12 research outputs found
âA Chain of Creation, Continuation, Continuityââ: Feminist dramaturgy and the matter of the sea
This article considers what remnants of the imaginary link established between the
maternal and the sea might still be useful in feminist performance practice and theory.
It does so by discussing a practice-as-research experiment that adapted strategies from
HĂ©lĂšne Cixousâs Ă©criture fĂ©minineâwhich performs a liquification of ordering
structures in prose writingâinto a dramaturgical form based on the logic of waves.
The article goes on to suggest that such a dramaturgy recasts creation as a fluid state
of becoming ex tempore, resisting the masculine-connoted vision of creation as an act
of the singular genius ex nihilo. It further argues that drawing on a non-human
phenomenon, the sea, to describe and theorise a type of dramaturgical composition
might be read as a twofold attempt on the hegemony of patriarchal culture: through its
associative link with the maternal body the creative potential of the feminine is
revalued while at the same time the generative capacity of the non-human is
recognised via Gaston Bachelardâs notion of the material imagination. The article
concludes by proposing that the sea, together with its analogic association to the
maternal, can be instated as a figure that gives temporary shape to an alternative
vision of cultural production