflective awareness of either self or other. (Crossley, 1996, p. 32) When the ‘performer’ and the ‘audience’ share the same roles, as is the case with Rimini Protokoll’s win > < win, the intra-action of the affective exchange is an explicit shift from the solipsistic to the relational. The neologism of audiencing affords an embracing of intra-action, foregrounding as it does a co-constitutive approach, one that requires a ‘with-ness’, ensuring we remain in-between. Like Ginters et al before us, the use of audiencing functions to open space for an explicit conversation around affective exchange in co-constitutive events, especially in its potential to expand and unsettle the active/passive binary in spectatorship. To return to Fiske, he considers audiencing as a ‘micro-rebellion’, a process that opens up the possibility of change at a structural level through incremental incursions into the dominant ideologies of what it is to be a spectator. This recognition, and the attendant neologistic turn which moves audience from noun to verb, explicitly unsettles the shift from passive to active, instead allowing space for intra-action and an entanglement of agency.

References Abramovic´, M. (1974). Rhythm 0. Six-hour durational performance, Studio Morra, Naples. Abramovic´, M. (2010). The Artist is Present. Long durational performance, MoMA [Museum of Modern Art], New York, 14 March–31 May. Barad, K. (2007). Meeting the universe halfway: Quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Bishop, C. (2012). Artificial hells: Participatory art and the politics of spectatorship. New York: Verso. Chatzichristodoulou, M. & Zerihan, R. (eds) (2012). Intimacy across visceral and digital performance. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Crossley, N. (1996). Intersubjectivity: The fabric of social becoming. London: Sage Publications. Diamond, E (2007). The violence of ‘we’: Politicizing identification. In J. Reinelt & J. R. Roach (eds), Critical theory and performance. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, pp. 403–412.

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Fiske, J. (1987). Television culture. London: Methuen. Fiske, J. (1992). Audiencing: A cultural studies approach to watching television. Poetics, 21 (4), 345–359. Freshwater, H. (2009). Theatre and audience. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Ginters, L. (2010) On audiencing: The work of the spectator in live performance. About Performance, 10: 7–14. Hall, S. ([1973]1980) Encoding/decoding. In S. Hallet al. (eds), Culture, media, language. London: Hutchinson, pp. 128–138. Hill, L. & Paris, H. (2014). Performing proximity: Curious intimacies. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Jones, A. & Stephenson, A. (eds). (1999). Performing the body/performing the text. London: Routledge. Kennedy, D. (2009). The spectator and the spectacle: Audiences in modernity and post-modernity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Levinas, E. (2003). Humanism of the other. Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press. Machon, J. (2013). Immersive theatres: Intimacy and immediacy in contemporary performance. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Massumi, B. (2015). Politics of affect. Cambridge: Polity. Mulvey, L. (1975). Visual pleasure and narrative cinema. Screen, 16 (3): 6–18. Rancière, J. (2007). The emancipated spectator. Artforum, March: 271–280. Rancière, J. (2009). The emancipated spectator, trans. G. Elliott. New York: Verso. Rimini Protokoll. (2017). win > < win, installation by Helgard Haug, Stefan Kaegi, Daniel Wetzel, commissioned for exhibition ‘After the End of the World’ at CCCB [Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona], 25 October 2017–1 May 2018, and in ‘EcoVisionaries: Art and Architecture after the Anthropocene’ exhibition at MAAT [Museu Arte Arquitetura Tecnologia] Lisbon, 11 April—8 October 2018. Sedgwick, E. K. (2003). Touching feeling: Affect, pedagogy, performativity. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Welton, M. (2011). Feeling theatre. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Whalley, J. B. & Miller, L. (2017). Between us: Audiences, affect and the in-between. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. White, G. (2013). Audience participation in theatre: Aesthetics of the invitation. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

7 DEVISING CREATIVITY IN HONG KONG An affective performance methodology Anne Harris and Kelly McConville

Affective encounters Affect studies has taken deep root and diversified since Silvan Tomkins’s articulation of his ‘nine affects’ within psychology (Tomkins, 1962/1991), now most widely known by contemporary critical scholars including Lauren Berlant and Kathleen Stewart (2019), Lauren Berlant (2011), Sara Ahmed (2010), Melissa Gregg and Gregory Seigworth (2010), Erin Manning (2009), Kathleen Stewart (2007), and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick (2003), among others. While we look elsewhere for signs of life, agency and matter that matters, affect studies encourages scholars to look more critically at the pre-emotional intensities, flows and opportunistic nature of events and bodies of all kinds. Manning tells us to look for ‘expression of body-movement relation—the interval—brimming over with micro-perceptions … never quite actualized. What is expressed is the variational field of movement. What is produced is sensation or feeling, affective tone’ (Manning, 2009, p. 95). Devising in research or other contexts is an example of Manning’s interval, an exchange or event between bodies toward an indeterminate but shared idea—in this case an idea about creativity and its different lives in different cultures. This chapter explores the ways in which, in one case study, affect presents itself in a verbatim theatre event as a pulse that moves between and amongst the bodies collaborating about creativity and culture. For us, Manning’s articulation of affective bodies helps us think differently about collaborative performance-making and co-creation, recognising that ‘While affect can never be separated from a body, it never takes hold on an individual body. Affect passes through, leaving intensive traces on a collective bodybecoming’ (Manning, 2009, p. 95). This essay brings together creativity studies, performance and affect in a transcultural project, a collaboration between Hong Kong and Australian theatre-makers/researchers.

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Performing Hong Kong. Photo by Ka Lai Chan

FIGURE 7.1

The project’s conceptual approach is informed by Harris’s (2014) articulation of a cultural turn in creativity discourses which favours innovation and commodification rather than slow creativity, aesthetic or experiential creativity, or play and experimentation. The ‘Phase 2’ of the overall 4-year study sits within the long tradition of theatre practice built upon found source materials alternatively described as verbatim theatre, documentary theatre, reader’s theatre, ethnodrama, and performance ethnography. Creating place-based performance works in research contexts, and in response to research engagements, is nothing new. However, finding practice-led ways of conducting or enhancing large-scale, mixed-method, multi-sited ethnographic projects, and in ways that attend to the affective dimensions of this work, are. Beck et al. (2011) note the slippages in various forms of what they term ‘research-based theatre’ that encapsulates verbatim, performance ethnography, ethnodrama, and more. They point to tensions like aesthetics which are governed by university ethics processes when making theatre in academic settings or with scholarly data in which consideration of human and other participants must be primary. The 4-year research project from which this ‘Phase 2’ devising work is excerpted, investigates culturally specific forms of creativity—its practices and its discourses—across higher education and creative and cultural industries throughout East Asia and Australia. We address the devising component independently, in order to more deeply explore its possibilities for expanding the depth and affective resonance of large-scale international (mixed method) research projects.

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East Asian creative flows Attention to the possibility of a regionally unique way of expressing and understanding creativity in this overall study allows a process of ‘zooming in’ and ‘zooming out’, an integrated meta-view of the creative flows across our region, but also the specifics of cities-as-sites rather than whole nations. Set against snapshots of all sites from a creative economic and cultural industry view, the Phase 2 verbatim/devising aspect of the study is one collaborative ‘zoom in’ that facilitates close attention to the affective reverberations of intercultural collaboration through theatre devising. It recognises and values creative practice as culturally and contextually generated, and investigates the unique contribution of an ‘Asian-Australian creativity’ as specific to our geopolitical place and time. The project is generating new cultural, interdisciplinary and policy knowledge into how regional cooperation, marked by new models of educational and workplace training, are emerging. By looking across the education lifespan and creative economic practices and goals, the project builds transnational understanding and alliances for Asia Pacific regional and global creative economic success. This essay explores the affective power of both co-devising across cultural differences, but also the ability of multi-sited ethnographic research work to bridge difference and sameness in global flows. Following Kathleen Gallagher’s (2014) work on youth engagement and international multi-sited theatre collaboration, this project attends to the affective power of being-with across those global flows.

Methodology The methodology for the study was derived from Harris’s articulation of and commitment to the power of a ‘creative ecology’ rather than investigating individual creativity (Harris 2016; Harris & de Bruin, 2018a, 2018b). The overall study is comprised of six sites across Australia and Asia: Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Hong Kong, Singapore and Indonesia. In ‘Phase 1’, each mixed methods data set consists of: 150 online surveys with higher education students in a range of disciplines, plus 25 one-to-one hour-long interviews with participants from three sectors: university educators, creative/cultural industries’ managers and professionals, and artists from diverse artforms. The surveys are concerned with the kind of training and perceptions of workplace requirements the university students in these cities are experiencing, anticipating or preparing for. The semistructured interview questions are focused on local, regional, and transnational perceptions and practices of creative and cultural economies, specific to their context and sector. In total, the full data set for this study will comprise 900+ surveys, 150 one-on-one interviews, six 30-minute devised performances, and a 50+ archive of creative self-portraits. Phase 1 data sets include rich, thick description of the creative environments (as part of the ‘creative ecologies’ conceptual approach), as well as participants’ deep narratives of their creative professional experiences, enabling a focus on the lived experience and perspective of the participants, as qualitative inquiry seeks to do

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(Denzin & Lincoln, 2008; Creswell, 2008). This chapter draws on the Hong Kong data, including the interview participant set (55% female and 45% male) who discussed experiences that revealed a rich creative ecology that is ‘embedded and immersed in a world of objects and relationships, language and culture, projects and concerns’ (Smith, Flowers & Larkin, 2009, p. 21), articulating the shaping of creative experiences, creative processes, collaborations, and the affordances of and constraints to creativity in their work and learning environments in 2018–2019. A survey of 150 university students across five institutions in Hong Kong provide quantitative data on students’ perceptions of their own and their institutions’ creative training and environmental characteristics. The statistical and survey data was collected online, coded and analysed using Dedoose software and focused mostly on their perceptions of creativity within their institution and course, always with reference to the specificities of each site, in this case the Hong Kong context. More in-depth qualitative questions were asked of the university teachers, creative/cultural industries professionals and artists via one-on-one interviews, in which they described their environments (classes within university courses, creative capacities within current creative workforces, and artists’ creative practices in contemporary creative cultures and economies). An ecological perspective considered creativity development, practices, and inter-connectivity across different strata –between and within levels of education, providing detailed reflections of needs, wants, and actualities of graduate capabilities, as well as of the wider ‘creative content’ within university courses, creative industries and artist practices. The narrative data was firstly open-coded through an ‘immersion approach’ that established preliminary interpretations. Multiple readings accompanied by general note taking summarised chunks of data into emergent themes. Quantitative student data is used to contextualise beliefs of skills gained and environments in which both the university teachers and students are learning in a ‘creative ecology’ or community. The larger data sets possible through quantitative survey tools allows the rich narrative data of the interviews to be broadened as well as multiple perspectives brought to bear. In addition, qualitative responses from teacher and practitioner/artists offer an experiential account of how university is/ is not preparing students for the workforce, as well as how industry practitioners perceive the creative qualifications of graduates entering Hong Kong’s workforce. Phase 2 is comprised of two parts: a digital photographic component, and a partdevised, part-scripted performance component. The photographic component asks willing interview participants to allow the research team to photograph them in their ‘creative work environment’, or alternatively to share with the team their own ‘selfie’ which reflects their creative self-image or the creative ecology in which they work. These images help constitute an online archive of creative environments (together mapping a ‘creative ecology’) in each of the six sites in the study. First, in order to contextualise the study overall, and especially our focus

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on Phase 2 performance devising for this essay, we briefly survey contemporary conditions for creativity and education in Hong Kong.

Creative ecologies in Hong Kong Hong Kong is changing at an unprecedented rate, culturally, politically and economically. Those both in and outside of Hong Kong have noted the importance of creativity for Hong Kong’s next stage of development. Led by their creative industries sector, Hong Kong—like most other emerging creative economies—still struggles to define its unique creative identity, two decades after the British ‘hand back’ of Hong Kong to China, and within a growing mainland Chinese political and economic influence. As one of the actors in our project reflects: If we only see mainland China we will think that we are not good enough, but compared with the Western part of the world we see that we also have a position for being a place of art. It is very important to do comparisons, otherwise we don’t know what we are. The Hong Kong government has funded major industry-oriented organisations to advance workforce capabilities. In 2001 the Hong Kong Innovation and Technology Commission were tasked with spearheading Hong Kong’s drive to become a world-class, knowledge-based economy (see www.itc.gov.hk), by funding the Innovative Technology Fund (ITF) and the DesignSmart initiative. Its aims were to support the fostering of an innovation and technology culture, promote technological entrepreneurship, and to provide technological infrastructure that facilitates the development of innovation and technology. Other initiatives since 2001 have included the Science Park (design and technology initiative), ASTRI (technological transfer from industry for commercialisation) and Cyberport, a US$2 billion landmark project housing about 100 infotech companies and 10,000 infotech professionals. The Hong Kong Design Centre is a multi-disciplinary, non-profit organisation that holds year-round seminars, workshops and conferences to promote awareness of upgrading the business and design expertise of design professionals and students. The Hong Kong Arts Development Council (ADC) promotes and supports the broad development of the arts, acting as a link between the government, arts sector and the public. In the last ten years, international flagship events like Art Basel and others have put Hong Kong on the international stage as a go-to destination for creative and cultural industries, all the while growing more locally focused art venues and events too (White, 2018). Regional recent creative education initiatives include the UNESCO ERI-Net Asia Pacific Study on Transversal Competencies in Education Policy and Practice (UNESCO, 2016) focusing on developing students’ holistic skills and competencies. This policy marks a more regional shift in focus beyond foundational literacy and numeracy skills toward developing competencies in creativity, critical thinking, collaboration,

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and self-awareness, employing the term ‘transversal competencies’ to describe these skills needed for so-called twenty-first century learners. Following secondary education, students with results that satisfy university entrance requirements are admitted to one of the eight universities, which have a combined undergraduate population of over 50,000. Apart from certain specialised courses such as medicine, undergraduate education spans three years and specialisation is immediate, with students assigned to respective schools and faculties from the beginning. There are very few degrees that deal extensively with creativity or innovation outside the mainstream, apart from specific courses on design (Lai, 2008). Eighteen percent of Hong Kong’s university cohort matriculates immediately after their secondary school years, and another twelve percent enters from other forms of short-cycle higher education, lagging behind Asian cities such as Shanghai and Singapore, where nearly 60 percent of young people enter some form of postsecondary education. The tertiary education enrolment rate is expected to reach 40% by 2020 (compared with 24.2% in 2009). Internationalisation has seen over 80% of non-local students being from the Chinese mainland in the years 2012–2013, and steadily increasing (Lee, 2014). Hong Kong’s University Grants Committee (UGC), a governing body for accountability in teaching, research, institutional management, and quality assurance, published the report ‘Aspirations for the Higher Education System in Hong Kong’ (University Grants Committee, 2010) in which it argues that ‘Investment in higher education is a prime contribution to the creation of Hong Kong as an “innovation society”—the formation of a population imbued with the appetite, confidence, skills and agility for the future’ (p. 16). But the UGC, like its counterpart in so many other countries worldwide, instead foregrounds ‘value for money’, ‘fitness for purpose’ and ‘transparency of management and accountability’ (Lee, 2014), and an explosion in institutional and individual creative entrepreneurship. Jayasuriya (2015), Marginson (2011), and Lo (2015) note a neoliberal education agenda that commodifies Hong Kong’s tertiary system, but yet constrains strategy-building innovation and business demands in tertiary graduates. Debate continues on appropriate models of teacher education remaining siloed in subject disciplines versus more integrated and transdisciplinary approaches, particularly in relation to fostering creativity. One teacher educator interviewed for this study reflected: The concept of creativity seeps into education in ways that, as an educator, are troubling … Things like ‘The three C’s’, critical thinking, communication, creativity. These terms kind of lose their meaning, they become something other than what they mean. Then they become these words that you somehow implement by publishing textbooks, by doing this particular thing in the classroom and then, it’s always overwrought with these neoliberal competitive discourses. (Participant)

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Participants in this study from both creative/cultural industries, as well as higher education, all agreed on one common point: that higher education training is still out of sync with the contemporary creative workforce demands. University training is still largely falling behind on the creativity and speculative mindset training required by contemporary industries, across a wide range of fields. This disjuncture between training and workplace requirements informed the decision to return to each site, and through creative performance collaboration to engage more deeply, and in an iterative process, at each site. On returning to Hong Kong, we engaged with local perspectives not only through the analysis of the transcripts, then creation of the playscript, but through the affective engagement of verbatim theatre devising with local actors.

Verbatim theatre What has come to be known as verbatim theatre, (approximately thirty years old and attributed to Derek Paget, 1987), is more prevalent in the British context, with documentary theatre more closely aligned with the American. Like verbatim and documentary theatre, readers theatre is also script-based, but takes an agit prop and largely ‘unstaged’ approach. Verbatim theatre is not always strictly limited to the exact words from interviews without enhancement; there is a range of variation in which some playwrights/researchers create composite characters, write contextualising dialogue, etc (Harris & Sinclair 2014; Gallagher et al., 2012). Often, verbatim theatre is used, like applied theatre, in an action research cycle with vulnerable communities around issues of social change or social justice, but not always. For example, The Laramie Project, by Moises Kaufman (2000) and the members of Tectonic Theatre Project, is an example of verbatim theatre, using not only interview transcripts but journal entries, print and digital media, and more. The Laramie Project is also an example of theatre engaging a specific community around an issue of social justice or human rights. Scholars such as Johnny Saldana have described shows like The Laramie Project and the work of Anna Deavere Smith as ethnodrama, but in professional theatre and performance sectors, they are more frequently referred to as verbatim or documentary theatre. Gallagher reminds us that ‘storytelling through theatre takes on a polyvocality, rather than a “telling it like it is”. Storytelling also helps us see how it is that stories of cultures come to be taken as natural and unquestioned’ (Gallagher, 2014, p. 16). Gallagher goes on: ‘Rather than taking experience and stories as the grounds for ethnographic authority, as more traditional forms of anthropological and educational ethnography have done, storytelling as method in “the field” with young people is often consensus-resisting and dialectical’ (p. 16). Our approach to our devising in the field can be understood through Gallagher’s lens of dialectical storytelling. The power of this co-creative approach is not in the end product (or even interim product) but rather in the working-together of the method, and the mutual bodily and discursive language we find together. This kind of doing-together across cultures is the kind of slow creativity that so

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powerfully counteracts the ‘commodified creativity’ global prevalent today (Harris, 2014, 2016).

Affect and the body Sara Ahmed’s notion of ‘sticky affect’ has been widely taken up, extending previous work on the subject, an extension that is particularly useful for thinking affect with performance. Her articulation of affect as that which ‘sticks, or what sustains or preserves the connection between ideas, values, and objects’ (Ahmed 2010, p. 230), she says, ‘contrasts with Brian Massumi’s work, which suggests that affects are autonomous and distinct from emotions’ (p. 230). She claims the work of emotions are ‘under-described’ (p. 230) and spells out the nuanced and less binary relationship between affects and emotions: for Ahmed, affect and emotion ‘are contiguous; they slide into each other; they stick, and cohere, even when they are separated’ (p. 231). This overall study on creativity in Australia and its region does include attention to affective creative versus commodified (market) creativity, or what has more widely been known as creative industries, but it is this Phase 2 devising part of the study in which affect is most present, through the co-creation event of bodies coming together across space and time. In this verbatim theatre collaboration, there were affects circulating that went beyond creativity or a sense of flow or other co-creative excitement. The cultural component of the work brought a sense of sticky affect around what it meant to be Hongkongers, and what a city/site can be said to ‘be’ at any given time. Can a city have an affect or affects? Ahmed’s theorisation of affective objects, and Harris and Holman Jones’s (2019) theorisation of queer affects certainly address the possibility of affect being both corporeal and beyond-bodies. For Manning, ‘Affect passes directly through the body, coupling with the nervous system, making the interval felt. This feltness is often experienced as a becoming-with’ (Manning, 2009, p. 95). But this project asks, can a city and its bodies becomewith a kind of unique creativity, as creative affect is becoming-embodied? For Harris & Holman Jones, affect can be an instinct which can flow beyond bodies, extending Ahmed’s distinction between fear as an affect distinct from the emotion of ‘being afraid’.1 So here we ask whether bodies in performance collaboration can ‘co-create’ before they can articulate an act and emotion such as ‘being creative’.

Intercultural performance devising In March 2019, the authors and an additional team member spent three days at University of Hong Kong, devising a performance from excerpts of six transcripts from interviews conducted there the previous year. The intention of the devising part of this study is to return to the site to work more deeply in a collaboration loop which allows multi-modal collaboration, sharing and reflecting on the themes, affective resonances, and diverse knowledges generated by multiple data

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enactments. The devising includes a range of collaborative drama activities including improvisation, free association brainstorming, soundscape-brainstorming, and editing and blocking the provisional script curated by Harris. The immediate goal of the Phase 2 devising component was to devise approximately 30 minutes of performance work about Hong Kong creativity to share with an audience of interview participants, invited guests and the public. On the first morning of the intensive devising period, the objective was to introduce the actors to one another, introduce ourselves as researcher-practitioners, and to anchor the work of Phase 2 to the time and place from which the research material that would inform the basis of the performance work emerged. Following a series of introductory exercises, typical in performance devising, the actors were invited to create a moving soundscape of Hong Kong. On one whiteboard, they brainstormed sights common to Hong Kong, and on another, sounds. They were then each asked to select one sound that they could generate using their voices in a repeated fashion. Selected sounds included: short, spoken sentences featuring a hybrid of English and Cantonese, local birdlife, honking cars, and a train announcement. These were layered over the top of one another, thereby creating a cacophony of sound that was reflective of the excitement and frenetic energy of Hong Kong. A similar process was followed with the sights of Hong Kong, this time with the actors creating a moving tableau by embodying the sights of Hong Kong in a repeated manner. Coming to life in this moving

FIGURE 7.2 Soundscape brainstorm. Photo by Ka Lai Chan

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picture were people praying at one of the many temples across the country, altercations in the street, Hong Kong milk tea servers and people dodging one another on the sidewalk. The moving image and soundscape combined to create an evocation of the rich sensory context in which the interview data was collected. It also demonstrably invited the actors to become collaborators and contributors to this phase of the study. Next, we turned our attention to the five curated interview transcripts that would form the provisional script for the performance. The text included representative voices from each of the three categories of interviewees: two artists, two university teachers, and one creative industry professional. These were selected on the basis of the range of views and voices they expressed about creativity education and industry in Hong Kong. While the full transcripts had been dramaturged toward a provisional script, the Hong Kong actors were important in responding to the most and least evocative sections as the script evolved.

Returning to the site: intercultural creativity This task of script creation was one that could have been undertaken back in Melbourne by the researchers; however, doing so in-situ with the actors proved vitally important in terms of enriching the script and voices through their local

Co-devising the script. Photo by Ka Lai Chan

FIGURE 7.3

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expertise. In working through the emerging text together, the actors were able to identify lines, stories or perspectives in the text that resonated with their subjectivities as locals, ones which the researchers may have otherwise overlooked. Similarly, parts of text that the researchers viewed as highly controversial were clarified as being culturally significant in Hong Kong at that time. This act of collaboration served as an intercultural mediator for sense-making of the data, leading one of the participants to report that: Yeah, and for me to work in those monologues with Kelly and Anne is really, I think, the character for me as a local, I can really see the person in the transcript. (Performer) The second day progressed from the soundscape about Hong Kong more generally, to the sights and sounds of creativity in Hong Kong. Brainstorming for this component took quite a bit longer than the day before, with actors initially struggling to identify anything at all that they saw as being synonymous with Hong Kong creativity. Slowly they began to identify things such as local comedians, restaurants, tattoo artists, and Cantonese opera. Although it required longer to conjure, the picture that emerged was a city bustling with a vibrant intersection of tradition and contemporary humour (see https://creativeagency. podomatic.com for a link to soundscape audio, a component of the performance). The improvised work was theatrically dynamic and rich—an energetic combination of gestures, movements, musicality and speech that articulated a unique blending of creative cultural specificities. In later unpacking his instinct to include the contemporary humour of Hong Kong comedian, Stephen Chow, one local actor described the significance of it in relation to Hong Kong culture: Within that limitation actually Stephen Chow is trying to walk in a fine line. One step further, it’s something obscene and one step backward, it’s something not really. And Hong Kong is always like walking on a line and that’s how we do. (Performer) In responding to the provocation in an embodied manner, a nuanced and rich commentary on the role of Hong Kong creativity emerged at a time of increasing tension and nostalgia for a Hong Kong that many felt was passing away or being actively eradicated, twenty-two years after the British handover. Following the generation of this second moving soundscape of Hong Kong creativity, attention was turned to an exploration of the scripts and how the contents ‘spoke to’ one another. The scripts were divided into sections, and the actors stood in a V-formation with those playing the artist characters standing downstage at the widest points of the V, those playing the university teachers in centrestage left and right, and the actor playing the corporate manager upstage centre

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forming the point of the V. Each spoke their monologue one after the other and, whilst doing so, the other actors were directed to listen as their character, responding with their body language when they felt their character agreed or disagreed with what the speaking character was saying about creativity in Hong Kong. A similar process was followed in the afternoon with the second section of transcripts, this time with the actors standing side by side horizontally across the centre stage line. Instead of using body language to express agreement or otherwise, the actors moved downstage when they felt that their characters agreed, or upstage when they did not. The degree to which they moved from their original position was representative of the degree to which their character aligned with the perspective being shared. The symbolic exploration through blocking and stage movement was effective both for the actors in terms of embedding the content of the scripts in their bodies, as well as being aesthetically rich in terms of conveying convergence and divergence between the perspectives in the dialogue. This corporeal engagement with the script moved the work from resonance to embodied enactment, a co-creation of polyvocal and multi-cultural values and expressions present within the characters’ work. These exploratory formations became the foundation of the blocking for the performance, with the soundscapes deemed as rich dramatic devices to be used as transitions between sections of dialogue. A motif of group ‘silent brainstorming’ using Post-It notes became an effective symbol of East-West differences in creative/design brainstorming, an evocative part of the content of one of the transcripts. As one of the respondents told us, the western group ideation model doesn’t work the same way in Hong Kong, as designers prefer to silently/individually brainstorm onto Post-It notes which can be read out to the group, a technique we adopted for this performance. This was incorporated physically in the middle section of the performance, thereby underscoring for the audience that this performance was intended to be only a part of the larger intercultural discussion about creativity in Hong Kong and its region. On the final day, the actors and research team returned to the university classroom to bring together the work of the previous two days’ explorations. The result was a workshop performance of the verbatim scripts about creativity in Hong Kong, using the intercultural collaboration as an embodied basis for the investigation. That afternoon, a mixed academic and public audience filled the classroom to watch the performance. It was framed as a sharing of work-in-progress, into which the audience were invited as collaborators and commentators, and about which they could share their responses either verbally or using the Post-It notes that formed part of the performance. In the 45-minute post-performance discussion, the audience and performers considered their resonances with the themes presented through the creative work, including the role of language in local creativity and comparisons between their own unique approach and that of regional neighbours. What also emerged from the discussion was that the performance had exposed the deep love and passion for Hong Kong that the audience felt, as well as a sense of fear, concern and sorrow about what was perceived

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as the passing of their cultural identity. For our team member Ka Lai Chan who contributed to and documented the devising process—a Hong Kong local living and working with us in Melbourne—what the work had generated for her was a sense of hope amongst the cultural unease. In responding to the sadness expressed by one of our audience members, she observed: As a Hongkonger all my life, I spent my life here, I did feel this urgency to document everything because I feel that, as Akbar Abbas said, Hong Kong culture is a culture of disappearance and I did worry but after these three days, working with these young people, it really gives me this hope and there’s this—coming back to the resistance, the idea of resistance. It’s a little bit cliché but honestly, honest to my heart, these young people, they are our resistance. Yeah. They are the resistance against disappearance. (Chan, in discussion) This reflection on her unique position in the devising process as both insider and outsider to Hong Kong is demonstrative of the affective power of being-with that the co-creation of dialectical storytelling can provide.

Conclusion This provisional collaborative devising project illustrates the ways in which intercultural making-with can offer powerful affective experiences while not seeking to (or needing to) make representational work that ‘typifies’ our own or other cultures. We see this methodology as an extension of more traditional performance ethnography (Gallagher, 2014; Harris 2012) in which creatives from different cultures or communities come together with openness to share insights about our specific contexts and practices. The laughter, sorrow, and pre-verbal, pre-emotional affects that circulated in our creative collaboration as well as in the room during performance illustrate Manning’s articulation of how ‘affectively, feeling works on the body, bringing to the fore the experiential force of the quasi chaos of the not-quite-seen’ (Manning 2009, p. 95). Through our shared co-creation work, this not-quite-seen has become part of the study on Hong Kong creativity that might not have been articulable, or even literally actable in performance. By focusing on the collaborative, affective power of such encounters, researchers can allow the ‘data’ to speak for itself, impacting the performers and ‘audience members’ differently with no need or attention to generalisation, to analysis or to persuasion which still too often typifies research outcomes or engagements. We hope that this small snapshot of this much larger multi-sited international ethnographic study on creativity in the East Asian-Australian region also demonstrates some ways in which collaborative, intimate, affective, creative methods can form an important part of large-scale large-data set studies in drama, performance and creativity research.

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Note 1 Ahmed claims ‘The “fear affect” can be separated from the self-conscious recognition of being afraid (the flicker in the corner of the eye signalling the presence of the stranger, which registers as a disturbance on the skin before we have recognized the stranger as a stranger’ (Ahmed, 2010, p. 231).

Acknowledgement This study is funded by an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship (2017–2021), grant no. FT170100022, A/Prof Anne Harris sole investigator. The authors would like to thank Dr Aaron Koh, Dr Margaret Lo, Ka Lai Chan, and Dr Leon de Bruin for their contributions to data collection at this site.

References Ahmed, S. (2010). The promise of happiness. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Beck, J. L., Belliveau, G., Lea, G. W., & Wager, A. (2011). Delineating a spectrum of research-based theatre. Qualitative Inquiry, 17(8), 687–700. Berlant, L. (2011). Cruel optimism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Berlant, L & Stewart, K. (2019). The hundreds. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Creswell, J. (2008). Educational research: Planning, conducting, and evaluating quantitative and qualitative research, 3rd edition. New York: Pearson/Merrill Prentice Hall. Denzin, N.K. & Lincoln, Y.S. (Eds.) (2008). Strategies of qualitative inquiry, 3rd edition. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Gallagher, K. (2014). Why theatre matters: Urban youth, engagement, and a pedagogy of the real. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Gallagher, K., Wessels, A., & Ntelioglou, B. W. (2012). Verbatim theatre and social research: Turning towards the stories of others. Theatre Research in Canada/Recherches théâtrales au Canada, 33(1). Gregg, M. & Seigworth, G. (Eds.) (2010). The affect theory reader. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Harris, A. (2012). Ethnocinema: Intercultural arts education. Dordrecht: Springer. Harris, A. (2014). The creative turn: Toward a new aesthetic imaginary. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers. Harris, A. (2016). Creativity and education. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Harris, A. & Holman Jones, S. (2019). The queer life of things. New York: Lexington/ Rowman & Littlefield. Harris, A. & de Bruin, L. R. (2018). An international study of creative pedagogies, practices and perspectives in secondary schools: Toward a creative ecology. International Journal of Curriculum and Pedagogy, 15(2). Harris, A., & de Bruin, L. R. (2018). Secondary school creativity, teacher practice and STEAM education: An international study. Journal of Educational Change, 19(2), 153–179. Harris, A. & Sinclair, C. (2014). Critical play/s: Embodied research for social change. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers. Jayasuriya, K. (2015). Transforming the public university: Market citizenship and higher education regulatory projects. In M. Thornton (ed.), Through a glass darkly: The social sciences look at the neoliberal (pp. 89–103). Canberra: ANU Press. Kaufman, M. (2000). Into the west: An exploration in form. American Theatre, 17(5), 17–18.

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Lai, R. (2008). From creative industries to creative economy: The role of education. Hong Kong: Hong Kong Design Centre and the Asia Case Research Centre, The University of Hong Kong. Lee, M. H. (2014). Hong Kong higher education in the 21st century. Hong Kong Teachers’ Centre Journal, 13, 15–34. Lo, W. Y. W. (2015). Revisiting the notion of Hong Kong as a regional education hub. Higher Education Policy, 28(1), 55–68. Manning, E. (2009). Relationscapes: Movement, art, philosophy. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Marginson, S. (2011). Higher education and public good. Higher Education Quarterly, 65(4), 411–433. Paget, D. (1987). ‘Verbatim theatre’: Oral history and documentary techniques. New Theatre Quarterly, 3(12), 317–336. Sedgwick, Eve K. (2003). Touching feeling: Affect, pedagogy, performativity. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Smith, J. A., Flowers, P., & Larkin, M. (2009). Interpretative phenomenological analysis: Theory, method and research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Stewart, K. (2007). Ordinary affects. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Sundararajan, L., & Raina, M. K. (2015). Revolutionary creativity, East and West: A critique from indigenous psychology. Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology, 35(1), 3. Tomkins, S. S. (1962/1991). Affect imagery consciousness: Anger and fear (Vol. 3). New York: Springer. UNESCO. (2016). ERI-Net Regional Study on Transversal Competencies in Education Policy and Practice (Phase 3): Preparing and supporting teachers in the Asia-Pacific to meet the challenges of twenty-first century learning (regional synthesis report). Retrieved from https://unesdoc.unesco. org/ark:/48223/pf0000246852. University Grants Committee. (2010). Aspirations for the higher education system in Hong Kong. Retrieved from www.ugc.edu.hk/doc/eng/ugc/publication/report/her2010/ her2010-rpt.pdf. White, A. (2018). Making the most of arty Hong Kong: Art Basel and beyond. The Guardian (Australia edition). 1 March. Retrieved from www.theguardian.com/travel/2018/mar/ 01/making-the-most-of-arty-hong-kong-art-basel-and-beyond. Yeung, C. (2017). Promises and reality. In PEN (ed.), Hong Kong 20/20: Reflections on a borrowed place (pp. 46–56). Hong Kong: Blacksmith Books.

8 POETIC BECOMINGS IN SCENIC ART FOR YOUNG CHILDREN Maybritt Jensen

A starting For the last decade, performing arts for children age 0–3 has emerged in Norway. The number of performances all over the country has increased due to political and financial support from the Cultural Department and Norwegian Art Council (NAC). Two major art projects initiated and funded by NAC Klangfugl (2000–2002) and EU, Glitterbird—Art for the Very Young (2003–2006) have enacted a starting point for the development of new kinds of scenic art produced for the youngest children. An evaluation from the Norwegian Art Council of the national project Kunstløftet (2008–2015) states that the intention has been to create art for young children that is productive from an artistic point of view as well as being relevant to the everyday lives of children. A further interest of the project has been to gain more knowledge on art for children through increasing the number of productions as well as research in the field (Haugsevje et al., 2016). For decades, institutional theatre has played the main role in promoting theatre for children. Productions often based on popular literature for children have been a part of the established repertoire on traditional stages and in that way have served as classical cultural, as well as commercial, offerings. Scenic art for children is often regarded as educational or entertaining and focus remains on subjective audience experiences based on cognition and emotional development. However, artists working with performances for young children are in a perfect position to investigate further how to perform for the youngest audiences. Performative dramaturgies as well as a more sensory and non-verbal artistic communication seems to be more fruitful in this kind of theatre art. Abstract forms of expression like dance, movements, and sounds, and the intra-actions of the audience, have become vital parts of the scenic event (Borgen, 2003; Böhnisch, 2010; Gladsø et al., 2005; Hovik & Nagel, 2017). Being a part of the production team

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of the performance Readymade Baby, 1 performed for children age 0–3, I have conducted research on the communication between actors on stage and the audience. This chapter is based on empirical data from rehearsals as well as from performances in and outside Norway over a period of two years. The aim of this chapter is to investigate the complexity of the sensory and multiple communications in scenic art with young children. In revisiting ethnographic data from two scenes in the performance, I explore what theories of affect can open up and contribute to in the analysis of the data.

Messiness, intensities, vitality, sensations, desire and the unsaid Inspired by non-representational ethnography (Vannini, 2015), I am, as an audience-researcher and a part of the creative team, entangled in the messiness of relations and affects between human and non-human entities. Starting out with empirical data from participating in and observing numerous rehearsals and performances, interviews with adults, field notes and photos, my attempts to analyse and interpret within ‘traditional ethnographic methods’ catches me up in thick descriptions and by doing so, the dance stops. Situated in multiple positions as producer and researcher with the performance, I desire to stay in the messiness of bodies, intensities, vitality, sensations, desire and the unsaid, to let my embodied research direct me to what is affecting and being affected in the doings to come. Rather than trying to ‘capture’ the performance, I invite the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari, together with theories of affect, into a different dance (Vannini, 2015). This Vannini citation interrupts and reminds me to continue to ‘dance a little’, searching for bodily rhythms and pulses in the storytelling, ‘to “dance a little” may entail a greater focus on events, affective states, the unsaid, and the incompleteness and openness of everyday performances’ (Vannini, 2015, p. 319).

Thinking with Revisiting empirical data from the performances, I’m guided by Deleuze and Guatarri’s reminder that art, as well as philosophy and science, are ways of thinking; art is working through affect and with affects; the artist creating affects, not only in the artwork, but also by offering them to us in a becoming (as an audience), and as a part of an assemblage (Deleuze & Guattari 1991, p. 501). My attention is moved by this to wonder how affects in a performance are working and what they do. According to Hovik (2019), little attention has been given to researching affect as a dimension in theatre for young children in Norway. However, it is obvious that affect has implications in the art event with a lively and young audience and their accompanying adults. Every scenic event is unique and unstable, created in the movements in time and place. For Deleuze and Guattari (1980/2005), we may appreciate the theatre performance as an assemblage including the affects of entangled elements in the performance’s processes of becoming.

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Working with affect Brian Massumi gives attention to what can affect and be affected. For him, affect can be understood as autonomic bodily processes that are independent from reflections or language. Massumi suggests that ‘intensity is embodied in purely autonomic reactions most directly manifested in the skin—at the surface of the body, at its interface with things’ (Massumi, 1995, p. 85). Theatre is a social art form in experiencing how the art is done with and among children and adults, and as such working creatively with a performance, one can explore how expressions affect the audience. However, affects, according to Massumi, are not working on a subjective level in the way that actors might create different emotions among the audience. Affects are working more like intensities between small and big moving bodies, cushions, sounds and temperatures affecting us unconsciously (Massumi, 1995, 2015). The performative event works with affects, and we are all entangled in the becoming of the performance. This opens possibilities to give attention to the sensory communication in theatre, not only as presence, but also as affects.

Poetic affects Slowly adults and children find their seats around me on small colored cushions that are placed in a half-circle on the floor in front of the stage. One of the three actors makes her way out of a wheeled steel box that for this scene becomes a pram at the back of the stage. She jumps in her sleeping bag towards the audience while the other two actors, who have been greeting the children while they were arriving, are now dancing between the yellow and orange umbrellas that are scattered like a curtain on the floor. One by one the umbrellas are folded and closed with a little click. Attention towards the stage is rising and the place-space turns silent. Affectively the tension is intense, goosebumps on my arms and a tear pressing its way in the corner of my eye, being surrounded by so many small and big bodies in complete tension. Then, suddenly a tiny but clear voice breaks out in a ‘bah!’ (Field notes, March 2008) This moment is moving. An embodied intensity and energy are present in and among bodies around me. There we are sitting close to each other on the floor. Being present in this moment of beginning has an effect on all of us.

Possibilities of affect The affective turn opens up other narratives in my analytic approach to theatre art for children. What creates affect in bodies during the opening scene are intensities from movements of dancers and umbrellas in all directions together with little clicks from the umbrellas when they are closed, while music of water drop-like sounds, slowly is creating rhythmical magic. However, the affect is also

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created by the intensities of focus and curiosity in small and big bodies that are either standing, lying or sitting close together on the floor with faces turned towards the performers who are also affected in this moment of smiling dialogues. Though artistic strategies are made with movements, objects, gazes and rhythms in order to make the scenic event special and magic, the performing moment is filled with uncertainty. Questions of how the audience react, will the children pay any attention, or will they start crying, are parts of the uncertainty artists as well as accompanying adults might have. The gap between how the affected value of a performance and how it is experienced might involve a range of affects (Ahmed, 2010, p. 37). In Readymade Baby, movements of adult pointing fingers and hands grabbing small bodies in attempts to transgress the invisible line between stage and audience space in a first meeting with scenic art, were making affects. These often unspoken feedback-loops are affecting the rhythm of the performance as well as the intensity in the audience. These actions which create disturbing affects are part of the messiness and the becoming of the performance and as such offer possibilities to re-configure our concepts of what is working in art experiences for young children (and their adults).

Auto-poetic feedback-loops Though most studies in the field of theatre for young children recognize the audience as an embodied and interactive part of the communication (Borgen, 2003; Hernes et al., 2010; Hovik & Nagel, 2017; Solli, 2014), little attention is given to more-than-human elements and non-representational aspects of communication. Theatre is a multimodal art form and as such, artists from different arts practices are working with material elements like stage light, music, costumes and scenographic installations. I want to investigate how other-than-human elements like intensities, sounds, temperatures and expectations intra-act in the becoming of the art event and by that decentring the human subject and social actions between actors and audience (Barad, 2007; Lenz Taguchi, 2010). With performance art and post-dramatic theatre, the autonomy of the work, as well as representation, is challenged. Several twentieth-century cultural-political movements including Dadaism, the avant-garde, the 1968 student rebellions, and more recently the Occupy movement, have been significant to the emergence of performance art (Bishop, 2012; Bourriaud, 1998; Fischer-Lichte, 2008; Lehmann, 2006; Sauter, 2000). In discussing participatory art, Bishop refers to the performance as a profound embodied meeting between artists and audiences in time and space. The political context, she states, also has a significant role in art production, ‘the work of art as a finite, portable, commodifiable product is reconceived as an ongoing or long-term project with an unclear beginning and end; while the audience, previously conceived as a ‘viewer’ or ‘beholder’, is now repositioned as a co- producer or participant’ (Bishop 2012, p. 2). The spontaneous verbal and non-verbal communication between actors and audience is the core of a performance.

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According to Fischer-Lichte, ‘the bodily co-presence of actors and spectators enables and constitutes the performance’ (Fischer-Lichte, 2008, p. 132). She highlights that the communication can be regarded as auto-poetic feedback-loops, where the spontaneous and sensory communication between actors and audience is unpredictable and creates the uncertainty of the performing event (FischerLichte, 2008). Performing for a very young audience, these feedback-loops are clearly parts of the performance and as such, the audience becomes an intraactive part of the performance. The participation of the audience is what creates the lack of control and uncertainty but also possibilities in the becoming of a performance for/with young children and their accompanying adults.

Readymade Baby Drawing on the empiric data from my involvement in Readymade Baby, and through the lens/method of devised theatre, I revisit that work in terms of intraaction and affect. The ensemble developed the performance through improvisations with movements, music, sounds and objects in crossovers of dance and theatre. Three performers (two dancers and a musician2) investigated objects, costumes and sounds as well as choreographic possibilities. During the performance, orange and yellow umbrellas danced a poetic opening of the performance and blue, green and pink cleaning mittens placed on hands, on feet and heads were creating playful and absurd movements and situations. Megaphones were turned into mystical instruments with whispering sounds and twisted voices. In Aristotelian dramaturgy used in traditional theatre for children, literary text and linear narrative is predominant. However, the devised performative dramaturgy used in Readymade Baby valued elements like bodies, sounds, movements and objects in the performing event (Arntzen, 2015; Gladsø et al., 2005; Østern & Hovik, 2017). Likewise, the focus was moved from the actors representing different characters, to non-representational bodies and movements and the ensemble emphasising playfulness in the absurd and the poetic, as well as sensory intraactions with the audience. According to Guss (2001) children’s playing is an aesthetic form of expression. In this way, we worked with expressions of form and content, creating moments that would generate surprise and wondering as well as challenging the child audience. During the rehearsal period, groups of young children from a kindergarten were invited several times to the rehearsal studio with their teachers. The intentions of the production team were to explore feedback-loops with affects from human and non-human elements. With observations and video-takes, discussions were had with the participants after each rehearsal around possible scenic strategies when listening to the affective communication.

Listening research During the production and following touring of Readymade Baby, I worked closely with the instructor and the actors as a dramaturgical advisor on the performative

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communication, discussing how and what different artistic strategies involving humans and non-humans were producing among the audience and onstage to investigate creative possibilities. Drawing on Braidotti’s nomadic theory, EegTverbakk suggests the dramaturg as a ‘nomadic subject’, a subject that lives in and with transformations affected by encounters with other things and bodies. ‘A nomadic dramaturg interrogates and negotiates power relations, always shifting positions and engaging in different ways with her surroundings’ (Eeg-Tverbakk, 2016, p. 28). Being a nomadic researcher in the middle of the creative entanglement, I am engaged in sensorial listening focusing on relations and formations taking place in the encounter between humans and non-humans as affective parts of the performative moment. The audience of children accompanied by adults (parents or teachers), is a moving mass, audible, with shifting focus and desires. As such, it is not only artistic strategies and expressions of dancers, costumes and scenographic elements that are creating the performance; small and big bodies in dancing movements, rhythms, intensities, sounds, expectations and power relations are also part of the messiness and instability that produces the becoming of the performance. I have now tried to map out some significant elements of theatre art for children as it has come to exist in the field of early childhood studies as well as onstage. Theatre for young children as performance art and non-representational performance, is different to traditional dramatic theatre art. On revisiting my empirical data using theories of affect and from new materialism, I explore this difference regarding what affects are produced in the complexity of scenic events for children, exploring how research on affect between humans and non-humans in scenic communication can contribute to research on theatre for young children differently and what might that produce.

Disturbances and possibilities The three actors onstage are all singing an opera-like polyphonic song (in nonsense-language) to recorded music. During the scene, the sound of the music and singing becomes rather loud and intensifies. One of the dancers sits on a cushion on wheels formed like a red mushroom made in faux fur, rolling back and forth, each time closer and closer to the audience. Several of the adults among the audiences are now moving anxiously. They turn towards the children’s faces. Quite a few lift the children to their laps or put an arm around. The majority of the children are sitting with bodies leaned forward and follow the actions on stage with intense and severe focus. (Field notes, April 2008) This affective scene evokes my curiosity and makes me enter into questions of what is working and in what ways. The music and singing slowly change in the dynamic, shifting between harmony and disharmony. The dancer sitting on the

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wheeling mushroom cushion is moving back and forth across the stage in the same slow pulse as the music, getting closer to the intensely focused children sitting on the floor. Sound is resonance created by vibrations that have the potential to affect our bodies. How bodies are affected is subjective, as how some sounds are evocative to one person and noise to another. Yet they are also socio-culturally constructed, based on ideas and ideals attributed to the given sounds (Gershon, 2013). The vibrations of the sounds affect small bodies in this scene. The singing dancer, rolling back and forth affected by the pulse of the music, creates together with movements and sounds, intensities and suspense. Being physically on a level with the children, her smiling gaze and body are directed towards and in tune with the children on the floor in front of her. The sounds and movements affect adult bodies differently where the vibrations and intensity of sounds and movements create dis-ease. Using the notion of performative intra-actions, movements and intensities are creating agencies differently, where agency can be understood as a quality in between bodies involved in mutual engagements and relations (Barad, 2007; Hultman & Lenz Taguchi, 2010). In dramatic theatre, this intensity could be used as an aesthetic means or affect to create suspense in a narrative. However, in this performative dramaturgy the different elements creating this scene are all working equally and without a narrative. The entanglement of the loud music and singing together with the movements of the dancer, the focusing children and the uneasy adult bodies creates the complexity of the communication in this scene. Giving attention to these intra-actions whether they are meaningful, noisy or scary, opens for the ongoing reconfiguring of practices of scenic communication with children (Barad, 2007, p. 141).

Towards the final curtain In this chapter, my aim has been to investigate in what ways theories of affect may produce other stories of communication in performing art for young children. Relating to children’s playing and non-verbal sensuous communication, this performance draws on performative dramaturgies rather than on traditional narratives. A young audience comes with enormous vitality and also many uncertainties. Using affect theory makes it possible to give attention to this liveliness and uncertainty to investigate what and how this is working in the becoming of the performance event. During my research, my attention has been drawn to how dancing, jumping, crawling bodies and megaphones, rhythm and expectations are entangled and create particular kinds of affects. Artists are working with affect, and in producing scenic art, they are sensitive to the affective impact on the audience, co-creating the performance (Borgen, 2003). However, attention is often given to human presence and embodied communication (Fischer-Lichte, 2008; Hovik, 2019) over non-human participants.

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A teacher stated in one of my research interviews (2008) that she did not understand anything, but recognised that the children were absorbed in the performance. With attention to affects, feed-back-loops in intra-actions with affects of more-thanhuman elements like sounds, intensities and expectations create other readings of the art-event. In this performance, the concept of ‘audience’ as quietly and passively receiving, seems to prevail among the adult audience, which causes them to pull crawling children away from the stage. Additionally, values about and interpretations of dissonant or loud music as ‘disturbing’ for young children, or not necessarily ‘art’, emerge. This chapter has sought to explore, additionally, in what ways intraactions of disturbances, uncertainties and intense affects may open up multiple possibilities in new creative becomings of performance in ways that reconcile with young children’s ways of being in the world—with or without their adults.

Notes 1 Readymade Baby was produced in March 2008 with funding from Norwegian Art Council and was performed more than 250 times in numerous European countries as well in Chile and Brazil until 2013. The director and choreographer Karstein Solli has since 2005 produced and directed several performances for children at the age group 0–3. 2 The two female dancers, Beata Kretovicova Iden and Marianne Skjeldal and the male singer and musician Øystein Elle performed with singing and dancing. Øystein being a countertenor, created with light tones unique soundscapes in addition to recorded instrumental music mixed with electro-acoustic music played on stage.

References Ahmed, S. (2010). Happy objects. In M. Gregg & G.J. Seigworth (eds), The affect theory reader (pp. 29–51). Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Arntzen, K.O. (2015). Performativ forestillingsanalyse av postmoderne teater—Hotel Pro Forma og Remote Control Productions. In A.M. Otterstad & A.B. Reinertsen (eds), Metodefestival og øyeblikksrealisme—eksperimenterende kvalitative forskningspassasjer (pp. 166–179). Bergen: Fagbokforlaget. Barad, K. (2007). Meeting the universe halfway: Quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Bishop, C. (2012). Artificial hells: Participatory art and the politics of spectatorship. London: Verso. Böhnisch, S. (2010). Feedbacksløyfer i teater for svært unge tilskuere. Et bidrag til en performativ teori og analyse. PhD dissertation, Aarhus Universitet, Århus. Borgen, J.S. (2003). Kommunikasjon er kunsten: Evaluering av prosjektet Klangfugl—kunst for de minste. Oslo: Norsk kulturråd. Bourriaud, N. (1998). Relational aesthetics. Dijon: Les Presses Du Reel Edition. Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. (1980/2005). Tusind plateauer: Kapitalisme og skizofreni. Copenhagen: Det Kongelige Danske Kunstakademis Billedkunstskoler. Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. (1991). ‘Persept, affekt og konsept’ fra Qu’est-ce que la philosophie? In K. Bale & A. Bø-Rygg (eds), Estetisk teori. En antologi (pp. 491–518). Oslo: Universitetsforlaget. Eeg-Tverbakk, C. (2016). Theatre-ting: Toward a materialist practice of staging documents. PhD dissertation, University of Roehampton, London.

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Fischer-Lichte, E. (2008). The transformative power of performance: A new aesthetics. New York: Routledge. Gershon, W.S. (2013). Vibrational affect: Sound theory and practice in qualitative research, Cultural Studies—Critical Methodologies 13(4) pp. 257–262. Gladsø, S., Gjervan, E. K., Hovik, L. & Skagen A. (2005). Dramaturgi: Forestillinger om teater. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget. Guss, F.G. (2001). Drama performance in children’s play-culture: The possibilities and significance of form. Oslo: Høgskolen i Oslo, Avdeling for lærerutdanning. Haugsevje, Å.D., Heian, M.T., Hylland, O.M. (2016). Resultater fra NM i kunstløft: Evaluering av Kunstløftets andre periode 2012–2015. Oslo: Kulturrådet. Hernes, L., Os, E., Selmer-Olsen, I. (2010). Med kjærlighet til publikum: Kunst for barn under tre år. Oslo: Cappelen Akademisk Forlag. Hovik, L. (2019). Becoming small: Concepts and methods of interdisciplinary practice in theatre for early years. Youth Theatre Journal 33 (1). Hultman, K. & Lenz Taguchi, H. (2010). Challenging anthropocentric analysis of visual data: a relational materialist methodological approach to educational research. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 23(5), pp. 525–542. Lehmann, H.-T. (2006). Postdramatic theatre. London: Routledge. Lenz Taguchi, H. (2010). Going beyond the theory/practice divide in early childhood education: Introducing an intra-active pedagogy. London: Routledge. Massumi, B. (1995). The autonomy of affect. Cultural Critique 31, pp. 83–109. Massumi, B. (2015). In lieu of a conclusion. In B. Massumi (ed.), Politics of affect (pp. 204–215). London: Polity Press. Nagel, L. & Hovik, L. (2017). Scesam—et kunstnerisk forskningsprosjekt om interaktive dramaturgier i scenekunst for barn. In L. Nagel & L. Hovik (eds), Deltakelse og interaktivitet i scenekunst for barn (pp. 31–54). Bergen: Fagbokforlaget. Østern, T.P. & Hovik, L. (2017). Med-koreografi og med-dramaturgi som diffraksjon— med som metodologisk agent for skapende og forskende prosesser i Baby Body. Journal for Research in Arts and Sports Education 1, pp. 43–58. Sauter, W. (2000). The theatrical event: Dynamics of performance and perception. Ames, IA: University of Iowa Press. Solli, K. (2014). Nå løfter jeg av døra til ansiktet mitt! In S. Graffer & A. Sekkelsten (eds), Scenekunsten og de unge (pp.107–111). Oslo: Norsk scenekunstbruk AS/Vidarforlaget. Vannini, P. (2015). Non-representational ethnography: New ways of animating lifeworlds, Cultural Geographies, 22(2), pp. 317–327.

9 ‘COME ALL SAVAGE CREATURES’ Becoming Bakkhai in the southwest of Western Australia Vahri McKenzie and Kathy Boxall

Introduction In 2018, the first author of this paper, Vahri McKenzie, directed a new version of Euripides’ Bakkhai, co-commissioned by Bunbury Regional Entertainment Centre and Culture and the Arts (Western Australia). For both of these partners, the project had social and economic imperatives closely linked to the South West region of Western Australia, as well as creative and artistic goals. Bakkhai was designed to offer opportunities to partake in a collaborative theatrical endeavour which had high social and cultural impact for participants, funders, and the wider community; thus, the work aimed to ‘address something beyond the form itself’ (Ackroyd, 2000). Moreover, the project was motivated by research questions that included, among others, what a community group understands of their participation in collaborative theatre. To this end, the nine-month creative development was documented weekly and, after the performance season, a focus group discussion was held with members of the cast and creative team, who reflected upon and theorised their own experiences of participating in the Bakkhai project. This focus group discussion forms the basis of the present paper. We begin with a section that sets the scene, addressing the Bakkhai project’s creative development and the theoretical foundations upon which it builds. This is followed by discussion of the affective methodologies informing both Bakkhai’s development, and the situated affective approach to data analysis we describe within this paper. We then outline our analysis of the focus group discussion (using both audio recording and written transcript), with particular attention given to affective traces and what they reveal about social and embodied understandings of performance and its affects. These affective traces—small indications of felt experience in the focus group discussion—take many forms; choices of wording, hesitation or silence, vocalics such as pitch and tone, and the use of

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verbal fillers are some of those we attend to in the theoretical background and methodology sections that follow. The paper concludes by contending that attention to affective dimensions of communication within our analysis of the focus group discussion revealed ways in which the community group affectively theorised and made sense of their participation in collaborative theatre. This analysis highlighted three key insights: firstly, a recognition that Bakkhai’s corporeal and sensual studio methods established affective relations between participants, the play-world and the proximate more-than-human world; secondly, the project built an affective community specific to the social and geographic context of the south west region of Western Australia that offered a sense of belonging; and lastly, performance of the work produced palpable audience affect and powerful understandings of the potential of performance.

Creative and theoretical development of Bakkhai The Bakkhai project brought together professional and emerging performers and artists with untrained community members. Composed by Euripides and originally performed in Athens, in 405 BCE, a new version of the play was specially commissioned, adapted for the local context with a focus on the landscape of the south west of Western Australia (Spradbury, 2018). Both Euripides’ original, and Spradbury’s adaptation, present the story of a Dionysos myth featuring ritual madness, religious ecstasy, dancing and crossdressing: a transformational event in a liminal space where a city collapses under the strain of its leader’s rigid rule and the god’s wild revenge. There is a particularly strong role for the chorus in the play, as they have the traditional role of commenting on the action, and also take part in that action. For these reasons, Euripides’ Bakkhai itself is an excellent vehicle for a work of applied theatre. We follow Judith Ackroyd in using the term ‘applied theatre’ in a broad sense that suggests it is signalled by intentionality and high levels of participation and transformation (Ackroyd, 2000). It is a notable feature of the creative development that everyone engaged in a shared studio process regardless of their role or status: strong performers took choral roles, and lead character casting did not occur until halfway through development. The ensemble as a whole was central to the creative process, and the diversity of the ensemble worked against reductive notions of participation and transformation. The ensemble was diverse in age, gender, and experience in performing arts; they shared a process that was both located within, and made explicit reference to, the ensemble’s regional home. The second author of this paper, Kathy Boxall, who had no prior experience in the performing arts, was a member of that ensemble. To begin, we describe the creative development of the performance, with attention to its relational qualities; both those between the participants themselves, as well as those between participants and the more-than-human world, where these are connected through the play-world created. The work was developed using a creative methodology adapted from Nancy Stark Smith’s ‘Underscore’, a collaborative creative model for practising and researching improvisation

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(Koteen & Smith, 2008). The Underscore draws attention to ‘changing states’ through a sustained period of creative endeavour, and by naming the experience of every stage of a creative process, the Underscore can act as a map to guide progress through an immersive activity (p. 90). Since 2013, Vahri McKenzie has been exploring this methodology (which is principally practised by performing artists in the contemporary dance form known as contact improvisation), investigating its potential for adaptation and application with communities of students, local artists working across a range of different art forms, and laypeople within a regional geographic area. Findings from McKenzie’s earlier work illustrate the significance of working with the ‘whole organism’ in community ensembles, which was found to support creative engagement regardless of the art form practiced (McKenzie, 2014a, 2014b). A whole organism approach considers people as fundamentally and primarily embodied, where effective communication is affective communication, and attends to ‘inward and internalised feeling, and the outward representation of emotion’ (Franks, 2014, p. 4), as well as people’s capacities for reflection and discursive speech. As a foundation for Bakkhai, this earlier work positions the present research within twenty-first century applied performance paradigms ‘that challenge the dichotomies of self and other through a discourse of embodiment and affect where thinking and feeling are conjoined’ (Shaughnessy, 2012, p. 4). The heart of Smith’s Underscore is a phase called the ‘open score’, a period of sustained and unstructured creative activity (Koteen & Smith, 2008, p. 95). In the creative development of our original version of Euripides’ play, we similarly incorporated an open score into every workshop, where participants were invited freely to respond to the space, the people in the space, and any of the ideas that had been introduced into the preceding phases. During the open score, all verbal instructions and social conversations were eliminated. As a consequence, ensemble members were free to move their bodies and use their voices in a wide range of openly experimental ways as a means of exploring affective responses to characters and themes. Objects that were at once familiar and relevant to the classical myth of the Bakkhai were introduced into the workshops to enable multi-dimensional expression. For example, individually crafted wooden poles cut from karri wattle, Acacia pentadenia, and other locally significant timbers, adapted the thyrsos, the traditional ritual wand of the Bakkhai, and aided performers in developing characters, costumes and movement that expressed their connection to their south west Western Australian homeland. The impacts of these experiences were enhanced, as participants also consented to the open score being video recorded. McKenzie participated in and reviewed audio-visual material from each open score, from which various composition activities were developed that in turn were fed back into later open scores. The work, then, was built via a process of calland-response, with characterisation and scenic material generated from ensemble workshops. As director, McKenzie guided dramaturgical and aesthetic cohesion of the materials such that links were formed between images, musical language, and physical patterns in dance and ensemble work. At the same time, individual

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freedom was encouraged and harnessed for the personal investment in collaborative creative endeavour, as well as for the community bonding it can enable. Ensemble members describe participating in the open score as ‘being able’ or ‘allowed’ to express themselves freely, using words like ‘play’ and ‘joy’ (all unreferenced quotes within this paper are drawn from the focus group discussion). Play-based approaches are common in applied theatre and increasingly are linked to well-being (Shaughnessy, 2012, p. 39). Moreover, in Performance Affects, James Thompson (2009) argues that pleasure can support ethical engagement, in as much as our affections for each can be a stimulus for social change. Our interpretation of Bakkhai embraced our regional cultural distinctiveness. One of the ways in which we worked to translate the play across time and space was via the metaphor ‘Thebes of the South West’ (McKenzie, 2019), a place of the imagination that reflected both our homeland and the deep philosophical and cultural history of western thought and art-making accessed via Euripides’ play. Although we came from places spread across the south west of Western Australia, and had different levels of experience in the creative arts, the potent metaphor of place became a touchstone around which the group cohered in creating a new version of the tragedy. Thus, in transposing ancient Thebes to the twenty-first century South West, costume designer Sky River drew on iconographic flora and fauna of the region, importantly including species indigenous to the region and those introduced since colonisation. While Dionysos, god of fertility and ecstasy, is traditionally associated with floral motifs such as grapes, vines and reeds, in postcolonial Australia these correspondences are mingled with the sounds and images - Pentheos’s mother, of the South West bioregion. For example, when Agaue, returns to Thebes bearing her son’s head on a stick, in the madness wrought on her by Dionysos she sees it as the head of an Angus bull (the iconic, and introduced, cattle breed of the region), rather than the traditional mountain lion; a choice made by the performer, Michelle Aslett, who played the role. In its aesthetic choices, expressive individualism was balanced against a sense of a modern south-western Australian tribe, a conscious act of forging connections between people and places, imbued with an ethos that positions creative activity as both a pleasure and a responsibility that can achieve real work in transforming the ways we relate to one another. The title of this paper, ‘Come all savage creatures’, is taken from a line in Spradbury’s (2018) script that appears in the opening choral ode, presented as a song sung and danced by the Bakkhai chorus, and composed by Rachelle Rechichi (2018) in original music commissioned for the project. (The ensemble also selected this phrase as a tagline used in promotional material.) ‘Bakkhai Song’ joyfully describes the pleasures of dancing and singing outdoors, and the importance of rites to honour Dionysos. It also dramatises the Bakkhai’s first meeting with the women of Thebes who ultimately join them, won over with a combination of beguilement and coercion that the song presents. The alignment of the Bakkhai with the natural world is suggested by their costumes, choreography, and language. This reflects traditional themes—Dionysos is said to charm

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wild animals—but also establishes a deliberate connection to the ‘more-thanhuman world’ felt to be significant to ensemble members. David Abram’s wellknown phrase, appearing as the subheading of his 1996 work The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-than-human World, describes this as the ‘sensuous world’, in reference to the links between perception and the material world revealed through our senses, including other species, and natural and manufactured objects. This is a philosophical perspective grounded in the insights of phenomenology, showing ‘the hidden centrality of the earth in all human experience’ (Abram, 1996, p. xi). Abram extends phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s understandings of the reciprocity of perception, which itself builds on linguist Ferdinand de Saussure’s work on the interrelated nature of language systems, to an understanding of ecological interdependence: it is not ‘the human body alone but rather the whole of the sensuous world that provides the deep structure of language’ (p. 85). Abram’s work offers a method that resonates with methods used in our project: When we begin to consciously frequent the wordless dimension of our sensory participations, certain phenomena that have habitually commanded our focus begin to lose their distinctive fascination and to slip towards the background, while hitherto unnoticed or overlooked presences begin to stand forth from the periphery and to engage our awareness. (Abram, 1996, p. 63) We compare this description of becoming alert to the natural world with the studio methodology described above, which works with creative constraints, such as restriction on the use of speech in the open score, as a way of training attention on subtle aspects of inward feeling. Moving in experimental ways produces literal changes in perspective (from the floor, for example), encouraging participants to engage differently with their environments, and to return to ‘modes of being associated with the pre-verbal and play-based aspects of child development’ (Shaughnessy, 2012, p. 35). While the studio is a manufactured rather than natural environment, it is largely free of distractions, with the placement of objects and other stimuli in the space carefully curated. The combination of playful exploration and links to the more-than-human world established affective relations between the play’s corporeal and sensual dynamics and the South West bioregion, with ensemble members describing the play-world as ‘familiar’, offering ‘solace’, and ‘a lot more real than if it was set in some Greek palace with white togas’.

Affective methodologies In this section, we discuss McKenzie’s methodological approach to the creative development of the performance itself before going on to outline, in the following section, the research methodology we employed to explore how a community

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group theorises and makes sense of their participation in collaborative works. Both of these methodological approaches have an affective focus, as we explain below. In addition to defining affect via its outward signs and felt experience, affect is reflected in theoretical understandings of our approach to practice. We view the process of creation that grounds participants’ understandings of the Bakkhai project as ‘affective practice’, which concerns ‘ethics and aesthetics in participatory modes of practice, the affect of the work on performers and audience, the importance of process and the relations between making and performance’ (Shaughnessy, 2012, p. 6). In keeping with the paradigm of applied theatre, we have above provided a sense of the importance of process in Bakkhai, and go on below to explore ethics and aesthetics in participatory modes of practice, as well as the relations between making and performance for participants and audience. Complementing Abram’s phenomenological understandings described above, theories of affective practice draw on perspectives pertaining to developmental learning from cognitive studies, which show the significance for learning of the physical environment and the movement of bodies within it (Shaughnessy, 2012, p. 11). Two examples illustrate the project’s links between affective practice and Bakkhai’s corporeal and sensual dynamics, which for participants was strongly connected to the more-than-human world of the South West bioregion. One of the creative development workshops focussed on the middle of the narrative, in which Dionysos’s power waxes, Pentheos’s control wanes, and the Bakkhai grow increasingly wild and frenzied. We looked to the animal world for cues of sexual potency and power, noting expansive displays of feathers and inflated pockets of skin, suggesting physical ideas of revealing and expanding. A series of tasks developed these ideas; for example, a variation on Ruth Zaporah’s exercise ‘Body parts lead’ (Zaporah, 1995, p. 116): moving freely to a beat and with the constraint to always lead with a body part as instructed: head, right arm, left, sternum, hips, legs. Next, lines from Spradbury’s script were recited with favourite movements, where these were enhanced by finding hidden and compressed positions from which to expand and reveal. Meanwhile, a presentation of animal images in their resting and displaying states was projected onto the wall and shown on a loop. This material fed into the open score, and was used to generate the choreography for the Third Choral Ode, which we called ‘Heedless and Bestial’. Once we entered a rehearsal phase with weekly six-hour workshops, we devoted a couple of hours to shooting a one-minute promotional video for our social media site. This provided our third opportunity to dress in costume (the first was to develop marketing imagery for the presenting venue’s brochure and the second was a promotional event at a local festival), and all of these opportunities provided strong links to our region. Moreover, like the photoshoot for the marketing imagery, the promotional video was shot in a Tuart forest, one in which the dominant tree species is Eucalyptus gomphocephala, a form of vegetation that only occurs in the South West bioregion. Although there was some discussion about the wisdom of spending limited time in this way, the pleasure and excitement

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generated by taking our now-familiar movements and sounds into the forest environment made the choice more than worthwhile. The video has been viewed almost 6000 times, and inspired a shot-for-shot remake by a group of children connected to members of our ensemble (Theatre of the South West, 2018). The various aspects of affect traced through the project’s creative development and its theoretical foundations reflect the ‘turn to affect’, which has seen increased interest in understandings of bodies as socially and contextually situated, rather than as discrete and fixed entities (Manning, 2010), and of the ‘importance of the milieu in analyses of affective relations’ (Blackman & Venn, 2010, p. 12). These understandings suggest that we may need to rethink ways in which we research bodies and their affects, particularly the ‘reliance of many of our qualitative methodologies on language or sight’ or the ‘speaking subject’ (Blackman & Venn, 2010, p. 9). To this end, some researchers, for example Walkerdine (2010), have focused attention on researchers’ affective responses within the research interview itself. In this paper, we also consider affective approaches to data analysis—that is, our affective responses, as researchers, to the audio-recorded and transcribed focus group data we analyse, which is addressed in the section that follows.

Situated affective methodology Methodologically, we position ourselves (in the roles of director and cast member) within the milieu of that which we research. We are an integral part of the performative theatre we seek to explore; we are also members of the ensemble (director, cast and creative team) with whom we conduct our research. Since that research is concerned with affect, ‘both inward and internalised feeling, and the outward representation of emotion through face, gesture, posture, position and so forth’ (Franks, 2014, p. 4), we seek also to use affective methods as a means of researching the affective traces of participants’ felt experience in the focus group discussion. In other words, we make no claim for our research to be distanced, objective, neutral or value free (Stanley & Wise, 2002), but instead situate ourselves as affective participants in our own research. Whereas feminist methodologists have pointed to the narrow androcentric nature of traditional ‘objective’ social scientific research and have advocated more situated approaches, our engagement with the affective takes this a step further. Like feminist methodologists, we eschew the ‘science’ of traditional approaches to research: not for us the desire to achieve a ‘view from nowhere’ or ‘God’s eye view’ (Griffiths, 1995). Our methods seek instead to engage with the messiness of performative inquiry and our situated affective approach informs our research questions, the focus group questions we ask our research participants (including ourselves), and the ways in which we collect and make sense of our data. Other qualitative approaches—for example, narrative analysis or conversation analysis—may also attend to affect (Silverman, 2016). However, our research differs from these approaches in that the primary focus of our analysis is affective data. In addition, rather than aiming to set aside our emotional responses to that data, we seek instead to engage our

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affective selves as tools for data analysis in order to attain an embodied interpretation or fuller understanding. Thus, we use affective methods to research affective data. Prior to undertaking this affective data analysis, our focus group discussion was audio-recorded and transcribed. Affective analysis then commenced with an audio analysis—for auditory affect—of the audio-recording itself. A voice-only recording is a rich and varied source of affective traces. Our affective audio analysis focused on these affective traces, small indications of felt experience captured in the audio recording, which included emotive intonation, volume, urgency, emphasis and choice of wording, as well as verbal fillers (utterances which are not words—um and ahh are common). We did not seek to identify or name particular emotional or affective responses, but rather to attend to those aspects of the audio recording which evoked in us an ‘inward and internalised feeling’ (Franks, 2014, p. 4). Listening and attending carefully to anything in the audio recording that evoked such a response, we recorded this by highlighting sections of the transcript previously prepared by a professional transcribing service. Our affective analysis was, of course, also influenced by our own situated positions within the research and the performance, thus when the audio recording evoked an ‘inward and internalised feeling’, this was sometimes a reminder of our own earlier affective responses, during the performance and rehearsals, as well as when participating in the focus group discussion itself. In a second stage of affective analysis, we searched the transcript for linguistic markers that convey affective dimensions buried within our spoken communication. In this we were guided by cultural phenomenologist Thomas Csordas’s (1999, p. 148) research illustrating how embodied understandings of the world might be revealed in spoken utterances: ‘There is no special kind of data or a special method for eliciting such data, but a methodological attitude that demands attention to bodiliness even in purely verbal data such as written text or oral interview’. Csordas’s approach is informed by what he calls ‘somatic modes of attention’: culturally elaborated ways of attending to and with one’s body in one’s environment (p. 151). Thus, we analysed the focus group transcript for the key words emotion, feeling, like and way. Emotion and feeling are drawn from Franks’s description of affect as ‘encompassing both inward and internalised feeling, and the outward representation of emotion’ (p. 4); moreover, these key words signal participants’ reflections upon, and efforts to theorise, their own affective experiences of participating in the Bakkhai project. Less obvious, perhaps, are the linguistic markers like and way, but they too signal affective dimensions of spoken communication. As well as being a verbal filler, according to philosophers of affect Erin Manning and Brian Massumi, use of the word like ‘marks an affective overflow in speech’ (Manning & Massumi, 2014). We eliminated usages that ‘designate an identity or resemblance’, instead using like to ‘linguistically gesture to the feeling tone of the moment’ (p. 34). (Although this usage is not addressed by Manning and Massumi, we also noted, but eliminated from our analysis of the focus group transcript, many examples of using like as a way of signaling a

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performative voice, the participant’s own or someone else’s.) We understood way as signalling participants’ embodied understandings of the performance process, in line with theorist of embodied practice Ben Spatz’s (2015, p. 47) observation that ‘[m]ore often than not, this common and inconspicuous noun is used to describe the how of an action’, revealing users’ embodied knowledge. We eliminated from our analysis usages that referred to figurative idiomatic usages (‘by the way’, ‘we’ve come a long way’).

Thematic analysis and discussion This section presents quotes from the focus group discussion transcript, interpreted in line with the theoretical concerns we foreground above. The selection of quotes illustrates the application of the two stages of analysis described in our methodology section, where affective audio analysis captured affective traces, which were then highlighted in the transcript (amounting to 43% of the total words in the transcript). This was followed by key word searches that identified significant passages (16% of the total words). We found alignment of findings in two respects. First, there is remarkable alignment between the two stages of affective analysis, in that all of the passages revealed through the key word searches were also identified in the audio analysis, reinforcing both analytical approaches. Second, the four key word searches regularly identified the same or overlapping significant passages, so that many passages contain more than one key word. Our examples, then, present powerful evidence supporting our contention that, in the context of the focus group, the cast and creative team reflected upon and theorised their own experiences to produce social and embodied understandings of performance and its affects. These understandings fall into three key themes:




studio methods that establish embodied affect; that is, affective relations between participants and the corporeal and sensual dynamics of Bakkhai’s play-world; affective community building specific to the social and geographic context of the South West; audience affect so powerful that it produced deep understanding of the potential of performance.

Studio methods The passages presented in this section relate to studio methods that can be described as establishing embodied affect by engaging the whole organism and all the senses (McKenzie, 2014a, 2014b). Much of the focus group discussion drew attention to the value of the project’s ‘organic development’, as this passage indicates: I particularly liked the way that we worked on the movement and the choreography in that it wasn’t the choreographer going, ‘Do this, do this.’ It was

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very much an organic development of our own ideas and then working on those and developing them into our final piece. Other examples of studio practices that were found to be valuable (also signalled, as in the passage above, by the key word way; Spatz 2015, p. 47), relate to musical development. Before the production’s musical score was composed, we engaged in group singing of traditional songs in minor keys, which ‘implanted in a really subtle way this minor key in my head’. In learning music, having lyrics on the wall was ‘a different way’ that members of the ensemble contrasted positively with holding a script, ‘an unproductive way’ experienced in other production processes: Your shoulders are hunched and you’re holding your script and you’re reading instead of engaging and looking, it’s such an unproductive way to rehearse and perform. The process of ‘organic development’ is also seen across the project as a whole, particularly in relation to the open score described above (Koteen & Smith, 2008), which was valued by many as a way of preparing for performance: in some way the open score allowed that performance to happen at the end … the depth of exploration that could happen in the open score … having the opportunity to go in that space and explore feeling, emotion, movement, interaction … The participant goes on: ‘It’s like open, it’s like it was opening it up’. Coupling open with the key word like, marking ‘an affective overflow in speech’ (Manning & Massumi, 2014, p. 34), provides an affective trace of his engagement with the process, which is expanded upon with additional details relating to the relational and affective qualities of the studio experience: that it took place ‘over quite a long period of time’, that it offered an opportunity to ‘take in and get to know people energetically and feel what things feel like’. He returned to this topic later on in the focus group discussion, using the phrase ‘in a different way’ to distinguish our creative activities from ‘intellectual channels’: that sense of emotion and feeling that goes into the voices and being able to let some of the sound out and that feeling out through sound. … that taps into those different channels. It’s like, it’s not intellectual, it’s actually going in a different way, and I think some of that was able to come out again in a production … By using studio methods that engaged the whole organism and all the senses, relational qualities were enhanced between the participants themselves; this participant reflects an understanding of bodies as socially and contextually situated,

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rather than as discrete and fixed entities (Manning, 2010). His further insight is to link these affective practices to powerful outcomes in performance. The four key words emotion, feeling, like and way display remarkable alignment in the passage above, and three of them are present in the passage presented in the block above. Identification of these passages further aligns with our affective audio analysis that identified aspects of the audio recording which evoked in us an ‘inward and internalised feeling’ (Franks, 2014, p. 4). These excerpts offer powerful evidence of participants’ understandings of Bakkhai’s corporeal and sensual studio methods that paved the way for a powerful performance.

Community building Affective community building is situated community building; it occurs within a specific regional and cultural geography. Passages presented in this section show that life in the South West entails aspects of regionality such as doubts about fitting in and travelling vast distances. While the South West offers many of those who live here a strong sense of connection to the more-than-human world, those new to the region can find it hard to find their ‘tribe’: I’ve been here six years and I still haven’t found my tribe. I was really feeling … that there weren’t many opportunities to explore creatively in a space that was deep enough for me … So engaging in this reassures me that good stuff can come out of the region. For those new to the region the project achieved a sense of belonging to a place that was not previously considered ‘home’. Other aspects of the creative community that were widely celebrated in the focus group discussion include a sense that all were welcome, even those joining the group later in the process, and that support was available within, and beyond, the ensemble. Passages analysed in this section reveal participants grappling with and theorising their affective experiences, revisiting and refining these throughout the focus group discussion. For example, one participant begins by saying the project offered her ‘a way of having creativity as a sense of belonging’. This feeling was so powerful that it overcame the large geographic distances that are a feature of life in the South West: ‘there was no hesitation for me wanting to jump in the car every weekend and drive a three-hour round trip to come and play’. When the discussion turned to how people processed the tragic story presented in Bakkhai, this participant said she did not emotionally engage with it. However, later in the discussion this comment is revised in recognition of what occurred in playing the role of a Bakkhante: they were raw emotion, they embodied all of those emotional aspects … it was a very emotive physical experience that I probably did process … it was me feeling and verbalising … an embodied response rather than an intellectual response.

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Our affective analysis is useful for drawing attention to the ways in which participants, as seen in the quotes above, understand that engaging with the playworld’s tragic material with their ‘whole organism’ (McKenzie, 2014a, 2014b) combines ‘intellectual’ reflection with ‘emotional’ and ‘embodied responses’. In response to the difficult scene in which Pentheos’s remains are carried onto the stage, another Bakkhante reported that: one night I was literally dribbling when the bones came out, because I just loved being that Bakkhai. Where else can you express those emotions? It’s not socially acceptable anywhere else … I’d go back home from the rehearsals and the performances just feeling really good because I’d done this little emotional run-through … Another participant agreed that the tragedy did not affect her once she was off stage, but noted further that the ‘whole feeling’ was linked to ‘the connectedness of all of us, that we’re all in this together, it wasn’t just me going through this’. This participant, in other words, links the wholeness of experience in herself with social connectedness, much as we saw in the studio methods discussion above: relational qualities between participants are enhanced when participants reflect upon bodies as socially and contextually situated (Manning, 2010). One participant said that she ‘took the tragedy home’, which served for her as a reminder that ‘in addition to the community we had with us, all of us had our own community of people helping us’ beyond the Bakkhai ensemble. Key word searches for emotion and feeling (Franks, 2014, p. 4) identified numerous passages showing the ways in which participants considered participation in the Bakkhai project as constituting or supporting affective community building. Other key word searches reinforced these sentiments, showing that ‘open’ and ‘organic’ studio methods produce a creative culture that is ‘democratic’, offering a ‘total even playing field’. Many participants in the focus group discussion use like to signal a performative voice, a self-conscious use of their own or someone else’s voice, suggesting a strong reaction that has been internalised, which is then rehearsed in the context of the group discussion. These are so numerous that they have been excluded from material discussed here, but it is worth mentioning that these usages always align with striking passages in the audio recording analysis, and of these, most relate to community building and the culture of inclusivity.

Audience While more experienced performers in the group expressed some reservations about the ending of the creative development and the beginning of a new responsibility to the audience upon moving into rehearsals in the theatre, others experienced a sense of everything coming together upon moving into the theatre. We understand that this relates not to the physical theatre space per se, but rather a growing sense of relationship with the audience. Many performers—both

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experienced and novice—witnessed audience affect so powerful that it produced a deep understanding of the potential of performance. Especially strong evidence of this is expressed by the two performers who played Agaue-’s sisters, Autonoë and Ino. One sister, who had no prior performing arts experience, recalls the way (Spatz, 2015, p. 47) in which her embodied understanding clicked into place on stage: I realised that I didn’t have to play Autonoë, I could be Autonoë … My sister was wailing and screaming and I was so emotional. I was being your sister on the stage and that was just really amazing and I didn’t even know that that could happen … The striking passage from which these lines are drawn aligns with our affective analysis of the focus group audio recording; additionally, three of the four key words (emotion, feeling and way) appear in it. Together, the sisters form the group of Theban women whom we see in ‘Bakkhai Song’ resist and then succumb to the Bakkhai chorus, departing in the direction of the woods. After the Herdsman has related the tale of Pentheos’s death and dishonour at Agaue- and her sisters’ hands, they return and stand downstage, with a good view of the audience. Multiple usages of the key word like, ‘affective overflow in speech’ (Manning & Massumi, 2014, p. 34), show the performer who played the other sister, Ino, in the act of recreating a powerful experience from memory in the moment of sharing: why are they all looking so horrified, why aren’t they smiling? … We’re doing a performance here and they’re like sadly, and oh that’s right, it’s a tragedy. She theorises her shock of recognition, within the performance, at the audience’s shock of recognition of the tragedy they are witnessing, as bearing witness to catharsis: ‘you read about it on paper but to actually see the audience go through [it] was an absolutely amazing experience for me’. From an affective perspective, we might also consider this participant’s experience as a significant instance of Bakkhai’s affective practice, arising in the context of the project’s ‘ethics and aesthetics’ as reflected in the ‘affect of the work on performers and audience’ (Shaughnessy, 2012, p. 6). Studio methods that engage the whole organism and all the senses enhance relational qualities between participants, who connect the wholeness of experience with social connectedness, including audiences. The process of making, and the relations between making and performance in Bakkhai, produced palpable audience affect and a powerful understanding of the potential of performance. This same scene is reflected upon by an emerging artist who did not perform but witnessed Bakkhai as a member of the audience, noting the ‘good vibe’ achieved; he attempts to describe the quality of the moment when Agaue-

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recognises what she has done, the vibe, but words prove inadequate. First author and focus group facilitator, McKenzie, asks the participant what this experience felt like, and the participant responds in fragmented language but with fluid movement that McKenzie voices for the benefit of the recording: you’re making a motion with your head that copies the motion Michelle - where we all move with her, looking from her made on stage as Agaue, father back to the head of her son, which she’s just coming to realise is the head of her son … He agrees and adds: ‘particularly because of the silence, like it’s just the complete –’. Silence is the important word here, with the verbal filler like standing in where words fail, ‘linguistically gestur[ing] to the feeling tone of the moment’ (Manning & Massumi, 2014, p. 34). What strikes the participant so powerfully is the stunned silence of the audience, immediately recognisable to all of us—director, cast and creative team—who witnessed it.

Concluding discussion As a work of applied theatre that addresses ‘something beyond the form itself’ (Ackroyd, 2000), Bakkhai succeeded as a project that provided high social and cultural impact for funders and the wider community. It was a key project to help presenting venue and co-producer Bunbury Regional Entertainment Centre (BREC) meet its mission to remain a leading performing arts and conference venue, cultural developer, educator and public meeting place. An audience of more than 650 over three performances ensured it was a commercial success for the venue, with tickets sales doubling break-even. Strong evidence of social impact is seen in BREC’s audience survey, quoted in their annual report: ‘Fierce and gripping. Incredible what community performers can achieve with a professional creative team leading it’ (Bunbury Regional Theatre, 2018). For funding partner Culture and the Arts (WA), projects were to reflect their regions; the Bakkhai project was both located within and made explicit reference to the ensemble’s regional home. Furthermore, it provided professional work for six emerging artists in art, design, music, writing, and performance, whose practices cohered around the potent metaphor of place, ‘Thebes of the South West’ (McKenzie, 2019). Participants had the opportunity to partake in a collaborative theatrical endeavour within which their creative voices were valued and given prominence in musical language and physical patterns in dance and ensemble work. The focus group discussion makes clear that participants found the experience a joyful and transformative one. As participants and researchers, we have further enjoyed the satisfaction of observing the ways in which our situated affective methodology engages with performative inquiry and informs ways in which we collect and make sense of our data, recruiting our affective selves as tools for data analysis. We argue that our

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methodology achieves a more authentic and full account of the ways in which a community group theorises and makes sense of their participation in collaborative theatre than methodologies claiming scientific objectivity. In much the same way that affect connects internal feeling and outward representation of emotion (Franks, 2014), and that embodied experience connects wholeness of one’s own experience with social connectedness (Manning, 2010), our insights as researchers are enhanced through our connection to the milieu of that which we research (Blackman & Venn, 2010). By tracking the impacts of affect throughout this project, from studio methods, to affective traces in data, to data analysis, we become attuned to the sophisticated ways in which Bakkhai’s participants reflected upon and theorised their own experiences to inform their social and embodied understandings of performance and its affects. Thus, our situated affective methodology reveals three key insights: firstly, Bakkhai’s corporeal and sensual studio methods established affective relations between participants, the play-world, and the more-than-human world of the South West bioregion, and these relational qualities are enhanced when participants engage their whole organism. Secondly, Bakkhai built an affective community and a sense of belonging that is specific to the social and geographic context of the South West, where this is enhanced in active participation in sense-making, as in the focus group discussion. Thirdly, performance of Bakkhai produced palpable audience affect and a powerful understanding of the potential of performance, which participants readily theorised in relation to the studio methodology of the open score, and traditional notions of transformation through catharsis. And finally, our situated affective methodology offers a way of researching affect that attends to the ‘inward and internalised feeling’ (Franks, 2014, p. 4) of those undertaking the research. We hope that readers will also note their affective responses to this paper, and perhaps be inspired to include situated affective analysis in their own research.

References Abram, D. (1996). The spell of the sensuous: Perception and language in a more-than- human world. New York: Vintage. Ackroyd, J. (2000). Applied theatre: Problems and possibilities. Applied Theatre Researcher, 1(1), 1–13. Blackman, L. & Venn, C. (2010). Affect. Body & Society 16(1): 7–28. doi:10.1177/ 1357034X09354769.. Bunbury Regional Theatre. (2018). BREC annual report 17–18. Bunbury, Australia: Bunbury Regional Theatre. Csordas, T.J. (1999). Embodiment and cultural phenomenology. In G. Weiss & H.F. Haber (eds), Perspectives on embodiment: The intersections of nature and culture (pp. 143–162). New York: Routledge. Franks, A. (2014). Drama and the representation of affect—Structures of feeling and signs of learning. Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance 19(2): 195–207.

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Griffiths, M. (1995). Making a difference: Feminism, post‐modernism and the methodology of educational research. British Educational Research Journal 21(2): 219–235. doi:10.1080/ 0141192950210207.. Koteen, D. & Smith, N. S. (2008). Caught falling: The confluence of contact improvisation, Nancy Stark Smith, and other moving ideas. Northampton, MA: Contact Editions. Manning, E. (2010). Always more than one: The collectivity of a life. Body & Society 16(1): 117–127. Manning, E. & Massumi, B. (2014). Thought in the act: Passages in the ecology of experience. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. McKenzie, V. (2014a). Underscore alchemy: Extending the underscore for creative artists. Journal of Dance and Somatic Practices 6(2): 159–173. doi:10.1386/jdsp.6.2.159_1.. McKenzie, V. (2014b). Extending underscore alchemy. Brolga: An Australian Journal About Dance 39: 35–42. McKenzie, V. (2019). Bakkhai: Freedom and control. Curatorial essay, Edith Cowan University Research Online. Retrieved from https://ro.ecu.edu.au/ecuworkspost2013/ 6662/. Rechichi, R. (2018). Bakkhai [music]. Bunbury Regional Entertainment Centre, Bunbury, Australia, 15–16 June. Shaughnessy, N. (2012). Applying performance: Live art, socially engaged theatre and affective practice. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Silverman, D. (Ed.). (2016). Qualitative research. London: Sage. Spatz, B. (2015). What a body can do. Abingdon: Routledge. Spradbury, S. (2018). Euripides’ Bakkhai [playscript]. Bunbury Regional Entertainment Centre, Bunbury, Australia, 15–16 June. Stanley, L. & Wise, S. (2002). Breaking out again: Feminist ontology and epistemology. London: Routledge. Theatre of the South West. (2018). Come all savage creatures [video]. 25 May. Retrieved from www.facebook.com/Bakkhaitheatre. Thompson, J. (2009). Performance affects: Applied theatre and the end of effect. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Walkerdine, V. (2010). Communal beingness and affect: An exploration of trauma in an exindustrial community. Body & Society 16(1): 91–116. doi:10.1177/1357034X09354127. Zaporah, R. (1995). Action theater: The improvisation of presence. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books.

10 THE SIX VIEWPOINTS AND THE ART OF WAITING (TO BECOME ART) Tony Perucci

The first hand (in which the wheel is invented backwards) On the day I meet Mary Overlie, the originator of The Viewpoints theory and practice for actor training, she stands in front of her iconic blackboard, where she explains the ethos and history of the approach of The Six Viewpoints, the six individual Viewpoints—the ‘materials’ of Space, Shape, Time, Emotion, Movement and Story (SSTEMS)—and the nine philosophic laboratories of ‘the Bridge’ that support their study. It is June 2004 in Fresno, California, where I am participating in a two-week course, ‘Viewpoints in Action’. Outside it is 105 degrees Fahrenheit. Inside the studio, it is a crisp 64 degrees. Amongst a group of students, faculty, dancers and actors, it is the first of five full days training with Mary, as well as with her long-time collaborator, the dancer and choreographer, Nina Martin. She is finishing her introduction to the Viewpoint of Time, preparing to pivot to the Viewpoint of Emotion. We laugh when she tells us that, ‘Anytime any of you get intolerably cold I will send you to stand outside in the sun’. But, now, she tells us that she will tell us a story that she often tells ‘in relationship to time’. She says that while once lecturing on the Viewpoints in Chicago, she had said to herself, ‘I’m tired of giving this lecture, I’m going to do it backwards!’ She continues, hamming up her own impish mental dialogue: ‘“Oh, that’s cool.” And then I thought, “Oooh, let’s not even start at the end. Let’s step away, step away from the lecture!” Okay! I’m stepping away from the lecture!’ As she shoots her left arm out in front of her, she re-enacts the pedagogical explication of this gesture, ‘I went, “You see this?”’ She delicately places her right hand on the extended arm and says, ‘“This is the Viewpoints.”’ She gazes inquisitively at her arm and hand, and then turns to grin mischievously at us, before once again beholding the simple shape this gesture has created. ‘Any minute, it’s going to become art.’1

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Now she grasps and releases her arm, saying, ‘It’s going to collect a story’. She shifts her gaze from the shape to various points around her in the room. ‘It’s going to start affecting the Space, and a lot of that has to do with letting it rest there,’ she says, as she lightly traces her body from outstretched hand to bicep, ‘so that it can collect the information, rather than speeding on’. The event of this gesture and the workshop of which it was a part, transformed my understanding of performance, as both an artist and a teacher. But in the more than fifteen ensuing years in conversation and study with Mary, in working with the Viewpoints in my artistic practice, in teaching them to students, professional actors, and non-actors, I have only begun to recognise the affective charge of this gesture—not only how it functions as a synecdoche for the Viewpoints, but also the pedagogical force of its demonstration. In this chapter, I consider Overlie’s Six Viewpoints through six ‘hands’— occasions for thinking through The Viewpoints, not as a method, but as an approach for what Erin Manning (2016) terms, ‘the affective tonality of nonconscious resonance and moving it toward the articulation, edging into consciousness, of new modes of existence’ (p. 7). Following Deleuze and Guattari’s (1986) theorisation of ‘minor’ languages, literatures and sciences that unsettle the force and fixity of ‘major’ forms from within, Manning calls this movement between affective tonality and articulation, a ‘minor gesture’ (p. 7). I posit The Viewpoints approach as a theory and practice of the minor gesture, but also as one among many ‘practices that are generative of minor gestures’ (Manning, 2016, p. 24). As a minor gesture and as a practice that is generative of minor gestures, The Viewpoints embodies a politics of fugitivity, of theatre’s ‘anarchic share’ (Manning, 2016, p. 33), that is, an ‘anarchist calisthenics’ (Scott, 2012, p. 4) for the production of what Overlie terms ‘Original Anarchists’. (Overlie, 2016, p. 123). Just as Manning describes such work of ‘[c]horeographing the political’, The Viewpoints is a call not only for the collective crafting of minor gestures, but for the attunement, in perception, to how minor gestures do their work (Manning, 2016, p. 130). The writing that follows is one attempt to participate in that collective practice—an act of attunement towards how the Viewpoints does its work.

Second hand (in which it grasps too tightly) Throughout the Fresno workshop, Nina has led us in exercises in the Hamilton Floor Barre and Contact Improvisation, while Mary has lectured and led exercises on The Viewpoints, her approach to actor/dancer training that emphasises the isolation of theatre’s six ‘materials’: Space, Shape, Time, Emotion, Movement and Story (SSTEMS). Some of these exercises are very specific and limited in scope. For Space, we are instructed to ‘walk and stop’ to identify the distances and angles of space. For Emotion, we individually sit in front of the group and, invoking the choreographer, Deborah Hay, ‘allow ourselves to be seen’.2 However, other instructions are quite abstract. Each performer is one of four quadrants marked by chalk. Our instruction: for 15 minutes, do an improvised dance

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on Time. As an actor and director with little dance training, I find myself further unmoored by the vagaries of these instructions leaving me either utilising too much effort or lost in a fog of uncertainty. But on the penultimate day, during an exercise doing ‘Shape duets’ with the dancer Kelly Dalrymple-Wass, I have a kind of breakthrough. We have been instructed to use our ‘Shape awareness’ to have a ‘conversation’ with Shape with our partner. However, our impulses to assert pronounced ‘interesting’ shapes have missed the mark. We are not to ‘make shapes’, but rather to learn the ‘language’ of Shape, in order to have a conversation with and about it. My body relaxes, time slows, Kelly and I comfortably and casually begin to speak ‘with Shape’, sometimes back and forth, sometimes in synchrony, sometimes in counterpoint. In a photograph I have from that day, it appears that we were working with linear and angular shapes, my own body is standing straight, leaning slightly forward from my hips toward Kelly, my hands by side, cupped in the opposite direction. With her right arm crooked at a nearly 90-degree angle, her body is turned away from me, as is her head, which faces the ground. Her outstretch arm is extended, her hand gently resting atop my head. Someone has memorialised this photo by inscribing on the back of it, ‘The Famous Tony + Kelly dance. Framing another. 2004’.

FIGURE 10.1

‘The Famous Tony + Kelly Dance’, Kelly Dalrymple-Wass (L) & Author (R), Viewpoints in Action Workshop, Fresno, CA, July 2004.

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On the following day, we are improvising with The Viewpoints, with all six materials available to us. I am part of a group doing a 15-minute improvisation. I am working intuitively with the materials. I am working with tempo, slowly crawling on the floor. I am conscious of working with Space, erasing a chalk line with the top of my bald head. I am working with duration and repetition as the dancer Andrew Wass calls repeatedly from across the performance space, ‘Toooo-nyyyyy’ and I reply at variously timed intervals, ‘AAAAAndreeewww’. I am in it. But, then, the generally soft-spoken Mary Overlie, yells, ‘Tony, let go of your artist-creator! Let go of your artist-creator!’ I am baffled; is not the job of the artist to create? If I do not create, what on earth am I to do?

Third hand (in which it becomes a minor gesture) The Viewpoints was originated by Mary Overlie in the vibrant interdisciplinary arts community of the SoHo district of New York City in the 1970s. Under the tutelage of Yvonne Rainer, Barbara Dilley and others from the post-modern dance world, Overlie (1980) worked to identify what she termed, a ‘language and system of thinking about dance which addresses more than just the language of the body’ (p. 31). This practice formed a ‘coming together of the systematic investigations of post-modern dance and the more complicated forms of literal dance’ (Overlie, 1980, p. 32). While the term ‘Viewpoints’ has become wellknown, due to theatre director Anne Bogart’s appropriation of it to name her own ‘method’, Overlie’s approach differs significantly from Bogart’s.3 Though Bogart adopts many concepts and terms from Overlie—not the least of them being the term ‘Viewpoints’—Bogart’s method does not simply ‘expand and refine’ Overlie’s approach for ‘the theatre’ as Bogart often claims (Landau, 1995, p. 16; see also Bogart & Landau, 2005, p. 5), it refashions them as a ‘grand gesture’ of the ‘major’ (Manning, 2016, p. 1; see also Perucci, 2017).4 Unlike Bogart’s method, the minor gesture of The Viewpoints functions as a rhizomatic structure, not only of the materials themselves, but also of Overlie’s conceptualisation of them. The Viewpoints operates as a practice of deterritorialising the fixed terms of theatres of the major by enacting a ‘collective assemblage of enunciation’ (Deleuze & Guattari, 1986, p. 18) in theatre and dance in order to free their materials, performers and audiences from what Overlie (2004) calls the ‘domination [of] hierarchical control’. Bogart’s method exemplifies the grand gesture of the major by utilising the terms of Overlie’s approach (e.g., Space, Time, Viewpoints) as what Deleuze and Guattari (1987) call the major’s ‘order words’, which fix and capture experience (pp. 106–107). The Viewpoints provides the conditions of possibility for what Overlie describes as Bogart’s ‘funny little machine’, which Overlie notes is an entire ‘system that wasn’t mine’ (Bogart, 2012, p. 483). Developed in the context of the SoHo experimental and interdisciplinary world, The Viewpoints was never intended to displace the American mainstream (or ‘major’) forms of theatre’s psychological realism or dance’s Classical and

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Modernist virtuosity. Rather, the Viewpoints operate as a minor gesture in that it ‘punctuates the in-act, leading the event elsewhere than toward the governmental fixity’, of grand gestures like Bogart’s method, doing so with ‘fragility and persistence’ (Manning, 2016, p. 7). Bogart's method operates as 'major' taxonomy, obscuring the potential of a different kind of machine altogether–the Viewpoints' abstract machine. As such, The Viewpoints does not oppose the major, but rather seeks to enable what Derek McCormack (2013) terms ‘affective-somatic experimentalism’ (p. xi) for Manning’s minor gesture that ‘open[s] the as-yet-unseen the as-yet-unthought, the as-yet-unfelt (Manning, 2016, p. 23). In short, the infectiousness of the Viewpoints, may arise from its carrying ‘the germ of freedom’ (p. 23).

Fourth hand (in which it learns the languages of the materials) As is visually apparent by the rendering of the Figure 10.2, the Viewpoints are not only provisionally isolated, they are non-hierarchical. A primary intervention of The Viewpoints is the shift from what Overlie sees as the ‘vertical’ hierarchies in both theatre and dance. In the case of Western theatre, primacy is traditionally given to plot and character, where all other scriptive and scenic elements exist to support those two formal elements. For Western dance, (depending on Classical or Modern style) this refers to the privileging of narrative, virtuosity, languages of the body. In the Viewpoints, the performer encounters all materials as existing ‘on the Horizontal’, as no material is essentially determining. Rather, in treating the materials as fundamentally Horizontal, as that which ‘fell on the floor’, one can create ‘temporary hierarchies’ in composition, where any one of the Viewpoints (or outside materials, such as spoken text or objects) is given the spotlight. The Viewpoints, as a pedagogy and form of embodied research, is fundamentally a perception training. It uses nine ‘laboratories’ to provisionally isolate or ‘bracket’ one Viewpoint at a time, for investigation or interrogation, a process introduced in the first two laboratories: News of a Difference (‘Noticing Difference in Increasing Levels of Subtlety’) and Deconstruction (‘Investigating Theater by Separating the Components of Its Structure’). While all of The Viewpoints are always present, these laboratories are geared toward a serial exploration of each individual Viewpoint: Space, Shape, Time, Emotion, Movement and Story (SSTEMS). Overlie refers to this process as ‘Inventing the Wheel Backwards’—a

FIGURE 10.2

The Six Viewpoints, a horizontal structure of theatrical materials, developed by Mary Overlie.

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term she coined in the 1970s, while working with the improvisational dance company, Natural History of the American Dancer, to refer to the act of ‘inventing’ the wheel by taking it apart, rather than by putting it together. This represents a radical shift in training the performer’s authorial relation to the work—rather than ‘inventing’ new material by introducing vocabulary, choreography, and affect, what is ‘invented’ is the materials that are already present and the structures that hold them together. The purpose of this deconstruction and, as she puts it, ‘particle-isation’ is one of learning to ‘speak’ the languages of the materials, notably different from learning what the performer can instrumentally do to or do with the materials. As a ‘language’ to be learned, rather than a ‘tool’ to be used, The Viewpoints do not seek to contain or fix the elements of the natural world, but instead materialise the performative intensities of what Fred Moten (2003) terms ‘fugitivity’ (p. 35). To learn the language of Space, for instance, rather than to talk about Space is the critical distinction that lies at the heart of The Viewpoints and the Horizontal Laboratory. In this view Space—as an abstraction, material fact, and sensory experience—is always already speaking, prior to, during and long after the performer enters into it. However, its communicative force is nearly imperceptible, operating at the edge of our consciousness of it. Its language is non-representational, but instead constitutes an affective relational field of which the performer is a part. To learn to speak the language of Space is to participate in perceptual attunement to its abstract-material tonality. Deleuze (1997) describes theatre’s potential to ‘minorate’ as just such a practice of ‘subordination of the subject to intensity or to affect, to the intense variation of affects’ (p. 249). The Viewpoints, as a form of perception training and affective attunement, works precisely to decentre and reorient the performer in a moment at ‘the height of abstraction, but also the moment at which abstraction becomes real’ (McCormack, 2013, p. 87). While Manning sees the minor gesture to be ‘activating new modes of perception’ through the work of ‘inventing languages that speak in the interstices of major tongues’, The Viewpoints demurs from the act of invention, choosing to learn abstract-material languages from the materials beyond the performer (Manning, 2016, p. 2). As significant as the horizontality of the materials is the horizontality of the performer in relation to the materials. That is, the materials of performance are to be given as much focus as the performer themselves. The performance work is ‘about’ the materials as much as it is about the performer(s). This can be seen as following in the tradition of Judson Dance Theatre and the work of post-modern choreographers, such as Yvonne Rainer and Trisha Brown, who sought to deprivilege and problematise the performer and their virtuosity as the loci of audience attention. Rainer (1968) famously schematised these as ‘minimalist tendencies’ as dance’s correlative practice to minimalist visual art in her ‘Quasi Survey’ (p. 263). However, notably absent from Rainer’s ‘quasi-survey’ is the ‘theatrical’ and confrontational aspect of minimal sculpture, derided by Michael Fried (1968)—its irascible presence and its obstinate refusal to mean. From a more

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celebratory perspective, Barbara Rose (1968) describes this quality as not just a passive ‘thing’, but also the thing’s ‘literal emphatic assertion of its existence’ (p. 291). Rainer’s elimination of the quality of ‘emphatic assertion’ from her formulation—both in recounting sculpture and dance—is not surprising given that in dance the ‘thing’ in question is a person. This is the heart of what Rainer variously terms her ‘seeing difficulty’ and ‘audience problem’, that the propensity of the performer’s ‘seduction’ of the audience impeded the audience from being able to perceive, apprehend and experience the literal physicality of the body (Lambert-Beatty, 2008), what Rose might call its ‘concrete thereness’ (Rose, 1968, p. 291).5 Overlie addresses this challenge directly in multiple ways, first, by shifting the locus of the performer onto the materials, themselves. The performer’s job, one could say, is to get out of the way of the materials in order allow for them to emphatically assert their own presence. This approach correlates well with the work of minimal sculptors. The objects created by Donald Judd, Robert Morris, Richard Serra and others can be seen as the artist enabling the object’s emphatic assertion, as opposed to the emphatic assertion of the artist-subject in, for example, abstract expressionism. Overlie’s formulation doesn’t resolve Rainer’s dilemma, but it attends to it by expanding the ‘literal object’ to include, for instance, the negative space between performer and object, between audience and architecture, or any other such combination. In The Viewpoints, the performance ecology of which the performer is a cocomposer and participant functions as this kind of literal object. Deleuze (1997) terms this role for the theatre artist that of the ‘operator’, but perhaps the more apt word would be a conductor, not only in the sense of the train ‘operator’ or one who leads the symphony with their baton, but as a conduit for circulation of the electrical field of affective resonances (p. 239). As a minor gesture for the enabling of minor gestures, the actor-conductor challenges the centrality of the artist’s volition, and thereby ‘celebrates the art of participation, making felt how an ecology can become expressive, and tuning that making-expressive toward the generation of an aesthetic yield, aesthetic in its original definition of making sensible, making felt’ (Manning, 2016, p. 81). As McCormack (2013) notes, the ‘affects of this field are radically autonomous’ and are to be found in the relational performance ecology, rather than in the body of the performer (p. 33).

Fifth hand (in which we wait for it to become The Viewpoints) It is February 2017 and Mary Overlie is leading workshops at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on the occasion of Carolina Performing Arts 10-day programming series and residencies marking composer Philip Glass’s eightieth birthday. Mary holds out her hand and investigates it. It is twelve years since the first and last time I had seen her perform this gesture. Indeed, I had forgotten about it. She asks the question to us, to herself, to her hand, ‘When will it become art?’ I don’t recall which Viewpoint she was demonstrating, because

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I have since realised that she employs this gesture for numerous purposes. It can be understood as a synecdoche for The Viewpoints as a theory and practice. That is, not what can the artist make with the materials, but how can they create the conditions in which the materials can ‘become’ art? For Overlie, the Viewpoints leads away from being an ‘artist-creator’ and instead to an ‘observer-participant’. This term—which had caused me so much consternation in 2004—is a reversal of the one used by contemporary anthropologists, surprisingly emphasises not enactment, but perception. The performer’s primary role is to ‘observe’ and then to ‘participate’ in that which they observe, rather than to impose something on it. This physical gesture is central to Overlie’s pedagogy, so much so, that it functions as a minor gesture to enable the Viewpoints minor gesture of producing the conditions for the emergence of minor gestures. In fact, she utilises it in her book, Standing in Space: The Viewpoint Theory & Practice (2016) on different occasions to illustrate five different concepts through the recollection of previous demonstrations. The physical gesture makes its first appearance in her explication of the Viewpoint of Shape. Now reach your hands out; look at them. Here is a Shape that is yours alone. Here is a material of performance existing in the form of your body. This material is both singular and universal. Begin by contemplating your own

Mary Overlie waiting for a gesture to become art at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, February 2017. Photograph by Alex Maness FIGURE 10.3

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form. Simply take time—lots of time—to just look at your arms, your legs, and the position they are in, and their relationship to each other, as a painter would. Observe and wait for the moment when Shape begins to speak in Shape to you. (Overlie, 2016, p. 19) Most notable here is that Overlie focuses us not on the shapes the performer can make, but on the shape that their hands are already in. Moreover, it is not the ‘hands’ that ‘speak in Shape’, but Shape (nor is it ‘the shape of your hands’ or even ‘the shape’, but ‘Shape’). Implicit in her use of the hand gesture to illustrate Shape is its reference to time, the necessity of duration, which is characterised by waiting for ‘Shape’ to ‘speak’. In her description of the Viewpoint of Time, she utilises the same gesture, but now as a description of her own performative pedagogy, rather than as an instruction to a student: In many ways it can be argued that this specific interrogation of Time was one of the primary, embodied cores of the radical shifts taking place in the art movement of that era [1970s SoHo]. In my lectures on the structure of the Six Viewpoints I express this shift, this emphasis on a contemplative Time, a natural Time, with a symbolic gesture: hand held out, palm cupped to receive while saying, ‘You see this, this is the Viewpoints, at any given time art will arrive on its own if you train yourself in observation and patience’. (Overlie, 2016, p. 22) In this case, ‘this is Viewpoints’ does and does not refer to the object of the cupped hand or the gesture of its extension. Similarly, ‘this is Viewpoints’ does and does not refer to the duration of time it will take for art to ‘arrive on its own’. What ‘is’ Viewpoints here is the quality of the waiting, its interminability, its potentiality, its imminent failure to arrive, the hope against the possibility that this waiting is like that of Vladimir and Estragon. It is also, though, a relation to the audience of students, in which we are invited to join her in waiting for the art to arrive on its own. In her use of the embodied gesture for the Viewpoint of Story, Overlie (2016) once again frames it as a performative demonstration. As with the Viewpoint of Emotion, which I will explain below, Story is particularly slippery, given our association of the term with linear narrative. Story is the most ‘difficult of the SSTEMS to teach’, (p. 45) and yet it is also ‘the material I most want them to learn and master (p. 51). Story, Overlie states, is a bit of a misnomer, as ‘logic’ would be the more accurate term.6 As with the other Viewpoints, Story is not a fictive structure to be imposed but the extant structure of an ‘arrangement of particles’, a ‘Logic’ to be discovered through a process of ‘exposing … an organization of sequences of information’ (pp. 45, 55). Thus, when Overlie once again

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holds out her cupped hand, she repeats, ‘See this? This is the Six Viewpoints’ (p. 50). Then I stare at my hand for a moment. Without taking my eyes off my hand I say. ‘At any moment this is going to become a performance, it is going to become art … it’s going to start to take on a meaning, a story’. At first it seems like a joke. (Overlie, 2016, p. 50) While nearly identical to the presentation on Time, there is a significant shift— artfulness of form connects the emergence of meaning. But, rather than a volitional construction of meaning, it is one that constructs an event that is shared by audience and performer and governed by duration and the tensive moment wherein a decisive act becomes meaningful. Story is necessarily always becomingStory. Meaningfulness as an emergent logic is particularly critical for this discussion, because this conceptualisation challenges not only the major definition of story as linear narrative, but also (and especially) the understanding of meaning and logic as rational processes that are divorced from emotion and corporeal experience. As many researchers into the significance of recent findings in cognitive neuroscience have shown, the ‘mind-body’ split is simply not supported by contemporary scientific investigation. Not only are the ‘body’s ongoing interaction with the world’ and the embedded emotional response to external forces, the ‘primary means for our being in touch with the world’, they are also co-constitutive of meaning and logic (Johnson, 2007, p. 65). If, following Mark Johnson (2007), we understand how ‘logic is embodied—spatial, corporeal, incarnate’, then it becomes apparent that the perceptual tuning of Viewpoints pedagogy is toward this somatic-affective-neurological experience of story-logic-meaning (p. 102).

Sixth hand (in which we want to be anarchy) It is June 2014 in Fresno, California; and Mary has just finished waiting for her hand-arm gesture to become art. Now she is putting that same hand on the blackboard, where she has written the word, ‘Emotion’. She says, ‘This is for most of you guys in “the theatre”, something you know very well’. Many of us laugh in knowing recognition. However, she explains, ‘emotion has been reified and practised in so many different ways’, that what we see most often in American theatre is the ‘gross and repetitive’ acting that she calls ‘cartoon work’. The Viewpoints of Emotion does not refer to the ‘capture and expression of unique emotional content’ that is found in Method Acting, Grotowski work, or the Modern Dance techniques of Martha Graham or José Limón (Overlie, 2016, p. 30). Rather, Emotion is the attunement to the simple fact that ‘the performer is present’ and that they have offered themselves to ‘the gaze of the audience, communicating human to human’ (pp. 29, 31). In short, Emotion is ‘presence’,

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which does not refer to an ephemeral ‘liveness’, but a performer’s heightened condition of ‘active self-awareness’ (p. 29). Thus, the Viewpoint of Emotion is not a matter of the communication of ‘feelings’. As Eric Shouse (2005) has argued, feelings are the ‘personal and biographical’ sensations that have been ‘checked against previous experiences and labelled’—the work that Overlie describes as the reified emotion expressed in ‘cartoon’ acting (p. 2). Following Brian Massumi, he describes affect, as ‘a nonconscious experience of intensity; it is a moment of unformed and unstructured potential’. It is these pre-/non-conscious entities that make ‘feelings feel’. While Shouse defines emotion as the social expression of feelings, Mark Johnson (2007) utilises Damasio’s term of ‘emotional response’ as an ‘automatic’ response to a stimulus, characterised by a ‘complex collection of chemical and neural responses forming a distinctive pattern’ (p. 59). Thus, the personal and biographical qualities of feelings can be understood as a ‘qualitative awareness’ that is labelled in relation to previous experiences and socially constructed categories that reify a particular feeling as such (Johnson, 2007, p. 56). While affects are, as Virginia Demos notes, ‘comprised of correlated sets of responses involving the facial muscles, the viscera, the respiratory system, the skeleton, autonomic blood glow changes, and vocalisations that act together’ that produce intensity, this understanding of emotion is that of making affect conscious (cited in Shouse, 2005, p. 6). Overlie demonstrates Emotion-as-presence as selfawareness, by giving language to the conscious experience of an actor during ‘presence work’: Ahh, here I am and they are watching me. This is causing my breathing to be fairly shallow, there is a rigidity in my body and especially in my spine; I don’t feel comfortable with them watching me; now a wave of sensation is rippling up the surface of my back; I am acutely aware of my shoulders for some reason; I need to allow them to see that I am uncomfortable. My focus should be more acute; I am in a mild fog. I would like to swallow and instead grind my teeth; they can see me grinding my teeth. I have stopped breathing for a second. I shift my ribcage and take a deep breath that moves down my last three ribs. I just dropped my eyelids; I am going to keep them and down and let myself know that they can see this gesture; this action, the vulnerable position. I look up, smile nervously at my audience, taking a ragged breath. This is my current state of being. (Overlie, 2016, p. 32; emphasis in original) Though Overlie verbalises it here, this articulation of affect into emotion need not be transformed into explicit representation. Moreover, the objective is not to express this interior awareness to the audience, but to attend its presence with the same care and specificity as Space or Time. Just as contemporary research into cognition has shown (Barrett, 2017; Claxton, 2015; Gallagher, 2005; Johnson, 2007; Noë, 2004), the production of emotion is neurological and corporeal; and thus, it is as material as Shape. While Overlie originally used the term ‘emotional ambiance’ for this Viewpoint, one could easily use the term ‘affective tonality’,

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whose materiality Overlie had to account for because ‘it is always there whether you want to acknowledge it or not’ (Anderson, 1981; Sommer, 1980, p. 57). All this is to say, the Viewpoint of Emotion works to open conduits for the transmission of affect, as to inhabit it, Overlie explains, is to enter the ‘Dog-Sniff-Dog World’, in which the performer simply presents themselves to the audience as ‘open and sniffable’ (Overlie, 2016, p. 32) It is no surprise, then, that to introduce the Laboratory for the study of Emotion, ‘The Piano’, she returns, once again, to the gesture of the hand. ‘The Piano’ might give the impression that the performer simply manipulates the audience by ‘playing’ then; indeed, this was my understanding of it until I did the presence work with Overlie in 2017. Rather, as she explained, following my own self-conscious (rather than self-aware) work, the term is meant to convey the sensitivity to nuance, magnificence of construction and openness to the artists’ actions as the finest hand-crafted piano in the world. In discussing The Piano, Overlie introduces the figure of the hand, not as an example of her teaching, but as a moment of discovery that accounted for the audience as internal to the work, as the ‘SSTEMS existed as fully in the audience as they do onstage’ (Overlie, 2016, p. 107). I began to walk around my studio using my space lens but this time seeing what I was doing from the perspective of the audience. I lifted my arm and inspected my hand and saw the audience see my hand, then I saw the audience see me seeing my hand and realized that these spectators/participants were very good. If I ‘thought of them as not good then what was I doing making dances for them? They were as good as I was. They had the capacity to see everything I wanted to show them and even things I did not consciously know I was showing them. I realized they were the finest pianos in the world. The audience, in this laboratory, became an instrument I could work with rather than a negative and frightening judge, or an ignorant, somewhat dangerous and demanding force. (Overlie, 2016, pp. 107–108) The hand, here, operates as the occasion to collaborate with the audience, where they are not only considered equal to the performer, but superior to them, able to detect things that she ‘did not consciously know’ to be discernible. This curious process exemplifies the Viewpoints, in its affective and perceptive attunement, as a minor gesture for the generation of minor gestures, and its operation at the ‘edge of the imperceptible’, of what Manning terms the ‘smallest vibrational intervals’, which the minor gesture assists to ‘take expression’ (Manning, 2016, pp. 221, 250). The Piano’s minor key(s) attunes us the emotion as corporeal and relational, ‘as both in us and in the world at the same time’ (Johnson, 1987, p. 67). That co-constructed emotional ambience is fundamentally affirmative, based on the performer’s recognition of the audience’s goodness and their ‘embrace [of] the idea that [they] are loved by the audience (Overlie, 2016, p. 32). And it is in precisely this ‘revolutionary theatre, a simple loving potentiality, an

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element for a new becoming of consciousness’ (Deleuze, 1997, p. 256) that the minor gesture of The Viewpoints attunes us to this political potentiality of ‘the barely perceptible sounding’ of affective tonalities of ‘the anarchy at the heart of all processes’ (Manning, 2016, pp. 228, 38). For, the perceptual tunings are preparations for The Viewpoints’ final laboratory: ‘The Original Anarchist’. In many ways, the performer’s discovery that their study of the Viewpoints had been a form of anarchist calisthenics. Critically, the Original Anarchist’s anarchism is not based on opposition to the grand gesture’s upstagings or the major’s rules and regulations. The Original Anarchist does not oppose, she evades. For, she simply ‘needs no outside rules as guides in order to function as a positive part of the whole’ (Overlie, 2016, p. 124).7 Nor does she oppose structure, rather the Original Anarchist is a performer who is ‘confident enough to wait’ for an emergent becoming-Story-logic (p. 124), derived from what Manning calls a ‘technique … for experimental prudence, a prudence patient enough to engage with that which experimentation unsettles, a prudence that composes at the edge of the as-yet-unthought in the rhythm of the minor gesture’ (Manning, 2016, p. 7). The Original Anarchist is capable of politics without a political programme. In fact she enacts a politics defined by its exceeding of such programmes and pronouncements. She is now attuned to the Viewpoints’ minor gesture, drawing her now to ‘the periphery of the stage’ and a tucked-away lighting pole’s ‘intriguing secretiveness’ (Overlie, 2016, p. 125). Led by the materials to the affective resonances of ‘hiding on stage’, she finds herself ‘feeling a new power with the idea’ by ‘turning the theater around on itself’ (p. 125). The performer’s minor gesture of attending to her hand—outstretched and cupped—embodies the ‘patina of The Original Anarchist gleaming in her presence, through her eyes and in her manner’, opening up the artfulness of Time, of Shape, of Story, of Emotion (p. 126). Her gleaming patina is not an achievement, but rather an affective tonality that hints at the performer’s ‘secret onstage’: that she will observe her hand and she will observe the audience observing her hand, waiting together as she asks, ‘When will it become art?’

Notes 1 My recollection of this lecture is based on a video recording taken by Cal State Fresno students. 2 Hay’s (2000) formulation is to ‘invite being seen’ (p. 26). 3 I argue in ‘On Stealing Viewpoints’ that, while Bogart has brazenly acknowledged ‘stealing’ the Viewpoints from Overlie, I argue that the radical differences between the approaches (and the very idea that the Viewpoints could be stolen), are such that what Bogart ‘stole’ was the term ‘Viewpoints’, more than the approach itself (Perucci, 2017). 4 See, for instance, (Bogart & Landau, 2005, p. 16), however, Bogart has circulated this claim of ‘refine and expand’ so frequently and for so long, that it is reproduced in most descriptions of the work. 5 Carrie Lambert-Beatty (2008) makes the convincing case that this dilemma is actually a central aspect of Rainer’s work, rather than an incidental one.

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6 The story of how Logic came to be named Story helps to account for the critical role it plays in the Viewpoints. From her earliest solo dance pieces in the 1970s, Overlie’s ‘abstract narratives’ staged interventions into the ‘era of Conceptual Minimalism’ in which she was working. In naming Logic as Story, Overlie (2016) intended to contest the claim made by John Cage and others of their work that ‘THIS DOESN’T MEAN ANYTHING’. (p. 45). Rather, as one of her ‘Arguments with Merce [Cunningham]’, she incisively pointed out that even the ‘enormous effort to have no Story is itself the Logic’ (p. 46). 7 I explicitly address the political potential of the Original Anarchist and the Viewpoints in relationship to Occupy Wall Street and other ‘horizontalist’ political movements in my ‘Dog Sniff Dog: Materialist Poetics and the Politics of the Viewpoints’ (Perucci, 2015, p. 16).

References Anderson, J. (1981). Post-modern dance favors display in lieu of definition. New York Times, p. D25. Barrett, L. F. (2017). How emotions are made: The secret life of the brain. New York: Mariner Books. Bogart, A. (2012). Interview with Mary Overlie. In A. Bogart (ed.), Conversations with Anne: twenty-four interviews (pp. 469–487). New York: Theatre Communications Group. Bogart, A. & Landau, T. (2005). The Viewpoints book: A practical guide to Viewpoints and composition. New York: Theatre Communications Group. Claxton, G. (2015). Intelligence in the flesh: Why your mind needs your body much more than it thinks. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Deleuze, G. (1997). One less manifesto (trans. E. d. Molin & T. Murray). In T. Murray (ed.), Mimesis, masochism & mime: The politics of theatricality in contemporary French thought (pp. 239–258). Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. Deleuze, G. & Guattari, F. (1986). Kafka: Toward a minor literature (trans. D. Polan). Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Deleuze, G. & Guattari, F. (1987). A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia (trans. B. Massumi). Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Fried, M. (1968). Art and objecthood. In G. Battcock (ed.), Minimal art: A critical anthology (pp. 116–147). Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Gallagher, S. (2005). How the body shapes the mind. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Hay, D. (2000). My body, the Buddhist. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press. Johnson, M. (1987). The body in the mind: The bodily basis of meaning, imagination, and reason. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Johnson, M. (2007). The meaning of the body: Aesthetics of human understanding. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Lambert-Beatty, C. (2008). Being watched: Yvonne Rainer and the 1960s. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Landau, T. (1995). Source-work, The Viewpoints, composition: What are they? In M. B. a. S. Dixon, Joel A. (ed.), Anne Bogart: Viewpoints (pp. 13–30). Lyme, NH: Smith and Kraus. Manning, E. (2016). The minor gesture. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. McCormack, D. P. (2013). Refrains for moving bodies: Experience and experiment in affective spaces. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Moten, F. (2003). In the break: The aesthetics of the Black radical tradition. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

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Noë, A. (2004). Action in perception. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Overlie, M. (1980). Mary Overlie: A letter. Dance Scope, 14(4), 30–34. Overlie, M. (2004). The Six Viewpoints. Retrieved from https://sixviewpoints.com/ maryoverlie. Overlie, M. (2016). Standing in space: The Six Viewpoints theory & practice. Billings, MT: Fallon Press. Perucci, T. (2015). Dog sniff dog: Materialist poetics and the politics of the Viewpoints. Performance Research, 20(1), 105–112. Perucci, T. (2017). On stealing viewpoints. Performance Research, 22(5), 113–124. Perucci, T. (Forthcoming). On the horizontal: Mary Overlie and The Viewpoints. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. Rainer, Y. (1968). A quasi survey of some ‘minimalist’ tendencies in the quantatively minimal dance activity midst the plethora, or an analysis of Trio A. In G. Battcock (ed.), Minimal art: a critical anthology (pp. 263–273). Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Rose, B. (1968). ABC Art. In G. Battcock (ed.), Minimal art: A critical anthology (pp. 274–297). Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Scott, J. C. (2012). Two cheers for Anarchism: Six easy pieces on autonomy, dignity, and meaningful work and play. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Shouse, E. (2005). Feeling, emotion, affect. M/C Journal, 8(6). Retrieved from http:// journal.media-culture.org.au/0512/03-shouse.php. Sommer, S. R. (1980). Mary Overlie: I was a wild Indian who happened to dance. TDR: The Drama Review, 24(4), 45–58.

11 SITTING WITH IT Liveness and embodiment Anna Hickey-Moody

To know ourselves, we must first see ourselves in others, and know ourselves as the shadow whose prey the hunter becomes. We live with shadows of ourselves, and shadows of others in us, all the time. Lacan explains this dynamic through saying: psychoanalytic investigation of the ego allows us to identify it with the form of the goatskin bottle [outre], with the outrageousness of the shadow whose prey the hunter becomes, and with the emptiness [vanité] of the visual form. This is the ethical face of what I have articulated, in order to convey it, with the term ‘mirror stage’. (Lacan, 2013, p. 34) The mirror stage is the idea that infants learn to recognise themselves at six months of age. Part of this process of self-recognition includes self-alienation. Back to Back Theatre’s1 production called The Shadow Whose Prey the Hunter Becomes alienates the audience from their sense of self and value in the world, by staging a futuristic intervention in which the audience are positioned as unskilled in comparison to artificially intelligent beings. In this chapter I discuss this alienation through concepts of affect, everydayness and discomfort. This discussion is woven together with an interview with Ingrid Voorendt, a performance maker who works with Back to Back Theatre, and we discuss disability, performance, affect, and the discomfort of sitting with shadows. … that’s where I come back to when we we’re talking about failure before, and that thing of well, what about the value in receptiveness and listening and being, and just being able to absorb and take in, like cultivating awareness, I guess.

INGRID:

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I think it is the awareness, but it’s also the sitting with, I think. Yes. ANNA: Because … if you think about the text that viewing publics consume, nothing is so real and politically challenging as Back to Back, they’re not pretending to be someone that they’re not. They’re not pretending. And they’re also being with and living with really complicated bodies. INGRID: And histories, experiences. You can sense it, you can see it.

ANNA:

INGRID:

I have written this chapter after collaborating for many years making performance works with Ingrid, and as a result of our dialogue. In coming together now to reflect on the work of Back to Back Theatre, I take my methodological cues from the ensemble (Back to Back), who devise their performance material through conversations. Taking cues from this process, I have developed this exploration of affect, disability, liveness, and the body as history and as text, through conversation. The Shadow Whose Prey the Hunter Becomes could not happen without emotional investments in working relationships. Because they are so absolutely central to the creation of the work, it seems wrong not to name them and value them. Central to this chapter is also my working relationship with Ingrid, which grew into a friendship while working together for many years at Restless Dance Theatre, and while this is not the subject of this chapter, the trust and love we have in and for each other shapes how we talk. What is possible without love? Nothing of worth, it seems. Let us then value this labour and emotion and work with it. I begin by offering an overview of the Back to Back Theatre show that has inspired this writing. Back to Back Theatre describe themselves as follows: Over the last 30 years Back to Back Theatre has made a body of work that questions the assumptions of what is possible in theatre, but also the assumptions we hold about ourselves and others. As an ongoing dialogue with our audience, each new project is an investigation seeking answers to questions raised in previous works. Our attention lies with design, light and sound. The stories we pursue weave the personal, the political and the cosmic. We work to curiosity and interest in the live moment, to what sits within and between. (Back to Back Theatre, n.d.) The final line about curiosity and interest in the live moment resonates with me, as the liveness and shared space of performance work is profound. The complexity of this affective impact is part of what I try to explore in what is to follow.

The Shadow Whose Prey the Hunter Becomes The Shadow Whose Prey the Hunter Becomes (2020) centres around a meeting of disability activists, unpretentiously held in a ‘small community hall in Geelong,

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Australia’. As it unfolds, a group of people with intellectual disability inform the ‘audience’ that artificial intelligence is going to take over the world and, when this occurs, all humans will be positioned as intellectually disabled. The journey taken in leading up to this public announcement intricately weaves together pain and humour and explores quite complex issues: from masturbation to abuse to disability rights. The performance invites viewers to come back to ourselves—as community members and as individual people—to integrate the shadow: the ignored, unwanted, neglected parts of ourselves. Its asks us to be with the shadow and to let it be. The liveness of the work keeps us connected to vulnerability, to loss, and to the performers. In this context, liveness reminds us that things take the time they take. Silence and everydayness are part of the equilibrium of the work. Performers take time to do tasks. The company spent two and a half years making the performance through improvisation and conversation and there is a sense of routine, and everydayness that permeates the work. The show begins with a stage that is empty, save for a mounted digital screen and a black ladder in the right-hand corner of stage. The ladder is edged with yellow plastic. Three performers enter, the one pushing a flat trolley loaded with chairs. Scott, who is tall and bearded, begins discussing rules around masturbation and consent. He says ‘I’m going to explain to you when it’s appropriate to touch someone … you can’t touch people in the crotch area … It’s also inappropriate to touch your own crotch in a public space.’ Sarah, the only female performer in the ensemble, states in a rather withering tone that ‘If you’re at work and actually working and someone touches you inappropriately, then that’s sexual harassment.’ Sarah is pushing the trolley as she speaks, giving the impression she is ‘actually working’ more than the other ensemble members. The screen above the stage spells out the dialogue as the actors speak. Their conversation explores a key anxiety surrounding intellectual disability: wanking in public. Scott establishes the fact that it is OK to masturbate in private and masturbation is normal, but of course ‘You never, ever fondle someone else’s genitalia.’ Mark, a performer aged about 50, wearing grey tracksuit pants and a plaid checked shirt, rolls out yellow tape across the floor, marking a line between audience and performers. The sound of the tape echoes across the hall. Two other performers join the trio. Simon meticulously rearranges chairs in a line. Michael welcomes the audience to the meeting, acknowledging that we are watching the performance on lands owned by the Wathaurong people of the Kulin Nation. The Kulin Nation is an alliance of five Indigenous Australian tribes in south central Victoria, Australia. Their collective territory extends around Port Phillip and Western Port, up into the Great Dividing Range and the Loddon and Goulburn River valleys. Mark struggles with the language and Scott snaps ‘Get an education, inform yourself, fucking step up.’ Michael hands over to Simon to start the meeting. Simon panics. Scott turns to his phone for advice: ‘Siri, what to do when an autistic person panics?’

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A conversation unfolds about who should ‘philosophically’ lead the group. The performers also discuss empowerment, and how the members of the group wish to identify themselves—as people with intellectual disability, as a group of neurodiverse people, or as disabled people. Sarah points out that ‘you can tell we have disabilities as everything we say is put up on a screen.’ She shouts at the screen ‘you don’t have feelings, you are not real!’ The meeting continues. Scott is persuaded to take on the role of the speaker. He exits and returns with a large polystyrene lectern. The others help him set it up, Simon moving the ladder behind it. Sarah sits in the audience. Scott gives a speech from behind the lectern: a shocking litany of the many ways people with intellectual disability have been abused and oppressed throughout human history. He talks about a case of exploitation and abuse in Iowa, USA, and about the Magdalene laundries in Ireland, listing the many Hasbro games women with intellectual disabilities assembled when the laundry contracts ended. … the reference to the history of the Magdalene laundries, and what’s happened to women with intellectual disabilities was really important to have, but also it’s such a distressing history. INGRID: Yes. And because the Magdalene laundries leads into that list of games that becomes kind of hilarious and really enjoyable, and then finishes with Sarah calling them on it, it makes shame. The next thing that happens is that conversation about shame, ‘I feel shame’. ANNA:

The group talk about shame, about feeling ashamed to be a person with a disability, and about whether the shame sits with society rather than the individual. Scott has a private conversation with Siri: ‘I have autism and unfortunately for me I also have a thick Australian accent.’ Siri responds ‘It must be very difficult for you.’ Scott returns to the group for further discussions about technology, HAL’s legacy, abuses of power, failure, and what will happen when artificial intelligence overtakes human intelligence. The performers begin to offer the audience advice on what to expect. It becomes evident that this is why the meeting has been called. ‘In the future things are going to move fast. It will be impossible to keep up. No matter how hard you try.’ I love the take on artificial intelligence making humans redundant—I think a lot of the dialogues about artificial intelligence are so futuristic in a very hyped way. They are structured around these worlds that are ‘to come’, where everything’s shiny and space age, but then the fact is that some of the implications of that might be that we’d all be positioned in the same way that people who live with an intellectual disability are positioned. This is a really nice comment on the AI debate, which is so often about success, superfast worlds, and progress, progress, progress. INGRID: And jobs, jobs, jobs. ANNA:

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And it’s never ever positioned in relation to intellectual disability … I’d never seen the two brought together before. So the fact that they did that, and then said ‘And actually when robots take over the world, everyone’s going to say ‘Oh you’ll have to have low expectations, because they’re a human’, I was like yeah, actually that’s such a good call … INGRID: And the cast have been positioned as the experts in this area, well, they are, they’re sharing their experience with the audience in a way that’s positioning them in this way that people with disability are not usually positioned. They’re usually forced into either being inspiring figures, or figures of pity. ANNA: That’s right. INGRID: There’s something significant—and it’s not tokenistic, like ‘Oh, let’s give so and so the role of the expert because it would be funny and interesting.’ It’s like no, actually, there’s something here to be said that is difficult to hear, if you really hear it, its true. ANNA: … it’s saying ‘Actually, the kind of technology that we’re living with at the moment is going to change the way that all humanness is positioned, not just some kinds of humanness.’ So I think that insight is really important.

ANNA:

The staged meeting concludes with Michael telling the audience that in the future they too will be people with an intellectual disability. He invites any audience members with questions or concerns to speak to him in the foyer. Michael and Simon exit. Scott and Sarah stack the chairs back on the trolley. Scott warns Sarah about paedophiles. Sarah responds dryly, ‘I’m a 36-year-old woman. I don’t think paedophile is the right word.’ As they wheel the chairs out, they talk about Michael Jackson and whether it’s okay to listen to his music still. Mark pulls up the line of tape from the stage floor and rolls it into a ball. He exits. … you were saying that it’s really interesting that we’re both so drawn to situations that rely on having risk and failure as operating principles. INGRID: Yeah. And that also involve people who were kind of classed by society as being failure. ANNA: Failure in some way, yeah. INGRID: Even being genetically, you know, like it’s pretty … ANNA: Harsh. INGRID: … it’s pretty harsh, the reality of how people with disability have been considered in the past and still are to some extent. ANNA: And still are. I think that was really brought home in the Back to Back show, where there was the monologue saying ‘expect people to have low expectations, expect to be spoken down to, expect’ … INGRID: ‘Expect to have no rights over your body at some point’, Simon says that, there will be times when you have no rights over your own body. ANNA: That’s so full on, isn’t it? INGRID: Yep. ANNA:

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Human life is the shadow whose prey, artificial intelligence, turns to hunt it. Artificial intelligence designed to make the world a ‘better place’ will make people seem slow and useless. AI will hunt people out.

Methodology and methods The methodology, or system of methods, for this chapter performs an investment in time, affect, and the agency of liveness of affect, which I explicate below in relation to disability, art, and performance. The methods—both my method for generating this text and the company’s methods for creating the performance text about which I write—are primarily time and conversation. As I noted above, The Shadow Whose Prey the Hunter Becomes was created through two and a half years of conversation within the ensemble. While the working relationship between Ingrid and me spans twenty-one years, this chapter is the result of four meetings in which we recorded and transcribed our conversations, our notes about the live show, and our conversations with the artistic director of Back to Back Theatre, Bruce Gladwin. The entanglement of these times, places, conversations, and relationships creates this text. I read the theatre work for meta-statements about how it creates a broad comment on its modes of performance, its methods, and how it operates affectively, rather than the specific nature of the text around which the work is structured. That thing that we’ve both said, that it feels real to us, it feels like we’re witnessing something real, that we’re watching something real, we’ve been invited to partake of and participate in something real. ANNA: And that’s what makes it really important. INGRID: And that’s what we’re craving, that’s what we want. That it’s not just the image of something, it’s the thing itself, isn’t it? The whole thing. ANNA: And there’s no pretending. INGRID:

Affect, the language of performance Back to Back are a professional theatre company with an international audience. Much of the work they make is about disability, specifically intellectual disability. Performance and intellectual disability has generated a notable amount of scholarship within performance studies (Conroy, 2009; Kuppers, 2017; Hadley, 2014; 2017; Hickey-Moody, 2009; Johnston, 2012; 2016) and the work of Back to Back Theatre in Australia has been the subject of sustained academic inquiry (see Grehan & Eckersall, 2013). Rather than investigating the company’s work in terms of the politics and aesthetics of disability, which are embedded and central aspect of their texts, I read the performance of The Shadow Whose Prey the Hunter Becomes as a means of understanding how performance operates through affect, liveness and embodied entanglement. The past ten years have seen a burgeoning of scholarly work on affect and increasing entanglements of this work with applied scholarly ideas and practices

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(see #Clough & Halley, 2007; Danvers, 2016; Ringrose & Renold, 2014; Todd, Jones & O’Donnell, 2016). In her interview published in New Materialism: Interviews & Cartographies (Dolphijn & van der Tuin, 2012), Braidotti (2000) asserts that the ‘enfleshed Deleuzian subject … is a folding-in of external influences and, simultaneously, an unfolding outwards of affects’ (p. 159). Human beings are a mobile, enfleshed memory that repeats (or sometimes contravenes) the economies of value in which their body is immersed. The affected body is, ultimately, a contextually enmeshed, embodied series of memories that are accessed in response to experience. As noted elsewhere (Hickey-Moody, 2009; 2010, 2013a; 2013b; Hickey-Moody & Willcox, 2019), affective scholarly entanglements draw on different intellectual traditions, notably the respective lineages of Silvan Tompkins, Gilles Deleuze, Baruch Spinoza, and the newer interdisciplinary field of ‘affect studies’ (Coleman, 2017; Massumi, 2002; Stewart, 2007). In adopting a philosophy of affect with which to read Back to Back’s work, I now turn to explore Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987; 1996) writing on bodily affect and affect in art as a means of understanding the mechanics of how art works through affect. As noted above, affect is used in academic work with two different meanings. Affect can be pre-cognitive (before thought), so it can be a change that occurs before we know it has happened, before consciousness. Affect is also a word used to describe emotional responses (a cognitive reading), but for Deleuze and Guattari (1987; 1996), affect is pre-cognitive. An affect is an increase or a decrease in the capacity of a given body (or assemblage) to act. Sad affect is a reduction of a body’s capacity. More generally, the idea of being affected denotes a change in capacity. Both Deleuze’s (2003) and Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987; 1996) reading of affect is derived quite directly from Spinoza: affects … have therefore certain causes through which they are to be understood and certain properties which are just as worthy of being known as the properties of any other thing in the contemplation of which we delight. I shall, therefore, pursue the same method in considering the nature and strength of the affects and the power of the mind over them which I pursued in our previous discussion of God and the mind, and I shall consider human actions and appetites just as if I were considering lines, planes and bodies. (Spinoza, 2001, p. 98) Through affects, human actions and appetites are increased and/or decreased. As bodies are affected they become greater or lesser and also become more or less competent in certain ways. Earlier in Ethics, Spinoza suggests: All ways in which any body is affected follow at the same time from the nature of the affected body, and from the nature of the affecting body … therefore the idea of these affections necessarily involves the nature of each body … the idea of each way in which the human body is affected by an

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external body involves the nature of the human body and of the external body. (Spinoza, 2001, p. 63) Affects are the products of connectedness. They are made through the enmeshment of bodies and contexts. Affects are how bodies and contexts act on each other. They are what happens when you sit with it. Spinoza, and Deleuze and Guattari after him, believed that bodies are constituted in part through their relations with others (Gatens & Lloyd, 1999). In arguing that ‘the idea of each way in which the human body is affected by an external body involves the nature of the human body’ (Spinoza, 2001, p. 63), Spinoza shows us that the project of understanding bodies and actions in thought is an ethical enterprise. What a body might become, how a body is received, already ‘involves the nature of the human body’ (Spinoza, 2001, p. 63). In other words, our understanding of the constitution of the body impacts on how we relate to and ‘deal with’ the body, and shapes the possibilities that are afforded to the body. Deleuze employs the term ‘affect’ to refer to changing bodies, but he also uses the word to talk about art and the ways art impacts on embodied subjectivities. Deleuze (2003) and Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987; 1996) work on affect and art shows how the methodology of art is an economy of affects. Art is designed to make feelings and change bodies. For Deleuze and Guattari, works of art consist of collections of percepts and affects. ‘Percept’ is the name that Deleuze and Guattari (1996) give to physical fragments of imagined worlds. Through crafting physical fragments of imagined worlds, artworks make new realities possible. For example, works of art can invent a world where artificial intelligence overtakes and rules humans, where machines construct the flesh as ‘disabled’. New realities imagined in art are communicated through kinaesthetic economies of affect, relays of sensation between a performance text and audience members. In this context, affect is meta subjective; it is the sense or feeling that is enmeshed with the materiality of the artwork. Combined together in art, percepts and affects constitute what Deleuze and Guattari (1996) term a ‘bloc of sensations’ (p. 76). They explain: Art is the language of sensations. Art does not have opinions. Art undoes the triple organisation of perceptions, affections and opinions [doxa: the ‘essence’ of a body] in order to substitute a monument composed of percepts, affects and blocs of sensations that take the place of language … A monument does not commemorate or celebrate something that happened but confides to the ear of the future. (Deleuze & Guattari, 1996, pp. 176–177) Blocs of sensation are entities that propel the worldviews and knowledges of those for whom they speak. Blocs of sensation create a new sensory landscape for their

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beholder. These simultaneous acts of presenting a worldview and creating a sensory landscape occur through an artwork’s affect. This is the way a work of art can make its observer feel, the connection(s) a work prompts its observer to make. The materiality of the artwork, the blocs of sensation of which it is composed, embody the affect specific to the work. Each bloc of sensation has its own affective force or quality. In The Shadow, blocs of sensation suck the beholder back in time to witness generations of institutionalised abuse of people with intellectual disability and push the viewer forward into a future where all people are outdated. In between these time-space moves, the audience sits and breathes with the performers, watching them take one. Step. At. A. Time. Deleuze and Guattari (1996) suggest that the person who experiences the force produced by an affect can ‘retain’ this force and be changed as a result of their experience. As sensation, art as force is ‘immediately conveyed in the flesh through the nervous wave or vital emotion’ (Deleuze, 2003, p. 40). However, the way in which a sensory affect is experienced, and the way(s) a work of art is perceived as having affect at all, are specific to the body in question. Deleuze and Guattari (1996) contend a work of art ‘is no less independent of the viewer or hearer, who only experience it after, if they have the strength for it’ (p. 164). Percepts and affects must be seen as context-specific and subjective. The forces produced by works of art exist in relation to those who experience them, those who ‘have the strength for it’ (p. 164). A compound of sensations is quite distinct from a general collection of people on stage, an unstructured performance, or the singular bodies, sounds and sensations that are worked together until they pass into a sensation (p. 167). Slowness, togetherness, being outdated, become sensations experienced by performers and audience. The nature of such a method is always specific to the work in question. Back to Back bring conversation, relationality and embodied histories as methods. Deleuze and Guattari (1996) describe this process as occurring upon a plane of composition, and as such, the task of constructing blocs of sensation is specific to this plane or cultural territory. In theorising the process of making artworks, Deleuze and Guattari suggest that such an endeavour ‘entails a plane of composition that is not abstractly preconceived but constructed as the work progresses, opening, mixing, dismantling, and reassembling increasingly unlimited compounds’ (p. 188). Back to Back’s compounds intersect with the viewer to shift how they experience time. The future, the past and the duration of the present are felt through the connectedness provided by being in a room together. For Spinoza (2001), substance is the stuff of which life is made. It is expressed in modes, which are changed (affected or ‘modulated’) by affections (‘affectio’). Affectio are traces of interaction: residues of experience that live on in thought and in the body. They make affects. Aspects of human bodies—molecules, muscles, blood, bones—communicate with each other and exist in relation to each other. In relating, these aspects form an assemblage, mixture, or body. Moving beyond

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the body, contexts and relations between human bodies are equally as constitutive of corporeal capacity. Viewers will feel, think and act differently after being part of the theatre assemblage that is The Shadow. A Hasbro game will never be seen in the same way again, now that the history of abuse and exploitation the games bring with them have been laid bare. Artificial intelligence will, perhaps, be seen in a less enthusiastic light. Do we want humans to be outlived by machines? Do we want to be too slow for technology? These are questions The Shadow asks us. Like Spinoza, then, Deleuze (2003) and Deleuze and Guattari (1987; 1996) explore ways of thinking the body as a changeable assemblage that is highly responsive to context. For Deleuze and Guattari, each body’s embodied mind is a performance of difference, the mind is the ‘idea’ of the body, human consciousness a product of corporeality. Our subjectivity is the embodied accumulation of our actions. It is impossible to compare the individuality of each body: every person has ‘the individuality of a day, a season, a year, a life (regardless of its duration) — a climate, a wind, a fog, a swarm, a pack’ (Deleuze & Guattari 1987, p. 262). The relationship between Spinoza’s philosophy and Deleuze and Guattari’s idea of the body is evident in their often cited contention that every body is ‘a longitude and latitude, a set of speeds and slownesses between formed particles, a set of non subjectified affects’ (p. 262). Here, as in the passage from Spinoza’s Ethics quoted by Deleuze (2003) earlier, we are reminded that the body is an extension of substance, a variation of the two universal attributes of thought and extension. Human bodies are consistently remaking themselves through their actions: relations, interests, the contexts in which they live. Emotions are a barometer of affectus, the change in capacity to act that comes before feeling, and are one of the ways in which bodies speak. Our capacities to affect and be affected are confined by experience. Both forms of affect, the change in capacity and the artistic invention, are central to my reading of The Shadow Whose Prey the Hunter Becomes. As a viewing body, I was profoundly affected by the percepts and affects created in the work—specifically by the sense of ordinariness and of ‘liveness’ that the work holds and with which audience members are asked to sit. There are two sequences during the performance in which the actors rearrange the chairs and other objects in the space. They carry out these practical tasks matter-of-factly, taking the time it takes and applying only the minimal effort required. The ordinariness of their movements and energy contrasts with a soaring soundtrack. The actors are not performing the rearrangement of chairs, they are casually rearranging chairs. The audience are invited to simply sit and watch this activity in real time. This specificity of liveness is perhaps what Deleuze and Guattari (1987, pp. 262–263) call a ‘haecceity’, a term they glean from medieval scholastic philosophy first coined by Duns Scotus to denote the discrete qualities, properties, or characteristics of a thing. A ‘haecceity’ is the ‘thisness’, or individuality, of a thing (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987).

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Is that the midpoint if you’ve got super high achieving growth expansion, ‘Look at this big’, the shiny, here’s the shiny side of the circle, and then here is the dark dirty bit, but in here, that’s the space where I integrate those, and I become more and more and more, like to be able to be here in this place, is that the middle path, for that point of going ‘I can hold it all’, but if I’m in that place where I can hold it all, and it’s all there, then I can go down, and I can go in? ANNA: I keep thinking about this word that Deleuze and Guattari use a lot called the haecceity, which is the ‘thisness’ of something. INGRID: Thisness. ANNA: And you know how you might say that someone has a certain feeling, ‘the thisness of them’, or the thisness of like, you know how a particular setting might have a certain atmosphere that’s really, like it’s really your grandma’s house, and that nothing smells quite like your grandma’s house used to smell. INGRID: And there are people who are quite happy to be in their thisness, who are quite happy to dig into the middle of the shiny and the dirty. And there are also people who are not, you can feel that they’re avoiding that thisness, or they’re trying very hard to be something else. And to be in the presence of someone who is absolutely at home in themselves, which I feel like Mark Deans [Back to Back actor] is, and that’s what is such a gift to sit and watch him.

INGRID:

The liveness of this at-home-with-myself is what The Shadow Whose Prey the Hunter Becomes asks its audience to sit with. In so doing, audiences are pushed to understand and accept the complexity of the lives of people with intellectual disability. In thinking of affect with and as liveness, I also think with the work of Rebecca Coleman, a contemporary British affect theorist. Coleman’s considerations of qualitative research methods and liveness highlight the situational and experiential nature of time. In her article ‘Austerity futures: Debt, temporality and (hopeful) pessimism as an austerity mood’, Coleman2 ‘examines the relationships between austerity, debt and mood through a focus on temporality and the future’ (Coleman, 2016, p. 83). Coleman works to ‘explore the politics of pessimism about the future, focusing especially on the affects and emotions that some women and young people might feel’ (p. 83). This spectral and temporal approach to affective politics provides an opposite orientation for reading The Shadow Whose Prey the Hunter Becomes as a pedagogical exposition on liveness and live, affective methods. Concepts of affect (Blackman, 2015; Clough & Halley, 2007; Cvetkovich, 2012; Hickey-Moody, 2013a, 2013b) and intra-action (Barad, 2007, 2016) allow us to better understand embodied entanglement.

Liveness and temporality Les Back and Nirmal Puwar (2012) remind us of the importance of time and the fact that all experiences of liveness are affected by time. Time of life, time spent

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learning about the knowledge learned, time in preparation, and time spent on reflection are all entangled in the production of affect. Back and Puwar argue: We need to rethink the relationship between time and scholarship. The governmental regimes of audit and measuring produce a frenzied rhythm … Fostering alternative ethical and political reasons for being ‘there’ in the context of research offers a counter-weight to the forces of instrumentalism and timidity within academic sociology … long-term intellectual future[s are] best served by participating in modes of knowledge that are beyond the instrumentalism of the audit culture … that is, the need to demonstrate the value of sociological research and writing through providing evidence of its impact on the economy or social policy. Live methods involve immersion, time and ‘unpredictable attentiveness’, allowing for a ‘transformation of perspectives that moves slowly over time, between fieldwork sites and the academy’. (Back & Puwar, 2012, p. 13)

I think one of the things I liked about the Back to Back show is with a lot of the performance there’s a strong sense of relationship, and that really comes through. Like you can tell that a lot of them have known each other for quite some time, and I thought that’s clearly part of the fabric of the show, and I thought that was important. INGRID: And you can see that the conversations that happen in the show, I think you can sense that the (scripted) conversations have come out of real conversations, can’t you? ANNA: Over time. INGRID: Over time. And that you cannot, you just can’t get to that place … ANNA: Quickly. INGRID: No, you can’t. It takes a long time to get to the place where you can have that, or you can go there I think. So yeah, you can sense the investment and the trust. ANNA:

Taking time matters. Sitting with what’s happening is an active state and it offers a way to learn, to discover. The Shadow Whose Prey the Hunter Becomes asks the audience to sit with an array of complex issues that span the history of disability, the institutional abuse of people with a disability, gender politics, reproductive politics, and futures run by artificial intelligence. From an audience member’s perspective, perhaps what feels most challenging is the very ordinary-ness of the labour of breathing, being, speaking. Staying alive takes so much work. The audience is reminded of this when watching the work of living, when we are face-to-face with a row of performing bodies who breathe as testimony to the transient nature of this mortal coil. One can sense the work has come from the practice of sitting with discomfort. The audience is given time to

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look, to see the performers as people in their humanness. But at a certain point there is a shift, and the observed bodies start looking back. This intense coobservation makes the most of the liveness that the form offers and holds open a space for uncertainty and the possibility of things going wrong. Somehow we are reminded that at any moment we could die, that our living condition is temporary. Bodies with vulnerabilities make us aware of our own mortality and also make us aware of similarities and differences between performing bodies and audience members. Waiting time is a very particular form of temporality. It is time not filled with talking. Watching time pass slows time down. Waiting during performances keeps us aware of tense, it keeps us aware of being in the present as we are not being rushed along to the ‘next thing’. The Shadow Whose Prey the Hunter Becomes has moments that one often needs to sit with for a long time, or what feels like a very long time, as we are reminded that things take as long as they take in life. The fact that time is a major ingredient in the works of Back to Back is made clear through the way they sit in and with time in their performances. Letting things take their time is also a way of giving people power, letting performers take as long as they need to take to make their work. Such an approach to performance is a far cry from methods of creating live works based on being in time, or being ‘on time’. Rather than controlling time and mastering time, Back to Back take time and let time run through their works. They are experts in making the familiar quite strange, by inviting the performer to be with it for so long. The performers in this play are not ‘playing a role’. Rather, they are just people being who they are and speaking from a very everyday place of being a person, in which form and content are not separate things, but are absolutely enmeshed. This collapse of borders between form and content is partially facilitated through the sharing of space, which is a defining feature of the liveness of performance. Sharing a physical space, bodies together in a room become enmeshed. They are breathing the same air and staring at the same walls, smelling the same smells, hearing the same sounds and silences and sitting together through pauses that are filled with them, you, and being. Embodied entanglements of the audience, performers, the past, and the present are key to constituting the affects of experiences when watching the performance. Lather and St Pierre (2013) explain the importance of this entanglement and liveness, suggesting it entails looking at people and their contexts, and the context of others. They suggest that: entanglement makes all the categories of humanist qualitative research problematic. For example, how are we to determine the ‘object of our knowledge’—or the ‘problem’ we want to study in assemblage? Can we disconnect ourselves from the mangle somehow (Self) and then carefully disconnect some other small piece of the mangle (Other) long enough to study it? What ontology has enabled us to believe the world is stable so that we can do all that individuating? And at what price? How do we think a ‘research

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problem’ in the imbrication of an agentic assemblage of diverse elements that are constantly intra-acting, never stable, never the same? (Lather & St Pierre, 2013, p. 630) Such enmeshment accurately describes the performance space, in which performers and audience co-habit space and breathe together. Yeah, I think that liveness—liveness can also teach you something about the nature of your life, the very thing that you’re in. I mean, there’s something so beautiful about being able to sit, and Back to Back, again this show does it, you’re given permission to really sit and watch people being themselves and being alive in a room, very close, very well lit, we see their bodies, and see… ANNA: I know. Them breathing, and … INGRID: … and breathing, and you’re, yeah. ANNA: … scratching their nose. INGRID: And I think that for me that’s part of the realness. You know how we were saying it’s so real … ANNA: It feels real and we love that we want more. And if it wasn’t live, it wouldn’t feel real in the same way. Like even if you saw that show on a screen, it wouldn’t have, the breathing body wouldn’t be right there in front of you. INGRID:

Conclusion This chapter reads Back to Back’s The Shadow Whose Prey the Hunter Becomes with the aim of thinking about what the work teaches its audience. The show makes its own time, the affect with which it modulates bodies is one of slowness, and attentiveness. The percept, or the perception which we are shown as the view from the world of the performance is of a future world in which humans have become disused and outdated. The modulation of bodies occurs through asking the audience to breathe with, and sit with the performers. These are the affects and percepts with which the show speaks, and an idea of everydayness as laborious. Life is hard work. Rather than offer a fine grained analysis of the work, I asked what the work says and paid attention to how it speaks through affect, across time, and in entangled times and spaces. The most enduring lesson I experienced in coming away from the show was being asked to sit with it: sit with difficult lives, bodies that break down, bad attitudes, being told you can’t do it. Sit with it. Breathe with it.

Notes 1 Back to Back Theatre (https://backtobacktheatre.com) is based in Geelong, Victoria, Australia, and for 28 years has made theatre with, through and informed by notions of the body and dis/ability. 2 She cites Berlant, Deville, Clarke, Newman, Lazzarato, Adams, Murphy, Clarke, Adkins, Gardiner, Anderson, Kristeva.

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References Back to Back Theatre (n.d.). About us. Retrieved 24 October 2019 from https://backtoback theatre.com/about/about-us. Back, L. & Puwar, N. (2012). A manifesto for live methods: provocations and capacities. The Sociological Review, 60(1 suppl), 6–17. doi:10.1111/j.1467-954X.2012.02114.x. Barad, K. (2007). Meeting the universe halfway: Quantam physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Barad, K. (2016). Queer causation and the ethics of mattering. In M. J. Hird & N. Giffney (Eds.), Queering the non/human (pp. 311–338). New York: Routledge. Blackman, L. (2015). Affective politics, debility and hearing voices: Towards a feminist politics of ordinary suffering. Feminist Review, 111(1), 25–41. doi:10.1057/fr.2015.24. Braidotti, R. (2000). Teratologies. In I. Buchanan & C. Colebrook (eds), Deleuze and feminist theory (pp. 156–172). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Coleman, R. (2016). Austerity futures: Debt, temporality and (hopeful) pessism as an austerity mood. New Formations, 87(1), 83–101. Coleman, R. (2017). A sensory sociology of the future: Affect, hope and inventive methodologies. The Sociological Review, 65(3), 525–543. doi:10.1111/1467-954X.12445. Conroy, C. (2009). Disability: Creative tensions between drama, theatre and disability arts. Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance, 14(1), 1–14. doi:10.1080/13569780802655723. Clough, P.T. & Halley, J. (2007). The affective turn: Theorizing the social. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Cvetkovich, A. (2012). Depression: A public feeling. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Danvers, E. (2016). Criticality’s affective entanglements: Rethinking emotion and critical thinking in higher education. Gender and Education, 28(2), 282–297. Deleuze, G. (2003). Francis Bacon: The logic of sensation. (trans. D.W. Smith). London: Continuum. Deleuze, G. & Guattari, F. (1987). A thousand plateaus, vol. 2 (trans. B. Massumi). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Deleuze, G. & Guattari, F. (1996). What is philosophy (trans. H. Tomlinson & G. Burchell). New York: Columbia University Press. Dolphijn, R. & van der Tuin, I. (2012). New materialism: Interviews & cartographies. Ann Arbor, MI: Open Humanities Press. Gatens, M. & Lloyd, G. (1999). Collective imaginings. New York: Routledge. Grehan, H. & Eckersall, P. (2013). We’re people who do shows: Back to Back Theatre—Performance, politics, visibility. Aberystwyth: Performance Research Books. Hadley, B. (2014). Disability, public space performance and spectatorship: Unconscious performers. Berlin: Springer. Hadley, B. (2017). Disability theatre in Australia: A survey and a sector ecology. Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance, 22(3), 305–324. Hickey-Moody, A. (2009). Unimaginable bodies: Intellectual disability, performance and becomings. Rotterdam: Sense. Hickey-Moody, A. (2010). Youth arts and the differential becoming of the world. Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies, 24(2), 203–214. Hickey-Moody, A. (2013a). Affect as method: Feelings, aesthetics and affective pedagogy. In R. Coleman & J. Ringrose (eds), Deleuze and research methodologies (pp. 79–95). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Hickey-Moody, A. (2013b). Youth, arts and education: Reassembling subjectivity through affect. New York: Routledge.

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Hickey-Moody, A. & Willcox, M. (2019). Entanglements of difference as community togetherness: Faith, art and feminism. Social Sciences, 8(9), 264. Johnston, K. (2012). Stage turns: Canadian disability theatre. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s Press. Johnston, K. (2016). Introduction: Performance and disability. Theatre Research in Canada/ Recherches théâtrales au Canada, 37(2), 151–156. Kuppers, P. (2017). Theatre and disability. New York: Macmillan International Higher Education. Lacan, J. (2013). The triumph of religion preceded by discourse to Catholics (trans. B. Fink). Cambridge: Polity. Lather, P. & St Pierre, E. A. (2013). Post-qualitative research. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education 26, 629–633. doi:10.1080/09518398.2013.788752.. Massumi, B. (2002). Parables for the virtual: Movement, affect, sensation. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Ringrose, J. & Renold, E. (2014). ‘F** k Rape!’ Exploring affective intensities in feminist research assemblage. Qualitative Inquiry, 20(6), 772–780. Spinoza, B. (2001). Ethics (trans. W.H. White). London: Wordsworth. Stewart, K. (2007). Ordinary affects. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Todd, S., Jones, R. & O’Donnell, A. (eds) (2016). Gender and Education. Special issue: Shifting education’s philosophical imaginaries. New York: Taylor & Francis.

PART III

Affective pedagogies

12 PERFORMATIVELY UNSILENCING AUSTRALIAN HISTORY A First Nations history curriculum Kathryn Gilbey and Rob McCormack

This chapter reflects on eleven years of performative truth-telling by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people through a transition unit, Telling Histories, offered at Batchelor Institute of Indigenous Tertiary Education (BI), 1998–2009. BI is the only Institute or dual sector educational institution for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Told in two distinct voices, it offers both shared and individual learning journeys reflecting on the power of public performance. Part theoretical analysis, part structural description detailing the conjunctural assemblage comprising this singular curriculum, the chapter highlights how performative practice can provide opportunities for First Nation ‘truth telling’ within the western academy. Whereas we both engage in theory and call on different theorists in our efforts to understand the power of this pedagogy to move and visibly effect lives, its capacity to mobilise the power of truth telling through performing First Nations stories was palpably real, raw and game changing.

Telling Histories: the workshops The unit Telling Histories was developed by a team of First Nations and Western academics and senior students for First Nations students in their first year of study of a Higher Education award at Batchelor Institute of Indigenous Tertiary Education, Northern Territory. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students from all over the country, across all disciplines in all undergraduate programs would be travelled to Batchelor, Top End. Offered as a 2-week workshop, Telling Histories created culturally safe time/spaces sheltering a counter-hegemonic discourse within which students could ‘real-ise’ histories of First Nations events, resistance and activism, our truths. A space in which white mainstream histories and culture could be performatively examined, critically evaluated and disputed through the telling of Aboriginal and Islander truths. We did this as a large group

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where we all identified five key moments in history that affected us personally and as a group. This becomes a deliberative process. Was it Cathy Freeman, Coniston Massacre or the Stolen generations, alongside readings about sites of resistance and strength in the struggle continuum, our (First Nations peoples) heroes, our histories. We provided building blocks to communicate the students’ own versions of history, their truths, moments of history, affective moments. Then we prepared twenty-minute performances in groups of five to ten. The groups chose a moment in history or a story and then conducted an intense character analysis from their physical and emotional depths for their historical roles in the performances. The groups then scripted and performed a story, a show; it may have been one moment, it may have been many. These performances were created for a large and varied audience of community members, staff and students and, when appropriate, we would invite Years 5–7 students from the local Batchelor Area School. Scripts were written and re-written, props and costumes made, the story rehearsed and re-rehearsed, all the formal requirements of creating a performance were carried out on a large scale with often five or six groups of eight to ten people with at least three or four re- workings and rehearsing. This was a crazy, exciting time and we did it all within two weeks. The classroom would be left open with students rehearsing into the night, with at least two direction rehearsals with lecturers. As workshops neared their end, student commitment built: they worked longer and longer hours, sometimes through entire nights to ensure their performances were ‘ready’. The day before we would rehearse the bumps in and out of all props, cement the order, practice all that at least two or three times, rearrange the classroom so it became a makeshift theatre, cordon off our entrances and exits, get all our sound effects and cues on the laptop and any power point or images to be projected. We would practise and then do a complete run through of all the shows. All the time we were aware of the energy growing, the excitement building, people panicking. The electricity in the air was palpable and then just when you felt ready to explode, it all came together with the room packed out, standing room only, and the performances perfect. Then the sense of shared achievement was hard to describe, the crowd going crazy and everyone elated.

Reflections on Telling Histories An insidious ideological assumption tends to contaminate educational offerings on Australian history. It is assumed that there is a singular history to be created by historians who together follow a rigorous epistemological discipline and are responsible for creating a unified ‘story’ transcending all local stories and memories. This understanding of the history of a nation as the formation of a singular community, the modern nation state, was built on a commitment to the modernist notion of a unitary truth that is both grounded and universal. However, for First Nations People who have never ceded their sovereignty nor consented to the

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singular sovereignty or unity of Australia, this version of history is experienced as alien, colonising, assimilationist and profoundly untrue. Australian History by its nature, name and definition has typically not been inclusive of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders’ stories or lived realities— Stanner’s ‘great Australian silence’ (Curthoys, 2003; Stanner, 2009). Australian history is invariably oriented around settlement, not invasion. It is underrepresented in public holidays, war memorials, curricula and the collective psyche the ongoing struggle continuum that is Aboriginal peoples’ realities since invasion. The constant and ongoing sites of resistance, freedom fighters, warriors, wars, activism and resistance to colonisation is rarely represented in the history books taught in schools and universities. When on the odd occasion it is, it has been hotly contested by non-First Nations historians and politicians (Macintyre & Clark, 2004; Reynolds, 2013; Windschuttle, 2002). This means we have to find another way to tell our truths, through performance and speech. Like road and town names, public statements reflect the values and heroes of the society, so when as Aboriginal people we are surrounded by oppressive public statements, we need to go back to orality as our mode of expression. Through performance and speech we found an old and new form of including ourselves in the public political discourse. It must be said that these Units were initially conceived in response to student demands to have a say, to have a voice, to be recognised in a fundamental way within their educational experience, as part of a broader plan of inclusive First Nations education. Veronica Arbon, former Director of the Institute, in her book Arlathirnda Ngurkarnda Ityirnda explains why they were developed and describes some of the initial resistance to the Units: There was no coherent story of the disruptive and oppressive aspects of Australia’s colonial history or the important aspects of our knowledge to be carried into tomorrow. (Arbon, 2008, p. 212) She went on later to say: Opposition arose as staff argued that the curriculum did not have the space, that Indigenous knowledge was addressed in other ways and that such an approach was not necessary. The most powerful arguments swirled around a belief that the inclusion of the Common Units would undermine and downgrade the professional intent of the awards. Despite these arguments, the Academic Committee of the Institute endorsed these Units in 2000. (Arbon, 2008, p. 222) Although keyed to different emphases, both Common Units, Public Communication and Telling Histories, shared many features. Public Communication fostered epideictic rhetoric, a discourse calling people into stronger commitment and community to

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the values that bind them (McCormack, 2003; Pernot, 2015); Telling Histories fostered the genres and discourses of critique, witness and collective memory (Gilbey & McCormack, 2013). This chapter is dedicated to describing how Telling Histories contrasts with mainstream academic forms of study.

Separation of form and content: craft versus voice A key feature of the Telling Histories workshops was that there was a separation of form and content, or to frame it differently, between platform and utterance. Students were provided with both an explicit training into the textual and performative crafts underpinning public speech and dramatic performance as well as being offered a structured, bounded discursive ‘space/time’ within which they could ‘perform’ their own voices, meanings, stories, values, cultures, aspirations, histories. The explicit training into textual forms and dramatic structures provided a safe and structured semiotic space in which to learn how to create a performance. Students felt able to step up and ‘occupy’ this bounded, semiotic ‘place’ with voices expressing their own sense of self and their own socio-cultural locations as opposed to being treated as empty vessels into which is poured the alien information and concepts of a colonising system of knowledge/power. As a consequence, students felt a strong sense of engagement and commitment to their work.

Organised around culminating performance Another reason for the strong investment of students was that Telling Histories was organised around a culminating public performance. Each workshop built towards a final event (assessment task) in which students performed their work before an audience. It seems to us that it is difficult to over-estimate the impact of framing curriculum in relation to a culminating public performance. Performance imposes a compelling narrative structure on the workshop itself. The finality and publicness of the culminating event injects a sense of foreboding, challenge, anxiety and urgency into earlier phases of the workshop. The thought that what you are learning, researching, drafting, planning, exploring, practicing and rehearsing will be performed before an audience—with all the potential for embarrassment and shame that that prospect brings to mind creates a sense of urgency, attention and sharpness. Instead of time being experienced as simply belonging to flat everyday time (chronos), a time accountable to the modernist clock in which time is filled, spent, wasted or waited for, time in the workshop was experienced as subject to a quite different, more imperative, time-frame (kairos). This performance time-frame wrenches the workshop out of the normal quotidian time-frame of schooling and into a temporality with its own strong, pressing sense of movement towards a heightened end-point, a point of closure that is still open and indeterminate, a finale that will distil and ‘fix’ the ultimate meaning of the performances and of the entire workshop.

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Emotionality: giving voice to ontologically prior lifeworlds By framing workshops performatively, students felt they were being offered speaking positions (as interpellators, as historians, as collective memory celebrants, as rhetors, as historical actors or witnesses) that enabled them to take on voices, to ‘key’ their discourse in ways usually reserved for other more authorised voices—historians, state authorities or teachers. Taking up these speaking postures enabled students to experience powers of utterance, resources of subjectivity, and socio-cultural affect they had no idea were available to them. They found their own meanings and utterances gained an unexpected enhancement in emotional affect by being performed publicly. They found themselves in possession of powers of affect capable of generating waves of shared social emotion—of crying, sadness, joy, hope, laughter, repulsion, anger. These powerful waves of shared emotion have been brought to prominence in recent theories of ‘affect’ that posit affect as an autonomous impersonal ontological order mediating and subsuming the Cartesian dichotomies of mind and body, reason and emotion, concept and appearance (see Williams, 2010). Affect is generally discounted in Western higher education: body, emotion and image are construed as disruptions, detours, distractions or contaminations of the ‘purity’ of abstract mind-focused education of reason and concept that should be consigned to the aesthetic sphere.

Responding to power with power In Telling Histories, we moved from being mere subjects of power and became agents of power. We managed to move our position on the power continuum from being passive recipients of the consequences derived from others’ positions of power through their benevolent goodwill to becoming speakers of our truths. Just being an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander person in this country is political, our very survival is political, so when we get up and speak our truths it becomes a revolutionary moment that changes all of us. The transition from being individuals beholden to the power of others to agents holding power and with space to speak was a transformative educational moment. We are all subjects of power (Butler, 1997), but we are not all subjected to subjugation and abjection. Yet this is the common experience of First Nations people in this country. Butler (1997) describes subjection as inescapable, that it is the process of becoming a subject of power and that as long as we are defined by that which subjects us, we cannot escape the dimensions of its power. We are all born into subjection as power discourses are all around us. But the movement from subjection to subordination and eventually to subjugation, through our reliance and dependence on a power system that posits us as ‘less’ is central to this theoretical framework. Subjugation occurs when the institutions of power in a society have fully dominated all expressions of ontology possible in that society to the extent that only one form of being, knowing and acting is

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allowed in the public discourse. This equates to power that represses difference and is conquest-oriented. Finally, there is abjection, the gaze that is given to the horrid, the unspeakable. Abjection brings with it a level of hatred, disgust and distrust. The abject gaze is reserved for those who are subjugated. This then marks the transition from subjection (all of us) to subordination (some of us), to where Aboriginality sits now, subjugated (only us). So, the act of speaking one’s truths has dual meaning. Although important for the public sphere (the room, the town, the country), it is also empowering on a subjective level. The public/private sphere is transformed into a collective space of affect imbued with all the strength and power of stories never before told, or needing to be re-told with the hopes and expectations and communitymindedness of the whole classroom. Agency and voices at play in Telling Histories workshops were dispersed, collective and shared by both staff and students. In this moment, the subjugation of the past is removed, the feelings of inadequacy gone, as we for a moment feel empowered. Butler insisted on this transition from subjugation to agency in an interview for an Israeli newspaper that: It seemed that if you were subjugated, there were also forms of agency that were available to you, and you were not just a victim, or you were not only oppressed, but oppression could become the condition of your agency. (Aloni, 2010) Speaking the truth of our lives, telling a story of a grandfather banned from the islands and the effects on him; three generations of one family in care because of the stolen generations; a story of survival from a massacre in NSW; stories of triumph against adversity; recollections of idyllic childhoods on the river, at the beach or in the desert; manifestos on hunting and bush food, and native title claims—for each student a moment of embodying the power of an ancient culture and sharing that with an audience. We performed and enacted the power and strength and guidance of our ancestors through telling their stories and talking their histories into existence.

White privilege The performative affect of public performance exists not just on a subjective or individual level, but also on a political level. The power of telling stories otherwise untold not only moves the performers to an agentic state, it also moved the audience to a space ‘in between’ modern white western Australia and First Nations realities. Given the energy and commitment on behalf of the Australian nation state to ignore, hide, refute and disavow actual histories and realities of First Nation peoples, this use of live public performance to act counter to the possessive investment in ignorance was intense and effective. The counter

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narrative of strength and survival sat staring in the face of the drunk, needy, desperate narrative of Aboriginal incompetence. As Lipsitz explains: Because they are ignorant of even the recent history of the possessive investment in whiteness … Americans produce largely cultural explanations for structural social problems. (Lipsitz, 2005, p. 75) This ‘pathologizing of Aboriginal people’ (Moreton-Robinson, 2009) is constant, in the mainstream news, television, papers a barrage of how bad we are, but for a moment in time we’d inverted all of it. We literally said, Look how good we are, over and over again. While Lipsitz refers to whiteness among Americans, these cultural explanations are very relevant to Australia. They are demonstrated through the use of western standards in this study. Any conversations around rights and sovereignty become conversations about community incapacity, alcoholism, poor health, sexual abuse and neglect. The white gaze is firmly fixed on First Nation peoples’ social problems rather than structural inequity. But most importantly for this argument, Lipsitz goes on to say that whilst white privilege and ignorance of that privilege accords advantages for white people, it does so at the expense of everyone else. The advantage doesn’t happen without a similar disadvantage being inflicted on others. Lipsitz’s primary argument is that white people are ‘part of the problem—not because of our race, but because of our possessive investment in it’ (Lipsitz, 2005, p. 79). It is the possessive need to maintain the privileges attached to white culture at the expense of non-white cultures that is the problem. White culture(s) in and of itself is not inherently bad, even though in its interest terrible atrocities have been committed. It is the need to maintain the power and control that comes with being white that is being problematised here. This is whiteness as white supremacy. bell hooks, in her paper, Representations of Whiteness in the Black Imagination, points out that white privilege: perpetuates the fantasy that the other who is subjugated is sub human, lacks the ability to comprehend, to understand, to see the working of the powerful in white supremacist society. White people can safely imagine they are invisible to black people since they have historically asserted the right to control the black gaze. (hooks, 2002, p. 21) In an Australian context, whiteness and its privileges are deeply founded in the version of history that is told. So, possessive investment in whiteness becomes a deeply possessive investment in ignorance. Ignorance is the vehicle that allows colonialism and its epistemic violence in the classroom to be continually played out: Indigenous people have spent a long time working at resisting the powerful. We have become extremely knowledgeable about White Australia in ways

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that are unknown to most white ‘settlers’. Our social worlds are imbued with meaning grounded in knowledges of different realities. In our communities, through the vehicle of oral history, social memory is developed, reproduced, changed and maintained. The message of resistance is embedded in local histories and is performed in embodied daily practice. (Moreton-Robinson, 2003, p. 127) The act of speaking up and out to an audience was a key strength of Telling Histories. The presentations were all informative and entertaining and strong, and they all held Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders’ views, worldviews, stories, realities. This often-times had a profound effect on the audience. Every speech and performance challenged ignorance. That was the very point: to communicate our histories to an audience. This would not be problematic except in an environment where there is a possessive investment in ignorance. This possessive investment means that anything that tells a counter-truth to dominant Australian narratives must be questioned, that the investment in ignorance must be possessively guarded. Ignorance in this sense is not as simple as not knowing or non-exposure to information. It is the structured, tacitly agreed upon, systematically enforced ignorance that lies in any society that is racially hierarchized. It is the deliberate not-knowing and not-seeing that allows lies about white supremacy and Aboriginal inferiority to be continued so that white privilege is never questioned, never undermined. It is mis-seeing injustice and turning your head and heart onto other matters, other explanations, therefore not seeing, not knowing, not caring.

Challenging possessive investment in ignorance Telling Histories, with its open storytelling style, not only confronted that ignorance but actively dismantled it. When the audience is sitting through a performance based around massacres on cattle stations in the Northern Territory, there is a profound impact on, if not extinguishing, of ignorance. Or when audience members watch a ‘smash the Act’ performance with a black Joh Bjelke Peterson and chanting protestors at the Commonwealth Games, screaming students being dragged out of the classroom/stage by other students wearing police costumes. Stage that right, and all disbelief is suspended, the audience is emotionally engaged, the action happening right there. Add to this the enactments of the histories of Pemulwuy, Jandamarra and the Freedom Rides, a life story of Sir Douglas Nicholls or William Cooper, Broome half-caste girls home and so many stories of the stolen generations, of mothers losing their children or being in the detention centres called ‘homes’. The power of these stories was felt by both audience and participant; it was felt deeply, emotionally, viscerally as real as the moments themselves. Phillips and Bunda talk of the power of storying and telling stories as: For Aboriginal peoples, story and storytelling commenced at the beginning. Stories are embodied acts of inter-textalised, trans-generational law and life

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spoken across and through time and place. In and of the everyday and everytime, stories—whether those that told of our origin or of our being now—all carry meaning; a theoretical understanding that communicates the world. (Phillips & Bunda, 2018, p. 8) To be part of an audience for a performance is not just to be entertained for a short time and then return to your ‘real self’ and ‘real life’ unchanged. Rather, it is to be deeply drawn into a sense of community enacted and bound by the resonance of affect and fellow-feeling rippling through the audience, a sense of connection that certainly has lasting cognitive and emotional effects. Even if the affect circulating in the performance cannot be deliberately transmuted into stable meanings able to circulate in other socio-institutional spaces or in other regions of quotidian social life, it is important to acknowledge that affect is as educative as abstract concepts and ideas. Or, perhaps more accurately, to acknowledge that deeply existential concepts and ideas adduce, draw on, evoke, embody and gain their definition and scope from affect. In short, the polarity posited by institutionalised Westernised academic education between reason (logos) and emotion (pathos) exemplified in Plato’s effort to distinguish between the responsible sober discourse of philosophy and knowledge on the one hand, and the irresponsible emotional excesses of rhetoric, poetics and drama on the other is simply untrue, even for its own occasions of education.

Speaking to and for an enlarged community Another element of the Telling Histories workshops is that students find that the voices and speaking stances they can take up are not only more ‘true to who they are’ but are also more representative. Insofar as they are speaking to an audience, they are ipso facto speaking on behalf of that audience. Moreover, they are speaking ‘in the voice of’ an even more enlarged audience and enlisting the specific audience in front of them to align themselves with this larger sense of community assembled around a collective memory or summoned to commit more emphatically to a public value or shared future. It is important to note that this ‘more representative voice’ is not the ‘universal voice’ of modernist knowledge or nation state. It is not a voice claiming to speak the one true Truth to everyone, nor summoning everyone to a universal sense of community instituted by a singular constitutive origin or event. Instead, it is a voice that is more respectful of dispersion, difference, diversity and indeterminacy, even in the very act of enacting its call to community. We could say that the community that is being invoked is a performative community, one that is called into being through the very performance of the call itself, a community that, although centred on the specific audience bodily present, invokes other more spectral members both past and future into the sweep of its performative call. The so-called ‘real’ audience senses and in fact actually is carried up into communion with this larger community stretching into the past and future.

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Rob’s reflection Prior to coming to Batchelor I had dabbled in ancient rhetoric, but, responding to the responses from students when I introduced them to rhetorical themes and textual figures, I embarked on a serious study of rhetoric as a practice of democratic politics. For more than two thousand years, rhetoric had formed the capstone discipline of Liberal Arts, dating back to Plato’s bête noir, the Sophists and Isocrates (Poulakos & Depew, 2004). I discovered an entirely other culture and discipline of reasonable discourse (logos), contemptuously labelled ‘rhetoric’ by Plato in his attempt to expel it from the realm of reason and the body politic (Conley, 1990). This discovery addressed two issues. One, it provided a pedagogic tool-box of textual patterns (Lausberg, 1998) that could assist students in finding the forms to give voice and enhanced power to their performances. In fact, traditionally, written literacy had been mastered through a rhetorical curriculum (Marrou, 1956). This would enable me to still contribute an ‘explicit language and literacy pedagogy’, but one that did not demean or reject what students brought from their own backgrounds, cultures, languages, rhetorical experience or political experience. But, even more importantly, it enabled me to find a philosophical and pedagogic footing set apart from the dominant mode of triumphant universalising Modernity (Wagner, 1994), which, unfortunately, still queered much of the supposedly ‘two-way pedagogy’ at Batchelor. As a result, students were intrigued to discover that Western culture is internally divided, not an impregnable singular monolith or Subject, and that it had always been riven by a dialectic between two competing theoretical, pedagogic and political traditions and practices of logos: Plato’s search for certain universal knowledge; and the embrace of pluralist democratic dialogue by Isocrates; both students of Socrates. These two ‘pillars of western civilisation’, are in fact competing forms of life that have been trading blows ever since (Kimball, 1995). My gambit was that First Nations students might find the discourse of public rhetoric framed as a conjuncture of ethos, pathos and logos more congenial and more enabling than the abstractions of modern knowledge and governance which banished both ethos and pathos. It seems to me that ancient rhetoric with its attention to logos, pathos and ethos provides an effective vehicle for students, along with applied theatre, to experience the power of speech to mobilise a sensus communis, a sense of togetherness which is vital in developing political power. It has also provided me with a framework for reflecting on the Telling Histories workshops. In trying to articulate how Telling Histories workshops have impacted on me, I have found myself pushed beyond Aristotle’s theoreticist (perhaps even instrumentalist) construal of public speech. I now find myself more attuned to the sophist, Gorgias, on the performative power of speech to create the world anew (Cassin, 2014), and to Isocrates’ emphasis on the power of political speech in creating ethical sensibilities and dispositions of future citizens (Haskins, 2006). I am also discovering a deep synergy between this ancient practice of public speech and contemporary theories of

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‘affect’ that draw on Spinoza’s anti-dualism (Massumi, 2002; Williams, 2010) concerning the constitutive significance of affect/pathos in life and political life. However, I must insist that these reflections express my own limited understandings as a settler colonial white man about what was at stake during these Telling Histories workshops. Far more important is how they were experienced, understood, appropriated and enacted by First Nations staff and students, and whether they contribute to a stronger praxis of political discourse and action by First Nations people in future.

Kathryn’s reflection Histories are contested terrain in educational practice. Many sites of public education and schooling serve to provide information on history and represent dominant histories which subjugate Indigenous peoples. (Iseke-Barnes, 2005, p. 150) Telling Histories viewed history simultaneously as a concept, a discipline and a tool of the oppressor. It was important that we had the space to tell our stories and histories in an Aboriginal-only place as in this way the journey of telling and retelling history could happen without fear. The sense of accomplishment at the end of these Units was enormous and was shared by all students (see Gilbey & McCormack, 2018). We raged, we cried, we celebrated, we laughed, we shared.

Performing an-other history of Australia These performances were an act of breaking down some of the barriers that typically exclude First Nations people from succeeding within western Higher Education frameworks. They were both an act, and therefore a site, of empowerment for the participants, and a gift to the audience to witness a different perspective, to participate and be drawn on a journey which may be one they don’t know, a journey which may open a door to conversations, to meaningful exchanges. Dion calls these moments, ‘compelling invitations’: within Aboriginal traditions the power of the story resides partly in the telling, our approach is to (re)tell the stories in such a way that listeners hear a ‘compelling invitation’ that claims their attention and initiates unsettling questions that require working through … the hope for accomplishing an alternative way of knowing lies partly in our ability to share with our readers what the stories mean to us. (Dion, 2009, p. 1) If the moments in history that we find important, moments that shape who we are, are the very moments that white Australia wants to forget, then telling

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histories from an Indigenous perspective can provide forums from which more authentic discussions can begin.

First Nations pedagogy For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change. (Lorde, 1984, p. 112) This seminal quote is used at every feminist explanation of difference or possibilities of different ways. But I am struck resolutely in its application in the context of Batchelor Institute’s two Common Units, Public Communication and Telling Histories? Why do we keep looking to the master’s tools to dismantle the house that is oppressing us? Why when we have an alternative: trust in culture, trust in the strength of our convictions and in our old and new/‘old’ ways (Arbon, 2008). We have the oldest continuing culture in the world. This means we have the oldest continuing education system in the world. The Common Units show us that it is possible in a diverse Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander classroom to have effective inclusive First Nations education in a higher education setting. Batchelor Institute has had opportunities to step outside of the colonial mentality that manifests itself in the containment arguments around standards and competencies, to trust in our cultures. Our cultures have never really let us down; they are there strong, constant, always changing yet fixed in the earth and in ourselves. We need to walk with our heads high and we need to trust in our difference, trust that it is only in celebrating our difference, not pretending sameness as in oppressive mimicry, that we can reclaim the Institute as a leading tertiary education provider to and with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. As expressions of Aboriginal knowledge within higher education courses, the Common Units were beacons of what could be. They were sites of freedom for First Nations lecturers and students to negotiate Indigenous knowledge and western knowledge into a lived First Nations teaching/learning experience. Premised and informed by First Nations values, customs, languages and histories, the Common Units represent for me a high point in the arc of the Institute’s struggle to embrace Aboriginal ways of knowing, being and doing in the world of learning. For if the master’s tools that bind us are whiteness and its privileges, ignorance and an investment in its maintenance, subjection, subjugation and abjection, then how can we possibly dismantle the master’s house? But more importantly, how can we construct our own house with those same tools, with those as our foundation unless we remove the ignorance, the abjection?

Telling Histories: now itself history All of these stories, communicated powerfully through performance, song and dance, changed those that heard them, taught those who engaged with them and

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confronted those who didn’t want to hear them. Telling Histories had eleven years of pushing the boundaries of ignorance possession. Momentarily within the Institute the central story being told was one of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander achievement, history, strength and survival. The classrooms and the offices had been hijacked and, whether it was one speech or story in particular that grabbed the audience’s attention, the focus briefly was not on curriculum content or discipline-specific knowledges that maintain the accustomed binary power relationships within the Institute, but all about First Nations peoples’ strength, knowledge, stories and capacity. The Common Units, through their expressed intent, impacted upon the levels of ignorance that ‘others’ (those that are not us) had an investment in. The Units also undermined the hegemonic power imported into the Institute by saying: You may think this, but you quite simply cannot deny the power of these stories and the work put in to the display of them. Two weeks is all we had to change the world around us a little bit. But that’s OK, that’s all we needed. We were that good!

References Aloni, U. (2010). Judith Butler: As a Jew, I was taught it was ethically imperative to speak up. Haaretz, 24 February. Retrieved from www.haaretz.com/news/judith-butler-as-ajew-i-was-taught-it-was-ethically-imperative-to-speak-up-1.266243 Arbon, V. (2008). Arlathirnda Ngukarnda Ityinda: Being-knowing-doing. Tenerife, Queensland: Post Pressed. Butler, J. (1997). The psychic life of power: Theories in subjection. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Cassin, B. (2014). Sophistical practice: Toward a consistent relativism. Bronx, NY: Fordham University Press. Conley, T.M. (1990). Rhetoric in the European tradition. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press. Curthoys, A. (2003). Constructing national histories. In B. Attwood & S. G. Foster (eds.), Frontier conflict: The Australian experience (pp. 185–200). Canberra: National Museum of Australia. Dion, S. (2009). Braiding histories: learning from Aboriginal peoples’ experiences and perspectives. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press. Gilbey, K., & McCormack, R. (2013). Telling histories: Performing history, becoming history. In T. Moktari, S. Henriss-Anderssen, & T. Clark (eds), Testimony, witness, authority: The politics and poetics of experience (pp. 130–143). Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars. Gilbey, K., & McCormack, R. (2018). The two years that killed a First Nations university. In G. Vass, J. Maxwell, S. Rudolph, K. N. Gulson (eds), Local/global issues in education: The relationality of race in education research (pp. 132–144). Abingdon: Routledge. Haskins, E. (2006). Choosing between Isocrates and Aristotle: Disciplinary assumptions and pedagogical implications. Rhetoric Society Quarterly, 36(2), 191–201. https://doi.org/ 10.1080/02773940600605552.

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hooks, bell. (2002). Representations of Whiteness in the Black imagination. In P. Rothenberg (ed.), White privilege: Essential readings on the other side of racism. New York: Worth Publishers. Iseke-Barnes, J. (2005). Misrepresentations of Indigenous history and science: Public broadcasting, the Internet, and education. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 26(2), 149–165. Kimball, B. A. (1995). Orators & philosophers: A history of the idea of liberal education (expanded ed). New York: College Entrance Examination Board. Lausberg, H. (1998). Handbook of literary rhetoric: A foundation for literary study (D. E. Orton & R. D. Anderson). Leiden: Brill. Lipsitz, G. (2005). The possessive investment in whiteness. In P. Rothenberg (ed.), White privilege: Essential readings on the other side of racism (pp. 67–90). New York: Worth Publishers. Lorde, A. (1984). The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. In Sister Outsider. Berkeley, CA: Crossing Press. Macintyre, S., & Clark, A. (2004). The history wars. Carlton, Vic.: Melbourne University Press. Marrou, H. I. (1956). A history of education in antiquity (trans. G. Lamb). New York: Sheed & Ward. Massumi, B. (2002). Parables for the virtual: Movement, affect, sensation. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. McCormack, R. (2003). Common units: Politics and rhetoric. Ngoonjook, 24, 25–33. Moreton-Robinson, A. (2003). Introduction: Resistance, recovery and revitalization. In M. Grossman (ed.), Blacklines: Contemporary critical writings by Indigenous Australians (pp. 127–131). Melbourne: Melbourne University Press. Moreton-Robinson, A. (2009). Imagining the good indigenous citizen. Cultural Studies Review, 15(2), 61–79. Pernot, L. (2015). Epideictic rhetoric: Questioning the stakes of ancient praise. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Phillips, L. G., & Bunda, T. (2018). Research through, with and as storying (1st ed.). New York: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315109190. Poulakos, T., & Depew, D. J. (Eds.). (2004). Isocrates and civic education (1st ed). Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Reynolds, H. (2013). Forgotten war. Sydney: NewSouth Publishing. Stanner, W. E. H. (2009). After the dreaming. In R. Mann (ed.), The dreaming and other essays (pp. 175–224). Melbourne: Black Inc. Agenda. Wagner, P. (1994). A sociology of modernity: Liberty and discipline. New York: Routledge. Williams, C. (2010). Affective processes without a subject: Rethinking the relation between subjectivity and affect with Spinoza. Subjectivity, 3(3), 245–262. https://doi.org/10.1057/ sub.2010.15. Windschuttle, K. (2002). The fabrication of Aboriginal history, volume one: Van Diemen’s Land 1803–1847 (Vol. 1). Sydney: Mcleay Press.

13 AFFECT AND DISCOVERY Transformative moments of confrontation in performative pedagogies Mary-Rose McLaren and Scott Welsh

Prologue The authors of this chapter believe that for deep learning to take place—the sort of learning that transforms lives by changing perceptions of self and the world— students must in some way embody that learning. We align our thinking with that of Anne Hickey-Moody (2013), when she states that corporeal affect leads to affecting change in thought. When we support students to enact questions about themselves and their world, we generate shared affect in the classroom. Such affect is a pathway to discovery that emerges from within, and colours the student’s view of their relationship with learning. It is the impetus to take a risk, and shapes belief in their own creative capacity. In 2016 we asked ourselves: how do we foster higher education classrooms that spark with invention and imagination in the context of the content being taught? In response, we decided to consciously teach differently, drawing explicitly on arts-based and affective pedagogy for units that were not traditionally ‘artistic.’ As we enacted this shift, the emphasis in teaching and learning moved from content to discovery. This chapter explores the use of drama as pedagogy in a unit entitled Academic and Professional Learning. It is the first unit taught in the Diploma of Education Studies, and so acts as an introduction to university. Many of these students have previously had poor educational experiences or disrupted formal education. They are often from low socio-economic communities, the first in their family to be at university, and frequently represent marginalised groups (Gilmore et al., 2019). The Diploma is their first step on an alternative pathway to becoming teachers. Our aim, clearly articulated to the students in their first class, was to teach the unit through Drama. Our purpose in choosing Drama was to engage affect to challenge the students’ preconceived ideas of what education is, and the images they held of themselves as

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learners. We sought to create a framework through which they could develop both confidence and agency. In writing this chapter, we drew on the experiences and reflections of our students, and ourselves as their teachers, to unpack what affect in the classroom looks and feels like. The story we tell here is sampled from data collected from five cohorts of students (approximately 600 students in total) over three years. In this unit the students were asked to develop an ethnodrama with the prompt questions: Why me? Why here? Why now? In doing so, we purposefully invited our students to experience affect in the classroom. Watkins (2016) discusses the nebulous meaning of this word, ‘affect’, noting that affect is heightened when we register happenings as significant, when events demand our attention. When we write of ‘affect’ in this chapter, we mean the ways that feelings, both sensory and emotional, shift our thinking and extend or deepen our understanding. As theatre practitioners, and educators, we work with the body of the student, the educator, and the institution, in a constant state of construction and reconstruction. We engage in Deleuze’s notion of ‘an ethical enterprise’ (Hickey-Moody, 2013, p. 83) when we build knowledge in this space. Our bodies, and the spaces within which they move, exist in the contested and transformational space of academic learning. We know that shared experiences in theatre can generate feelings of belonging (Nicholson, 2002); as teachers we hoped that the classes our students worked in would become spaces of belonging for them, in which they felt safe to explore ideas and take intellectual and theatrical risks. The students were introduced to drama games (Boal, 2002), embodied learning (Nguyen & Larson, 2015), and symbolism (Brook, 1990), before being asked to explore improvisation (Spolin, 1999) and physical theatre (Callery, 2001). Ideas generated in these classes became the skeleton on which the performance was built. Where necessary, we suggested strategies for distancing so that students could express their sometimesintense feelings in manageable ways (Nook et al., 2019). We were keen to see them develop an understanding of nuance, the capacity to listen, the ability to step back and look, and the ability to validate their own story and the stories of others. Our own framework of understanding, as teachers, was constructed primarily from the work of Freire (2000) and Boal (1985, 1995). As the students were required to devise a performance, it is appropriate in this chapter that we present our growing understanding of the power of affect in transformational learning in the form of a play.

Act One: Opening the door to Narnia Scene 11 [Desks are in rows. It is day one: everything is clean and in order. The space is full of electricity. As the teacher enters they observe a number of students on their phones. An air of anxiety fills the room. Their phones provide a place to escape to. The teacher does an eye-

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roll: contemporary students ought to come with labels, ‘I am not here.’ The students are not in the classroom. They are elsewhere. The only way to bring these students into the classroom is to ensure they, the teacher, are there too. The teacher thinks: step one—confrontation of self in the classroom. This unit is aimed at provoking and exploring; it demands that the body performs, that every student and every teacher dances and absorbs the knowledge that arts-based, affective pedagogy has to offer.] Welcome to university; welcome to this unit. This will be fun and it will be challenging. And I promise you—you will not learn anything in this classroom that you can google.

TEACHER:

[students shuffle]

Scene 22 [The students are waiting at the door. The teacher unlocks the door and enters with the students streaming after, as if they are following the Pied Piper. It is a dance studio, not a classroom. The teacher does an eye roll as they enter. Clearly the university can’t organise itself: who puts Academic and Professional Learning in a dance studio?] Well, make yourselves comfortable. I’ll just see if I can find a white board … STUDENT 1: Where are the tables and chairs? TEACHER: Umm, just um, sit on the floor. TEACHER:

[In a far corner the teacher sees a gym curtain. They are drawn to it. They don’t know why. They let the class go, leave them behind, like they are not even there. It’s day one and already this teacher has forgotten about the class. Behind the gym curtain is a dusty, black theatre curtain. The teacher is very familiar with this kind of fabric. They touch it; it brings some comfort. They have forgotten they are looking for a white board. The teacher drags the dusty, black curtain toward them. Emerging from the darkness they see a Blackbox theatre with curtains and places to hang lights, like so many other little theatres they have performed in over the course of their adult life. The class murmurs complaints and sits. Phones come out. They begin to escape into their virtual lives. But the teacher’s performance life flashes before their eyes: Shakespearean fools, fresh-faced young gentlemen, street rats, dirty old theatres, criminals, dirty old theatres, murderers, hobos, dirty old theatres, film extras, performance art. They look back to their dumbfounded students. They can see what the students are thinking: ‘What the Hell is going on here?’ The teacher closes the heavy curtain and returns to the dance studio, which is meant to be a classroom, where the students are gathered. But the teacher knows it’s there now, that amazing tiny blackbox theatre, hidden like Narnia in the bowels of a dilapidating university building.] Where are the tables and chairs? What tables and chairs?

STUDENT 1: TEACHER:

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The ones to sit on. I don’t understand. STUDENT 1: You don’t understand what? How are we supposed to write notes if there are no tables and chairs? TEACHER: Perhaps you’re not supposed to write notes. Perhaps you are in a dance studio because you are supposed to dance. STUDENT 1: Supposed to what? You have got to be kidding. TEACHER: [remember the teacher didn’t plan this room. The teacher was as surprised as the students to walk into a dance studio. The teacher is making this up as they go along— improvising]: We don’t need tables and chairs. The reason we’re in a dance studio to study Academic and Professional Learning is because we are going to dance. Do you see what a wonderful learning space this is? STUDENT 1: But there are no tables and chairs. OTHER STUDENTS: What do you want us to do? TEACHER: [hesitating for just a moment—will they agree?]: I want us to go together into Narnia. STUDENTS: What? TEACHER: Trust me. STUDENT 1:

TEACHER:

Act One dramaturgical notes We experience the affects of the place (Watkins, 2016). This can work in our favour, as in the case of a theatre, redolent with stories of change; or against us, as in the case of a classroom, holding a different and more repressive set of tales. Narnia is the antithesis of ‘order’; it requires imagination, and an openness to chaos, that is necessary to make art (Hickey-Moody, 2013). The idea of Narnia in our classroom is important, of reimagining the potential contained within our surroundings, of not being constrained by the limits of our understanding, environment, or perceptions. This is at the heart of the learning process with which we engage our students, and is true to Freire’s notion of education as an emancipatory force. Indeed, recent work on the critical pedagogy of Freire and Rancière suggests that education should be about creating the conditions in which the ‘emancipatory moment’ of learning can occur (Vlieghe, 2018). Our work involves a freedom that is attained through imagining and reimagining the nature and conditions of our surroundings. Like Narnia, others tend not to see our emancipatory space, and are often antagonistic to it. Noise complaints and questions around the nature of our unit are commonplace. Perhaps because of the apparently chaotic or random nature of our learning activities when seen by outsiders, the interruptions from the accounting exam from downstairs, or the science experiment above us, are frequent. They come in the form of other teachers knocking on the door, as we slip in and out of the magical world we create around the tables in rows that have been disrupted in our dreaming, the chairs upturned in an attempt to set ourselves free from the everyday constraints of Higher Education. Or they come over

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coffee in the staff room when other teachers say, ‘I don’t think it’s my job to entertain students.’ ‘Scott! Scott! Scott! What do you want us to do?’ the students cry. ‘Miss! Miss! Are we allowed to …?’ It is our job to open the door to Narnia, to walk with the students through the forest and the snow on a journey of discovery.

Act Two: The Classroom as a Dream Scene 1 Let’s start by playing a game. We are going to play lots of games in this unit—and every game has a purpose. We will need to begin by moving all the tables and chairs back. STUDENT A: But what will we sit on? TEACHER: You don’t need to sit right now. STUDENT A: But how will we write notes? TEACHER: You don’t need to write notes right now. We’re going to play a game, get to know each other a little, talk about the purpose of the unit. Come on, let’s get these tables moved. TEACHER:

[Students shrug, raise their eyebrows to each other, give awkward smiles, and begin to move the furniture. There is still not enough room to play active games. Backpacks and jackets litter the floor. Students shuffle and wait.] Unfortunately, we are in a small room. What we need to do is transform the space. It needs to become a space where we can experiment and grow, not a place for writing notes. Does anyone have a solution? STUDENT B: We can move all the tables and chairs into the hallway. STUDENT C: We can stack stuff up higher. STUDENT D: This might sound a little crazy, but…we can think about it differently. TEACHER: Yes! [and then containing their obvious preference for the last of these options] Which of those shall we try first? [Students mutter. Then—] TEACHER:

Let’s put the tables and chairs outside. Okay. Let’s try that.

STUDENT B: TEACHER:

Scene 2 TEACHER:

Follow me. huh? Are we allowed to do this?

STUDENTS:

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Allowed to have an adventure? I sure hope so! [the teacher pulls back the curtain and reveals the black box and the students file through the gap in the curtains into the performance space]. STUDENTS: Wow. This is really amazing. Is this ours? Can we use this? STUDENT 1: But there are still no tables and chairs STUDENT 2: There are chairs, see? The seats where the audience sit—we can sit there. STUDENT 1: But there are no tables. STUDENT 2: We don’t need tables. I reckon we don’t need anything but ourselves. This is awesome! TEACHER:

[The teacher is smiling, a plethora of possibilities in their mind. But front and centre is a memory: their first experience of the classroom as a teacher and the overwhelming sense of the surreal. It is a state of heightened sensitivity, perhaps due to nerves or the strangeness of the expectations inherent in the situation between teacher and students. The teacher has this same feeling now. It is a feeling of enormous potential. That potential shivers in the air.]

Act Two dramaturgical notes The architecture of our surroundings speaks to us. Watkins (2016) notes that affect influences space, and the flow of relations within that space. Carl Jung (Farah, 2014) dreams of a house. For each of these teachers, there was also a dreamlike experience of the surroundings. For Teacher One it was like a nightmare—a small room cluttered with tables and chairs to which students immediately gravitated. Teacher Two recognised his ‘house’ and yet was unfamiliar with it. Both ‘houses’ offered windows to another world. Teacher One wanted to draw back the curtains and show this other world to their students. They invited them to explore it; they waited while they found the map they could follow—while they experimented with stacking tables and emptying the room. All this will help—but the real ‘other world’ is not only represented by the removal of the things. It is the transformation of the space to work in, and the transformation in the minds of the students and teacher, that truly opens the door to this Narnia. Teacher Two saw the window into the other world: the theatre space that lurked in the hidden, concealed space behind the two heavy curtains. Once seen, the people who they were teaching, and the self with which they were teaching, were utterly transformed. Laid out before for this teacher was a physical and architectural environment with unconscious content. This was all at once an inspiring and deeply confronting experience. It invited performance from students who did not enrol in this unit to perform. It created parallel universes for the teacher who was also, in other parts of their life, a performer. It made real the unsteadying experience of teaching, of leading students into new spaces, both geographic and metaphoric. This blackbox theatre, and the classroom bound with tables and chairs, both challenged their inhabitants to transform their thinking about learning. In different ways, they both offered an entrance to Narnia.

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Act Three: Confronting the Self Scene 13 [Student sits alone, centre stage right, in the spot. They are unsettled, trying to find the right words for experiences they have not had before, looking for ways to articulate their experiences. We hear hesitations, uncertainties in their speech. They speak directly to the audience.] The new trick to learn for Academic and Professional Learning, for me, became all about honesty, honesty to yourself. And it’s really hard to be honest with yourself, not sure why, maybe because you can never be without you, you learn how to drown out the bits you don’t want to believe. When they re-surface they become even more difficult to admit and deal with, than if you had just dealt with it the first time. Lack of honesty can trick you, can trick you into believing you can achieve something when you cannot, or perhaps when you are not ready to achieve it. When we put the play together, we wrote monologues. As we wrote some of our innermost feeling down on paper, we were confronted, as individuals we were allowing ourselves to become so vulnerable in front of our peers by reading these confessions aloud. Some in the class never joined in from the start. This created angst amongst those that did participate with the open discussions. Then some that were responding started to push back against the readings. For all parties involved this class became a tough environment to excel in. But hey, that’s what the hunt for honesty can do.

STUDENT:

[Spotlight moves to second student, centre stage left. This student is less hesitant. They have a certain confidence in the way they engage the audience, as if they have a secret to share. They are a story teller, speaking directly to the audience.] I have to tell you, rehearsing the class play has been a massive journey. Today we finally did a full run through and seeing it come together into one story was extremely satisfying. I feel so proud of how much my classmates are developing into confident and capable colleagues. I feel like, in comparison to my earlier thoughts of frustration around the timidness of my classmates, I now feel proud that they have achieved a sense of confidence. I believe this happened because there’s a real growth-promoting environment in the class. Our teacher, they have allowed us to openly share and reflect how we are feeling. This has given us a chance to work through things that have been brought up by being ‘put on the spot’. It allowed us to reflect on our learning in a holistic way. I will definitely take this experience with me into my own classrooms. I would like to allow the same freedom of expression and collaborative learning that we experienced during the process of writing and performing this play as a class.

STUDENT TWO:

[Lights up across the stage. Students are dotted around the stage. They share the following dialogue.4]

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Yes, I agree, it was an amazing experience. It was scary as shit. I feel ten feet tall now. But it was hard, are you saying it wasn’t hard? Honesty is always hard. Collaborating is hard—really—getting an idea across to 27 other people. But we did it. Yeah. We did. We did it. I didn’t think I could, didn’t think we could. So—we can surprise ourselves, hey? TEACHER: what did you learn? STUDENTS: [each stating one thing in the following list]: trust, planning, collaborating, problem-solving, listening, different ways of thinking, tolerance, endurance, spontaneity, courage, togetherness. STUDENTS:

[Their voices fade into the silence as the list continues. Two students step out and speak over the continuing, muted list.5] We all became very comfortable with one another and being honest seemed effortless. STUDENT TWO: This probably happened because we had done so many activities being out of our comfort zone throughout the semester STUDENT ONE: Yeah, so there was no boundary or awkwardness. STUDENT ONE:

Scene 26 [Students are moving about the stage, saying lines. The energy level is low. Three students sit in the audience, watching. One puts her head in her hands, then says—] Has it looked this bad all along? No. It looked worse before. STUDENT C: They won’t follow any of our direction. STUDENT A: They are scared of looking stupid. STUDENT B: Well, here’s Theatre Rule Number One: the more you try to avoid looking stupid, the stupider you look. STUDENT C: They don’t get it. STUDENT A: It’s more than that. Do you mind if I talk to them? STUDENT C: Do you know anything about theatre? STUDENT A: Not much—but I don’t think this is a theatre problem. You two have got all the scenes, you’ve put together the class’s ideas, you’ve developed a sort of narrative across the scenes, you’ve told us where to stand and what to say. All the elements are there. But it looks awful. It’s not about theatre. STUDENT B: Go for it—we can’t make it work. STUDENT A: STUDENT B:

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[coming onto the stage and addressing the students, feeling nervous but determined]: Hey everyone, I took a few minutes out to watch and I’d like to give you some feedback.

STUDENT A:

[There is a general groan. It’s mid-morning. People are already tired.] Truthfully—it looks awful. You all look bored. You look like you don’t want to be here, like it isn’t your story. But it is your story. More importantly, it’s our story. Our shared story. So—here’s what we all have to do: we have to stop worrying about how we look as individuals, and start thinking about how the play looks. Start thinking as a group, not a solo person. If you think of this as our group’s thing, then you don’t have to worry about how you look as an individual. STUDENT D: Urgh. Do we have to do it again? STUDENT A: No. Go and have a break, get some food. Then we’ll do it again as a group, okay? STUDENT A:

[Dark, followed by lights up; students dotted around the stage. Students speak, one line each7] When we came back from our break it was like something magical happened. I think it was the food. It wasn’t just the food, but the food helped. We started to think about the play, not about ourselves. We were awesome! It just worked. Suddenly we understood what our directors had been trying to tell us all along. I stopped worrying about me. I really wanted to make it work for us. All we had to do was take a risk. We deserved to do a good job because as a group, we really care about each other, you know? Yeah, so it was right that we looked that way on stage, like we cared. Our play was fantastic. It was, it was fantastic—it was fantastic because our group is fantastic. I’m so pleased to belong to this group.

STUDENTS:

Act Three dramaturgical notes Play allows us to take risks, experiment, change our mind, try another way, attempt the outrageous, and back away again. Play, beginning with theatre games, and ending in the performance of ‘the play’ on stage, opens up opportunities to construct a range of narratives, to explore ideas and consequences, and

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to experiment with the interaction of space, place, things, self and others. If we understand affect as ‘the margin of modulation effected by change in capacity’ (Hickey-Moody, 2013, p. 80), we see that a change in physical capacity effects a change in mental images. In devising the play, we harness the impact of affect in our classrooms: ‘the passage from one state to another’ (Hickey-Moody, 2013, p. 81) is literally played out to be observed, critiqued and reflected upon. The dissipation of boundaries reconstructs the classroom yet again. It generates an environment of collective energy, a ‘collective fantasy’. Within this ‘fantasy’, each of us sought something within ourselves, deep within the well of our own personal experience (Romero et al., 1985), and brought that something into the group identity. Our readiness to find a new knowledge of ourselves, was central to the process of establishing and engaging with a collective unconscious, and the collective conscious. Because some of us had troubled backgrounds, unique challenges and, at times, disturbing experiences, the action of letting go and allowing the dissipation of boundaries could be a dangerous undertaking. Trust was of critical importance in exploring such dangers safely. Trust between individuals and within the class was developed through engaging in the performance process, and expressed in the doing of the performance. Dangerous ideas could be played out as dangerous actions within the performances, where they could be looked at, assessed and analysed. This trust was paramount, not only to the activity of the performance, but to the learning itself. Indeed, our experience of creating ‘the play’ involved engaging in a form of praxis learning around the issue of trust. In 2009 sociological theorists Wilkinson and Pickett emphasised the importance of trust to the health and well-being of populations. Their research discovered a correlation between levels of trust and inequality, for example, where ‘high levels of trust are linked to low levels of inequality’ (Wilkinson & Pickett, 2009, p. 53). By generating trust within the group, there was a secondary aim, clearly articulated: to encourage and support the growth of a community of learning which is de-hierarchised (Heron & Johnson, 2017), and essentially democratic (Pearl & Knight, 1999; Darder, 2015). Tied into this attempt to de-hierarchise the classroom, is the study of ‘dialogism’ in education which has compared the choice of words and type of communication between teachers and students, depending upon age: communication between adults is compared to communication between adults and children (Overton, 2006). A key feature of the analysis is the way in which authority operates in educational conversations between teachers and students (Callander, 2013). Using drama as pedagogy, we acknowledge that Theatre has its own structure, its own authority, indeed its own language. Brechtian methods and understandings of theatre offer some useful classroom tools for the teacher. For example, stilted, non-naturalistic speech, or self-conscious and self-reflexive methods, have the potential to free students from their preconceived notions of how they should present before their peers. When the processes of theatre are introduced into a classroom of pre-service teachers, we change both the hierarchies of power within the classroom, and the language used to convey relationships.

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We can extend the idea of ‘Affect as Pedagogy’ into ‘Classroom as Theatre.’ Lahey (2016) claims teaching is like ‘performance art’ and describes the ‘magic show’ of the teacher setting the tone and creating the culture of the classroom through their performance. But in a de-hierarchised classroom we must ask: are the students audience or performers? Is the teacher also a performer? Are they method actors, deeply immersed in feeling, or Brechtian actors, drawing on alienation? What form does the theatre of the classroom take—Mystery? Autobiography? Melodrama? Horror? In a classroom where knowledge is constructed through marking affect in the making of theatre, we are motivated by a different force than that operating in a ‘normal’ classroom. The introduction of ‘the show’ brings forth a new element. It redirects the ‘gaze’ of both the student and the educator. The gaze of the teacher shifts from those students who are not engaged in the class, toward developing a collaborative process. The student gaze is initially directed at every other student, and the self in relation to them. There is a strong desire not to look stupid; not to be judged. But during the course of the rehearsal process, the student gaze shifts again, this time to the collaborative end product: what do they need to do to get to the end successfully? The shifting of the gaze of students and teachers results in a shift of focus from content transfer and summative assessments to discovery and creation as ways of learning. Students are required to be physically and emotionally present, and to participate and contribute. Our learning journeys become intertwined with one another; group activities and games lay the foundations for an environment of sensitivity, care and belonging. The nature of performance means that we cannot hide, we are on display. The theatre of the classroom, where the teacher is essentially the performer, is disrupted by the ‘real’ theatre of acting and performance. The classroom is democratised as the ideas and opinions of students, whose stories are being told through the ethnodrama, are just as vital and important as those of the academic. Performance physicalises knowledge in an era when the physical is often neglected by teachers and students alike in favour of screens and electronic communication. Whilst information still needed to be explained to students and understood, that task was undertaken by enacting our thinking. Image theatre (Boal, 1995), forum theatre (Boal, 1995), Brecht’s epic theatre (Silberman et al, 2014); Grotowski’s poor theatre with truth and trust at its heart (Grotowski, 1970); Brook’s empty space (Brook, 1990); Artaud’s understanding of the cruelty of experience (Artaud, 1958); and Stanislavski’s emotional memory and empathetic engagement with character (Stanislavski, 1983) were all used as ways to untangle ideas, synthesise, problem-solve and create new knowledge. In our Higher Education classrooms performance became a way of engaging mind, heart and body in developing understanding and constructing new ways of thinking. When devising the ethnodrama the inherent risk involved in performance is where true courage and learning takes place. This is what we understand by Hickey-Moody’s ‘critical agency of human feeling [which is] choreographed by the aesthetics of existence’ (Hickey-Moody, 2013, p. 94). It requires us to say yes

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to the unknown and to trust oneself and those one works with. Without trust, the step into Narnia cannot take place; without honesty, that step cannot constitute change or growth; without an understanding of the self and, in this case, a commitment to others, that step cannot be transformative.

Epilogue Over four years more than 600 students have participated in this process of creating an ethnodrama as a way of studying Academic and Professional Learning. Not one of them has journaled that it was a waste of time. Although many initially questioned the purpose of the play as a major part of a unit on Academic and Professional Learning, not one, after completing the unit, questioned the value, purpose or significance of the play. It seems that it is possible to open the door to Narnia, whether the classroom is a dance studio, a blackbox theatre, or a small space filled with tables and chairs. The important thing is to find the cupboard, somewhere in the heart of each student, that offers them a way, through the distractions of the heavy hanging coats, into Narnia. As teachers our job is to bring the torch into the room, and expose the wardrobe as it emerges from the darkness. It opens when we offer students the transformational experience of embodied learning, when we invite them to consciously and unashamedly experience affect in the classroom. When they push the coats aside and leap from the wardrobe into the snow, they accept that challenge and become actors and activists, expressing their agency in the world. We all know that once we have entered Narnia there can be no going back. The things that happen there change us forever.

Notes 1 Act One, Scene 1 is based on the usual first moments of Academic and Professional Learning, in each iteration, as experienced by one of the authors. 2 Act One, Scene 2 is based on one of the author’s first experiences of teaching in Higher Education; it connects these with later experiences of teaching. 3 The monologues in this scene are built from students’ writings in their journals. 4 Individual lines of dialogue in this scene are taken from students’ comments in their journals or from their check-in, check-out sticky notes from the rehearsal and performance days of the unit. 5 The following short dialogue is constructed from one student’s reflective comment after the performance of the play. 6 This scene is based on an assessment, a case and commentary on the play experience, submitted by a student in Semester one, 2018. 7 This section of student comments is based on students’ reflections on the rehearsal morning, and of the intervention of food and Student One’s feedback.

Acknowledgements This work was undertaken with approval from the Victoria University High Risk Ethics committee, approval number: 0000024773. Participating students signed

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consent forms and were free to withdraw from the research at any time without consequence. Power imbalances were identified and managed.

References Artaud, A. (1958). The theatre and its double (trans. M. Richards). New York: Grove Press. (Original work published 1938). Boal, A. (1985). Theatre of the oppressed (trans. C. Lean-McBride & M. Leal-McBride). New York: Theatre Communications Group. (Original work published 1974). Boal, A. (1995). The rainbow of desire. The Boal method of theory and therapy (trans. A. Jackson). New York: Routledge. (Original work published 1995). Boal, A. (2002). Games for actors and non-actors (2nd ed., trans. A. Jackson). New York: Routledge. (Original work published 1992). Brook, P. (1990) The Empty space. London: Penguin. Callander, D. (2013). Dialogic approaches to teaching and learning in the primary grades. Master of education thesis, University of Victoria, Victoria: Canada. Callery, D. (2001). Through the body: A practical guide to physical theatre. London: Hearn Books. Darder, A. (2015). Freire and education. New York: Routledge. Farah, S. (2014). Jung’s dream house and discovering your own archetypal home. Retrieved from https://appliedjung.com/jungs-dream-house. Freire, P. (2000) Pedagogy of the oppressed (trans. M. Bergman Ramos). New York: Continuum. (Original work published 1968). Gilmore, G., Welsh, S. & Loton, D. (2019) An Australian case for relational resilience. Building academic pathways in first year, preservice teacher education. Pedagogy, Culture & Society, 27 (3), pp. 441–461. Grotowski, J. (1970). Towards a poor theatre. New York: Simon & Schuster. Heron, J. & Johnson, N. (2017). Critical pedagogies and the theatre laboratory. Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance, 22 (2), pp. 282–287. doi:10.1080/13569783.2017.1293513. Hickey-Moody, A. (2013). Affect as method: Feelings, aesthetics and affective pedagogy. In R Coleman & J Ringrose (eds), Deleuze and research methodologies (pp. 79–95). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Lahey, J. (2016). Teaching: Just like performing magic. One half of the entertainment duo Penn & Teller explains how performance and discomfort make education come alive. The Atlantic. Retrieved from www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/01/what-cla ssrooms-can-learn-from-magic/425100/. Mathisen, A. & Thorjussen, F. (2016). Imitation, interaction and recognition: Communication between children and adults in the Waldorf Kindergarten. RoSE—Research on Steiner Education, vol.7(2), pp. 18–32. Nicholson, H. (2002). The politics of trust: Drama education and the ethic of care (La politique de la confiance: Education par le théâtre et l’éthique de la responsabilité). La Política de la Confianza: La educación del arte dramático y la ética del cuidado, 7(1), pp. 81–91. Nguyen, D.J. & Larson, J.B. (2015). Don’t forget about the body: Exploring the curricular possibilities of embodied pedagogy. Innovative Higher Education, 40, pp. 331–344. Nook, E. C., Vidal Bustamante, C. M., Cho, H. Y., & Somerville, L. H. (2019). Use of linguistic distancing and cognitive reappraisal strategies during emotion regulation in children, adolescents, and young adults. Emotion, 21 March. Retrieved from http://dx. doi.org/10.1037/emo0000570.

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Overton, W. (2006). Developmental psychology: Philosophy, concepts, methodology. In R. Lerner (ed.), Theoretical models of human development: The handbook of child psychology, vol. 1 (6th edition, pp. 18–88). New York: Wiley. Pearl, A. & Knight, T. (1999). The democratic classroom: Theory to inform practice. Cresskill: Hampton Press. Romero, E.F., Hauser, L.A. & Archer Jr., D.D. (1985). Collective fantasy: A way of reaching the unconscious. The Arts in Psychotherapy, 12 (3), pp. 181–186. Spolin, V. (1999). Improvisation for the theatre (3rd edition). Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Silberman, M, Giles, S. & Kuhn, T. (eds). (2014). Brecht on theatre (3rd edition). London: Bloomsbury. Stanislavski, C. (1983). An actor prepares (trans. E.R. Hapgood). London: Methuen. Vlieghe, J. (2018) Rethinking emancipation with Freire and Rancière: A plea for a thingcentred pedagogy. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 50 (10), pp. 917–927. Watkins, M. (2016). Gauging the affective: Becoming attuned to its impact in education. In M. Zembylas & P.A. Schutz (eds), Methodological advances in research on emotion and education (pp. 71–81). Cham: Springer. Wilkinson, R. & Pickett, K. (2009). The spirit level: Why equality is better for everyone. London: Allen Lane.

14 ‘THEY CALL TEACHERS BY THEIR FIRST NAMES!’ An ethnodrama of pre-service teachers visiting innovative schools Alys Mendus, Michael Kamen, Adaire Kamen, Sarah Buchanan, Abigail Earle, Abigail Luna and Kelli McLaughlin

Introduction This chapter shares the script written for the Performing the World conference held in New York City in September 2018. This co-created ethnodrama follows the journey of a week of performing school tourism, defined as ‘the performance that occurs when you physically visit schools/places of learning … the embodied experience and co-present intra-actions with those that spend time in that place’ (Mendus 2017, p. 1). We are four pre-service teachers at Southwestern University in Texas, a New York playwright, and two seasoned school tourists (our professor and a PhD student from the UK), and in this chapter we share our experiences visiting innovative schools (Kamen & Shepherd, 2013) in New York City. As we all worked on themes, ideas and scenes, a play emerged. The scenes became an ethnodrama (Saldaña, 2005, 2016), as ethnodrama is written from ‘journal entries, personal memories … and other data [which] are dramatized into a theoretical script’ (Chilton & Leavy 2014, p. 411). Saldaña argues that ‘ethnodrama’ is a way to ‘present and represent a study of people and their culture-ethnography’ (Saldaña, 2005, p. 2) which we were seeking to do based on our exploration of innovative schools. Following Saldaña’s (2003) advice to develop higher-quality research-based work for the stage, we worked collectively with a playwright, adding another perspective from someone experienced in scriptwriting but also part of our group visiting schools. We realise that putting our reflections into words and choreographing actions to perform, negotiating scenes, and explaining perspectives creates a deeper meaning for our entire group and offers an important momentum for our evolving teaching identities. We frame this collaborative ethnodrama through the lens of Massumi’s understanding of affect that: ‘When you affect something, you are at the same time opening yourself up to be affected in turn, and in a slightly different way

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than you might have been the moment before’ (Massumi, 2015, p. 4). This articulation of affect supports our view that through visiting these schools and then sharing the stories through working together, writing, and performing an ethnodrama, those involved are changing. We are ‘becoming teachers’ in a different capacity. In this ethnodrama we are continually performing and becoming teacher[s] (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987), informed by a series of school visits and discussions, our own continued classroom experiences, reading, studying, reflective processes, collaborative writing, workshopping, and performing our ethnodrama. Following Massumi (2015) we embody an ‘experience in-the-making’ as academics, pre-service teachers, and a playwright when we visit each school. The embodied nature of these experiences empowers reflection and growth. Massumi’s articulation of affect resonates with our process, in that ‘the reason to say “affect” rather than “emotion” is that “affect” carries a bodily connotation’ (Massumi, 2017, p. 109). We have this embodied ‘encounter’ (Massumi, 2017) with the people in these spaces: the teachers, students, parents, administrators. We encounter the non-human environment–objects that characterise that school identity. Following Adler (1989), the performance is not just taking part in the visiting of the school but also includes the travel, in this case the travel to/from a school, as a ‘performed art,’ which involves anticipation and day-dreaming about the journey, the destination, and also who/what might be encountered on the way. This chapter argues that these collective encounters, seen also as performances, create an adventure into the unknown, with new experiences and understandings of education. Following Massumi, these ‘adventures of relation’ (Massumi, 2015), for those of us studying to become teachers, had an internal, emotional affect on who we are and who we hope to become, our ‘becoming teacher[s].’ We share this emotional journey in the stories of the pre-service teachers within this ethnodrama script. Viewing these school visits as encounters helps frame the experience. As Massumi argued: Every encounter is an affective complex: a patterning of capacities to affect and to be affected. This is not a dualism, but a relational matrix, because both capacities are found on both sides of the encounter. (Massumi, 2017, p. 49) As school tourists, or as a group visiting innovative schools, everyone (from our group to those part of the school) are part of this affective encounter, a relational matrix all having different and equally important experiences. Understanding these encounters and experiences as a performance, particularly reflective of Goffman’s notion of ‘front stage’ and ‘back stage’ (Goffman, 1959), extends this idea of relational matrix further. The front stage is typified by less open, more guarded conversations with senior management and in correspondence, in comparison to those back stage, much freer conversations over a cup of tea in the staff room, or with a student being shown around without observation by teachers.

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This view is further supported by Gingrich-Philbrook, who suggests that the performance can be connected to ‘crossing the thresholds of performance spaces’ (Gingrich-Philbrook, 2014, p. 83) and here our performance spaces constantly change from schools visits, to discussions afterwards, to writing the ethnodrama, to its performance and the audience’s experience. Taking inspiration from the concept of performance, we realise that our group is also performing as we co-create our dynamics as a tour group. An awareness of these differing types of performances help when writing the ethnodrama in opening up both front- and back-stage conversations between students, between students and their professor, and between Alys and Michael, acknowledging any possible power dynamics within our group and attempting to invite the audience into different aspects of the process and experience. Harris and Holman Jones explain when ‘Writing for performance, the performer, the character, and the audience member exists in (and is affected by) this temporal and physical distance …’ (Harris & Holman Jones, 2016, p. 12). In this ethnodrama we see affect as ‘relational encounter’ (Massumi, 2015) in the performances within the school visits as well as that in the final ‘performance.’ As the students in our group begin to collaborate on a script and craft our performances, our reflections on the schools we had visited deepens. The students in our group continue to question assumptions, beliefs, and pedagogical priorities, beginning a deep examination of how to reconcile these beliefs with the expectations and benchmarks likely to be encountered as Texas public school teachers. As we began acting out our future classrooms (as well as our own experiences as elementary school students and our experiences visiting the schools), our own educational philosophies expand rapidly, as do our takeaways from these experiences. One of us had negative feelings at the beginning of the innovative schools course about the idea of doing away with grades in elementary school. As we continued to craft our performances, however, and examined what our future classrooms would be, our views became more progressive. This play script adds to the relatively small field of collaborative ethnodrama (Ackroyd & O’Toole, 2010), collaborative playwriting (Grazer & Grazer, 2012), and group-devised ethnodrama (Lam et al., 2018) as it was written collaboratively by those involved in the research, sharing multiple opinions and experiences into a collective piece. The ethnodrama that follows is a collective composite artistic product of our co-experience.

The Ethnodrama Part One: Background and initial scenes How can we question our developing teacher identity if we ignore our pasts? What privileges and assumptions do we carry with us, and what effect does this have on our understanding of pedagogy and education? We may cringe when we explore our past thoughts and feelings, but bringing them alive in performance

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gives permission for others to think and feel into their own changes (or not) in their teacher identity.

Scene 1: The pre-service teachers as children are playing school with their dolls STAGE NOTES: Each student has written their own script—as one finishes their scripted part, the next one is projecting her lines while everyone else is whispering to their ‘class’. Abigail should have her class set-up. Others may line up animals/ dolls while Abigail starts speaking. PROJECTION: 2005, Abby, Abigail, Kelli, and Sarah—Somewhere in Texas. Four students pretending to play school. Good morning boys and girls! I am so happy to see all of your smiling faces. Today we are going to learn something very fun. It’s called … (drum roll). our ABCs! These letters are very important to remember because we use them every single day. And you are going to be graded on how well you do! Let’s begin by putting on our listening ears. SARAH: Now listen up children! Today we are going to learn all about math and how to add! Now quietly sit down in your assigned seats and take out your homework. Raise your hand if you have any questions, and remember it’s Ms. Buchanan–not Ms. Sarah. Ok, time to go to specials–line up in a straight line quietly! Follow the line on the floors to get us to class. ABBY: Okay boys and girls lets come sit down for circle time. Ariel, stop poking Chad. Now Juan and Jose, remember we only speak English during circle time. Okay, now let’s get back on track. Today we’re going to read a book about Goldilocks and all the choices she has. KELLI: Morning everyone! Please make sure you’re sitting in the correct seat… Oh, Anna, I think you may be in Steven’s desk… (Rearranges the doll positions) Okay, today we’re going to be focusing on rounding. Repeat after me … Four or less, let it rest. (mumbles, playing for the dolls) Four or less, let it rest. Good! Five or more, raise the score. (mumbles, playing for the dolls) Five or more, raise the door. No, Anna. It’s raise the score, not raise the door … Try it again Anna, just like everyone else … Five or more, raise the score. Very good, let’s continue. ABIGAIL:

Scene 2: Alys and Michael meet in Plymouth, UK in March 2017 STAGE NOTES: Adaire plays Alys, as Alys is not present for the performance in NYC. PROJECTION: Plymouth, UK showing conference title, Alys’s abstract and Video of Alys finishing her presentation. After visiting over 180 schools in 23 countries, searching for the ‘Ideal School’ for my PhD thesis I share this poem:

ALYS:

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I think the future is not teaching Learning yes, but not teaching Mentoring, and freedom for intrinsic self-autonomous learning Away from narrow testing structures and lives deemed failures at such a young age Activist-Alys-we peers through the looking glass Searching for beauty, and calm learning environments With adults that share life skills promoting autonomy, free thinking and passion for life And caring for each other Innovative, flexible, practical thinkers Bringing creativity back to the heart of learning And time in nature to just be To play at all ages Something that is inclusive and courageous to meet all beings needs Unpicking privileges of age, gender, sexuality, ability, ethnicity Not just stepping away but revolutionising old-thinking, it even questions current alternatives For it is a rhizome of education, a radical non binary approach That draws on the current strengths, the gems, but dreams for the future For the visions of the not-yet-thought Made possible by giving young people the freedom to fly. And to de-school teachers and de-school the system And chuck out not just the word school But the institution itself For there is no ideal school As school is not the answer. (Mendus, 2017) Hello! It’s so exciting to meet you. I’m a Professor of Education from Southwestern University in Texas. I also love visiting schools and I’d love to hear more about your school tourism research. I’ve done a bit of school tourism myself. ALYS (ADAIRE): Wow! We should definitely talk more! Your research sounds similar to mine–I’m a PhD student on a scholarship in Freedom to Learn from the University of Hull, England. I’m using school tourism to search for the ideal school around the world. MICHAEL: You might be interested in a course I’ve been running with pre-service teachers. It’s called Innovative Schools, and we study schools that are very different from the typical public or private school, visiting as many as we can. ALYS (ADAIRE): That’s so important! I feel that people–teachers, parents, pre-service teachers, academics, and kids–need to physically experience all these different types of possibilities for education. You can get a sense online, but it is only by actually visiting the school that it becomes an embodied experience MICHAEL:

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and hopefully influences how you can teach in the future or the type of education you want. MICHAEL: I’m running my next Innovative Class in New York in May 2017. Would you like to join us? ALYS (ADAIRE): Yes please! That would be brilliant. Up to now I do most of my school tourism alone–which can be pretty isolating– and I would love to see the impact of visiting innovative schools on a group of pre-service teachers. I hope that showing them the possibilities of innovative pedagogies will help them make changes within their public school classrooms. MICHAEL: I think together you and I could come up with a really great week-long itinerary of schools to visit.

Scene 3: Present day introduction of four students and Adaire. Conversation with Abigail about the NYC class STAGE NOTES: Four chairs in a circle near the side. This conversation will continue between scenes to narrate the performance. PROJECTION: Southwestern University Georgetown, Texas, Fall 2017. Hey Abby, how was the rest of your summer? Oh, it was great. Spent a lot of quality time with my mom and dog, you know, the usual… SARAH: Did you do anything cool this summer, Kelli? Well, besides our New York trip! KELLI: Not really, Sarah… Everything seemed pretty lackluster in comparison to all the crazy schools we visited. I just can’t stop thinking about that one school with the democratic meeting. I can’t imagine gathering the whole school every day for so much discussion and planning–let alone having the kids make all the decisions! ABIGAIL: Hey, what are y’all talking about? It sounds crazy! SARAH: Hey Abigail! Well, this summer we all took the Innovative Schools course with Dr. Kamen. We spent a whole week in New York City touring so many different schools. Alys, a doctoral student from the UK, came along too. She had a lot of great insight from her own experiences visiting schools for her PhD. Kamen’s daughter, Adaire, even joined us from time to time! She was pretty cool, too, with her background in theatre. ABIGAIL: Wow, that sounds amazing. I think I actually signed up for that class this Fall semester, but we are going to visit innovative schools in central Texas. What kinds of things did you see in New York? ABBY: Well, there was this one school, and they called teachers by their first names! KELLI: ABBY:

Part Two: Stories from our School Tourism All students in Michael’s Innovative Schools course write a journal about their experiences visiting schools and then carry out a project to design their own ideal

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school. Alys read these assignments and recognised the key subjects that had troubled and excited the students during the visits, such as hierarchy, grading, and freedom. In Part Two we share a series of scenes written to explore these themes initially from journaling reflections and then added to in group skype meetings and interactive google docs. The aim of these scenes is to show how different the students’ points of view are from each shared school visit and how each has their own feeling response to the school which extends beyond the actors to the audience as they too are invited to reflect on their experiences of school and schooling.

Scene 4: ‘They call teachers by their first names …’ STAGE NOTES: Location: Group walking out of a school gate. PROJECTION: A Progressive School in NYC, May 2017 with a photo of a school in the background. One of the things I loved about that school was how the students called the teachers by their first names. I’m very interested in unpacking hierarchies and societal norms in the classroom. I think by using first names there is an opportunity to connect as people. An opportunity for mutual respect, instead of superficiality or arbitrary customs. KELLI: It was so interesting to observe it in action! I think I actually like the idea of having the students call teachers and administrators by their first names. I think it really does eliminate some of the weird authoritative-like stigma that comes from calling someone Mr. or Mrs. As the students put it, it really does make you feel like you’re talking on the same level as someone. This could be something to take with me into my future teaching career. I’ve always said that I would like to be Ms. Kelli, since I don’t really like the way my last name sounds, but now I’m thinking of throwing out the ‘Ms.’ as well. ABBY: Uhh … I’m not sure if I agree with that idea—with students and teachers being on the same level. A teacher is still an adult. I think if a student still used Mrs. or Mr. in front of the first name, that might work for the teacher and student relationship. But… I still like last names used, especially with secondary students. SARAH: I think I’m with you. I’m not sure how I feel about letting students call teachers by their first name. I agree that simply putting a Mr. or Mrs. in front of a person’s name doesn’t automatically make you respect them, but I do think that it is one step towards respecting them. I think I need to learn more about that before deciding about my own classroom. MK: Do you think it is more appropriate for students to call their teachers by their first names in a high school? Perhaps the culture of the school determines how students and teachers feel about using formal versus informal proper nouns. I wonder whether this school-wide choice actually has much impact on students’ attitudes and their relationship with teachers, or if it ALYS (ADAIRE):

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serves more as a statement and indicator of the school’s philosophy. I think that level of formality chosen indicates an intentional decision about power relationships and the degree to which students are given freedom.

Scene 5: Grading STAGE NOTES: Slowly walking across the stage. PROJECTION: Southwestern University Texas, Fall 2017, with image of the SWU in the background. How interesting, I can see both sides of the first name debate. But I’m not sure I have a solid opinion on it yet. What else did you see? SARAH: Well, we also saw some schools that didn’t give out grades or report cards. I have mixed feelings about it. ABIGAIL: Why is that? SARAH: On the one hand, I see how eliminating grades could be beneficial so as to keep students from comparing themselves to one another or from having negative self-views based on a number or letter grade. However, I believe that students have the right to know their progress. How will the students know how they are doing, and how will the teachers know? ABBY: Yeah, I wasn’t impressed by the school that had a rubric where the students are either satisfactory or unsatisfactory. This, to me, does not provide enough feedback and could possibly limit these children. KELLI: But think about it from the teacher’s point of view. If we don’t need to teach to a test we could truly allow the students to learn and connect to things in the outside world. I think that grades don’t show how smart a child is, just shows how motivated they are. Motivation and intelligence shouldn’t be determined by a number grade. ABBY: I can see that, but I think that there should be some type of grading system— just maybe not such a forced one such as what we see in most schools today. SARAH: I know you weren’t too impressed by the satisfactory and unsatisfactory system but I like the idea that students were given feedback outside of letter or numerical grades. ABBY: I agree. I also really appreciate the idea of giving in-depth comments midsemester before an overall grade at the end of the semester. KELLI: I was really excited to see a school that did not have to do standardised testing. It gives me hope that as a future teacher, I will one day be able to assess my students without standardised testing. ABIGAIL: I’m not sure how it works with kids, but wouldn’t it be nice if Dr. Kamen wasn’t giving me grades right now? SARAH: I want to try and implement the peer editing we saw in the school that didn’t have standardised testing into my future classroom. ABBY: Even after visiting all those innovative schools, I realise that I am really opposed to not giving students grades. I think that in the early years it might ABIGAIL:

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work just fine, but as they grow up there will not be an incentive to do the best that they can on their work if they are not rewarded for it. KELLI: I know what you mean, but I am starting to feel optimistic about the power of self-motivation. We saw it work really well in a few schools—kids wanting to learn and excel without any incentives or competition–and I think it’s really valuable for kids to learn to love learning just for learning’s sake. ABBY: Don’t you think that if kids call their teachers by their first names and aren’t graded they have too much freedom?

Scene 6: Let Freedom Ring STAGE NOTES: Choice, Power, Arts, and Play are performed by Abigail, Abigail, Kelli, and Sarah all hanging a sign around their necks so their role is obvious to the audience. My country, ’tis of thee, Sweet land of liberty, Of thee I sing; Land where my fathers died, Land of the pilgrims’ pride, From ev’ry mountainside Let freedom ring! (Ascher, 1861). CHOICE: ‘Let freedom ring’, they say. A line that encourages Americans to embrace and uphold the ideals of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. But how might we let this freedom ring in schools? Now that, my friends, is a question that all institutions should ask. On that note, I am Choice and I would like you to meet some of my dear, closest, friends that I have met along the way of this freedom journey. POWER: I am Power. ARTS: I am the Arts, of all shapes and forms. PLAY: And I am Play. Ground couldn’t make it. POWER: We four are showing preservice teachers what it takes to build a ‘child centred education’. After all, isn’t that what we should be striving for? School is not about the teachers, administration, janitors, or parents. It’s solely about the students. What do the students want and need, and how can we help them succeed? CHOICE: That is why I give children the ability to choose what they want to do with their life. Instead of forcing them to learn concepts, we believe that if a student wants to be educated about something, they will learn it. They have the choice of spending their day however they’d like. POWER: But Choice, what if they choose to not learn anything? What’s the point of school, if they are going to jump around and do gymnastics all day? CHOICE: Children are learning all the time, even if it might not look like it. Kids are social sponges. PLAY: As the students participate in gymnastics they are learning how to work together, develop social skills, and learn from the mistakes they make. Learning happens everywhere, especially during play! ARTS: Oh yes, ‘play’! The magical word that adults seem to be so afraid of. ABIGAIL SINGING:

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It’s as if adults feel like they have no power if students are playing. But that’s the very least of it. I don’t mean to toot my own horn, but I am such a valuable part in everyone’s daily lives. For the students, I am able to promote learning in a whole other manner. I give students the freedom of letting their mind and body explore. ARTS: Umm, hello? You forgot about me, Arts. Everyone seems to forget about me– I’m usually one of the first things to get cut in school budgets. But I bring you all together! You can make powerful statements with art, and art is also play! PLAY: Exactly! I supply many materials in the room for children to explore. They have the freedom of playing with whatever they want. In my opinion, including a lot of hands-on materials is important because it allows students to embrace all kinds of thinking. KAMEN (AS OUTSIDE VOICE): This conversation between the importance of Choice, Play, the Arts, and Power represents what many preservice teachers struggle with. Finding the perfect balance between these four ideals is vital for students’ freedom. If we ‘let it ring’, maybe we will see what they are truly capable of. ABIGAIL SINGING: Land where my fathers died, Land of the pilgrims’ pride, From ev’ry mountainside Let freedom ring! POWER: PLAY:

Part Three: Applying the new experiences As we collaborate and our ethnodrama takes form, an awareness grows that the new experiences of visiting these innovative schools has an affective process on developing teacher identity, by giving voice to how being a teacher, working with young people and setting up our own classroom environment actually feels. It is the forum to create, write and perform the stories of these visits that further extends each student’s ability to become socially-just educators, although we recognise that this can be challenging when trying to get a job in the mainstream school system.

Scene 7: Anxious interviews STAGE NOTES: Michael and Kelli on either side of the stage pretending to be talking into their cell phones. PROJECTION: Kelli’s Phone Interview, Summer 2018. Hi, Kelli. This is Mr. Dornsby from Sunshine Elementary calling to conduct your interview for the third-grade position you applied for? KELLI: (Oh, Lord) Right, hello! Nice to meet you, Mr. Dornsby. INTERVIEWER (DR. KAMEN): I’m going to begin by asking you a few questions about your teaching philosophies and the like… are you ready? KELLI: (Inner voice: no!) (clearly nervous) Absolutely. Couldn’t be… ready…-er… INTERVIEWER (DR. KAMEN):

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In what situation would you send a student to the principal’s office? (begins taking notes on a notepad) KELLI: (Inner voice: ummm …. never?) Well, I believe the only situation in which I would send a student to the principal’s office would be if they began to become a danger to themselves or other students… I personally don’t believe in using a trip to the principal’s office as a discipline measure. INTERVIEWER (DR. KAMEN): (shuffling papers and looking slightly skeptical) … Alright. And could you explain your grading policy to me? KELLI: (Inner voice: Aw crap. He’s not gonna like this …) Well, I’m always looking to learn from other more experienced professionals and their seasoned strategies and policies… But I personally like to take into large account a student’s effort and progress made from where they were previously to where they are now, rather than on a standardised scale compared to that of their peers. (Inner voice: Dang, that was eloquent.) INTERVIEWER (DR. KAMEN): Right, okay. (nodding, taking more notes) And why do you want to work for our school district? KELLI: I heard a lot about your district and it is the kind of district I want to work at. (Inner voice: I need a job, I applied everywhere) INTERVIEWER (DR. KAMEN): Why do you think you are a good fit for this position? KELLI: (Inner voice: I don’t know, aren’t you supposed to tell me?) Well, I am very passionate about teaching and educating the younger generation. I am a strong nurturer at heart, and I love to support and encourage young students. I love getting to see the growth that a year, six months, one month, two weeks can show. INTERVIEWER (DR. KAMEN): How sweet! Now, say that a student is consistently showing misbehaviour in your classroom and requires some kind of punishment. What does your discipline strategy look like? KELLI: (Inner voice: Punishment? Jeez …) I am personally a firm believer in using positive behaviour interventions and supports my students, focusing on the ‘why’ behind each misbehaviour and dealing with it on a situation by situation basis. I want to provide my students with opportunities to build character and understanding of the negative impacts of poor behaviour on their own terms and help them develop plans for bettering themselves. INTERVIEWER (DR. KAMEN): So your students would not have any consequences for misbehaviour? KELLI: Well, it depends … INTERVIEWER (DR. KAMEN): (raises eyebrows) I see … (writes down notes quickly).

INTERVIEWER (DR. KAMEN):

Scene 8: Michael and Alys video call following the NYC school visits STAGE NOTES: Recorded video chat. When we visit schools, we need to be aware of our privilege. We are white, able-bodied, and able to afford to study/work at university and to spend a

ALYS:

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week in New York. When we walk into these schools each day we need to hold an awareness of this. We, too, are part of the performance. We wear our privileges as we visit schools, and in turn the schools perform to us and share what they want us to see. There are many unspoken themes, topics, and judgements left hanging in the air. We had one challenge with the patriarchy and what we discussed later as the ‘white saviour’ concept. What responsibility do we have in not only visiting schools but in sharing the stories from these places we visit? How do we tell these stories? What language do we use? MICHAEL: Yes, and in turn you and I have the responsibility of choosing which schools we visit and which schools we choose for the students to experience. ALYS: Exactly. New York is unique in that way. We managed to choose several places that tackle diversity, social justice, and inclusion in numerous ways. I was impressed by one school we visited that had created a sliding scale of tuition fees in an attempt to include more students, but I was frustrated when I realised that this still is not an option for families from the poorest areas. It was unsettling in some ways to visit some exciting and innovative schools and know that many were only accessible to affluent families. MICHAEL: That’s why we’re visiting public schools as well as private schools. We even visited a public school that doesn’t participate in high-stakes testing at all. We toured a few others that have made social justice a key part of their curriculum. ALYS: It’s been such a treat to visit so many schools and to have a group of people to talk about each experience with. I have felt that these discussions have really helped my thinking and ability to reflect on different places and to unpick my own privileges, assumptions, and biases. Although I do wonder about our responsibility. MICHAEL: Oh, interesting. What do you mean? ALYS: Well, by being upfront about my dislike of hierarchy and the use of titles such as Mr. and Miss I may have unfairly influenced the students… MICHAEL: I can see that. Although by explaining why you dislike hierarchy, it means that the students are beginning to question thoughts and beliefs they might have had about education. I think that some of them are now less bothered by the use of first names for teachers, for example, which provides the opportunity to look further at what that school has to offer. ALYS: So although we need to be aware of our privileges and position in these school visits, we may also be able to help the students extend their thinking and understanding about educational possibilities. MICHAEL: Yes, but I think it is good to keep being conscious about our responsibilities. For example, when we visited my favourite progressive school, but the teaching did not seem particularly alternative to the students–they were not that impressed. I realised that we hadn’t necessarily given a historic/ pedagogic overview of the different types of approaches, so they may not

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have known what to look for. You and I were also on that same school visit, but we could see levels of innovative practice even when the teaching in a particular class wasn’t that innovative in itself. ALYS: Exactly. For example, we saw wooden blocks for building in the upper primary grades, but we didn’t see them being used. MICHAEL: I wonder what the students’ takeaways will be as they become established in their teaching careers.

Scene 9: Final teaching scene Good morning class of 2031! Please find a seat on whatever you’d like. You can sit on the bouncy ball, swivel chair, beanbag, or regular chair. Before we begin, I would like to remind you to wear tennis shoes tomorrow, and be prepared to get messy in whatever clothes you wear! We will be working in the garden and with the animals on the farm. In our class, it is important that you learn how to help nurture the environment that we live in. It doesn’t need to be Earth Day in order to be an active community member. KELLI: Hello everyone! I’m so glad to see you all today. In a few moments I’d really like for us to all introduce ourselves and share one good thing that happened to us recently. But before that, let’s go through what classroom norms we’d all love to set in order for this to be a positive, safe environment for all involved. (Writing down on a whiteboard and saying out loud) Community… Guidelines… Anyone have any ideas for a good guideline? … Yes, and what is your name, sweetheart? Johnny? … Respect ourselves and each other … That’s a wonderful idea, Johnny … (writes down guideline) SARAH: Its Passion Project time! Today we get to choose our new passion topic! Last unit y’all decided to take a closer look at why immigrants are discouraged and discriminated against when they speak a language other than English? What are some topics that you are interested in learning more about during our studies for this unit? Everyone turn and talk with your classmates about possible ideas. ABBY: Okay friends, let’s start packing up. As a reminder progress reports have gone out. You and your parents should sit down over the weekend and look at the comments that have been made. Read over, discuss, decide, and write what letter grade you think you should have and what you would like to have and why. This reflection should be approximately 500 words and is due Monday! Remember to make smart choices, think about the bigger questions at hand, play, make art, and that Ms. Earle will always love you. Now be gone and go take chances, make mistakes, and be messy! ABIGAIL:

END OF PERFORMANCE

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Conclusion Through writing this ethnodrama as a collaborative work from a shared fieldwork experience, our whole group continues to be affected by the research. By concluding our ethnodrama with Abby, Abigail, Kelli and Sarah embodying their future teacher identities we collectively aimed to share lingerings of the relational encounter, a trans-materiality in the sense that the impact of school tourism and visiting those innovative schools continues to permeate our understanding and beliefs as new teachers. These scenes link back to Scene 1 and show changes, differences, and multi-faceted and personal responses to becoming a teacher. From this experience, as both pre-service teachers and more experienced teachers, we realise we are moving beyond school ‘tourists’ to becoming ‘residents’ with these experiences and discourses of education now embodied in our identities of ‘becoming teacher[s].’ It is worth appreciating that this becoming ‘resident’ is not a stationary expression, but one that also continues to move with new understandings of pedagogy, experience in the classroom, and further school tourism. With reflection, a further realisation emerged for Alys and Michael, recognising how difficult it is to look outside of one’s own educational culture and judge the schools visited in terms of their own unique culture. We know that the preservice teachers among our group naturally evaluate from our own experiences and assumptions of school culture, based on 13 years in mainstream education environments. Appreciating the difficulty to evaluate from within, we are eager for the preservice teachers among us to evaluate a school on the school’s terms, with the question ‘How well do they enact their goals, their understanding of children and learning and their holistic theories of being?’

References Ackroyd, J., & O’Toole, J. (2010). Performing research: Tensions, triumphs and trade-offs of ethnodrama. Stoke on Trent: Trentham Books. Adler, J. (1989). Travel as performed art. American Journal of Sociology, 94 (6), 1366–1391. Ascher, G. (1861). America, my country ’tis of thee. Notated music. Retrieved from www. loc.gov/item/ihas.100010477/. Barad, K. (2007). Meeting the universe halfway: Quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Chilton, G. and Leavy, P. (2014). Arts-based research practice: Merging social research and the creative arts. In P. Leavy (ed.), The Oxford handbook of qualitative research (pp. 403–422). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1987). A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Edensor, T. (2010). Introduction: Thinking about rhythm and space. In T. Edensor (ed.), Geographies of rhythm: Nature, place, mobilities and bodies (pp. 1–20). London: Ashgate. Gingrich-Philbrook, C. (2014). A knock at the door: Speculations on theatres and thresholds. Departures in Critical Qualitative Research, 3 (1), 24–36. Goffman, E. (1959). The presentation of self in everyday life. Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company.

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Grazer, J., & Grazer, J. (2012). A tempest in the halls: Intersections of social justice, student collaboration, and devised theatre. Doctoral dissertation, Kennesaw State University. Harris, A., & Holman Jones, S. (2016). Writing for performance. Rotterdam: Sense. doi:10.1007/978-94-6300-594-4.. Kamen, M. & Shepherd, D. (2013). Exploring innovative schools with preservice teachers. In L. Shavinina (ed.), The Routledge international handbook of innovation education. Abingdon: Routledge. Lam, 林.K., Mak, 麥.P., Wong, 黃.K., & Yeung, 楊.A. (2018). An alternative path: A physical and metaphorical group-devised ethnodrama 另一條創作路: 一個運用身體和 隱喻的集體編作人種誌戲劇. The Journal of Drama and Theatre Education in Asia (DaTEAsia), 7 (1), 29–52. Massumi, B. (2015). Politics of affect. Cambridge: Polity Books. Mendus, A. (2017). A rhizomatic edge-ucation: ‘Searching for the ideal school’ through school tourism and performative autoethnographic-we. Doctoral dissertation, University of Hull. Saldaña, J. (2003). Dramatising data: A primer. Qualitative Inquiry, 9 (2), 218–236. Saldaña, J. (2005). Ethnodrama: An anthology of reality theatre. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press. Saldaña, J. (2016). Ethnotheatre: Research from page to stage. Oxford: Routledge. Wunderlich, F.M. (2010). The aesthetics of place—Temporality in everyday urban space: The case of Fitzroy Square. In T. Edensor (ed.), Geographies of rhythm: Nature, place, mobilities and bodies (pp. 45–56). London: Ashgate.

15 ETUDES AND EMPATHY Towards a pedagogy of empathy Alison Grove O’Grady and Thomas De Angelis

Introduction This chapter is both reflective and analytical, and discusses a funded project, referred to here as the Huddle, that responded to a call for discussions about new ways for pre-service teachers to engage students in more humane relationships and encounters in classrooms. The original remit for the Huddle was developed in response to increasingly frequent incidents of racism in schools, which had been identified by the then Human Rights Commissioner, Professor Gillian Triggs. At the time, Triggs was sustaining numerous, and at times bigoted attacks from sections of the media and notable commentators (not to mention a variety of politicians) over her unswerving commitment to upholding the integrity of Australia’s plurality of human rights legislation, and in particular Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act 2012.1 For context, the successful footballer and former Australian of The Year, Adam Goodes had recently been racially vilified by a young woman at an Australian Rules Football match. It appeared that this incident and its attendant discourse, provided space for intolerant, prejudiced and discriminatory behaviours in classrooms around Australia. What was worse, the incident itself was couched within the scurrilous defence of free speech. In her role as Commissioner, Triggs put the call out to expert educators for methods, practices and pedagogies that might better embed human rights education into initial teacher training, including but not limited to improving empathy for others. We responded in two ways: first, by joining the teacher reference group at the Australian Human Rights Commission and representing at a forum into Initial Teacher Education responses to Human Rights Education. Second, we convened a group of playwrights, practitioners, experts in the arts, performers and educators to explore the nexus between theatrical practices and traditions and pedagogy. These practitioners were called upon to situate their collective

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experiences of affective practices in relation to pedagogies of empathy in a group setting. We prioritised the sharing of experiences and engendered a discussion of critical reflection. The members of the Huddle are listed below.2 The Huddle participants were invited in recognition of their expertise and experience within their particular fields, which made them uniquely positioned to gain insight into the dialectical world of theatre and empathy. Additionally, the Huddle participants had been similarly motivated by the Goodes/Triggs episode. In short, the Huddle was a working group made up of like-minded empaths, which for our purposes was a qualification held by those whose professional practice was grounded in affective empathy. For one of the performers in the Huddle, this practice was born out of ‘a desire to represent reality in a way that affects an audience, and hopefully challenges them’. For a pedagogue participant in the Huddle, empathy was ‘part and parcel of every pedagogical decision I make’ and therefore a basis for practice, rather than ‘an end in and of itself’. By co-interrogating the insights of both educators and theatre makers, we sought to answer these guiding questions:





Can empathy be defined? Can empathy be distilled and facilitated as a practice in teacher professional learning? How do we frame empathy as pedagogy and practice for pre-service teachers? Can theatrical methods explicitly inform the practice and praxis of pre-service teachers?

The group gathered to explore the potential for theatrical traditions, in particular Stanislavski’s Method of Active Analysis, to provide a critical pedagogic practice, based on the Method’s foundational precept of ‘etudinal exploration’. Etudinal exploration emphasises a non-verbal, affective and embodied approach to understanding complex emotional scenarios, contexts and positions. In this way, Stanislavski’s Method was appropriated as an embodied practice for preservice teacher professional learning. As empathy is currently and problematically articulated in the Western discourse, the group contended that a historical conceptualisation, problematisation and participatory approach to empathy can render pre-service and early career teachers with a pedagogical tool that could be integrated into everyday practice. This was to further the way pre-service teachers understood their responsibilities under human rights laws and their affects, in particular Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act 2012, and how they might develop a critical and strategic empathy, in their work as teachers. Together, we observed a persistent complexity in our analysis of empathy as a pedagogical tool, and in particular, recognised that empathic action in the training of pre-service teachers and associated fieldwork permitted our perceptions of the vagueness around understanding critical empathy and the negative connotations associated with a dominant theory of empathy.

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In addition to an exploration of the usefulness (be it limited or enabling) of empathy as pedagogy, this chapter will synthesise the Huddle experience and locate it within a field of study that sees empathy as method. For our purposes, empathy, with its basis in emotional affect, opens a door to a world of possibilities for pedagogical development. This chapter will also present theatrical traditions as essential in developing a ‘dramaturgical consciousness’ (Rifkin, 2009) and scholarly approach to its inherencies in developing affective and pedagogical empathy. The following contextualising literature review is given to assist in the framing of the epistemological and popular debates that seek to create a useful definition of empathy.

A brief literature review Empathy has emerged in popular literature and online spaces with increasing prevalence (Hatcher et al., 1994). Previous generations, certainly in Western societies, were neither encouraged nor asked to discuss feelings and emotions and culturally for some groups, showing emotions could be considered a sign of weakness (Stout, 1999). This can be contrasted with a contemporary perspective on emotional affect, held predominantly by younger people, where talking about how you feel, about an issue or your state of mind, is more likely to be a sign of being socially aware (Cook, 2011). In The Empathic Civilization (Rifkin, 2009), Rifkin situates empathy between the anthropological and the psychological, arriving at the conclusion that this is the age of empathy. His book challenges society to develop empathic intelligences in order to understand the brutality of damage to our natural environment, discrimination and marginalisation of minority groups, and the ongoing deprivation of communities. His work underscores the central themes of the OECD’s Future of Education and Skills 2030 discussion paper, which regards empathy as an essential social and emotional skill (OECD, 2018). Both Rifkin’s work and the position paper grapple with the paradox that though we are seeking to develop affective responses and empathy for our future, we are simultaneously denuding environmental resources and reducing our humanity in issues of racial division. Rifkin (2009) argues for a ‘global empathy’, citing a view of humanity that is both inter and intra disciplinary, combining neuroscience, psychology and social scientific fields as a way to understand the human narrative and social tapestry. Research and literature about empathy in a broad and generalised sense is fairly widespread, but for our purposes, and considering empathy in an affective sense, we contend that empathy must be a central part of an embodied pedagogy. Empathy is frequently understood within the literature in relation to training medical professionals, social workers and the like, and only infrequently with respect to educators and their pedagogies (Chen et al., 2008). Leading scholars such as Ewing (2019) have offered timely reminders that pedagogy is for the learners and about learning. Her contribution to this research focuses on the importance of an arts-rich and imaginative learning experience,

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arguing that pedagogy should be enriched by modifying theatrical traditions to engender critical and productive empathy. Other definitions tend to reflect that empathy is sought to be better understood as a phenomenon, and it is important in any conversation about empathy to understand that (paradoxically) it can be used for nefarious purposes. For example, there is evidence to suggest that bullies often know how to attune themselves to the way people feel, drill down to the perspective and vulnerability of another person and then commit an act of transgression designed to substantially hurt the other person (Davis, 1990). Scholars such as Stein (1964) provide a unique if less contemporary insight in terms of their semantic and interpretative definitions of empathy. In general, however the definition is one that can be surmised as a concept where empathy is accepted to be a cognitive process that has cultural imperatives attached to the way we might understand it; I don’t simply see faces. I see angry faces, or faces transfixed with wonder, or bearing expressions of grief. I don’t simply see physical bodies as mere physical things but rather as embodying the lived experiences of the people in front of me. (Stein, 1964 p. 42). The common conception regarding empathy evokes the expression ‘to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes’ (Ewing & Saunders, 2016) and while this feeling about another person’s situation can be limited (Hoffman, 2000) as far as popular social commentators Bloom (2016) and Krznaric (2014) are concerned, it is a tangential way of understanding what it means to generate affective emotions, be they sympathetic or compassionate. Because this chapter is in part about how empathy can be distilled into a teachable pedagogy and practice, a critique of empathy as pedagogy is essential. Hoffman’s suggestion is that empathy requires more than an imagined stroll in someone else’s shoes and that the cognition associated with an empathic affective act requires responding to another person’s situation by assessing their needs and not assuming their suffering (Larocco, 2017). Popular conceptualisations of empathy have been characterised as bearing a ‘cosy view’ Nelems (2017), which is an understanding of empathy as a basic common-sense concept that is broadly seen as a social good. This view and others like it, which see empathy in a simplistic ‘social good’ sense, have been interrogated by Larocco (2017) who argue that empathy is often conflated with sympathy and compassion—and the overall fuzziness around its application within professional practice in a range of fields makes the use and misuse of empathy potentially problematic. Nelems (2017) furthers her argument by suggesting that empathy has many different interpretations as a multi-dimensional, ethical and social construct, though she offers empathy as a ‘constellation of concepts and experiences’ and therefore a broader and pluralistic metaphor (p. 23).

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In a similar vein Zembylas (2013) suggests that by carefully re-examining our pedagogies and their moral undertones, as teachers and educators we can help students navigate their way through what he describes as ‘troubled knowledge’. Troubled knowledge differentiates itself from the more commonplace pedagogies of conservative curricula, where emphasis is placed on affective responses and ‘explicit pedagogic attention’ particularly when discussing or facilitating learning that interrogates contestable issues. Zembylas suggests that part of a teacher’s tool kit of pedagogies is ‘strategic empathy’. The benison of such a method is manifold and provides purposeful ways to consider knowledge and meaning making. Using empathy in strategic and planned ways can, Zembylas argues, provision teachers with a space both physical and metaphorical to test their troubled knowledge and then channel it through careful strategising, into socially just perspectives.

Theatrical Traditions in the getting of empathy Despite the plethora of evidence for increasing arts education in classrooms to improve student success rates (Ewing & Saunders, 2016; Fleming et al., 2016; Deasy, 2002; Fiske, 1999), various governments, certainly in Australia and also in the United Kingdom, have failed to act upon this evidence and instead remain fixed in a reductive view of curricula. The theatre has historically provided a vehicle for exploration of the human condition, pushing boundaries, contesting ideologies and turning a mirror to the audience often to provoke reactions of introspection and critical reflection. In the ‘constellation of empathy’ theory advanced by Nelems (2017), theatrical traditions lend themselves seamlessly to affective pedagogic practices and meaning making with compassion, sympathy and empathy as core components. An actor must get into the mind of the character by imagining themselves as the character (Szilas et al., 2003). Taking on the role of another person and understanding what motivates them, what they desire, what they intend and how they act are all empathetic tools used in the pursuit of acting in the theatrical tradition. The ability to harness a pedagogy of empathy is central to a theatremaker’s practice, and it was our view that there could be a free exchange among pedagogues, theatremakers, and educators in the Huddle, that would inform the basis of a new pedagogy based in embodied and affective empathy. The traditions of modern, western theatre and its usefulness in this work owes a theoretical and practical debt to the work of Stanislavski (1949) and his method acting techniques. The intention in method acting is to imbue a character with a sense of the actor’s self, whilst remaining true to the integrity of the text. Important from a practice perspective is Stanislavski’s attention to the physical self, the language of embodied characterisation and his prioritisation of the malleability of the body. Susan Verducci’s (2000) ground-breaking research into method techniques in developing moral reasoning practices is influential in this line of inquiry regarding our pedagogy of empathy. Rather than canvassing definitional arguments about

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empathy, Verducci suggests that the way actors train in this method allows them to empathise by activating doable and discussable steps. She suggests that borrowing from Noddings (1984) ethics of care model and Nussbaum’s (1995) pity postulation, educators in this case, can appropriate these techniques to develop and cultivate empathy as a productive construct. Verducci is careful not to suggest that the students be manipulated by the process. Rather she affirms Brecht’s (1964) caution to avoid emotional manipulation of the audience and in this case, students and teachers. Finally, it is critical in this discussion about pedagogy, empathy and praxis to situate what Rifkin (2009) describes as a ‘new dramaturgical consciousness’ (p. 554) positioning today’s generation of school students as globally sensitive and cosmopolitan consumers of affective notions and responses. This, he suggests, is evidenced by their lived experiences in digital social spaces. His hypothesis is that the third industrial revolution of technological change has opened the gates to a new generation of empathic sensibility (ibid.). Compared with the passivity of movie watching and listening to the radio, that were the past times of past generations, the internet has changed what we might previously have identified as pro social behaviour. Critics argue this generation have stunted sociability because of the internet whereas Rifkin argues their sensibilities are in fact heightened as a consequence of enlarging their emotional and empathic repertoire (p. 557). Goffman’s (1990) use of dramaturgical metaphors to describe the way different roles and jobs might require a particular persona (that requires acting as that person), guides the designing and recruitment of pedagogy that is rich in theatrical and dramatic elements and can be constructed to enhance empathy, compassion and sympathy.

The practice In the context of any dialogue about empathy, consideration needs to be given to art forms like the theatre that have provided human beings with a way to engage with and examine human relationships for millennia. Sharpening our outlooks and provisioning us with a mirror to hold up to ourselves, drama can be a democratising force (Neelands, 2016) that affords teachers, no matter the discipline, with the skills and conventions to carefully sequence and build upon students’ comprehension of what it means to live in the world. Using the Aboriginal theory and method of Daddirri (Ungunmerr, 2017) that draws on our oldest living people’s culture and ways of listening, the Huddle participants collectively determined that work could begin if we embodied the practices we sought to capture. We were led through Daddirri by Zoe Cassim who acknowledged country and invoked the spirits of ancestors, the wind and waters we all share, to give us courage in our thinking. The group acknowledged the definitional difficulties with empathy as a largely western and highly individualistic phenomena. Verducci’s (2000) suggestion that the potency of empathy lies in its transformational capacity was instructive as

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theoretical basis for interrogating the pedagogical potentialities of empathy. The Huddle participants conceived of a number of ways in which a pedagogy of empathy could be underpinned by theatrical and/or dramatic techniques to bring about affective change in practitioners, teachers and students. Passive empathy, Verducci argues, is deeply individualistic and often narcissistic and vague. Common conceptions of empathy as a ‘social good’ and that its promotion and fostering can only promote good, is in her view troubling. The Huddle participants agreed with this understanding and assertion that not all conceptions of empathy are equal. We decided to underpin our work guided by Verducci’s (2000) and Boler’s (1999) theorisation that argues a transformative empathy strives to understand the other by knowing they can never fully know their experience or be that person. This is contrasted with passive empathy where one believes it is possible to stand in another’s shoes and know their experience. The robust discussions and views that we shared proved the perfect precursor to a series of embodied practices lead by Australian Playwright Thomas De Angelis (De Angelis, 2016) who devised modified etudes in the Stanislavskian tradition to allow all of us in the room to physically embody and explore. This technique developed originally by Stanislavski has been modified by many teachers of acting including the famous Lee Strasberg (1901–1982) and Stanislavski’s protégé Maria Knebel (1898–1985) who passed this work down as a method in rehearsal processes. Active analysis and etudes are designed for actors playing any character with an active rather than passive way to heighten character work and to ensure authenticity and integrity in performance. Rehearsal rooms, much like classrooms, use discussion, questioning, noticing and textual analysis as part of a suite of tools to get under the skin of a character, play or scene and to produce a credible and aesthetic interpretation of the work. No two performances are ever the same—even when the scene has been performed by the same actor in the same theatre. Etudes form the central dimension of active analysis. Etudes require embodiment and performance that mitigate any passivity and superficial interpretation of work because the participant needs to rely on improvisation and imagination. Etudes are developed to produce a scenic speech that combines the elements of empathic understanding including the emotional, the social and the psychological (Zamir, 2010). The etude action should allow actors an opportunity to develop a character’s memory of their own creation that then precipitates their ability to behave and decision make as if they had the lived experiences of that person or character. Etudes sanction the development of subtext and motivation before an actor takes on the cognitive task of memorising lines. Etudes come before any memory activity and rely on critical thinking, questioning and noticing in order that the character asks and answers powerful questions.

If … In an active analysis and practice of etude, the director asks the actors to use the ‘magic if’ (Counsell, 2013, p. 28) as the provocation to explore the inner life of a

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character and person. The empathic process requires some space and time to reflect and to improvise the experiences and personhood of the character. For example, in the Australian play Nothing But Nothing by Towfiq Al-Qady (in Cox, 2013), which is a play that dramatises the story of an Iraqi boat refugee and his incarceration in an Australian detention centre, by using the principles and practices of etude, before any rehearsal involves line memorisation the actors would need to use role to understand multiple perspectives of all the people in the narrative including unpopular policy officials and politicians. Using the ‘magic if’ as the stepping off point into performance creating original and improvised dialogue, the actor can then overlap and interact with the integrity of the text with their personal and critical engagement to make meaning. A consideration in this process of active analysis and etudes is that this performance is not designed to be seen by an audience. In a similar way to the concept of process drama (Heathcote & Bolton, 1995), the experience of performance and play in both these constructs is designed for the benefit of individual and collective unanimity and understanding. Some interpretations of active analysis and etudinal exploration refer to ‘the pools of silences’ (Counsell, 2013, p. 24) created by asking questions and presupposing imagined lives without reading or engaging in information and contexts that might prejudice or compromise the spontaneity of the scene. Stanislavski’s process creates conditions for affective expression that allow actors to feel connected and importantly responsible for their character. As Ewing (2019) has argued, ‘dialogue and substantive conversations are central components of embodiment and enactment’ (p. 23) and these critical components are key to any development and co creation of empathy and rational compassion in a myriad of circumstances that are concurrently powerful and empowering. Zamir returns to the active analysis and likens it to learning a new language. If you can only speak a few words in a new language you can’t really say you have learned it, that it is only when you have learned to speak a few sentences and ask questions in that language that you begin to understand and own it. (Zamir, 2010, p. 238) In developing etudinal exploration as a pedagogical tool in pursuit of teaching, we relied on a pre-text in the tradition of process drama (Ewing & Saunders, 2016; Bundy & Dunn, 2006), choosing to use a verbatim script taken from a previous study into attitudes of drama teachers to social justice in the curriculum (O’Grady, 2016). As these scholars have noted, the efficacy of a pre-text relies on a series of qualities in order for it to function as the tipping point for any embodied exploration of an idea or issue. The playwright, Thomas De Angelis, led us through an etude which focussed on an exploration of the pre-text using the ‘magic if’. The exercise began through listening to the pre-text, and after a short period of reflection, each participant

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used physical representations of the emotions expressed by the character in the pre-text in order to render it in an embodied and dramatic form. As the day drew to a close, the group engaged in a guided de-brief, that encouraged critical reflection and had two key objectives: the first being to understand the various engagements and knowledges that arose out of the etudinal exploration; and secondly, to assess the workability (albeit in a limited and time constrained way) of etudinal exploration becoming part of a pedagogy of empathy to develop a range of skills in empathic understanding. In general, the Huddle’s participants found that the etudinal exploration afforded a degree of freedom in choosing how to present an embodied response to the pre-text. In this way, it was noted that there were virtually limitless opportunities for empathic activities such as the etudinal exploration to frame complexified issues. Complexifying, recontextualising and repurposing narratives as explorations and ultimately presentations to an audience is the job description of most artists, and educators, it was found, could be armed with these same skills in the interests of developing a pedagogy of empathy. As one of the aims of the Huddle was to understand how a new method or repurposing of theatrical traditions might open up possibilities for developing empathic awareness and understanding, we also discussed ways to deepen conversation as a community of practitioners. The commonality found between classrooms and rehearsal rooms is the critical overlap between the role directors and classroom teachers play in shaping the climate for thinking and speaking and appreciating everyone’s ideas both affective and intellectual. This can also occur even when the ideas proposed may not accord with those held by the teacher or the director’s conceptualisation or characterisations in the play or performance piece. As Saxton et al. (2018) remind us, when students are able to create questions, and control and direct the exchange of ideas this can have the desired effect of a spill over into their lived worlds, where powerful conversations and an appreciation of other ideas can occur even when there is a disagreement. Learning to respect differences and inviting other contravening ideas is a part of a robust community of ideas and productive, inclusive discourses and of course— empathy.

Conclusion As an applied practice, using theatrical techniques and traditions like the etudinal exploration as a principle tenet and praxis, the hope is that educators might see the benefit of a more nuanced and therefore effective invocation and understanding of empathy. The potential for educators to radically redraw the boundaries of expression, emotional embodiment and classroom participation by employing a pedagogy of empathy remains high. The goal of this area of inquiry is for a classroom teacher to feel as empowered as a lead actor does in communicating the emotional narrative of a text—be it a textbook or playscript.

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Notes 1 Section 18C of the Commonwealth Racial Discrimination Act 1975 provides a civil action for the control of hate speech. The section, introduced by the Racial Hatred Act 1995, makes it unlawful to ‘offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate’ a person or group on the basis of the ‘race, colour or national or ethnic origin of that person or a member of the group’ (Berg & Davidson, 2016). 2 Members of the Huddle included: Professor Robyn Ewing A.O., leader in the field of Literacy and Arts education in Australia; Zoe Cassim, Educational Director at Reconciliation Australia, alumna and Bunjalung woman, whose presence was seminal in establishing an authentic voice and homage to Aboriginal traditions; Dr Stephen Sewell, Australian playwright of note, Head of Writing at NIDA (National Institute of Dramatic Art); Hannie Rayson – award winning playwright, performer and commentator; Zoe Hogan, emerging playwright and teacher artist; Rachael Jacobs, activist, educator and performer; John Nicholas Saunders, Education Manager and Board member, Sydney Theatre Company; Contessa Treffone, actor and performer Sydney Theatre Company; Madi Duncan, teacher educator regional NSW; Emma Hughes, Head of Performing Arts, Holy Spirit school Lakemba, South Western Sydney; Kate Smyth lecturer and researcher in Creativity; Professor Michael Anderson, pedagogue and leader in creative thinking and Huddle patron; and Thomas De Angelis, young Australian playwright, winner of the Rebel Wilson scholarship at ATYP (Australian Theatre for Young People) and Dr Alison Grove O’Grady who led the research into empathy and pedagogy.

References Berg, C. & Davidson, S. (2016). Section 18C, human rights, and media reform: An institutional analysis of the 2011–13 Australian free speech debate. Agenda: A Journal of Policy Analysis and Reform, 23(1), 5–30. Bloom, P. (2016). Against empathy: The case for rational compassion. New York: Ecco Press. Boler, M. (1999). Feeling power: Emotions and education. New York: Routledge. Brecht, B. (1964). Brecht on theatre: The development of an aesthetic. New York: Macmillan. Bundy, P. & Dunn, J. (2006). Pretexts and possibilities. The Journal of the Queensland Association for Drama in Education: Drama Queensland Says, 29(2), 19–21. Chen, J. T., LaLopa, J. & Dang, D. K. (2008). Impact of patient empathy modeling on pharmacy students caring for the underserved. American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education, 72(2). Cook, A. (2011). For Hecuba or for Hamlet: Rethinking emotion and empathy in the theatre. Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, 25(2), 71–87. Counsell, C. (2013). Signs of performance: An introduction to twentieth-century theatre. New York: Routledge. Cox, E. (ed.) (2013). Staging asylum: Contemporary plays about Australian refugees. Strawberry Hills, NSW: Currency Press. Davis, C. M. (1990). What is empathy, and can empathy be taught? Physical therapy, 70(11), 707–711. De Angelis, T. (2016). Unfinished works. Unpublished play, Sydney. Deasy, R. (Ed.). (2002). Critical links: Learning in the arts and student academic and social development. Washington, DC: Arts Education Partnership. Ewing, R. (2019). Embedding arts-rich English and literacy pedagogies in the classroom. Literacy Learning: The Middle Years, 27(1), 7. Ewing, Robyn. (2019). Drama-rich pedagogy and becoming deeply literate. Brisbane: Drama Australia.

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Ewing, R. & Saunders, J. N. (2016). The school drama, literature & literacy in the creative classroom. Sydney: Currency Press. Fiske, E. (Ed.). (1999). Champions of change. The impact of arts on learning. Washington, DC: Arts Education Partnerships/President’s Committee on Arts and Humanities. Fleming, J., Gibson, R., Anderson, M., Martin, A. J. & Sudmalis, D. (2016). Cultivating imaginative thinking: Teacher strategies used in high-performing arts education classrooms. Cambridge Journal of Education, 46(4), 435–453. Goffman, E. (1990). The presentation of self in everyday life. London: Penguin. Hatcher, S. L., Nadeau, M. S., Walsh, L. K., Reynolds, M., Galea, J. & Marz, K. (1994). The teaching of empathy for high school and college students: testing Rogerian methods with the Interpersonal Reactivity Index. Adolescence, 29(116), 961–974. Retrieved from www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7892806. Heathcote, D. & Bolton, G. M. (1995). Drama for learning, Dorothy Heathcote’s mantle of the expert approach to education. Portsmouth: Heinemann. Hoffman, M. L. (2000). Empathy and moral development: Implications for caring and justice. New York: Cambridge University Press. Krznaric, R. (2014). Empathy: A handbook for revolution. New York: Random House. Larocco, S. (2017). Empathy as orientation rather than feeling: Why empathy is ethically complex. In Exploring empathy (pp. 1–15). Leiden, Netherlands: Brill-Rodopi. Lave, J. & Wenger, E. (2001). Legitimate peripheral participation in communities of practice. In Supporting lifelong learning (pp. 121–136). New York: Routledge. Neelands, J. (2016). Applied theatre. Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance, 21(2), 270–272. Nelems, R. J. (2017). What is this thing called empathy? In Exploring empathy (pp. 17–38). Leiden, Netherlands: Brill-Rodopi. Noddings, N. (1984). Caring: A feminine approach to ethics & moral education. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Noddings, N. (1992). The challenge to care in schools. New York: Teachers College Press. Nussbaum, M. C. (1995). Poetic justice: The literary imagination and public life. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. OECD. (2018). Towards the future 2030. Discussion paper. Paris: OECD. O’Grady, A. (2016). Always in the process of becoming (Freire, 1998): How five early career drama teachers build their worlds through language and discourse. Unpublished thesis, University of Sydney. Rifkin, J. (2009). The empathic civilization: The race to global consciousness in a world in crisis. Cambridge: Polity. Saxton, J., Miller, C., Laidlaw, L. & O’Mara, J. (2018). Asking better questions— Teaching and learning for a changing world (3rd ed.). Markham, Ontario: Pembroke Publishers. Shapiro, J. (2002), ‘How do physicians teach empathy in the primary care setting?’, Journal of The Association of American Medical Colleges, 77(4), 323–328. Stein, E. (1964). On the problem of empathy. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Stout, C. J. (1999). The art of empathy: Teaching students to care. Art Education, 52(2), 21–34. Szilas, N., Marty, O. & Réty, J. H. (2003). Authoring highly generative interactive drama. In International Conference on Virtual Storytelling (pp. 37–46). Heidelberg: Springer. Ungunmerr, M. R. (2017). To be listened to in her teaching: Dadirri: Inner deep listening and quiet still awareness. Earth Song Journal: Perspectives in Ecology, Spirituality and Education, 3(4), 14. Verducci, S. (2000). A moral method? Thoughts on cultivating empathy through method acting. Journal of Moral Education, 29(1), 87–99.

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Zamir, T. (2010). Watching actors. Theatre Journal, 62(2), 227–243. Zembylas, M. (2012). Pedagogies of strategic empathy: Navigating through the emotional complexities of anti-racism in higher education. Teaching in Higher Education, 17(2), 113–125. Zembylas, M. (2013). The ‘crisis of pity’ and the radicalization of solidarity: Toward critical pedagogies of compassion. Educational Studies, 49(6), 504–521.

16 THE DRAMATURGY OF SPACES IN THE POST LABORATORY Tatiana Chemi

A home for theatre laboratory When members of Odin Teatret, or their extended family of collaborators, show visiting guests around the home of the ensemble in Holstebro, Denmark, they seem to take a great deal of pleasure in this task. I noticed the pride of those leading such tours, first as a participant and then as a guide myself. I first visited this space as a foreign guest student, then as a scholar and fellow resident in Denmark. Afterwards, in the role of collaborator, I have shown around colleagues and students who knew of the ensemble but never visited their home. With each tour, I harvested new discoveries about the ensemble’s history and practices, about creative principles, about relationships within creative shared tasks. This happens not only because the place where Odin Teatret lives is constantly changing (it reflects the fluctuating needs and the dynamic processes that have led the ensemble through laboratorial practices for more than 50 years) but also because of a specific topographic ontology, which I wish to describe in the present contribution. The farm in the Danish countryside that has housed Odin Teatret since 1966 has become legendary through a great number of written and spoken narratives about its origins. Storytelling on Odin Teatret’s formation includes its early foundation in Oslo, Norway, in 1964, in a literally subterranean space, a damp old air raid shelter1, and its migration to Denmark, where the group started training and preparing for the first performances. The ensemble was invited by the municipality of Holstebro to move there, and part of the agreement with the public bodies was the gift of an unused farm in exchange for cultural production. Famously, director Eugenio Barba negotiated that little of the expected cultural production would be public and much of it could be internal to the group. By convincing the municipal institutions that the ensemble would establish itself as a

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theatre laboratory, he guaranteed a multi-level strategy: the inexpert actors and director would take their time to actually learn how to make theatre, the foreign ensemble would either learn to speak Danish or develop non-verbal acting skills, and Danish actors would be recruited. The ensemble would in general take the time needed to settle in a new geographical and professional context. Even though Barba recounts this pivotal episode with amusement (Chemi, 2018), a deep respect for the progressive and courageous choice of the municipality at that time clearly shines through in his tone; but there is equal awareness of the challenges of establishing the project within a potentially unreceptive environment. The mindsets of the parties to this deal embodied a potential to clash: the overreligious rural Danish community, the extremely young and inexpert Scandinavian actors, and the Southern Italian director, brought up in the discipline of a military academy and Grotowskian apprenticeship. Regardless of the true motivations on all sides, this cultural-political negotiation both sanctioned the establishment of a theatre laboratory, and also provided for the fuzzy concept of the concreteness of physical frames (the farm) and of professional time (the preparatory work). In the laboratory space, material and ephemeral elements act on each other as indivisible components of the same social practice: tangible physicality (shared places, artefacts, artistic traditions, collaborative projects) cannot be separated from intangible beliefs (affects, values, rules, mindsets, ideologies). Purely for the purpose of this chapter, these two components will be approached separately, in order to address the specific research question that led my analysis: how do the tangible and intangible frames and structures of laboratory influence its participants’ creativity and learning? My methodological approach is hybrid and built on qualitative empirical data (qualitative semi-structured interviews and ethnographic field observations), autoethnographic materials that I have collected over the past twenty years (Holman Jones, Adams & Ellis, 2016) and desk study on artistic and scientific laboratories. The empirical data have also been used in two books (Chemi, 2018; Chemi & Christoffersen, 2018) where they are described in greater detail. By using this body of knowledge, the interconnectedness between physical/emotional space, in/out, and artistic/scientific laboratory will become even more evident.

Reification of theatre laboratory Bruno Latour (1987) is the sociologist who has studied laboratories in the most original way. He looked at scientific laboratories and ended up, on the one hand, describing laboratory life in detail (Latour & Woolgar, 1979) and, on the other, developing a methodology aimed at embracing the complexity of human and non-human actions in a network of cultural influences (actor-network theory). In his observations, the material settings (desk, bench, office, informal spaces) not only merge with mythologies, behaviours and cultural representations, but also represent ‘the reification of knowledge’ (Latour & Woolgar, 1979, p. 68). As in

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the scientific laboratory, where once data are produced the material layout will be forgotten, in theatre laboratories physical frames exist as reification of the knowledge produced within their frames. Latourian perspectives allow us to invert the material/immaterial relationship: ‘objects […] are constituted through the artful creativity of scientists’ (Latour & Woolgar, 1979, p. 129). The consequence is not only a contextual construction of creation, but also the very negation of biblical-exegetical interpretations of creativity as discovery (p. 169). Ideas are not discovered in the laboratory, which serves instrumentally the higher purposes of creative epiphanies, but rather the laboratory influences the construction of knowledge by delimiting the process, so that ‘the object [material layout] becomes the reason why the statement [knowledge] was formulated in the first place’ (p. 177). Ideas are not created by the individual (genius) but rather emerge from a complex exchange of influences, where the laboratory is one of the crucial dialogic partners. In this sense, theatre laboratory is not invented but constructed through reciprocally influencing forces of collaborative entanglements that often follow invisible routes. Does this ontology imply that no truth is possible and only relativism can explain scientific knowledge? This is neither what Latour advocates nor what theatre laboratory practices. However, the concept of truth and knowledgecreations is challenged in both contexts (the scientific and artistic laboratory) by means of a constructivist sociology that does not obliterate materiality. To the concept of truth Latour & Woolgar (1979) substitute the concept of ‘out-there-ness’ (p. 175), meaning what is out there, knowable and approachable. Once more, scientific logic is inverted when out-there-ness is conceived as the consequence of knowledge-creation and not its objective cause. For laboratory practices, this means that knowledge is not created in the laboratory against the background of external observations and applied to other external contexts, but rather laboratory practices reify knowledge that shapes out-there-ness and extends to other social contexts. Neither in scientific nor in theatre laboratories is it possible (or desirable) to verify, apply or establish linear correspondences to, or even bypassing social contexts. What is possible is the construction of facts, in the scientific laboratory, and the construction of collective, poetic metaphors, in artistic laboratories. Queries about what laboratories are, in either context, lose their relevance, in favour of a topographic issue: where does the laboratory emerge? This question finds its particular significance when looking at how Odin Teatret has structured its laboratory practices throughout its many years of activities, because of the emergent and co-creative character of these practices.

The affective studio Latourian perspectives on the body and embodied practices in scientific laboratories can be useful in broadening views on theatre laboratories. Mostly studied within the domain of theatre studies, theatre laboratories have been framed historically in the genealogy of theatre studios at the beginning of the nineteenth

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century (Schino, 2009). However, recent studies on the emergence of early theatre laboratories (Chemi, 2018) show that, besides the artistic purpose, spaces are fundamental elements of these artistic environments, together with the collective dimension (a group), the ethos (shared values) and the activity structures (research, pedagogy). Laboratory practices emerge through intra-active (Barad, 2007) networks of reciprocal material-discursive influences. This calls for the consideration of affects as the vocabulary of the body. According to Latour (2004), the body is ‘an interface’ (p. 206) that is affected by what it experiences and learns, and at the same time it learns to be affected. The actors’ bodies are dynamic trajectories that (need to) learn to be sensitive to affects and be affected, but at the same time they need to learn how to perform this vitality (in Baradian sense) as if they were something/someone else. Actors engage in relationships with each other (human), with things and spaces (nonhuman), with worlds and environments (more-than-human), and also with imagined worlds (imagined-human) (Chemi, 2020). The imagined worlds actors iteratively shape and un-do meaningfully perform the entanglement of meaning and matter. As Barad (2007) explains, meaningfulness is semantically determined by the embodiment of apparatuses. The loci where theatre laboratory emerges are spaces that are ‘third’ (Bhabha, 1994), and contain dichotomies without reducing them to syntheses or taxonomies. One of the consequences is that their dramaturgies perform affective-material complexities. Looking closely at the spaces of Odin Teatret’s laboratory, it is possible to investigate how affects emerge in performance/performativity practices, in the occurrence of post-laboratory, in the dramaturgy of spaces and through the critique to the laboratory.

The pedagogical space Reflecting on my own experiences as inhabitant of Odin Teatret’s spaces, I marvel at the feelings attached to them. The feeling of pleasure I derive from the exploration of these frames seems to originate from a three-folded experience of identity: (1) genealogical, (2) personal and (3) professional. In order to define genealogical identity, I looked at Haraway’s (2016) concept of ‘making kin’ and the performativity of an entangled feeling of belonging to a given cultural tradition. In the case of my participation in the tours through Odin Teatret’s physical spaces, this derives from performing to external participants the father’s house as my own. The father’s house is Barba’s own metaphor (see, for instance, the performance Min Fars Hus, Eng. My Father’s House, 1972–1974) and I extended it to the mother’s house (Chemi, 2018) in order to embrace a more appropriate kinship, not only for gender equality issues. In the event of these visible positioning in/out the cultural space, by means of trajectories through Odin Teatret’s home, my performance of self is clearly established within the community to which I feel I belong. It meaningfully constructs my lived life as a contribution to a larger historical trajectory. To this, the experience of personal

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identity is strictly linked. A deep feeling of self might emerge as a consequence of the performed identity and the participation in relationships in space might end up revealing a meaningful individual ontology and becoming. In some occurrences, personal and professional identity might overlap, dissolving into each other. In the autoethnographic observation of my sharing Odin Teatret spaces, I noticed a specific source of pleasure, which seemed to be related to cognitive accomplishment. In my role as a guide, I perform my professionality as an expert who is knowledgeable within frames and traditions. However, no matter how expert, I am always an external participant in the guided tours. Mine is a participating periphery. In this role, my attention goes to my own learning. Regardless of how often I have visited Odin Teatret’s home, I always collect new information about the most recent changes or acquisitions, or old information in renewed insights that can be triggered by a serendipitous sensory experience. This place functions as a fluid organism, in constant transformation, and in order to accommodate the changing needs of its inhabitants and its pulsating organisation. Since its very beginning, time and frames have had the character of pedagogical spaces for this organism. The ensemble needed first of all to build skills, knowledge and methods, as much as they needed to construct, renovate and rebuild the farm. Even though Barba insists that his aim was not to do research but to make performances (Chemi, 2018, p. 116), the organisational structures of the ensemble’s work were pedagogical and knowledge-seeking from its beginning: the ensemble had to learn the craft of theatre and its members had to teach each other the skills they already possessed from previous training or experiences. Their work had the character of a laboratory inasmuch as their purpose was not to perform for any performance’s sake, but to appropriate a specific, different way of doing theatre, which had its roots in the work of Western innovators—Stanislavski, Meyerhold, Chekhov, Grotowski. Barba did not intend to engage in any kind of performance, but he wanted to build performances that enquired into a specific genealogy of theatrical innovations. Therefore, the semi-formal pedagogical events that the group initiated had the purpose of inviting experts who were participating in this fluid lineage. The aim was to learn from these experts. The physical and affective frames that the ensemble set itself to adjust answered to the need for enquiry, for reciprocal teaching and learning, for giving space and time to trial-and-error processes, for reflexive discussion, for pedagogical exchanges with external experts.

The artistic space In Chemi (2018), I compare modern theatre laboratories with the Renaissance artists’ studios. Showing an extremely innovative attitude, the Renaissance studio (Cole & Pardo, 2005) was an artist’s space that had been transformed into a space of enquiry, indeed of study. As in the modern understanding of the term, the Renaissance studio merged within one unique cluster physical frames (architectures), relationships (occupants), and functions (activities). Formerly, Italian

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visual artists had given different names to the spaces dedicated to the artist’s and the scholar’s work. The former was better known as bottega (shop) or stanza (room), and was a public/performative space, while the latter was known as studio proper, or scrittoio (desk), and was a private and experimental space. Cole and Pardo (2005) maintain that Renaissance practices in the visual arts, contrary to what is commonly believed, often combined rather than separated bottega and studium. Analogously, the performers’ studio seems to have combined different places/ functions. The working spaces of the emerging theatre laboratories in the nineteenth century ‘had not been as delimited as in the fine arts studios, but theatre was built on the dialectic between backstage and stage, and their corresponding functions of preparation and performance’ (Chemi, 2018, p. 9). Theatre laboratory challenged the division into hidden—or invisible—backstage and transparent frontstage in several ways: the Italian-style stage (teatro all’italiana) exploded into a performance space where actors and spectators were not divided by a fourth wall, and artistic activities were not necessarily destined for public performance but for participation. Odin Teatret’s work demonstrations or community engagements (such as the barter) display a performative flow that blurs what should be conventionally hidden or staged. This new view of the Renaissance studio clarifies the multiple functions of its physical delimitation, and opens up to understanding the fluidity of actions or behaviours, but also the collective dimension of artistic creation. With its origins in both Romantic and industrial culture, the idea that creativity is an individual enterprise has been influencing centuries of studies and current approaches (Chemi et al., 2015). However, most updated perspectives on creativity describe it as a collective-relational phenomenon (Gla˘ veanu, 2014, Sawyer, 2007, Sawyer & DeZutter, 2009, Wyatt, 2018), linked to democratic (Adams & Owens, 2015) and eco-systemic (Harris, 2014) emergence rather than economic growth. I can indicate at least three qualities of interactions that occur at Odin Teatret when the spaces are used (this refers to exchanges that are specific to this social space), safeguarded (this refers to the everyday care of the space through mundane but fundamental chores), or developed (this refers to the extension, transformation or implementation of frames). Each of these interactions is characterised by a number of practices strictly related to and dependent on each other:


Use ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○

Ritual (for instance the 50 years jubilee celebration) Cultural-political (the municipality’s elegant meeting room) Artistic (public performances) Pedagogic (training, educational activities) Research (library, archive, video room) Administrative (for instance, for project management) Care and kinship (especially, but not exclusively, for the young generations and their offspring)

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Maintenance ○ Shared chores (cleaning, providing food) ○ Duties (everyday administration) ○ Dissemination of values/rules – Implicit (by eyes-on examples provided by experts) – Explicit (verbal introduction or manufacture of artefacts as lists of ‘do’s and don’ts’)




Development ○ Ad hoc according to growing or changing needs ○ According to resources (economic, workforce, time) ○ Occurs sporadically.

Whether these social interactions occur indoors or outdoors, they all reify the entangled network of the Odin Teatret laboratory. Spaces that facilitate laboratory collaboration in the arts require the paradoxical possibility of negating the arts’ movement towards visibility and performativity, reclaiming space and time that is hidden, protected and studious. The purpose is still artistic: the creative exploration of producing artistic products for audiences. These spaces need to dwell at the periphery of any of the artistic disciplines or genres, not in secluded or inaccessible ways, but in a separation that allows for and protects investigative processes. This, I believe, is the reason that Barba, lately, insistently advocates for the importance of creative processes, instead of products (Barba, 2018). Dramaturgical production that escapes the obligation to be made public after a short, linear making, or to be made public at all, is at the core of theatre laboratory research. Therefore, the core can only be situated topographically in the periphery, at the edge.

Dramaturgy inside-out Odin Teatret’s dramaturgy and pedagogy have been challenging the concept and practice of theatre as a fixed physical space by bringing theatre outside the theatre room. Sharing these practices with other poetic communities, the reformulation of performing spaces has been frequent in popular theatre (Schechter, 2003), political theatre (Boal, 2000) and agit prop (Silva, 2018). Since the 1960s, artistic practices have been slipping out of formal spaces—studio, laboratory, atelier, taller—in order to meet society at large and to unfold their activities in encounters with casual receivers. Happenings, community art, activist and political art, conceptual art, site-specific and performance art are just a few examples of this movement. Artists have taken over public spaces, jails, hospitals, educational institutions, landscapes, and made of these environments their own craftsman’s room, reinventing at the same time the artistic space and the artist’s identity. This journey has brought poetic discursive-material practices into organisations

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(Sköldberg, Woodilla & Berthoin Antal, 2016), leadership and management (Taylor & Ladkin, 2009), creative industries (Adler, 2011), knowledge-creation (Strati, 2003), education (Chemi & Du, 2017, 2018), and healthcare (Clift & Camic, 2016). According to Strauss (2017), Marxist aesthetics can explain much of the artist’s intention in engaging in collaborative partnerships with society, reclaiming the use of art as a tool of social intervention. It can be argued, though, that, rather than being a modern (or post-modern) construction, the outdoors studio or laboratory emerged somewhat earlier in the history of theatre. As Barba and Savarese (2019) have shown by means of rich iconographic evidence, openair venues were at the origins of Western theatre and common to different cultures around the world. The charlatan, mountebank or acrobat tradition is undoubtedly one of the references of post-dramatic actor’s theatre. However, while in former times outdoors venues had practical rather than aesthetic motivations, the recent obliteration of the predominance of closed spaces corresponds to an ideological statement. While the former was due to necessity, the latter is chosen by conviction. Reviewing the physical spaces where the Odin Teatret ensemble have been carrying out their dramaturgical and pedagogical activities so far, it is possible to identify two main areas, each of which can be divided into sub-areas. The first main distinction is between inside and outside spaces.


Inside ○ ○ ○ ○




Alternative or underground spaces transformed for theatre purposes (Oslo bunker) Everyday spaces transformed for theatre purposes (farm, gym) or for other knowledge projects (office, library) Cultural spaces transformed for theatre purposes (castle, exhibition room, conference centre, university, school, church) Laboratory/studio proper to performance (performing or training room) Theatre space (traditional theatre spaces)

Outside ○ ○ ○

Urban spaces (streets, squares, alleys, building facades, city gardens) Nature (seashore, forest, desert) Outdoor cultural spaces (castle courtyards)

Common to all is that they are different places of community, where physicality merges with human affects and relationships. This could be said for all spaces that establish a deeply affective and bodily relationship for/with humans. What distinguishes these spaces from others is the fact that their activities reconstruct in/out topologies in one single intra-active flow and perform their ontology as a continuum of (genealogical, affective, cultural) kinship and skilled performance of bodies. The purpose being the creation of imagined worlds in their

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‘vitality’, understood ‘in terms of a new sense of aliveness’ that is ‘exuberant creativeness [that] can never be contained or suspended’ (Barad, 2007, p. 177).

Post-laboratory practices Daichendt (2012) has reviewed the transformation of studio practices through the lens of the visual artist-teacher. Defining the hybrid practice of artists who have also pedagogical tasks, Daichendt (2016) goes back to the nineteenth century in order to find the first example of such a designation. This does not mean that hybrid artist-teacher practices did not occur before George Wallis, British ‘selfdeclared artist-teacher’ (Daichendt, 2016, p. 79), but rather that awareness of this as an autonomous profession only began to rise concurrently with industrialisation and its influence on artistic ideologies. Looking at the development of both artistic and pedagogical practices, one observes the emergence of out-there-ness as a laboratorial space—either devoted to learning, to creation or both. Considering Odin Teatret’s assimilation of theatrical or community spaces alone, it is evident that artists rarely anchor their work to one single space. Rather, with the emergence of art as activism, public, social spaces have been occupied by a new form of art-making and—I would argue—a new laboratory practice. The academic notion of the artist(s) retreating to their loft to conjure a masterpiece is an outdated and romantic ideal that is hampered by both economics of the art world and post-modern practices. It was conceptual artists in the 1960s, who were the leaders of this movement that originally saw the studio as a type of bondage that limited their creativity——and they sought locations to make art that specifically aided in developing their ideas. An example might be the physical restrictions of a doorframe or the height of a ceiling and how something so simple can limit the size of art produced in a particular studio. However, this bondage may also refer to the traditional materials of art making as well that limit how and where they can be used […]. The 16th century ideal of a large workshop or studio to facilitate ambitious pieces has remained the standard for artists through the centuries. A workspace represents a home, storage, and success and maintaining a studio as an artist means that you are a genuine and serious artist. […] It’s a place where the artist can retreat from the world and conjure new concepts and images never seen before. While the artist may only see the studio as a place to house materials and where the non-glamorous aspects of their work are accomplished, it more often is a romanticized space […]. (Daichendt, 2019). Davidts and Paice (2009) collect evidence for the ‘fall of the studio’: contemporary artists deny any centrality to the studio, establishing fluid relationships amongst work, collaborators, context and artistic challenges. American conceptual artist and pedagogue John Baldessari coined the definition of post-studio

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art-making (Daichendt, 2016, p. 87), which opened up to a number of hybrid forms, such as the open-air, on-site, on-route or portable studio (Farías & Wilkie, 2015). Likewise, I would argue that Odin Teatret extends theatre laboratory to a post-laboratory practice. Odin Teatret brings the artists’ studio outside, outdoors, in community spaces. By doing so, the ensemble extends the physical and psychological limitations of performance and its pedagogy. There are no limits to the size of costumes, props, movements, sounds in space, or interactions. But they also stretch the very concept of the laboratory dimension: no longer a physical space (if it ever was), nor a single function (the space for making art or the space for selling/performing art), but an affective and psychological space characterised by multiple functions and creative-relational exchanges (Wyatt, 2018).

The dramaturgy of space(s) According to Barba (2010), ‘a performing space [is] any place in the open air or indoors deliberately selected to establish a particular actor-spectator relationship’ (p. 45). It is solid, entangled (in a Baradian way) and never neutral. Turner (2004) explains Barba’s pluralistic conceptualisation of dramaturgies—the director’s, the actor’s, the spectator’s—as different aspects of the same creative energy, which is invisible but tangible experientially. To these Barba adds the dramaturgy of the event, concept used mostly in informal conversations or during the preparation of community events, and indicating the structured design of large events, co-created with other artists groups and local communities, by the application of the methodology of barter. In 2010, Barba added to the above three dramaturgies that of space: the ‘capacity to arouse in the spectator a double perception’ (Barba, 2010, p. 45) of what is matter-of-factly recognisable and of what is envisioned, ‘a potential space, ready to divest itself of its identity in order to be transformed by the forces of the performance’ (p. 45). This dramaturgy is practiced against the paradox of holding ambivalence and complexity alive without reducing them to an indifferent synthesis. The locus that is dramaturgically conceived and realised embraces both doing and undoing, affirmation and negation, in a logic that is proper to third space ontologies (Bhabha, 1994), but also to poststructuralist material entanglements (Barad, 2007). The dramaturge Barba structures his creation by emptying and refilling the space in a fluid river of influences. The ‘space-river’ (Barba, 2010, p. 46) is sensory, liquid, constantly moving and accessible from two opposite river banks. The metaphor becomes technique when performance spaces are designed by opposing two reciprocally facing rows of spectators (e.g. Brecht’s Ashes, The Gospel According to Oxyhrincus, Talabot, Kaosmos, Inside the Skeleton of the Whale, The Tree) and where the actors dance back and forth, constructing their actions as if they were waves of energy that flow before the eyes and bodies of spectators. However, this also becomes a dramaturgical principle that helps the director ‘to strengthen the performance’s elusive order, the ambivalence of its sensorial stimuli and the

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spectator’s dramaturgy’ (Barba, 2010, p. 48). The river-dramaturgy enacts loci of creativity where the ensemble is able to co-create. Only spaces that are third, alternative to mainstream and underground, can host the pluralistic premise of Odin Teatret’s dramaturgy, because the technique of montage implies the interweaving of individual, autonomous creations together with the director’s overall vision. I would argue that this is a specific kind of group or team creativity (Sawyer, 2007), because it occurs in metaphor-building environments and with artistic purposes: it is ensemble creativity. Together with the metaphor of weaving (and undoing the weave), Barba (2010) chooses a sensory association with perfume-making to explain his dramaturgy of dramaturgies, or more simply the fundamental technique of montage. In mingling, the single aromatic essences lose their autonomous value. They become perfume, an intense indivisible unity. During the rehearsals, the director distils and blends the dramaturgies of the actors. When the performance is ready, if the process is successful, the different dramaturgies settle and condense into perfume which acts on the dramaturgy of the spectator. (Barba, 2010, p. 204) With this, Barba does not imply that any trace of individual work is obliterated, but rather he reaffirms the autonomy of the collectively shaped performance, where individual threads continue to exist, but are alchemically transformed in a living organism. In this ‘environment-in-life’ (Barba, 2010, p. 206), egotistic distinctions between ‘I’ and ‘you’ become shared creation and awareness. This organic environment ceases to become simply technique or practice (see the distinction in Madison, 2018, pp. 4–6) and becomes a pulsating, entangled (‘web of motivations’; Barba, 2010, p. 206), relational-creative periphery, where participants are and remain ‘in the place of risk’ (Varley, 2019).

The critique of laboratory It can be concluded here that laboratory spaces not only contribute to dramaturgies as attractive backgrounds, but also imply an autonomous dramaturgy, which is meaningful and meaning-generating. In Latourian terms, spaces where laboratory or post-laboratory dramaturgical activities occur construct these activities and reify their ‘norms and superstitions’ (Barba, 2010, p. 206). It is meaningful that the multiple participants in theatre laboratory activities (actors, directors, pupils, administrative and technical staff, collaborators, researchers, spectators, politicians) interact with and within the laboratory frames in a plurality of ways. One potentially useful critique is Karen Barad’s (2007) understanding of laboratory as an open, inclusive social practice. A ‘shift from apparatuses as static

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prefab laboratory setups to an understanding of apparatuses as material-discursive practices through which the very distinction between the social and the scientific, nature and culture, is constituted’ (p. 141) and characterises the construction of knowledge. Theatre laboratory, with its practices that challenge the predominance of language and the binary interior/exterior opposition, can be looked at as an example of ‘dynamic practices of material engagement’ (Barad, 2007, p. 55). The pulsating flesh of actors and actresses substitutes dualistic ontologies with laboratorial methodologies that are strictly linked to labor as hard work or engaged investment of energies, but that stretches beyond ‘the violence of the laboratory space’ (Madison, 2018, p. 7) as colonising force. It is telling that these spaces are constructed by and emerge only through the actors’ bodies. Often, the guided tours at Odin Teatret occur when the ensemble is on tour. This makes the exploration easier, as there is no concern about disturbing working artists. However, when the ensemble is not present, something is notably missing: in a theatrical tradition based on the actors’ dramaturgy, their own bodies and physical presence are the spaces of performance. When these are missing, the house is nothing but an empty simulacrum, demonstrating that the frames of the house are meaningful as long as creative relationships are keeping them alive. These affective-embodied experiences unfold in tangible and intangible spaces. Barba (2019), without attempting or intending any opposition, describes the actors’ spaces as threefold: the inner space, the venue, and the public space. The first is a ‘shadow space’ (Barba, 2019, p. 90) that builds the creative core of the individual actor or actress, where they tap into biography, memory, experience and technique. This must be cultivated in order for the actor to step into the other two spaces as a creative, responsive agent. The second is the space of negotiation between actors and spectators. In modern and post-modern theatre traditions, this is not just background or casual frame but rather a fundamental dialogic partner, an ‘ally’ especially ‘for the reformers of theatre who prepared their actors for a new mode of acting on stage’ (Barba, 2019, p. 91). The third space mentioned is the public space whose function is not originally performative, but is a space that can be altered, invaded, decontextualised, revitalised by dramaturgical and performative means. These three dimensions cannot be separated out—they are yarns of different colours woven into a ‘cosmological performance, knotting proper relationality and connectedness into the warp and weft of the fabric’ (Haraway, 2006, p. 91) of theatre laboratory practices. What still needs investigating is how this laboratory—or post-laboratory— engages with communities, shaping both co-creative processes that are transformative, and social creativity. When laboratory activities involve participants—not audiences, not spectators but fully participating members of a shared creation— what does this imply for the dramaturgical investigation and its reification in performative structures? Can ensemble creativity contribute to the emergence of poetic communities, shaped as ‘environment[s]-in-life’ (Barba, 2010, p. 206)?

Odin Teatret’s planimetry, ground floor. By permission of Odin Teatret.

FIGURE 16.1

Odin Teatret’s planimetry, first floor. By permission of Odin Teatret.

FIGURE 16.2

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Note 1 On the Norwegian origins of the group, the poetic documentary by Elsa Kvamme (2017) provides an engaging affective storytelling (with English subtitles).

References Adams, J. & Owens, A. (2015). Creativity and democracy in education: Practices and politics of learning through the arts. New York: Routledge. Adler, N.J. (2011). Leading beautifully: The creative economy and beyond. Journal of Management Inquiry, 20(3), 208–221. Barad, K. (2007). Meeting the universe halfway: Quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Barba, E. (2010). On directing and dramaturgy. Burning the house. New York: Routledge. Barba, E. (2018). Informal conversation in occasion of the First Nordisk Teaterlaboratorium Festival, Holstebro, Denmark, 3 February. Barba, E. (2019). The actors’ three spaces. In E. Barba & N. Savarese, The five continents of theatre: Facts and legends about the material culture of the actor (pp. 90–91). Leiden: Brill/Sense. Barba, E. & Savarese, N. (2019). The five continents of theatre: Facts and legends about the material culture of the actor. Leiden: Brill/Sense. Bhabha, H. K. (1994). The location of culture. New York: Routledge. Boal, A. (2000). Theater of the oppressed. London: Pluto Press. Butler, J. (1993). Bodies that matter. New York: Routledge. Chemi, T. (2018). A theatre laboratory approach to pedagogy and creativity: Odin Teatret and group learning. New York: Springer. Chemi, T. (2020). Possible in performance and performing arts. In Palgrave encyclopedia of the possible. New York: Springer. Chemi, T. & Du, X. (2017). Arts-based methods in education around the world. Gistrup and Delft: River Publishers. Chemi, T. & Du, X. (eds). (2018). Arts-based methods and organisational learning: Higher education around the world. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Chemi, T. & Christoffersen, E. E. (2018). Serendipitetens Rum: Odin Teatrets Laboratorium. Aarhus: Klim. Chemi, T., Jensen, J. B. & Hersted, L. (2015). Behind the scenes of artistic creativity: Processes of learning, creating and organising. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Clift, S. & Camic, P. M. (eds). (2016). Oxford textbook of creative arts, health, and wellbeing: International perspectives on practice, policy and research. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cole, M. & Pardo, M. (eds). (2005). Inventions of the studio, renaissance to romanticism. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press. Daichendt, G. J. (2012). Artist-teacher: A philosophy for creating and teaching. ?: Intellect Books. Daichendt, J. (2016). The artist-teacher: Models of experiential learning. In J. H. Davis (ed.), Discourse and disjuncture between the arts and higher education (pp. 75–93). New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Daichendt, J. (2019). The artist-teacher in the post modern era. In M. A. Peters & R. Heraud (eds), Encyclopedia of educational innovation. New York: Springer. Davidts, W. & Pace, K. (eds). (2009). The fall of the studio: Artists at work. Los Angeles, CA: Attanae Press. Farías, I. & Wilkie, A. (eds). (2015). Studio studies: Operations, topologies & displacements. New York: Routledge.

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Gla˘ veanu, V. P. (2014). Distributed creativity: Thinking outside the box of the creative individual. Cham: Springer. Haraway, D. J. (2016). Staying with the trouble: Making kin in the Chthulucene. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Harris, A. M. (2014). The creative turn: Toward a new aesthetic imaginary (Vol. 6). New York: Springer Science & Business. Holman Jones, S., Adams, T. E. & Ellis, C. (2016). Handbook of autoethnography. New York: Routledge. Kvamme, E. (2017). Det Umuliges Kunst: Eugenio Barba og Odin Teatrets Lange Rejse. Oslo: Alert Film. Latour, B. (1987). Science in action: How to follow scientists and engineers through society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Latour, B. (2004). How to talk about the body? The normative dimension of science studies. Body & Society, 10(2–3), 205–229. Latour, B. & Woolgar, S. (1979). Laboratory life: The construction of scientific facts. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Madison, D. S. (2018). Performed ethnography and communication: Improvisation and embodied experience. New York: Routledge. Sawyer, R. K. (2007). Group genius: The creative power of collaboration. New York: Basic Books. Sawyer, K. R. & DeZutter, S. (2009). Distributed creativity: How collective creations emerge from collaboration. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 3 (2), 81–92. Schechter, J. (ed.). (2003). Popular theatre: a sourcebook. New York: Routledge. Schino, M. (2009). Alchemists of the stage: Theatre laboratories in Europe. Poland: Icarus. Silva, U. I. (2018). When theatre overflows the stage: An investigation about popular theatre and social transformation. MSc in Cultural Sociology in Social Transformation Processes. University of Southern Denmark. Sköldberg, U. J., Woodilla, J. & Berthoin Antal, A. (eds). (2016). Artistic interventions in organizations: Research, theory and practice. New York: Routledge. Strati, A. (2003). Knowing in practice: Aesthetic understanding and tacit knowledge. In S. Gherardi, D. Nicolini & D. Yanow (eds). Knowing in organizations: a practice-based approach (pp. 53–75). Armonk, NY: Sharpe. Strauss, A. (2017). Dialogues between art and business: Collaborations, cooptations, and autonomy in a knowledge society. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Taylor, S. & Ladkin, D. (2009). Understanding arts-based methods in managerial development. Academy of Management Learning and Education, 8 (1), 55–69. Turner, J. (2004). Eugenio Barba. New York: Routledge. Varley, J. (2019). Intervention at the First Nordisk Teaterlaboratorium Festival, Odin Teatret, Holstebro, 3 February. Wyatt, J. (2018). Therapy, stand-up, and the gesture of writing: Towards creative-relational inquiry. New York: Routledge.

INDEX

Aboriginal 191, 193, 195–198, 201–203, 239, 243 Abram, D. 146, 147, 156 Abramovic, M. 114, 115, 146 Ackroyd, J. 2, 142, 143, 155, 156, 221 Active Analysis 235, 240–241 activism: -affective 28, 37–38; -art 30, 34; -eco- 28, 30–32, 37; -slow 27, 34, 38 activist 3, 27–31, 34–38, 60, 64, 69, 78, 80, 174, 216, 223, 243, 252 actor 85, 86, 95–97, 113, 122, 124, 126–129, 135–138,157–160, 162, 168, 175, 182, 183, 195, 215, 216, 221, 225, 238–242, 247, 249, 251, 253, 255–257 affect/ive 147–156, 159, 162 -control 97 -cut 94 -empathy 97 -fact 86 -jolt 96–97 -data analysis 149–150, 153–154, 156 -sad affect 179 affirmative ethics 84, 90, 97, 101 agit prop 124, 252 Ahmed, Sara 16–18, 21, 22, 44, 45, 47, 48, 50, 51, 53, 55, 56, 118, 125, 131, 136 Animals 20, 36, 77, 101, 110, 146, 222, 231 art (see participatory art) 27, 30, 33, 34, 42, 44, 46, 48, 52, 54–56, 60, 61, 64, 67, 68, 87, 89, 110, 115, 122, 133–136, 138–140, 142–145, 155, 158, 161,

163–167, 170, 178–181, 205, 207, 208, 215, 220, 227, 228, 231, 234, 238, 239, 243, 251–255 artificial intelligence 175, 176, 178, 180, 182, 184 artist/artistic 4, 6, 14, 15, 27–32, 34, 38, 41, 43–46, 48, 50, 52, 54–56, 61, 67, 69, 70, 71, 73–78, 80, 91, 94, 113, 114, 120, 121, 127, 128, 133, 134, 136, 138, 139, 143, 144, 154, 155,159, 161, 164, 169, 178, 182, 205 artworks 60,75, 180, 181 Asia / Asian-Australian 120, 123, 130, Assemblage 113, 134, 161, 179, 181, 182, 185, 186, 191, 221 Audience 3, 4, 11, 13–16, 18, 19, 27, 30, 31, 36, 37, 42, 43, 55, 61, 73, 74, 83–86, 88–101, 107–116, 120, 126, 129, 130, 133–140, 147, 150, 153–156, 161, 163, 164, 166, 167–170, 173, 174–178, 180–186, 192, 194, 196, 198, 199, 201, 212, 215, 203, 210, 221, 225, 227, 235, 238–242, 252, 257 Back to back theatre 4, 173, 174, 178, 186 Barba, E. 6, 95, 246, 247, 249, 250, 252, 253, 255–257 barter 251, 255 Batchelor Institute: 191, 193–194, 202 -Common Units 193–4 Becoming-teacher 220, 222, 228, 232 Bennett, J. 31–32, 35, 37–38 Braidotti, Rosi 12, 18, 84, 90, 93, 97, 138, 179

Index 263

Class 42, 48, 56, 64, 121, 205 Classic/al 39, 48, 114, 133, 144, 161, 162 Classroom 5, 123, 129, 196–198, 202, 203, 205–211, 214–216, 218–222 ,224–226, 228, 229, 231, 234, 238, 240, 242, climate change 83–84, 86, 99 (‘land loss’) -and animals 100–101 -fiction 87 comedy 89–91-as defamiliarisation 89-as disorienting gesture 90 -and play 91 -reorienting 90 Corporeal 2–5, 13, 18, 48, 109, 116, 125, 129, 143, 146, 147, 150, 152, 156, 167–169, 189, 205 Corvalán-Pincheira, M. 61, 67, 68, 74–77 Creative industries 121, 122, 125, 253 creativity 4, 5, 118–130, 152, 243, 247, 248, 251, 254, 256, 257 culture/cultural 1, 4, 5, 14, 17, 20, 27, 35, 57, 71, 92, 101, 105, 113, 114, 118–122, 124, 125, 127–130, 133, 136, 139, 142, 145, 149, 152, 155, 181, 191, 194, 195, 197, 236, 237, 246, 247, 249, 251, 253 Cvetkovich, Ann 14, 15, 21, 125, 183 Deleuze, Gilles 5, 14, 21, 22, 69, 70, 134, 159, 161, 163, 164, 170, 179–183, 206, 220, 232 devise 4, 5, 29, 120, 121, 126, 137, 174, 206, 221, 240 -devising 4, 28, 29, 118–130, 214, 215 dialogue 35, 56, 114, 116, 124, 129, 136, 158, 174–176, 200, 211, 216, 239, 241 dialogism 214 digital 13, 18–20, 78, 121, 124, 175, 183, 239 disability 173–178, 181, 183, 184, drama/dramatic 2, 43, 44, 56, 64, 78, 87, 88, 91, 98, 119, 124, 126, 127, 129, 130, 133, 136–139, 144, 145, 194, 199, 205, 206, 210, 213–215, 239–242, dramaturgy 4, 6, 137, 139, 246, 249, 252, 253, 255–257 ecology (creative ecology) 32, 36–39, 60, 100, 120, 121, 164 El Otro País Que Eres/The Other Country That You Are 64, 66 Embodiment 2, 4, 13, 14, 20, 22, 41, 44, 46, 48, 50, 51, 72, 90, 94, 97, 100, 144, 156, 173, 240, 241, 242, 249 Emotion/al 5, 11, 12, 14–19, 22, 34, 36, 44, 45, 48, 53, 62, 66, 83, 91, 96, 98, 101, 118, 125, 130, 133, 135, 144, 148,

149, 151–154, 156, 158, 159, 162, 166–170, 174, 179, 181–183, 192, 195, 198, 199, 206, 215, 220, 235–237, 239, 240, 242, 247, Empathy x, 5, 87, 97, 234 – 245 enchantment 31–33, 35, 37–38 ensemble 4, 60, 137, 143–146, 148, 151–153, 155, 174, 175, 178, 246, 247, 250, 253, 255, 256, 257 environment/environmental 28–30, 36, 38, 92, 121, 236 -emancipated environmentalism 30, 36, 38 ethics 13, 32, 35, 39, 84, 97, 101, 119, 147, 154, 179, 182, 239 ethnodrama 5, 6, 119, 124, 206, 215, 216, 219–221, 226, 232 -collaborative ethnodrama 219, 221, 232 Ethnography 119, 124, 130, 134, 219 Etude 5, 234–235, 237, 239–241, 243, 245 Feedback 33, 36, 38, 39, 136, 137, 213, 216, 226 -Feedback loops 136 Feeling 3, 11–15, 17, 21, 22, 27, 31, 32, 34, 35, 44, 46, 48, 51–53, 63, 65, 68, 70, 71, 74, 83, 86, 90, 91, 99, 101, 118, 130, 144, 146, 148, 149, 151–156, 168, 170, 176, 180, 182, 183, 196, 199, 206, 210, 211, 213, 215, 221, 225, 226, 236, 237, 249, 250 Feminist/feminism 1, 16, 21, 64, 148, 202 Field attention 18–20 First Nations (history) 5, 191–193, 195, 201 Franks, A. 144, 148, 149, 152, 153, 156 Gallagher, Kathleen 120, 124, 130, 168 gaze 19, 110, 136, 139, 158, 159, 167, 196, 197, 215 gender 25, 31, 37, 42, 43, 48, 50–52, 56, 57, 143, 184, 223, 235, 237, 249 given circumstances 86 gesture 5, 25, 27, 30, 50, 55, 58, 64, 68, 77, 90, 93, 94, 101, 128, 148, 149, 158, 159, 161–170 -grand gesture 93, 161, 162 ,170 Guattari, F. 5, 134, 159, 161, 179–183, 220 History 5, 17, 22, 145, 158, 163, 174, 176, 182, 184, 191–193, 197, 198, 201, 202, 246, 253 honesty 211, 212, 216 Hong Kong 4, 118–130

264 Index

Ignorance 91, 196–198, 202, 203 -possessive investment in 198 -as a colonial tool 198 -as deliberate not-knowing and not-seeing 198 imagination xv, 60, 61, 73, 77, 80, 101, 145, 197, 205, 208, 240 improvisation/improvise 3, 11, 15, 69, 73, 88, 126, 128, 137, 143, 144, 159, 161, 163, 175, 206, 240, 241 Indigenous 5, 67, 145, 175, 191, 193, 197, 201, 202 innovative schools 219, 220, 221,223, 224, 226, 228, 230, 231, 232 Intensities 16, 21, 32, 35, 36, 44–46, 56, 61, 62, 72, 77, 118, 134–136, 138–140, 163 Intercultural 4, 120, 125, 127–130 Intra-action 2, 4, 45, 46, 107–109, 111, 114, 116, 133, 139, 140, 183, 219 Labour 2, 30, 63, 174, 184 land loss 87, 92–93 learning 2, 5, 27, 31, 36, 41, 44, 46, 51, 52, 121, 147, 151, 163, 184, 191, 194, 202 205–208, 210, 211, 214–216, 219, 223, 227, 228, 232, 235, 236, 238, 241–243, 247, 250, 254, liveness 4, 5, 168, 173–175, 178, 182, 183, 185, 186, 254 major gesture 93 Manning, E. 2–4, 11, 12, 19, 21, 46, 50, 51, 55, 56, 60, 70, 71, 80, 90, 93, 94, 118, 125, 130, 148, 149, 151–156, 159, 161–164, 169, 170 Mapeo de Bordes Porosos/ Mapping Porous Borders 75, 76–78 Massumi, Brian 6, 44, 86, 108, 125, 135, 149, 151, 154, 155, 168, 179, 201, 219–221 Materialism 4, 28, 31, 35, 100, 102, 138, 179 -enchanted materialism 28, 31, 35 McKenzie, V. 142, 144, 145, 146, 150, 153, 155, 157 Media/Mediation/Mediatised 17, 64, 69, 77, 78, 110, 124, 128, 195, 210, 234, minor gesture 5, 50, 55, 94, 101, 159, 161–165, 169, 170 movement xv, 1–5, 11–13, 15, 18–21, 43–46, 48, 50–57, 63, 64, 70, 73, 80, 84, 97, 109 118, 128, 129, 133–139, 144,

147, 148, 150, 151, 155, 158–159, 162, 166, 171, 182, 194, 195, 252, 255, Narnia 206–10, 216 New material/ist/ism 1, 100, 138, 179 Nomadic 138 Non-binary 12, 14, 73 non-human 3, 4, 12, 44, 62, 95, 100–101, 109, 134, 137–139, 220, 247 -see also more-than-human 2, 12, 31, 32, 37, 68, 136, 138, 143, 146, 147, 152, 156, 249 -see also non-dualistic 1, 2, 14, 15, 21 Non-representation/al 21, 134, 136–138, 163 Odin Teatret 246, 248–257 Other/s 2, 3, 11, 12, 17, 20, 21, 27, 32, 37, 46, 62, 66, 74, 77, 93, 97, 98, 109, 110, 116, 136, 146, 175, 176, 179, 180–182, 184, 185, 197, 200, 203, 210, 212, 216, 220, 234, 249 pavleheidler 60, 69,70 Paraha, T. 60, 74–76, 80 participation 83, 84, 94, 95–97, 99 Participatory 45, 109, 116, 136, 147 pedagogy xv, 5, 30, 162, 165–167, 191, 200, 202, 205, 207, 208, 214, 215, 221, 232, 234–240, 242, 243, 249, 252, 255 (see also two-way pedagogy 200) performance -power of 195 -public 191, 194, 196, 251 -culminating 194 -as pedagogy 220 -one-to-one performance 27–28, 35–36 Performative dramaturgy 137 Performers i, 3, 11, 13, 18, 19, 43, 56, 61, 64, 98, 110–112, 114, 129, 130, 136, 137, 143, 144, 147, 153–155, 161, 175, 176, 181, 185, 186, 196, 215, 234, 235, 251 Plato 199, 200 Play (playing, playful, play-world) 2, 4–6, 19, 34, 36, 43, 48, 50, 51, 54, 57, 73, 84, 86, 89, 91, 92, 94, 96, 97, 99, 107, 108, 119, 128, 133, 137, 139, 143–146, 150, 152–154, 156, 169, 171, 185, 196, 197, 206, 209, 211, 213–216, 219–223, 227, 228, 231, 240–242

Index 265

Playwriting 219, 221 Poetry / poetic 3, 14, 27, 52, 54, 60, 62, 69, 71–73, 75, 77, 78, 133, 135–137, 171, 199, 248, 252, 257 power, powerful 2, 3, 5, 18, 28, 29, 31, 34, 41, 43, 45, 46, 48, 55, 56, 64, 65, 70, 77, 83, 87, 89, 91, 93–101, 107–110, 113–115, 120, 124, 125, 130, 138, 143, 147, 150, 152, 154, 155, 170, 176, 179, 185, 191–203, 206, 214, 220, 221, 226–228, 240–242 -responding to power with power 195–6 -subjects of 195 -subordination to 195 -subjugation by 195 -as abject gaze 196 Posthumanism/ism 1, 3, 12, 13, 18, 20, 21, 90 Preacceleration 3, 11, 21 Pre-service teachers 219, 222, 227, 228 Proximity 3, 11, 12, 18, 21, 36, 83, 87 queer xv, 41–44, 46, 51, 56, 57, 68, 70, 71, 94, 95, 125, 200 queering 43, 46, 94 -somatics 69–71 Race 42, 43, 48, 56, 197, 243 Ranciére, J. 4, 30, 38, 109, 110, 114, 208 Reflexive 96, 214, 250 -reflexivity xv -reflexive mimesis 96 Relationality 13, 14, 16, 17, 21, 46, 70, 181, 257 -Relational encounter 220 Reproductive politics 184 rhetoric 193, 199, 200, -epideictic 193–4 -Plato's rejection of 199, 200 -emphasis on ethos and pathos, not just logos of 200 risk 2, 36, 56, 68, 177, 205, 206, 213, 215, 256 Robertson, L. 60, 62, 63, 80 School hierarchy dynamics 225, 226, 230 School tourism 219, 223, 224 Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky 13, 14, 113, 118, Sensory 3, 5, 6, 14, 27, 29, 30, 31, 33, 36, 61, 63, 127, 133–135, 137, 146, 163, 180, 181, 206, 250, 255, 256

shadow 70, 173, 175, 178, 257, -The Shadow Whose Prey its Hunter Becomes 4, 174, 178, 182–186 Shaughnessy, 144, 145, 146, 147, 154, 157 Social Justice 225, 226, 230 sovereignty 192, 193, 197 soundscape 126, 128, 129, 140 space 3, 6, 11–13, 15, 18, 20, 21, 34, 36, 50, 51, 56, 57, 60–64, 68–70, 72–75, 78, 80, 87, 89–96, 99–101, 108, 110, 112–116, 125, 135, 136, 143, 144–146, 151–153, 159, 161–165, 168, 169, 174–176, 181–183, 185, 186, 191, 193–196, 199, 201, 206, 208–210, 214–216, 220, 221, 232, 234, 236, 238, 239, 241,246, 247, 249–257 Spradbury, S. 141, 143, 145, 147, 157 Stanislavski 86, 215, 218, 235, 238, 240, 241, 250 Stewart, Kathleen 3, 15, 16, 19, 60, 62, 63, 80, 118, 179 Story 5, 36, 41, 42, 55, 62, 87, 97, 100, 143, 152, 158, 159, 162, 166, 167, 170, 171, 192, 193, 196, 198, 201–203, 206, 211, 213, 241 -the power of story 201 -storytelling 87, 124, 130, 134, 198, 246 studio 4, 6, 68–71, 80, 137, 143, 146, 150–156, 158, 169, 207, 208, 216, 248, 250, 251, 252–255 Telling Histories workshops 191–2 Theatre / theatrical 1, 2, 4, 6, 15, 17–19, 41, 44–46, 51, 62, 78, 83–87, 91–94, 98, 101, 107, 109, 113, 118–120, 124, 125, 133–139, 142, 143, 145, 147, 148, 153, 155, 156, 159, 161–163, 167, 173, 174, 178, 182, 186, 192, 200, 206–208, 210, 212–216, 224, 235, 238–240, 243, 246–253, 255–257 -theatremaker 6, 94, 238 tracktivism 27, 30 transformation 13, 36, 44, 66, 138, 143, 156, 184, 206, 210, 216, 239, 250, 251, 254 trust 38, 61, 115, 174, 184, 196, 202, 208, 212, 214–216 truth-telling 191 -challenging Australian history 5, 191–193

266 Index

-embodies collective memory 196 -moments of compelling invitation 201 -manifests trust in culture 202 -stolen generations 198 -Pemulwuy 198 two-way pedagogy 200 ‘Underscore’ (Stark Smith, N.) 143–144, 157 Verbatim (theatre) 17, 118–120, 124, 125, 129, 241

walking 25, 27, 29; -walking art 27 water 25–27, 29, 33–34, 36 White/whiteness: 5, 6, 18, 42, 75, 97, 99, 107, 146, 1919, 196–198, 201, 202, 207, 229–231 -as deliberate not-knowing and not-seeing 198 -white gaze of 197 -white supremacy 197 -privileges of 197–8 -possessive investment in ignorance of 198