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Collabowrighting the hyper(play)text: a postdramatic digital poetics
The aim of this research is to exhibit how literary playtexts can evoke multisensory trends prevalent in 21st century theatre. In order to do so, it explores a range of practical forms and theoretical contexts for creating
participatory, site-specific and immersive theatre. With reference to literary theory, specifically to semiotics, reader-response theory, postmodernism and deconstruction, it attempts to revise dramatic theory established by Aristotle’s Poetics. Considering Gertrude Stein’s essay, Plays (1935), and relevant trends in theatre and performance, shaped by space, technology and the everchanging role of the audience member, a postdramatic poetics emerges from which to analyze the plays of Mac Wellman and Suzan-Lori Parks. Distinguishing the two textual lives of a play as the performance playtext and
the literary playtext, it examines the conventions of the printed literary playtext, with reference to models of practice that radicalize the play form, including
works by Mabou Mines, The Living Theatre and Fiona Templeton. The arguments of this practice-led Ph.D. developed out of direct engagement with the practice project, which explores the multisensory potential of written language when combined with hypermedia. The written thesis traces the development process of a new play, Rumi High, which is presented digitally as
a ‘hyper(play)text,’ accessible through the Internet at www.RumiHigh.org. Here, ‘playwrighting’ practice is expanded spatially, collaboratively and textually.
Plays are built, designed and crafted with many layers of meaning that explore both linguistic and graphic modes of poetic expression. The hyper(play)text of Rumi High establishes playwrighting practice as curatorial, where performance and literary playtexts are in a reciprocal relationship. This thesis argues that digital writing and reading spaces enable new approaches to expressing the
many languages of performance, while expanding the collaborative network that produces the work. It questions how participatory forms of immersive and
site-specific theatre can be presented as interactive literary playtexts, which enable the reader to have a multisensory experience. Through a reflection on
process and an evaluation of the practice project, this thesis problematizes notions of authorship and text
Titus Anonymous: fragments of...
Welcome to TITUS ANONYMOUS where ‘Rome is Rome is a fiction is Rome.’ During the 2017-18 academic year, Drama students at the University of Northampton (UK) were tasked with deconstructing Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus in a collaborative process with their tutors, who modelled their own creative and professional practices as theatre-makers. The students were challenged with the need to find contemporary relevance and resonance in this early Shakespeare work, which many scholars argue is the bard’s most flawed text. Rossi, who led the process, argues that Titus is the work of a young practitioner experimenting with the form of the revenge tragedy, and establishes ground for absurdist theatre, which wouldn’t take shape until centuries later. The term-long exploration and reconstruction of the text led to our need to grapple with the racist language exchanged between Shakespeare’s Romans and Goths in light of the Black Lives Matter movement; and overt misogyny in both language and action; no longer norms but points of critical debate through the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements. To add to the complexity of this process; student learning around professional practices of theatre-making was framed by an experimentation in DIY Theatre aesthetics, working with a limited budget but a wealth of space, a robust costume, props and set stock, and the power of our collective imagination. This text represents ‘fragments of’ the process, including the final script, production design details, reflective essays by students, and introductory essays by Drama tutors, Sarah Mullan and Rory O’Neill, writing from their unique perspective in their roles as Dramaturg and Actor, respectively. These fragments aim to give a sense of the hybridized world that was inspired by the Wild West, Ancient Rome, pop culture and today’s political landscape; while hopefully providing interpretive space for future theatre-makers to develop their own production concept