In case you want to know the fun times we have in academic conferences, here's the abstract for my paper (and now you can understand after a day of such things, why I would be tired...and I haven't even given my paper yet...):
Whilst
more overtly political theatre, in the epic tradition, concerns itself with how
power operates in the realm of what can be seen and understood in a rational,
materialist form, the postdramatic theatre, in the way it operates in my own
and other theatre companies identified by Lehmann, opens a door into the
psychic backstage of thought, experience and pre-existing social
structures. I will discuss how engaging with the way the gears of the
machine are constructed, even more so than the visible parts of the machine,
can be a political act.
I
will propose a politically and philosophically-engaged theatrical practice that
tessellates the Brechtian and Artaudian traditions, wherein the undermining of
the meaning-making machinery with its implicit questioning of universalizing
language structures does not have to be done only by an appeal to bodily
experience, but can engage that meaning-making machinery itself.
An
example given will be Apocryphal Theatre's use of 'the grid', which is engaged
to activate language, gesture, objects and the performance space itself in a
way that owes a debt to the lineage of Artaud, Cage, Burroughs/Gysin and
Foreman but for the purposes of engaging such overtly political 'grids' as
gender, class, religion and race, in a way that owes a debt to the Brecht,
Beck/Malina, Chaikin and Gómez-Peña traditions.
good-night!
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