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Dramaturgies of the Body: Staging Stranger-Fetishism in a Cosmopolitan Solo Performance

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Performance, Subjectivity, Cosmopolitanism

Abstract

This chapter examines an autobiographical solo performance in its methodologies of the cosmopolitan encounter that takes place within the body of a single performer and in a series of performative simulacra, created by other bodies, objects, and video projections on stage. My principal focus is the materiality of the actor’s body, the ways the performer’s living experiences of displacement mark their acting work. The second focus of analysis is the potential political impact such a performance can produce on its audiences.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Internal Terrains , written and performed by Natasha Davis, was developed in collaboration with Bob Karper (sound), Branislava Kuburović (written documentation), Elisa Gallo-Rosso (objects), Lucy Cash (movement), and Marty Langthorne (lights). It was commissioned by the Chelsea Theatre, London, the Colchester Arts Centre, Refugee Week UK, and Live Collision, Dublin, and funded by the Arts Council England, Hosking Houses Trust, and Theatre Studies at the University of Warwick. Its first public presentation took place at the Colchester Arts Centre on February 6, 2013.

  2. 2.

    The Fish Eyes Trilogy premiered at the Cultch, Vancouver, on January 31, 2015. Its first part Fish Eyes was presented for the first time at the André Pagé Studio at the National Theatre School of Canada in January 2004 and was directed by Kate Schlemmer. It officially premiered at Theatre Passe Muraille, Toronto, in October 2005 with Anita Majumdar, as its choreographer and actor, and Gregory David Prest as its director and dramaturg. Boys with Cars—its second part—was commissioned and developed by Nightswimming, under the patronage and directing of Brian Quirt. Its third part—Let Me Borrow That Top—was co-commissioned by Nightswimming and The Banff Centre. The national tour of the trilogy included the Great Canadian Theatre Company in Ottawa, where I saw it in 2014, the PuSh International Performing Festival (Vancouver), the Aga Khan Museum (Toronto), the Belfry Theatre (Victoria), and The Banff Centre.

  3. 3.

    Written, directed, and performed by Mouawad, Inflammation du verbe vivre premiered on June 28, 2015, in Mons. It features Dimitris Kranias on video, with Charlotte Farcet as its dramaturg, Emmanuel Clolus as set designer, Michel Maurer as sound maker, and Mouawad and Dominique Daviet’s video. In 2016, Inflammation du verbe vivre received the Prix littéraire du Gouverneur Général, Canada. I saw Inflammation du verbe vivre in Paris in the summer of 2016.

  4. 4.

    A student of the Kathak, Khan performed in Peter Brook’s Mahâbhârata. Later he created highly experimental solo and ensemble work that would draw his viewers’ attention to the hybrid language of dance as invented by Khan himself, a language in which traditional elements of Indian dance would coexist and dialogue with many components of Western performance. To enrich his vocabulary, Akram Khan employed dramatic narrative and humour, approximating in his style the so-called Tanztheater developed by the German choreographer Pina Bausch.

  5. 5.

    Mahalia Golnosh Tahririha notes that ‘the spelling of this specific style of dance often differs between combinations of its two composite parts “Bharata” and “Natyam”, translated literally from the Sanskrit as “Bharata’s dance”, and seen either as one word or two’ (2017, 41). The published version of the play favours this spelling—bharatanatyam—and so it will be used here as well.

  6. 6.

    I briefly discussed this phenomenon in Chap. 2, in conjunction to Mani Soleymanlou’s multilingual solo performances.

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  1. University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Canada

    Yana Meerzon

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  1. Yana Meerzon
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Meerzon, Y. (2020). Dramaturgies of the Body: Staging Stranger-Fetishism in a Cosmopolitan Solo Performance. In: Performance, Subjectivity, Cosmopolitanism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41410-8_4

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