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New Dramaturgies

Series Editors
Cathy Turner
Drama Department, University of Exeter Drama Department, Exeter, UK

Synne Behrndt
Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden

This series explores new dramaturgies within contemporary

performance practice and deploys dramaturgical thinking as a
productive analytical and practical approach to both performance
analysis and performance-making. Designed to inspire students,
scholars and practitioners, the series extends the understanding of the
complex contexts of dramaturgy and embraces its diversity and scope.
Maaike Bleeker

Doing Dramaturgy
Thinking Through Practice
Maaike Bleeker
AMSTERDAM, Noord-Holland, The Netherlands

ISSN 2947-6801 e-ISSN 2947-681X

New Dramaturgies
ISBN 978-3-031-08302-0 e-ISBN 978-3-031-08303-7
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-08303-7

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023

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All Inclusive. Photographer: Rolf Arnold. Courtsey of Ism & Heit

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Praise for Doing Dramaturgy
“This eloquently written book by Maaike Bleeker is a must read for
anyone interested in dramaturgy and contemporary performance. It
includes an exceptionally precise description of the developments of
the field of dramaturgy until now, including new contemporary
methods. But more importantly this seminal book answers the
question: what does contemporary theatre do? It thinks. In a world torn
between easy-fix opinions and oppressive categorizations, theatre is a
space for deep thinking, thinking with others, thinking through
practice, and performative thinking that goes beyond language and
definitions. Read this book: think with theatre.”
—Sodja Zupanc Lotker, Professor of Alternative and Puppet Theatre
at DAMU (Prague Academy of the Performing Arts), Czech Republic, and
former director of the Prague Quadrennial PQ
“In her new book Doing Dramaturgy, Maaike Bleeker accomplishes
the unimaginable: she embraces the inheritance of the field of
dramaturgy, traces practices across different times, places and theatre
makers, and unlocks its radical potential, without determining what the
future of dramaturgy might be. If this book bares a risk, it is the risk of
infecting practitioners—in academic, creative or educational contexts—
to resist generalities and to never stop thinking-doing forward
together.”
—Marijke Hoogenboom, Director of the Department for Performing
Arts & Film, Zurich University of the Arts, Switzerland
“In this wonderful book, Bleeker demonstrates how doing
dramaturgy is always a process of thinking through practice. This is an
important argument for conceptualizing dramaturgy as a means of
“making-thinking”. With deep historical insights, critical acumen, and
well-chosen case studies, Bleeker shows how dramaturgy is an
apparatus of creative thinking and doing that is interwoven and
interdisciplinary in ways that put performance at the center of an
expanding politics and activism. Generously referenced and wide-
ranging, Bleeker’s text helps us work with the complexity of
dramaturgy to understand its central place in the contemporary arts.”
—Peter Eckersall, The Graduate Center, City University of New York,
USA
 “Bleeker deftly brings late 20th century conversations about new
and expanded dramaturgies up to our 21st century moment,
illuminating dramaturgy as a site where theory and practice cannot be
separated, and arguing beautifully for a dramaturgy of care.
Collaborative artists of all sorts will find fodder in Bleeker’s generous
tool-box of dramaturgical questions and modes of engagement, as well
as her detailed case studies from a range of contemporary European
performances.”
—Katherine Profeta, Professor in the Practice of Dramaturgy and
Dramatic Criticism, Yale University, USA
Acknowledgments
This book expands on my essays “Dramaturgy as a Mode of Looking”
(2003) and “Thinking No-one’s Thought” (2015). These texts presented
first explorations of ideas that are central to the approach to
dramaturgy elaborated in this book. Like these articles, this volume is
single-authored. Yet the ideas elaborated in it were developed together.
This book is the outcome of an ongoing dialogue with Janine Brogt.
We both know the developments in dramaturgical practice that this
book is about from the inside, yet from different positions, different
journeys through time, and different trajectories through theatre and
dance practice. We both attended the Context 01: Active Pooling New
Theatre’s WordPerfect conference in 1993. Janine as one of the most
established dramaturgs in the Netherlands and co-founder of
Toneelgroep Amsterdam, the company that is now called Internationaal
Theater Amsterdam (ITA) under the direction of Ivo van Hove. I as a
student and a beginning dramaturg. The year 1993 was also the year
that Janine became the chair of the board of theatre company Het
Oranjehotel, co-founded by directors Ivar van Urk and Jeroen van den
Berg and myself. It was there and then that our dialogue about doing
dramaturgy started. Over the years, our paths kept crossing and from
our thinking together sprang the idea for this book. Throughout the
writing Janine was my sparring partner and she was an important voice
in many of the conversations with makers that inform this book. Being
in this together has been a very special experience.
This book is informed by our personal experience with doing
dramaturgy and by many exchanges with other dramaturgs during
symposia, public discussions, and after-talks, as well as in more
informal settings, including meetings of various dramaturgy networks.
Prominently present in this context was Marianne van Kerkhoven. She
is dearly missed. Her work and writings, as well as her profound
commitment to theatre, to people, to the world, continue to be a source
of inspiration for many, including me.
Furthermore, this book would not have been there without all the
makers whose work is represented in this book and who generously
shared their inside knowledge about doing dramaturgy and the
thinking that is making. Thank you Manuela Infante, Julian Hetzel,
Miguel Angel Melgares, Ivo van Hove, Jan Versweyveld, Anouk van Dijk,
Falk Richter, Milo Rau, Stefan Blä ske, Kris Verdonck, Kristof van Baarle,
Ben Kidd, Bush Moukarzel, Pauline Kalker, Arlène Hoornweg, Herman
Helle, Emio Greco, Pieter C. Scholten, Henk Danner, Junior Mthombeni,
Fikry El Azzouzi, Cesar Janssens, Gerardo Salinas, Robbert van Heuven,
Dries Verhoeven, Lara Staal, Loo Zihan, Ray Langenbach, Sanja Mitrović,
Jonas Rutgeers, and Amanda Piñ a.
I would also like to thank current and former theatre and dance
colleagues at Utrecht University: Sigrid Merx, Chiel Kattenbelt, Laura
Karreman, Liesbeth Groot Nibbelink, Eugène van Erven, Konstantina
Georgelou, Dick Zijp, Isis Germano, Bojana Cvejić, Danae Kleida,
Arianne Perez-Koeleman, Liza Kardami, Bart Dieho, Wil Hildebrand,
and Liesbeth Wildschut. Thank you for offering me such supportive
context in which this book could grow, and for years of thinking
together about theatre, dance, and dramaturgy. May thanks also to
colleagues and friends from other parts of the university, from other
universities, and from the field. Iris van der Tuin for recognizing that
what I am doing is new materialism, and for many inspiring
explorations across real and imaginary borders. Nanna Verhoeff for
recognizing the importance and value of dramaturgy outside the
theatre and for sharing the burden of institutional dramaturgies. Lucia
van Heteren for believing in this project from the very beginning and
for her ongoing encouragement. Marijke Hoogenboom for setting the
stage for so many fruitful collaborations across different practices of
thinking. Nirav Christophe for collaborating in making possible
Marianne van Kerkhoven’s appointment in Utrecht and for many more
collaborations and exchanges of ideas around dramaturgy. Peter
Eckersall, Helena Grehan, and Edward Scheer for inviting me to be part
of your research about New Media Dramaturgies, for bringing me over
to Melbourne and Sydney to present early stages of my research, and
for your ongoing support over many years. Thank you also to the many
BA, MA, and PhD students who read and responded to work in
progress. And thank you to my sister Bregje for many years of writing
together.
Finally, a big thank you to the series editors Cathy Turner and Synne
Behrndt for their patience, and to Eileen Srebernik and Imogen Higgins
for their wonderful support.
Contents
1 Introduction
1.​1 A Paradigm Shift
1.​2 Thinking Through Practice
1.​3 Dramaturgical Sensibility
1.​4 The Making of My Thinking
1.​5 About the Composition of This Book
References
Part I
2 Thinking Through Practice
2.​1 Lessing and Institutional Dramaturgy
2.​2 The Rise of the Director and Production Dramaturgy
2.​3 Brecht and the Dramaturgical Concept
2.​4 “New Dramaturgy”
2.​5 From Product to Process
2.​6 Making as Thinking Through Composition
References
3 Doing Dramaturgy
3.​1 Attending to Process
3.​2 Inhabiting Process
3.​3 From Process to Planet
3.​4 Enter the Dramaturg
3.​5 Where to Begin?​
References
4 A Dramaturgical Mode of Looking
4.​1 The Apparatus
 4.​2 Six Sets of Questions
4.​3 Puzzles That Hold The Key
References
Part II
5 The Ghent Altarpiece—Milo Rau
5.1 The Small Planet Called The Ghent Altarpiece
5.​2 Beginnings, and from There
5.​3 Thinking Through Practice
5.​4 Doing Dramaturgy
References
6 Chekhov’s First Play—Dead Centre
6.1 The Small Planet Called Chekhov’s First Play
6.​2 Beginnings, and from There
6.​3 Thinking Through Practice
6.​4 Doing Dramaturgy
References
7 Dear Winnie—Jr.cE.sA.r
7.1 The Small Planet Called Dear Winnie
7.​2 Beginnings, and from There
7.​3 Thinking Through Practice
7.​4 Doing Dramaturgy
References
8 Complexity of Belonging—Anouk van Dijk and Falk Richter
8.1 The Small Planet Called Complexity of Belonging
8.​2 Beginnings, and from There
8.​3 Thinking Through Practice
 8.​4 Doing Dramaturgy
References
9 Lazarus—Ivo van Hove
9.1 The Small Planet Called Lazarus
9.​2 Beginnings, and from There
9.​3 Thinking Through Practice
9.​4 Doing Dramaturgy
References
10 Le Corps du Ballet—EG|PC
10.1 The Small Planet Called Le Corps du Ballet
10.​2 Beginnings, and from There
10.​3 Thinking Through Practice
10.​4 Doing Dramaturgy
References
11 Estado Vegetal—Manuela Infante
11.1 The Small Planet Called Estado Vegetal
11.​2 Beginnings, and from There
11.​3 Thinking Through Practice
11.​4 Doing Dramaturgy
References
12 Conversations (at the end of the world)—Kris Verdonck
12.1 The Small Planet Called Conversations (at the end of the
world)
12.​2 Beginnings, and from There
12.​3 Thinking Through Practice
12.​4 Doing Dramaturgy
 References
13 Phobiarama—Dries Verhoeven
13.1 The Small Planet Called Phobiarama
13.​2 Beginnings, and from There
13.​3 Thinking Through Practice
13.​4 Doing Dramaturgy
References
14 All Inclusive—Julian Hetzel
14.1 The Small Planet Called All Inclusive
14.​2 Beginnings, and from There
14.​3 Thinking Through Practice
14.​4 Doing Dramaturgy
References
15 WAR (Ein Kriegstanz)—Amanda Piña
15.1 The Small Planet Called WAR (Ein Kriegstanz)
15.​2 Beginnings, and from There
15.​3 Thinking Through Practice
15.​4 Doing Dramaturgy
References
16 Kamp—Hotel Modern
16.1 The Small Planet Called Kamp
16.​2 Beginnings, and from There
16.​3 Thinking Through Practice
16.​4 Doing Dramaturgy
References
17 SPEAK!—Sanja Mitrović
 17.1 The Small Planet Called SPEAK!
17.​2 Beginnings, and from There
17.​3 Thinking Through Practice
17.​4 Doing Dramaturgy
Reference
18 I am LGB—The LGB Society of Mind
18.1 The Small Planet Called I am LGB
18.​2 Beginnings, and from There
18.​3 Thinking Through Practice
18.​4 Doing Dramaturgy
References
19 Epilogue
References
Index
List of Figures
Fig. 5.1 Frank Focketyn in The Ghent Altarpiece. Photographer: Michiel
Devijver. Courtesy of NTGent

Fig. 6.1 Bush Moukarzel in Chekhov’s First Play. Photographer: José

Miguel Jimenéz. Courtesy of Dead Centre

Fig.​6.​2 Rory Nolan in Chekhov’s First Play.​Photographer:​José Miguel

Jimenéz.​Courtesy of Dead Centre

Fig. 6.3 Rory Nolan, Rebecca O’Mara and a member of the audience as
“Platonov” in Chekhov’s First Play. Photographer: José Miguel Jimenéz.
Courtesy of Dead Centre

Fig. 7.1 Joy Wielkens, Jade Wheeler, Andie Dushim, Gloria Boateng,
Mahina Ngandu, Tutu Puoane in Dear Winnie. Photographer: Reyner
Boxem. Courtesy of Noord Nederlands Toneel and KVS Brussels

Fig. 7.2 Gloria Boateng in Dear Winnie. Photographer: Reyner Boxem.

Courtesy of Noord Nederlands Toneel and KVS Brussels

Fig. 8.1 Complexity of Belonging. Photographer: Jeff Busby. Courtesy of

Chunky Move

Fig. 8.2 Complexity of Belonging. Photographer: Jeff Busby. Courtesy of

Chunky Move
Fig. 8.3 Complexity of Belonging. Photographer: Jeff Busby. Courtesy of
Chunky Move

Fig. 10.1 Ballet National de Marseille in Le Corps du Ballet National de

Marseille. Photographer Alwin Poiana. Courtsey of the photographer

Fig. 10.2 Ballet National de Marseille in Le Corps du Ballet National de

Marseille. Photographer Alwin Poiana. Courtsey of the photographer

Fig. 11.1 Marcella Salinas in Estado Vegetal. Photographer: Maida

Carvallo. Courtesy of the artist

Fig. 12.1 The snow and five performers in Conversations (at the end of
the world). Photo: Kurt van der Elst. Courtesy A Two Dogs Company

Fig. 13.1 Phobiarama. Photographer: Willem Popelier. Courtesy of

Studio Dries Verhoeven

Fig. 13.2 Phobiarama. Photographer: Willem Popelier. Courtesy of

Studio Dries Verhoeven

Fig. 13.3 Phobiarama. Photographer: Willem Popelier. Courtesy of

Studio Dries Verhoeven

Fig. 14.1 Geert Belpaeme and Edoardo Ripani in All Inclusive.

Photographer: Rolf Arnold. Courtesy of Ism & Heit
Fig. 14.2 Kristien de Proost in All Inclusive. Photographer: Rolf Arnold.
Courtesy of Ism & Heit

Fig. 15.1 Amanda Piñ a and Alexandra Mabes in WAR (ein Kriegstanz).
Courtsey of nadaproductions

Fig. 15.2 Alexandra Mabes, Amanda Piñ a, Pasqual Pakarati, and

Elisabeth Tambwe in WAR (ein Kriegstanz). Courtsey of
nadaproductions

Fig. 16.1 Kamp. Photographer: Herman Helle. Courtesy of Hotel Modern

Fig. 16.2 Herman Helle and Pauline Kalker in Kamp. Photographer: Leo
van Velzen. Courtesy of Hotel Modern

Fig. 16.3 Kamp. Photographer: Leo van Velzen. Courtesy of Hotel

Modern

Fig. 17.1 Sanja Mitrović and Geert Vaes in SPEAK! Photographer: Bea
Borgers. Courtesy of Sanja Mitrović / Stand Up Tall Productions

Fig. 17.2 Sanja Mitrović in SPEAK! Photographer: Bea Borgers. Courtesy

of Sanja Mitrović / Stand Up Tall Productions

Fig. 18.1 The author as participant in I am LGB. Courtsey of the LGB

Society of Mind
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023
M. Bleeker, Doing Dramaturgy, New Dramaturgies
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-08303-7_1

1. Introduction
Maaike Bleeker1
(1) AMSTERDAM, Noord-Holland, The Netherlands

Maaike Bleeker
Email: m.a.bleeker@uu.nl

This book is about doing dramaturgy as a practice, or practices—since

there are many ways of doing dramaturgy—that are part of making
theatre, dance and other performances. It elaborates an expanded
approach to doing dramaturgy informed by today’s highly diverse field,
in which traditional genres and categories, although these can still be
part of that which performances relate to, build on, or move away from,
no longer define the playing field. “Expanded” refers to how dramaturgs
have expanded their field of action beyond particular culturally and
historically specific traditions of text-based theatre, as well as to the
expansion of activities that can be part of dramaturgical practice
(Eckersall 2006).
Developments in the field of theatre, dance, and performance
inform new ways of doing dramaturgy. Vice versa, dramaturgy inspires
new approaches to making performances, and reconfiguring the
relationships between performances, audiences and the context in
which making, showing, and attending performances take place.
Therefore this book approaches doing dramaturgy by considering how
ways of creating and ways of doing dramaturgy mutually inform each
other. Instead of identifying different types of dramaturgy specific to
different types of theatre, dance, and performance, this book shows
how a closer look at a diversity of practices of making side by side
illuminates the function of dramaturgy in creative practice. This
function can take different shapes and inform different ways of doing,
of dramaturgs as well as of others. For, as Adrian Heathfield (2016) and
others have pointed out, there is also dramaturgy without a dramaturg.
Dramaturgy can also be performed by others than dramaturgs, or be
distributed among participants in the creative process.
Heathfield characterizes doing dramaturgy as a form of
responsiveness that involves “responsibility towards (and response to)
that which is immanent in a given performance, its phenomena and
forms of representation” (Heathfield 2016). He thus proposes an
understanding of doing dramaturgy in terms of a particular attitude—
of responsibility—and in terms of a capacity that we may understand
with Donna Haraway (2016) as response-ability: a praxis of care that
involves the capacity to attend to and respond within the messy worlds
we inhabit and participate in. Doing dramaturgy involves being
response-able in ways that make sense in the context of the, often
messy, process that is the creation of a given performance, its
specificities, the modes of working of the creators, and what they aim
for with the performance. What makes sense may vary from context to
context, from performance to performance; therefore, the capacity to
respond in a responsible way—to be response-able—requires insight
into how different kinds of performances and creation processes work,
and what one’s responses can do to them.
Such being response-able is not limited to what is created. It also
involves a praxis of attending to how creation processes are organized,
who is involved and in what role, where performances are shown, how
and to whom, how performances are produced, in what context, and
with whom, the setting up of working conditions and taking
responsibility for their implications. Being response-able thus involves
what Konstantina Georgelou, Efrosini Protopapa, and Danae
Theodoridou describe as an expansion of our understanding of
dramaturgy “beyond the solely artistic domain into the infrastructural
one, pointing to relations with institutional structures and funding
bodies that constitute today’s economy of performance theory and
practice” (2017, 3). Dramaturgy, as they insist, “is also bound to the
material conditions, economies and infrastructures in which it
operates” (79).
 Being response-able involves skills and expertise, as well as certain
types of knowledge. Knowledge not as in holding some kind of
authoritative truth enforced on creative processes from the outside—
something that doing dramaturgy is sometimes associated with, and
which is known to cause resistance to dramaturgy and dramaturgs—
but rather expertise and knowledge that are relevant to the emergence
of that which is immanent in the performance-in-becoming and that
supports its emergence. Such supporting may also involve intervening,
disturbing, disagreeing, and challenging. Furthermore, response-ability
as characteristic of the practice of dramaturgy points to care (for what
is created and how, and for what is immanent in this process) and to
ethics (of taking an ethical approach toward what is being created and
how, toward what performances do, toward those involved in the
creation, and toward what is implied by modes of working) as being
part of the attitude and capacities that define doing dramaturgy.

1.1 A Paradigm Shift

Many have observed that in the context of today’s theatre, dance and
performance practice approaches to doing dramaturgy as they
historically developed in relation to the tradition of Western dramatic
theatre and its reformations under influence of Brecht and others no
longer hold. These observations inspired the use of “new dramaturgy”
as an umbrella term for new dramaturgical practices emerging roughly
since the 1980s. However useful as a marker of historical change, the
term “new dramaturgy” does little to further understanding of what
then these new dramaturgical practices entail and how one might
develop one’s own. Like the term “new media” the term “new
dramaturgy” merely contrasts these (then) newly emerging approaches
to older ones and inscribes today’s dramaturgical practices in a linear
timeline that suggests a continuous progression from a singular origin,
a suggestion that is also supported by textbooks that present the
staging of dramatic plays as the default option and other practices as
variations on, or digressions from, this theme.
The unspecified nature of what is referred to as “new dramaturgy”
has been further reinforced by a tendency to avoid, or sometimes even
explicitly resist, a more precise description. This reluctancy to define
and fix, and the tendency to keep everything open, are laudable from
the perspective of embracing new possibilities opened up by breaking
away from (or simply ignoring) more traditional frameworks. However,
the suggestion that nothing more specific can be said is not of much
help when trying to understand the role and function of dramaturgy in
actual creative practice. And although dramaturgy can be many
different things in different creative practices, this does not mean that
within each of these practices doing dramaturgy cannot be defined
more precisely. Furthermore, the opposition of “new dramaturgy” as a
dynamic, diverse, and ever-changing practice to more traditional ways
of doing dramaturgy obscures the fact that transformations in
dramaturgical practice brought about by “new” and “non-traditional”
forms of theatre, by dance and other kinds of performance, have
opened up new perspectives on doing dramaturgy that have also
affected doing dramaturgy in more traditional forms of theatre. Vice
versa, practices of “new dramaturgy” still include aspects of older
dramaturgical practices without necessarily adopting the general logics
and assumptions underlying these practices.
The emergence of “new dramaturgy” is better understood as
indicative of a paradigm shift in understanding and doing dramaturgy.1
A paradigm shift describes the moment that the emergence of new
ways of thinking and doing necessitate a reconsideration of the
assumptions that structure ways of understanding within a particular
field. The need for such reconsiderations informed the conference
Context 01: Active Pooling New Theatre’s WordPerfect organized by a
network of continental European avant-garde theatres in 1993. This
conference brought together over forty dramaturgs, performance
makers, and theorists from Europe and the United States to discuss
transformations in theatre practice they observed, and their
consequences for understanding dramaturgical practice. The collected
materials of this conference were published in a double issue of
Theaterschrift (issue 5/6, 1994) titled “On Dramaturgy.” In the
introduction to this issue, dramaturg Marianne van Kerkhoven coins
the term “new dramaturgy.” She consistently puts the term between
quotation marks to indicate the tentative nature of this description.
Van Kerkhoven refers to how the initiators of the Context 01
conference—Marijke Hoogenboom and Elske van der Hulst—had
started out with this subject “from the realization that in many
countries a form of theatre is being produced which answers to
paradigms other than the traditional (reflected significantly in the
play’s dramaturgy) and the realization that there is currently no
terminology available to describe those paradigms in all aspects” (Van
Kerkhoven 1994a, 12). Their observations reflect how the emergence of
so-called new dramaturgy from roughly the 1980s and 1990s
inaugurated an expansion and diversification of ways of doing
dramaturgy while also drawing attention to the close relationship
between different ways of doing dramaturgy and the specificities of the
different creative processes of which these ways of doing are part.
These developments foreground that which it means to do dramaturgy
is intimately intertwined with the ideas, experiences, expectations,
conventions, and desires that inform the different ways of making
theatre and dance that doing dramaturgy is part of and response-able
to. Furthermore, from this perspective, ways of doing dramaturgy as
they developed in relation to Western traditions of staging plays now
begin to appear as historically and culturally contingent variations that
came into being in relation to the demands of specific ways of creating
theatre at particular times and places. From the perspective of today’s
expanded practice of dramaturgy, what may have seemed important or
useful from the perspective of these traditions of staging plays is not
necessarily essential to what dramaturgy can be, nor are the wide
diversity of dramaturgical practices today necessarily derived from
what doing dramaturgy in these historical traditions entailed.

1.2 Thinking Through Practice

Following these observations, this book presents an approach to doing
dramaturgy from thinking through a diversity of contemporary
practices of making to show how that which they share is that in each
of them creating is a matter of making compositions in space and time
out of materials of various kinds. And this is not only the case with
contemporary performances. This description of creating applies to all
kinds of performances and therefore provides a useful starting point for
an approach to doing dramaturgy that does not start from identifying
different types of dramaturgy specific to different types of theatre,
dance, and performance, but instead looks at how a closer look at a
diversity of practices of making side by side illuminates the function of
dramaturgy in creative practice. Creating is a matter of making
compositions in space and time out of materials of various kinds. What
differs is how these compositions are created and what the logic of
their composition is. As a result, what is different as well is how these
compositions address their audience and what they do to their
audiences: how they organize experiences, invite interpretations,
trigger associations, affect the audience, make them feel and think, and
perhaps even make them do things. How they are appreciated, or not.
Approached from the perspective of what they share, the relationships
and differences between different practices of making are instructive
for developing the dramaturgical sensibility required to be response-
able to the demands and challenges of diverse ways of creating
performances. The development of such sensibility is what this book
aims to support.
Furthermore, the approach elaborated on the pages that follow
proposes an understanding of making theatre, dance, and performance
as itself a thinking through practice. Making is conceived of as a doing
that is also a thinking. This proposal to approach theatre and dance in
terms of thinking through practice is not meant to over-intellectualize
artistic creation, but rather to argue for an expanded understanding of
thinking in line with current developments in, among others, new
materialism, anthropology, ecological thinking, embodied, enactive, and
environmental approaches to cognition, post-phenomenology, and
actor-network theory. Theorists in these fields are invested in attempts
at conceptualizing the ways in which humans make sense and think in
terms of material practices that proceed through doing, and through
the enactment of networks of relationships with the environment and
with other human and non-human elements. These developments are
also related to an understanding of artistic creation in terms of
research.
Making theatre and dance is a thinking that takes shape in and
through materials of various kinds (including texts, movements,
objects, light, sound, and the presence and actions of performers) and
practices (of rehearsing, writing, choreographing, directing, designing,
composing, performing) and in collaboration with others (like
directors, choreographers, dancers, actors, designers, writers,
composers). Such thinking proceeds through the creation of
compositions of people, objects, texts, light, sound, and movements in
space; successions of actions and reactions over time; the directing of
attention; the creation of sensations, rhythm, affect, and emotion. It is a
thinking that is inventive, sensitive to what emerges from bringing
together text, movements, action, sound, visuals, and more. And it is a
thinking in which the audience participates.
The chapters in Part II of this volume trace the thinking through
practice of theatre and dance makers and show how such thinking
proceeds through embodied and material practice and involves
constellations of humans and non-human elements. Such thinking
through practice in the theatre usually involves more than one person.
It is a thinking that is done together. Thinking together in and through
practice produces thoughts that are not those of one of the individuals
involved in the creation. These thoughts that emerge from the
collaborative process cannot be traced to individual thinker-creators. In
this sense they are no-one’s thoughts. And precisely as such, they are
dramaturgy’s concern. We might describe these thoughts that are no-
one’s as that which is collectively brought about (see Bleeker 2015).
Doing dramaturgy involves relating to this totality-in-becoming that is,
in Heathfield’s words, immanent to the process of creating and requires
the capacity to respond to this becoming in a meaningful way that
supports its further development.

1.3 Dramaturgical Sensibility

Doing dramaturgy is not a matter of intellectual interpretation, or of
having the correct answers to how to construct a performance, but of
engaging with the complexity of creative processes, where this may also
mean to complicate or problematize rather than to clarify. This requires
what Geoffrey Proehl (2008) calls dramaturgical sensibility. He uses
this term to describe a continuous balancing act performed by
dramaturgs between the intellectual and the emotional, the concrete
and the ephemeral, and between clarification and complication. The
understanding of dramaturgical sensibility elaborated in this book is
related to Proehl’s, yet also differs from his in that it does not centralize
the staging of dramatic plays but presents an expanded approach to
doing dramaturgy that includes other types of making performances
and other activities than the making itself.
Dramaturgical sensibility, as I understand it, is an informed
sensibility toward choices that can be made and decisions that can be
taken in creative processes, and toward the implications of these
choices and decisions. This is a sensibility toward how performances
result from decisions about what materials to work with, how to
compose these into performances, with whom to work, how to work,
and so on. This extends beyond the performance proper to include
choices and decisions about where to show performances, how to
announce them, how one positions oneself as maker, what one aims for
with one’s work. Decisions taken set the stage for further choices to be
made. Choices that seem self-evident could be made differently. Choices
made have implications for what the performance in the end will be like
and what it will do to its audiences. Performances not merely show or
represent things, they do things: they evoke responses, trigger
emotions, afford interpretations, cause confusion (intentionally or
unintentionally) or are misunderstood. They may confirm assumptions,
stereotypes, and power relations, or question and subvert these. This
may include showing “how it is” with the world, as well as to destabilize
assumptions about “how things are,” or to offer alternatives.
Dramaturgical sensibility manifests itself in the capacity to engage with,
reflect on, and respond to processes of making choices and taking
decisions in creation. This capacity involves intuitions, feelings,
associations, and emotions, as much as it is informed by experience,
knowledge, and understanding.
Not all choices are made consciously, and sometimes there is not
much of a choice. But even if it is simply a fact that the performance has
to start at 8pm, or that for some reason it is a given that one will work
in this particular theatre, or it seems self-evident that this actor should
play that role, it remains important to acknowledge the implications of
these “givens” for what the performance will do. Approaching these
“givens” as choices that (even if only hypothetically) could have been
made differently is a first step toward denaturalizing them and
grasping what they contribute to what the performance will be like and
how it will engage the audience.
 Dramaturgical sensibility, understood as the capacity to engage
with, reflect on, and respond to processes of making choices and taking
decisions in creation, is not exclusive to dramaturgs. It also informs
how directors, choreographers, scenographers, costume and light
designers, actors, dancers, and others involved in creative processes
can (and often do) give shape to their creative practice. Also, the
capacity to perceive a performance as the outcome of processes of
choices (choices that could have been made differently, even if only
hypothetically) informs the work of critics and is crucial for developing
analytical and critical skills required for performance analysis.
Furthermore, this dramaturgical attitude can also be adopted toward
other things or events, like, for example, the staging of public space, the
performance of politics, the design of computer games, or how one
curates an exhibition.

1.4 The Making of My Thinking

Proehl describes dramaturgy as a constant balancing act between the
intellectual and the emotional, the concrete and the ephemeral, and
between clarification and complication. Writing this book similarly
involved a constant balancing act, or actually several of them. First,
between the personal experiences that inform my understanding of
dramaturgy, and the insights of many others that similarly contributed
to it. More than a matter of getting back and forth between the two, this
balancing act is a matter of how they come together in an ongoing
dialogue that has helped me situate my own experiences, and expand
my understanding of dramaturgy beyond them. This balancing act
started long before writing this book. It started at the moment I began
doing dramaturgy. Dramaturgs working in independent productions
hardly encounter each other in the workplace. I was lucky to quickly
become part of a network of dramaturgs from across theatre and dance,
and across generations. This network provided a place for exchange of
experiences of dramaturgs working in different types of theatre and in
different working conditions. Marianne van Kerkhoven was part of this
network, as was Janine Brogt, one of the founders of Toneelgroep
Amsterdam (now Internationaal Theater Amsterdam, ITA), and
dramaturg for a great number of makers, in the Netherlands and
abroad. Many years of dialoguing with them as well as with many other
dramaturgs laid the foundations for this book.
My personal experience with dramaturgy is entangled with the
developments that inform what, in the next chapter, I will further
elaborate as a paradigm change in doing dramaturgy. My professional
journey as a theatre maker started in the early 1990s, first as a costume
designer and a little later as a dramaturg. I attended the Context 01:
Active Pooling New Theatre’s Word Perfect conference mentioned before
as a young professional, and the developments that this conference was
about is the context in which I began to develop my own dramaturgical
practice. I worked for more than fifteen years intensively with different
theatre and dance makers in different kinds of creative processes. This
active involvement in making became less intensive once I got
appointed as a professor in Theatre and Performance Studies. Although
I remained in close contact with many makers and have remained in
dialogue with them about their work, in my own work the focus shifted
from doing dramaturgy to research and writing about dramaturgy, and
to questions of how to teach it. How to support others in the
development of their own dramaturgical practice? How to make my
own experience productive for this? In this context again Van
Kerkhoven and Brogt were important partners in dialogue. A
collaboration between Utrecht University and the Utrecht School for
the Arts brought Van Kerkhoven to Utrecht as a guest professor in 2008
and 2009, during which she worked on what would become her last
major publication: the book Listen to the Bloody Machine (2012)
written together with Anoek Nuyens, at that time master student at
Utrecht University (I will come back to this book in the next chapter).
Shortly after the publication of Listen to the Bloody Machine, Janine
Brogt and I began imagining this book.
Although my personal experiences with doing dramaturgy inform
the understanding of dramaturgy elaborated in this book, I choose not
to centralize them. Actually, my inside knowledge of dramaturgical
practice is what motivated the choice not to centralize these
experiences. What is needed to understand and prepare for today’s
dramaturgical practice is a broader perspective that helps to
understand how that which dramaturgs do follows from the diversity of
making processes they are part of. Therefore, instead of organizing this
book around my personal experiences, I have used them to look at, and
unpack, a panorama of practices.
Writing this book also involved a balancing act between the
philosophical and the practical. This book is not a manual for how to do
dramaturgy. It does not offer recipes or procedures to follow, nor
models to copy. Yet, it is meant to support developing one’s own
dramaturgical practice. Precisely for this reason it presents what may
be considered a philosophy of dramaturgy of sorts, rather than being a
manual. This may seem contradictory but it is not. In today’s expanded
dramaturgical practice, dramaturgs operate on what Hans-Thies
Lehmann and Patrick Primavesi (2009) describe as “shifting grounds”
(more about this in Chap. 2). This situation demands from dramaturgs
the capacity to constantly reinvent their own practice in relation to the
creative processes that they are part of. This is not a matter of shifting
between (supposedly already existing) formats or sets of tools of, for
example, text-based dramaturgy, dance dramaturgy, dramaturgy for
devised theatre, and so on. It also does not mean constantly starting
from scratch. Rather, it requires something of a meta-perspective on
what doing dramaturgy can be, combined with practical insight into
how making works, and the capacity to combine the two in how one
gives shape to one’s role in a particular creation process.
The capacity to shift between the philosophical and the practical is,
in my experience, fundamental to dramaturgical practice. Doing
dramaturgy involves constant going back and forth between, on the one
hand, meta-perspectives on what is happening in creative processes,
one’s own role and those of others in these processes, the potentials
and implications of the materials one is working with, and so on, and,
on the other hand, concrete hands-on engagement with how things are
taking shape. With how doing things affect the creative process and
what is coming about within it. Making theatre can be considered a new
materialist practice par excellence for how it demonstrates the
fundamental intertwining of making meaning and manipulating
materials. This entanglement of meaning and matter tends to get
obscured by approaches to theatre that seem to assume that matter is
merely a means to represent meaning, yet is foregrounded by
developments in theatre and dance during the past decades, and by the
approaches to doing dramaturgy emerging in relation to them.
 These developments also suggest new perspectives on another
balancing act that has received much critical attention in reflections
about dramaturgy, namely that of theory and practice. Recurring motive
in such reflections is a perceived gap between theory and practice, and
the need to either bridge this gap or to emancipate practice from
theories imposed on it. Theory, then, refers to knowledges that are part
of the academic background that many dramaturgs bring in through
their training, thus putting them in the position of either mediator
between theory and practice, or that of representative of the perceived
imposition of theory onto practice. Chapter 2 shows how this tension
between theory and practice can be traced back to how, historically,
doing dramaturgy started with the incorporation of intellectuals in
theatre practice, and with putting them in the position of being
expected to explain practice. With Brecht, the role of the dramaturg
shifted from that of in-house intellectual observing what is being
created from a certain distance toward that of a collaborator in the
creative process. Yet, understood as mediator between theoretical ideas
and the practice of theatre, and as protector of concepts thought out in
advance, this new role of the dramaturg (in some contexts) also
reinforced the opposition of the artistic and the intellectual that still
can be seen at work today in certain critical appraisals of dramaturgs
and dramaturgy.
Developments in both theory and practice during the past decades
suggest different ways of understanding the relationship between
theory and practice. Many makers nowadays do not seem intimidated
by, or resistant to, theory at all. They use it as a source of inspiration
and understand their practice as a way of dialoguing with and
reconfiguring theory. These developments resonate with
transformations within academic thinking and theorizing. Indicative of
these transformations is, for example, the shift from Pierre Bourdieu’s
interest in practices as subject of theoretical explanation (in his Outline
of a Theory of Practice, 1977) toward Michel de Certeau’s Practice of
Everyday Life (1984) in which he looks at the ways in which everyday
practices embody ways of understanding. Such practices do not need
theoreticians to explain them. Rather, De Certeau shows how practices
may inform theoreticians about what happens “in practice,” and his
writings about practice have inspired many theorists to find new ways
of engaging with practice. More recently, Tim Ingold (2013) and others
have argued that making should itself be considered a form of thinking
in and through practice. (Chapter 2 elaborates how Ingold’s ideas
support an understanding of making theatres as thinking through
practice.)
Rather than opposing thinking and making, theory and practice, we
better look at what kind of thinking making is, and how thinking and
making, theory and practice, may mutually inform and inspire each
other. In my own work, academic thinking and thinking through making
have informed each other from the very beginning. I began making
theatre at the same time I went to university. Looking back on how my
thinking has developed over time, I have come to realize that making
theatre made me a new materialist thinker long before I learned about
theories of new materialism. Similarly, the work and ways of making of
Kris Verdonck and others alerted me to the importance of taking into
account the role of the more than human long before I learned that this
is what is called posthuman thinking. Vice versa, theoretical insights
about (among others) intersectionality and implicatedness, and
theoretical tools like focalization, have helped me to unpack things I
encountered in practice and contributed to the thinking-making of
makers I collaborated with. Although over time, the balance between
making and thinking has shifted several times, they are still
fundamentally intertwined in the things I do and the things I write.
Finally, writing this book involved a balancing act between looking
at the past for what it can tell us about how dramaturgy has come to be
what it is today, and opening up toward a future that is still unknown. A
balancing act between looking for how expertise and experiences from
the past may inform today’s practices of dramaturgy, and for how
today’s practice may transform what dramaturgy is and how it can be
done. Constantly reinventing itself, doing dramaturgy happens at this
intersection.

1.5 About the Composition of This Book

Part I of this book elaborates an approach to doing dramaturgy as
attending to processes of thinking through compositions in time and
space of materials of various kinds. It does so in dialogue with fourteen
performances and their makers, and from a tracing of the thinking-
through-practice that underlies these creations. These case studies are
Part II.
Part I starts from a genealogy that traces how ideas and practices
such as institutional dramaturgy, production dramaturgy, and the
dramaturgical concept came about in relation to approaches to making
specific to historical Western European traditions, in particular
dramatic theatre and its Brechtian successors. I use the term
“genealogy” to indicate that this is not a complete history of
dramaturgy in all its aspects. Luckhurst (2006), Turner and Behrndt
(2007), and Trencsènyi (2015) offer extensive accounts of this history.
My text focuses on several aspects of dramaturgical practice that are
still part of how doing dramaturgy is understood today, and shows how
these developed in response to the specific needs, desires, and modes
of thinking embodied in particular historical traditions of making
theatre. This is the first part of Chap. 2.
The second part of Chap. 2 shows how the emergence of so-called
new dramaturgy marks the moment that ways of doing dramaturgy as
they historically developed lost their self-evidence in relation to newly
emerging postdramatic approaching to making. New ways of making
catalyzed expansions of dramaturgical practice and, associated with
them, transformations of the understanding of what doing dramaturgy
can be. This second part of the chapter brings in Van Kerkhoven’s
tentative observations on the “new dramaturgy” that she saw emerging
at the time of her writing, as well as observations by others since then,
to show how these pave the way for an understanding of dramaturgy as
a function in the creative process that can take shape in different ways
in different creative processes. The final part of the chapter elaborates
an understanding of creative processes as forms of collective thinking-
making and doing dramaturgy as attending to this thinking and what
this thinking-making produces.
Chapter 2 works toward an understanding of doing dramaturgy as a
practice that constantly reinvents itself in relation to the specificities of
the creation processes of which it is part, and of theatre as a practice of
thinking through compositions in time and space of people, things,
texts, movements, gestures, sounds, references, objects, set design, and
everything else that can be part of performances. Chapters 3 and 4 offer
tools for engaging dramaturgically with performances and the
processes in which they are created. Doing dramaturgy also concerns
the process of creating performances: how they are organized, how to
inhabit them dramaturgically, how contribute to them, catalyze them,
or intervene in them. Doing dramaturgy concerns how that which is
being created and is going to be presented on stage (or somewhere
else) is constructed, how this construction works, and what this does.
Chapter 3 looks at how dramaturgs participate in, or “inhabit”—as
Trencsényi (2015, 28) aptly puts it—practices of thinking-making and
are response-able to them. The chapter starts from looking toward
creative processes and the choices made and decisions taken in
organizing them. The chapter looks at seven dramaturgical modes of
engagement with creative processes and what is created in them. These
modes of engagement embody dramaturgical ways of attending to
creative processes and inform the things dramaturgs do to contribute
to them. The chapter then looks at the role of dramaturgy in the
transition from the emergence of no-one’s thought in collective
processes of making toward what the audience encounters, the
question why bringing in a dramaturg, and where to begin when
working as a dramaturg.
Chapter 4 introduces a dramaturgical mode of looking as a looking
for how performances are constructed, how this construction works,
what this brings about and does to audiences, and how all of this is the
result of choices made and decisions taken during creation. Starting
from five sets of questions introduced by Elinor Fuchs in her text “EF’s
Visit to a Small Planet” (2004) and an additional sixth set of questions
based on Van Kerkhoven’s notion of the macro dramaturgical, this
chapter shows how these questions can be used to dramaturgically
unpack how performances do what they do as a result of how they are
constructed. Fuchs’ text is about dramatic play-texts. I will show her
approach to be most useful as well as starting point for engaging with
all kinds of performances, and as basis for an approach that is
relational, processual, and ecological.
The chapters in Part I refer to fourteen case studies that are further
discussed in Part II. These case studies combine a dramaturgical mode
of looking with reverse engineering. In technology, reverse engineering
describes the process of taking something apart to understand how it is
constructed and how this construction works. Using reverse
engineering as a method to investigate performances is not meant to
suggest that creating performances is a mechanical process of
engineering, nor that it is a predictable process working toward
foreseeable outcomes. Creative processes are often rather
unpredictable, take unforeseeable routes, and are depending on the
changeable and often unpredictable natures of human beings. Which is
actually also the case with many engineering processes. This is
precisely why reverse engineering is a useful method. It looks at the
outcomes of these unstable and unpredictable processes to understand
what choices and decisions produced these outcomes. These insights, in
their turn, contribute to increased understanding of decisions taken in
creation and their effects. Furthermore, looking for how performances
do what they do as a result of how they are constructed (and how this
relates to choices have been made in creating them) provides a starting
point for reflection on how choices could have been made differently.
Such understanding provides the basis for modes of analytical and
speculative thinking that are important to doing dramaturgy.
All fourteen performances except one were created between 2011
and 2019, that is, 20–30 years after the beginning of the
transformations that inspired the use of the term “new dramaturgy.”2
Together they present a panorama of different kinds of creative
practices by makers from different places, at different stages in their
careers, and working in different circumstances. Some of these makers
are among the most established and widely known theatre artists at the
moment of writing. Others operate in more specific artistic and
geographical contexts. Some of them were trained as theatre or dance
maker, others as visual artist, designer, or curator; again others studied
music, literature, sociology, philosophy, cultural analysis, or Japanese
studies. They made their works in a diversity of conditions: some of
them with major theatre and dance companies, some at production
houses or smaller companies, again others as independent makers with
very modest means. Many of these performances include reflections on
making theatre and dance, as well as the persona of the artist, the role
of art and art institutions, and ways of showing, seeing, and
interpreting theatre, dance and performance,. They invite to rethink,
reconsider, question, criticize, open up, and affirm (aspects of) artistic
practice, and thus actively contribute to the continuous reinvention of
what theatre, dance, and performance can be, as well as to how these
practices are understood.
Obviously, these fourteen examples together do not offer a complete
overview of all possible ways of creating theatre, dance, and
performance. This would be impossible given the great diversity of
contemporary practice, and given the fact that ways of creating theatre
and dance are in constant transformation. Impossible as well given the
fact that theatre, dance, and performance as live events are available
only at specific times and places, and that human beings like this author
are only capable of attending a small part of all that exists. Rather than
an exhaustive overview, these fourteen examples are meant as
conversation pieces that offer insight into different ways of making and
structuring performances, different ways of relating to past and present
realities, different ways of addressing audiences, and different ways of
collaborating.
Each chapter in Part II starts from a brief positioning of a
performance and its maker(s). This is followed by a close look at the
performance, using the six sets of questions introduced in Chap. 4. Each
chapter thus demonstrates the use of a dramaturgical mode of looking
at the construction of the performance and what this construction
does: how it brings about worlds on stage, directs attention, invites
interpretations and associations etc. This first part of the chapter aims
to support the development of dramaturgical sensibility toward choices
that can be made in constructing performances, and the effects of these
choices.
The second part of the chapter then shifts attention to the creative
process and supports the development of dramaturgical sensibility
toward processes of making-thinking. Each chapter looks at how
making began and what steps were taken from there. This is followed
by a discussion of several characteristics of the thinking-making of the
artist(s). Each chapter identifies several aspects of the function of
dramaturgy in the making of the performance and addresses
relationships between ways of thinking-making and dramaturgical
modes of attending to such making. Rather than describing from A to Z
what dramaturgs did in creating these works, the chapters show how
these performances and the ways in which they were created may
contribute to developing dramaturgical sensibility toward choices
made in creative processes and insight into dramaturgical ways of
engaging with them. These observations are not limited to the final part
of each chapter (titled “Doing Dramaturgy”). The other parts of the
chapter too include observations on the role of dramaturgy and
dramaturgs in how the performance came about.
The chapters also introduce various concepts used by makers to
describe aspects of their thinking-making, including the b-flat, assumé,
and egoless creation (Chap. 12); visual dramaturgy, the conduit, and the
organization (Chap. 9); live animation and “rijgmomentjes” (Chap. 16);
the intuitive body and assuming (Chap. 10); citing (Chap. 13);
choreographic thinking (Chap. 11); documentary choreography (Chap.
17); thrill and thrilling (Chaps. 6 and 7); and global realism (Chap. 5).
The chapters also introduce various other concepts that are useful to
understand what these makers do in and with their creations, and what
these creations in their turn do to audiences. These concepts include
interpellation and intersectionality (Chap. 7); critical intimacy (Chaps.
5 and 7); thought-apparatus (Chap. 12); scenographics (Chaps. 9, 18);
managing attention, kinesthetic empathy, and bodies of ideas (Chap.
10); reenactment (Chaps. 16, 17, and 18); being implicated (Chaps. 14
and 18); metaphors we live by (Chap. 11); technoperformance (Chap.
12); the gaze (Chaps. 7 and 13); preposterous history (Chap. 2);
appropriation (Chaps. 7 and 15); expository gesture (Chap. 15); the
audience as witness (Chap. 16); spect-actor (Chap. 18); ritual (Chap. 7);
and utopian performative (Chap. 5).
The following briefly introduces each of the fourteen case studies
and maps out themes and subjects addressed in them.
The Ghent Altarpiece by Milo Rau (Chap. 5) was the first creation of
Rau as artistic director of the Ghent city theatre company NTGent. Rau
is known for radical work that addresses the inequalities and
complexities of today’s realities. His work makes these complexities
tangible by means of combinations of live performance and video, often
building on documentary materials and personal experiences of
performers. The Ghent Altarpiece uses a famous painting (The Adoration
of the Mystic Lamb by the Van Eyck brothers) as framework for a
montage of video and live performance that reflects on past, present,
and future of the city of Ghent. The Ghent Altarpiece was the first
performance to be created within the framework of the Ghent
Manifesto, a set of ten rules devised to support the development of
Rau’s “City Theatre of the Future,” and that may be considered a revival
and actualization (and radicalization) of Lessing’s dramaturgical
project.
Keywords: Montage; Video; Non-Professional Performers; Social
Realism; Critical Intimacy; Utopian Performative
Chekhov’s First Play by Dead Centre (Chap. 6) is an adaptation of the
first play written by Russian playwright Anton Chekhov. The
performance is a postdramatic staging of a historical dramatic play that
presents a highly sophisticated, clever, and funny reflection on the
development of twentieth-century theatre from dramatic to
postdramatic. The performance points to various ways in which theatre
makers over time have attempted to make their theatre more real and
how this involved privileging different “realities” as well as different
conceptions of the relationships and differences between theatrical
staging and reality. Dead Centre shows Chekhov and Stanislavski’s
realism to be one answer to the question, and the explicit theatricality
of Brechtian theatre and much postdramatic theatre, as well as new
types of audience participation as others. Inventive use of headphones
adds another layer to the construction of the performance and
mediates in new relationships between stage and auditorium.
Keywords: Postdramatic Staging; History of Twentieth-Century
Western Theatre; The Director; Naturalism; Realism; Adaptation;
Focalization; Soundscape
Dear Winnie (Chap. 7) by collective Jr.cE.sA.r is an example of
contemporary music theatre combining urban arts and musical
traditions of different continents. Seven female performers from the
African diaspora reconstruct the life of Winnie Mandela, a controversial
figure, celebrated for her extraordinary political activism, but also
criticized for inspiring division, and charged of fraud, adultery, and
murder. Building on historical materials as well as personal
experiences, Dear Winnie demonstrates the potential of theatre to
intervene in historical consciousness and to draw attention to what has
been left out, who has been silenced and whose perspectives have been
suppressed in how historical events are framed and represented. Dear
Winnie also reminds us of the ritual origins of theatre and performance.
Ritual not in the sense of some kind of mystical or religious function but
as a place of collective and experiential (rather than intellectual)
working through of identity, history, and ways of understanding the
world.
Keywords: Music Theatre; Urban Arts; Ritual; Testimony; Rhythm;
Interpellation; Intersectionality; Critical Intimacy
Complexity of Belonging (Chap. 8) is a collaboration between
choreographer Anouk van Dijk and director/playwright Falk Richter.
The show paints a compassionate and humorous postdramatic picture
of contemporary globalized and mediatized life in which people are
constantly on the move, often at great distances from their place of
origin and loved ones, and in which communication happens mainly via
media. Texts, movements, and ideas for scenes were initially developed
via improvisation and then further developed into dialogues (Richter)
and choreographed movement sequences (Van Dijk). The montage is a
collaborative effort in which all is brought together in a continuous flow
and in which dancers and actors move, speak, and act. The framing of
this montage by means of a storyline about a woman artist
investigating the kind of life the performance is about suggests that we
may understand the performance as a portrait of what it entails to be
an artist in today’s world, and as a reflection on the idea of the artist as
ethnographer.
Keywords: Postdramatic Playwriting; Contemporary Dance;
Montage; Media; Artist as Ethnographer
Lazarus (Chap. 9) is a musical written by David Bowie and Enda
Walsh. The world premiere was directed by Ivo van Hove, one of the
most prominent representatives of today’s director’s theatre. Together
with scenographer and light designer Jan Versweyveld, Van Hove has
developed a unique signature style combining radical spatial and visual
design with intense and energetic acting and intricate use of video.
More than being a matter of designing a set and directing actors, their
approach to spatial design manifests itself in the very logic of thinking
through and with theatrical means underlying their creations as well as
their approach to creating. Van Hove and Versweyveld refer to this as
visual dramaturgy. Lazarus exemplifies how this visual dramaturgy
serves as a conceptual lens through which staging takes shape.
 Keywords: Musical; Director’s Theatre; Scenography; Visual
Dramaturgy; Scenographics
Le Corps du Ballet by EG|PC (Chap. 10) rethinks ballet from the
highly distinctive approach to movement and creation developed by
Emio Greco and Pieter C. Scholten. In their work, music and light are
prominently present as artistic means in their own right and as part of
spatio-temporal montages evoking sensuous, associative, and
sometimes hallucinatory worlds brought forth by movement as the
driving force. Key to their approach to movement is what they call the
intuitive body, with which they refer to bodies as curious, vulnerable
presences, capable of generating movement and multilayered meanings
originating from physical impulses. Le Corps du Ballet is about the corps
de ballet in its double meaning, referring both to the group of dancers
not performing solo, and to the balletic body as produced by practices
of selection, training, (not) eating and behaving (including the effects of
the structures of power, gender, race and ability defining ballet
training). Greco and Scholten show the emergence of new dancing
selves that take the liberty of “assuming” beyond the categories and
binaries defining and naturalizing what body can perform what
movement in what way.
Keywords: Rethinking Ballet; Bodies of Ideas; Intuitive Bodies;
Theatricality; Movement; Rhythm; Movement Creation; Montage;
Danceality
Estado Vegetal by Manuela Infante (Chap. 11) is a one-person show
inspired by the work of plant philosopher Michael Marder and plant
neurologist Stefano Mancuso, as well as various other posthumanist
and new materialist thinkers. The performance is the outcome of
Infante’s attempt at writing a play that would not merely be about
plants but written according to plant-logic. To this end, she explored,
together with performer Marcela Salinas and others, how to imitate
aspects of plant behavior in their approach to acting, scenography, Light
design, and the development of text and narrative. For Infante, theatre
is a laboratory for embodied philosophy making. Important concern is
what she describes as the “decolonization of the theatrical practices
from anthropocentrism.” Humor and music play an important role in
how Estado Vegetal engages the audience and seduces them into
considering serious themes and fundamental questions.
 Keywords: Playwriting; Posthumanism; Plant Logic; Embodied
Philosophy; Rhythm; Choreographic Thinking; Metaphors We Live By
Conversations (at the end of the world) (Chap. 12) by Kris Verdonck
is a performance for five performers (one of them being a pianist), 120
cubic meters of small Styrofoam balls, and a grand piano. Texts are by
Daniil Kharms (1905–1942), a Russian absurdist writer, poet, and
dramatist. Kris Verdonck’s creations show how theatrical performance
can be used to explore, make experiential, and reflect upon worlds in
which humans are no longer at the center, and how this affects human
notions of self and agency. This posthuman perspective on the human
condition is also reflected in Verdonck’s approach to making theatre, in
which creation is not a matter of externalizing ideas conceived by
autonomous creators but the result of engaging with and listening to
the materials one works with and involves acknowledging the agency of
these materials and of the others involved.
Keywords: Landscape Stage; Posthumanism; Absurdism; Thought-
Apparatus; Assumé; Scenography; Non-Human Actors; Death of
Character; Historical Avant-Garde
Phobiarama by Dries Verhoeven (Chap. 13) is a performance-
installation that looks like a haunted house in which audiences take a
45-minute ride. The title Phobiarama serves as an indication of how
this haunted house approaches fears as phobia, i.e. as anxiety disorders
that are not justified by, or in proportion to, actual threats. The
construction of the performance aims to trigger fears (by means of the
compilation of media messages and other sounds, clever use of the
CCTV system, and the performers as projection screen for different
types of fears) while also inciting reflection on these fears and the
mechanisms behind the ways in which they are triggered. Phobiarama
thus makes tangible how ways of looking are haunted by politics of fear,
and confronts audiences with their own un-reflected, intuitive,
affective, and associative reactions.
Keywords: Performance-Installation; Soundscape; Public Space;
Culture of Fear; Non-Professional Performers; Experience;
Spectatorship; Scenography; Thought-Apparatus; The Gaze
All Inclusive by Julian Hetzel (Chap. 14) takes the audience on an
imaginary tour through an exhibition of contemporary art together
with a group of refugees. The performance confronts actual refugees
with artworks that aestheticize and capitalize on violence and
destruction, and shows how well-meant attempts at inclusivity easily
turn into neo-colonial imposition of ideas and perspectives. The
audience is put in the uncomfortable position of witnessing this
confrontation. Hetzel’s works consciously and intentionally blur the
boundaries between theatre and reality and draw attention to human
implicatedness: to how human behavior, perception, and thinking take
shape from within economic systems, culture, history, and networks of
symbolic meanings and associations, and how this raises questions
about agency and responsibility.
Keywords: Non-Professional Performers; Spectatorship;
Focalization; Neo-Colonialism; Aesthetization of Violence; Institutional
Criticism; Human Implicatedness
WAR (Ein Kriegstanz) by Amanda Piñ a (Chap. 15) is a performance
about making, and showing dance, and about how dance is evaluated.
The performance is a staging of a staging of what, at first, looks like a
demonstration of traditional dances but appears to be a series of newly
created works that combine aspects of traditional dance from Easter
Island with new components like different kinds of music, costumes,
texts, philosophical insights, and new approaches to movement. The
performance is an example of the research-based character of Piñ a’s
artistic practice and how she uses performance as a means to draw
attention to the colonial gaze haunting ways of looking at, evaluating,
and understanding non-Western dances. WAR (Ein Kriegstanz) is based
on research into dance practices at Easter Island and was created in
collaboration with dancer and choreographer Pasqual Pakarati.
Keywords: Contemporary Dance; Hoko; Colonial Gaze;
Eurocentrism; Spectatorship; Ethnography; Bodies of Ideas; Expository
Gestures
Kamp by collective Hotel Modern (Chap. 16) is a reenactment of a
night and a day and a night in concentration camp Auschwitz, using a
stage-wide scale model and thousands of little puppets. Characteristic
of much of Hotel Modern’s work is the use of scale models and video for
what they describe as live animation: they use small video cameras to
film how they animate little puppets and other non-human performers
on stage and in front of the audience. What is filmed is simultaneously
projected on large screens. In Kamp they use this approach to engage
with the traumatic history of Auschwitz. An important motivation for
creating Kamp was the desire to understand what must have happened
in the concentration camps, and use theatrical performance to relate to
what happened there.
Keywords: Live-Animation; Scale-Models; Non-Human Performers;
Reenactment; Landscape Stage; Witnessing
SPEAK! by Sanja Mitrović (Chap. 17) uses the format of a contest to
engage the audience in reflection about political speeches and what
they do to their audiences. Two performers, a woman and a man,
compete for the audience’s favor, using excerpts from famous political
speeches. With this simple, yet very effective, construction, SPEAK!
draws attention to the role of speeches and other public expressions in
the modes of operating of democratic systems, and to the role of the
audience/voters within these systems. SPEAK! is characteristic of how
Mitrović’s creations work with historical materials and explore
relationships between these materials, contemporary performers, and
audiences. She describes this approach as “documentary
choreography.” Choreography thus describes the performance that
results from the negotiation between a historical document and the one
who has to present or perform it.
Keywords: Political Speeches; Spectatorship; Contest;
Documentary Choreography; Interactive Performance; Democratic
Politics; Concept; Archival Materials
I am LGB by the collective LGB Society of Mind (Chap. 18) is a large-
scale site-specific participatory performance that combines elements of
a school system with that of a game show and a social experiment to
raise questions about education, indoctrination, and the history of
performance art in Singapore. The performance cleverly exploits the
differences and tensions between the three to create an atmosphere of
indeterminacy, ambiguity, and uncertainty. The project was initiated by
Loo Zihan, an artist and academic working at the intersections of
critical theory, performance, and the moving-image. He uses
performance to explore how historical materials may open up
alternative histories as well as futures, and how transgenerational
transmission of knowledge happens. His works bring to life often
forgotten or repressed histories in ways that allow audiences to relate
experientially to these histories and the social forces underlying them.
 Keywords: Participatory Performance; Site-Specific; Theatre of
Experience; Archival Materials; History of Performance Art; Spect-
Actors; Infrastructural Logic; Reenactment; Alternative Histories;
Scenographics; Dramaturgy of Everyday Life

References
Bleeker, Maaike (2015). Thinking No-One’s Thought in: Dance Dramaturgy. Modes of
Agency, Awareness and Engagement edited by Pil Hansen and Darcey Callison,
Basingstoke: Palgrave, 67-83.

Bourdieu, Pierre. 1977 [1972]. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge and New
York: Cambridge University Press.

De Certeau, Michel. 1984 [1980]. The Practice of Everyday Life. trans. Steven Rendall,
Berkeley: University of California Press.

Eckersall, Peter. 2006. Towards and Expanded Dramaturgical Practice. A Report on

“The Dramaturgy and Cultural Intervention Project.” Theatre Research International
31(3): 283–297. doi:https://​doi.​org/​10.​1017/​S030788330600224​0

Fuchs, Elinor. 2004. EF’s Visit to a Small Planet. Some Questions to Ask a Play.
Theater 34 (2): 4-9.

Georgelou, Konstantina, Efrosini Protopapa and Danae Theodoridou (eds.) 2017. The
Practice of Dramaturgy. Working on Actions in Performance. Amsterdam: Antennae
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Haraway, Donna. 2016. Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene.
Durham: Duke University Press.
[Crossref]

Heathfield, Adrian. 2016. Dramaturgy without a Dramaturg. The Theatre Times.

https://​thetheatretimes.​c om/​dramaturgy-without-a-dramaturg/​Accessed 31-10-
2020.

Ingold, Tim. 2013. Making: Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture. New York
and London: Routledge.
[Crossref]

Lehmann, Hans-Thies and Patrick Primavesi. 2009. Dramaturgy on Shifting Grounds.

Performance Research 14 (3): 3-6 D O I : 1 0 . 1 0 8 0 / 1 3 5 2 8 1 6 0 9 0 3 5 1 9 4 6 8
Luckhurst, Mary. 2006. Dramaturgy: A Revolution in the Theatre. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
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Proehl, Geoffrey S. with DD Kugler, Mark Lamos, and Michael Lupu. 2008. Toward a
Dramaturgical Sensibility: Landscape and Journey. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson
University Press.

Trencsényi, Katalin. 2015. Dramaturgy in the Making. A User’s Guide for Theatre
Practitioners. London: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama.

Trencsényi, Katalin and Bernadette Cochrane. 2014. New Dramaturgy. International

Perspectives on Theory and Practice. London: Bloomsbury.

Turner, Cathy and Synne Behrndt. 2007. Dramaturgy and Performance. Basingstoke:
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Van Kerkhoven, Marianne and Anoek Nuyens. 2012. Listen to the Bloody Machine.
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International Theatre & Film Books.

Footnotes
1 Katalin Trencsényi and Bernadette Cochrane, in their New Dramaturgy:
International Perspectives on Theory and Practice (2014), observe that “new
dramaturgy does not replace traditional dramaturgy: it incorporates it into a much
wider paradigm” (10). With “traditional dramaturgy” they refer to dramaturgy as it is
historically associated with Aristotelian poetics and understood as an attribute of
dramatic text (10). My understanding of what new dramaturgy brought about in
terms of a paradigm shift relates to, but also differs from, theirs in how it draws
attention to the fact that the developments referred to as new dramaturgy not
merely expand dramaturgical practice beyond its roots in Aristotelian poetics and
theatre based on dramatic texts (and thus integrates these ways of understanding
dramaturgy in a wider paradigm) but, more than that, involve a transformation of the
very understanding of dramaturgy (including dramaturgy for text-based theatre)
from this expanded perspective.
2 The only exception is Kamp, created in 2005 and still on repertoire at the moment
of writing.
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