Performance Affects: Applied Theatre and the End of Effect

216 Pages·2009·1.52 MB·English

by  James Thompson

Performance Affects
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Also By James Thompson
PRISON THEATRE: Perspectives and Practices (editor)
DRAMA WORKSHOPS FOR ANGER MANAGEMENT AND
OFFENDING BEHAVIOUR
APPLIED THEATRE: Bewilderment and Beyond
DIGGING UP STORIES: Applied Theatre, Performance and War
PERFORMANCE IN PLACE OF WAR (co-authored with Jenny Hughes and
Michael Balfour)
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Performance Affects
Applied Theatre and the End of Effect
James Thompson
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© James Thompson 2009
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First published 2009 by
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To Bridget and Molly, with love
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Contents
Acknowledgements ix
Introduction: Hedonism Is a Bunker 1
Applied theatre 3
The end of effect 4
Affects 7
Performance 7
From Part I to Part II – from effect to affect 8
Part I The End of Effect
1 Incidents of Cutting and Chopping 15
An international incident 19
A showpiece 25
Competing narratives and the public meets the private 31
Applied theatre as strategy or tactic? 34
Making a perruque 39
Postscript 41
2 The End of the Story? 43
Stone 1 47
Stone 2 48
Trauma – ‘a cut into the soul’ 49
A-historical and a-cultural trauma 52
The imperative to tell 56
Trauma, the ‘importance of storytelling’ and
the connections to theatre 60
The ‘failure of silence’ 66
In defence of silence (and many other forms of expression) 68
An ethnography of performance in crisis 71
Conclusion 75
3 Academic Scriptwriters and Bodily Affects 78
Rwanda performed 80
Re-imagining projects 84
The first slips – from Abiyunze to prison 85
vii
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viii Contents
A change of key – memorials 89
Suspended memory – Murambi 90
Strategic memory – Kigali Memorial Centre 97
Memory theatres 101
Back to the protean bodies 104
Towards Part II 111
Part II Performance Affects
4 Performance Affects: A Kind of Triumph 115
From effects to affects 116
Defining affect 119
Theories of affect 120
Affects and the political 125
Theatre, performance and affect 128
Affect and method 132
Conclusion: Back to bewilderment 134
5 The Call of Beauty: An Affective Invitation 136
Beauty makes a comeback 138
A troublesome term 140
Performances of pain 146
So is beauty good? 149
Limiting the ephemeral 156
Conclusion: Beholder bias 158
6 About Face: Disturbing the Fabric of the Sensible 160
Facing the other 161
Political affects 165
Face to face in performance 171
The fabric of the sensible 173
Conclusion: Political passion 176
Conclusion: Let them slide 178
The end of the story? 182
Notes 184
Bibliography 190
Index 199
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank all colleagues who worked on the In Place of War
project. They are Michael Balfour, Ananda Breed, Ruth Daniel, Rachel
Finn, Charlotte Hennessy, Jenny Hughes and Alison Jeffers. A particular
thanks to Rachel for providing invaluable support on seeking permis-
sions in the last stages of preparing the manuscript and Jenny who made
the whole project possible. Colleagues in the School of Arts Histories
and Cultures and especially those in Drama have provided encourage-
ment to all the Applied Theatre work in the University of Manchester.
It is their enthusiasm that makes working in the city so enjoyable and
rewarding. A particular thanks to Viv Gardner, Tony Jackson, Johannes
Sjöberg and a massive thank you to Maggie Gale – her comments on
many different stages of this book have helped hugely.
I am also indebted to colleagues in the broader applied theatre/drama/
performance field whose openness and warmth make them great friends
and collaborators. Thanks always to Paul Heritage, who made me under-
stand what working in a University could be, and to Bill McDonnell,
whose insights on questions of ethics and politics have been vital for
this area of practice. Thanks to David Grant for spirited encouragement
of all applied theatre endeavours and particular appreciation to Helen
Nicholson, who shares a passion for practice and research in this area
and is an inspiration to all of us who continue to strive to create a place
for applied drama/theatre inside universities.
I would also like to thank the artists whose work has inspired a num-
ber of the debates and ideas that exist in these pages. There are many
who show incredible tenacity to make beautiful work happen in the
most surprising contexts. Ruwanthie de Chickera continues to amaze in
her capacity to create theatre projects in the testing world of present-day
Sri Lanka, and Janine Waters continues to amaze in her capacity to cre-
ate theatre projects in the testing world of present-day Manchester: two
artists who in different ways – perhaps unknowingly – shaped many of
the key concerns of this book.
Thank you to all MA Applied Theatre students at the University of
Manchester and all PhD students past and present. Emilie Brothers,
Kat Low, Ranjit Khutan and Zoe Zontou demonstrate the future health
of a participatory and progressive performance practice. Performance
Affects was completed while I was on research leave funded by the Arts
ix
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