(Syn)aesthetics: Redefining Visceral Performance

235 Pages·2009·2.14 MB·English

by  Josephine Machon (auth.)

(Syn)aesthetics
Also by Josephine Machon
PERFORMANCE AND TECHNOLOGY:
Practices of Virtual Embodiment and Interactivity
(co-edited with Susan Broadhurst)
(Syn)aesthetics
Redefining Visceral Performance
Josephine Machon
© Josephine Machon 2009
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2009 978-0-230-22127-2
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First published 2009 by
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ISBN 978-1-349-30678-7 ISBN 978-0-230-23695-0 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9780230236950
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For Andrew
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Contents
List of Figures x
Acknowledgements xii
Notes on Interview Contributors xiii
Epigraph xviii
Introduction: Redefining Visceral Performance 1
Part 1
1.1 Defining (Syn)aesthetics 13
Synaesthesia – defining the parameters of (syn)aesthetics 15
Engaging sense with sense 16
From the neurological to the theatrical 19
Imagination, the ineffable and embodied knowledge 21
Live performance 24
Tracing a feminized style 26
I nterdisciplinary, intercultural practice and
the (syn)aesthetic hybrid 29
‘New Writing’ and the visceral-verbal 31
Demanding a new discourse 32
1.2 Connecting Theories 34
Nietzsche’s Dionysian 35
T he Russian Formalists – Dionysian
disruptions in linguistic play 37
Barthes – jouissance and pleasurable texts 39
Kristeva’s semiotic chora and genotext 40
Cixous and Irigaray – écriture féminine 42
A rtaud – disturbance and sensation in
the Theatre of Cruelty 44
N ovarina – corporeality and carnage in
the Theatre of the Ears 46
B arker – imagination and disturbance in
the Theatre of Catastrophe 48
vii
viii Contents
B roadhurst and the liminal – touching
the edge of the possible 50
(Syn)aesthetics – connecting theories 52
1.3 (Syn)aesthetics in Practice 54
The (syn)aesthetic hybrid – a ‘total’ (syn)aesthetic 55
The performing body and the (syn)aesthetic style 62
Disturbing speech patterns – the visceral-verbal playtext 69
(Syn)aesthetics – redefining visceral performance 80
Part 2
Introduction: A (Syn)aesthetic Exchange 85
2.1 Felix Barrett and Maxine Doyle of Punchdrunk:
In the Prae-sens of Body and Space –
The (Syn)aesthetics of Site-Sympathetic Work 89
2.2 Lizzie Clachan and David Rosenberg of
Shunt Theatre Collective: A Door into
Another World – the Audience and Hybridity 100
2.3 A kram Khan: The Mathematics of
Sensation – the Body as Site/Sight/Cite and Source 112
2.4 M arisa Carnesky: Trapping the Audience in
the Fantasy – Instinct, the Body and
the Magic of the Experiential 124
2.5 Naomi Wallace and Kwame Kwei-Armah: Desire,
the Body and Transgressive Acts of Playwriting –
on Writing and Directing Things of Dry Hours 132
2.6 Linda Bassett: Bypassing the Logical –
Performing Churchill’s Far Away 144
2.7 Jo McInnes: A Text That Demands to
Be Played With – Performing Kane’s 4.48 Psychosis 153
2.8 Graeae’s Jenny Sealey and Playwright Glyn Cannon:
Seeing Words and (Dis)Comfort Zones – the Fusion of
Bodies, Text and Technology in On Blindness 160
2.9 Sara Giddens and Simon Jones of Bodies in Flight:
The In-Betweens, Where Flesh Utters and Words Move –
on Flesh, Text, Space and Technologies 172
Contents ix
2.10 Leslie Hill and Helen Paris of Curious:
Embodied Intimacies – On (the) Scent,
Memory and the Visceral-Virtual 184
Notes 197
Bibliography 205
Index 217