Oceanic Geographies
2016; Routledge; Volume: 21; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/13528165.2016.1162506
ISSN1469-9990
Autores Tópico(s)Geographies of human-animal interactions
ResumoCaridad Svich describes The Orphan Sea as ‘a waterscape play’. She wrote the piece and I directed its world premiere at the University of Missouri during the autumn of 2014. Then, during the summer of 2015, I directed and performed in a staged, telematic reading of the play as part of the North Atlantic cluster of the Performance Studies international (PSi) ‘Fluid States’ conference. The theme of the meeting was ‘telematic presence’. Events were convened simultaneously in Copenhagen (Denmark), Nuuk (Greenland) and Tórshavn (Faroe Islands). Svich’s play uses characters drawn from Homer’s The Odyssey and the metaphor of a sea that is orphaned to provide a space upon which to discuss a wide variety of issues—the environment, migration and the sense of nausea brought on by the contemporary trappings of technology. Through this experience, I have come to understand Svich’s approach to theatre as a kind of ‘liquid dramaturgy’: fluid in its structure, form, content and production. The script is poetic and choral, and does not contain delineations of lines. Tides of energy ebb and return, and waves of emotion oscillate from peak to nadir. Topics coexist layer upon layer, not as the strata of rock in a landscape, but as thermoclines in the depths of a waterscape. Themes are deliberated within the language of the play, but are also brought to contemplation through visual dream signs, inventing a new kind of dramaturgical language. Beyond these elements of fluidity, Svich’s work calls out for an activist response to global emergencies brought on by the destruction of the environment, humanitarian concerns of border crossings and immigration and questions of the sustainability of technological ‘progress’. As artists and scholars, we need to go beyond performance strategies fixed in the terrestrial condensation of ‘presence’. Our responses to these problems must be fluid.
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