The Soft Animal of Your Body: Conversation with Mette Aakjær

The Soft Animal of your body af Thomas Rosendal Nielsen er en samtale med performancekunstneren Mette Aakjær, leder af Wunderland. Samtalen omhandler eksperimenter med facilitering af “radical physical and sensory audience participation” (Wunderland, 2016)

Theatrical Complicity as a Medium of Emancipation

How do we find a solution when we ourselves are the problem? This is the question posed by two contemporary performances that frame the spectator as an accomplice in the exploitation and representation of suffering and violence in a globalized and mediatized world: Sálo (2010), based on Pier Paolo Passolini’s film by the same name (1975), by the Danish performance group SIGNA in cooperation with Teater Republique; and the Royal Court Theatre’s production of Tim Crouch’s The Author (2009), co-directed by Karl James and a smith. By applying the systems theory of Niklas Luhmann, the two performances are analysed and compared as elaborately structured games of observation, where the spectators are made to observe their own acts of spectating as complicity in the reproduction of violence caused by theatrical representation. Jaques Rancière’s paradox of the spectator and Josette Féral’s concept of theatricality are re-described in a systems theoretical perspective in order to show how the theatrical attribution of guilt to the spectator can work as a medium of emancipation. The explication of the different dramaturgies makes it possible to distinguish between how self-righteous, self-examining, progressive and ‘tragicist’ conceptions of emancipation are given form in different ways and measures in the two performances. In this way, the article aims to contribute to the qualification and expansion of a critical discourse on participatory theatre and performance beneath the loosely defined horizon of a modern theatre of emancipation

Det Røde Rum: Det gode menneske fra Sezuan

Die Ware Liebe: om kapitalismekritik og godhed på kredit. En anmeldelse af Elisa Kragerups iscenesættelse af dramaet af Bertolt Brechts på Det Kongelige Teater

Poetologisk analyse: Begrebslige og metodiske overvejelser

In many dictionaries, poetics is defined as “the branch of knowledge that deals with the techniques of poetry” or “the aspect of literary criticism that deals with poetry” (e.g. Oxford English Dictionary, accessed 25.9.2020). Within a context of dramaturgy studies, the word is used almost synonymously with the artistic ideology or view of art of the artist (playwright, director, performer etc.) or of the production process, creative method, training regime or institutional framework of theatre and performance. This essay reflects on the complex of problems implied in the concept of poetics, and it suggests a range of research questions to the analysis of poetics in order to delineate and focus the development and dialogue of such studies, especially within the field of dramaturgy

Interaktivitetsbegreber

Nielsen presents a range of interactivity definitions from the areas of communication and media studies and discusses their heuristic implications for a dramaturgical thinking of interactivity. In conclusion, Nielsen suggests a basic definition of interactivity from the perspective of systems theory