As a language play, SPEECH/ACT is a piece of performative writing (and writing for performance) exploring linguistic performativity. It personifies speech and action to stage a dialogue playfully testing the limits of J. L. Austin’s famous claim in How to Do Things with Words (1955) that performative utterances cannot be “felicitous” within the theatre. As the character ACT contentiously notes in a footnote to Act III: “Though Austin famously asserted that theatrical utterances are necessarily ‘hollow’ or ‘void’ as performatives, this notion has been vigorously contested by theatre and performance theorists for half a century.” My text’s humorous yet melancholic meditation on hollowness, emptiness, and the void—in relation to speech acts and linguistic performativity in particular, but also climate change and existential dread more broadly—moves across stylistic, tonal, affective, and structural registers to test the edges of narrative description and performative action. In the indicative, imperative, and subjunctive moods, my script grammatically and syntactically stages speech and action as ambivalently entwined amidst a backdrop of continuously shifting theatrical, poetic, and philosophical contexts. Ultimately, it invites the reader to contemplate the criteria for “felicitous” performative utterances within a dematerialized theatre of the mind.
The essay’s title question (“Is it necessary?”) offers a kind of manifesto for thinking through the appeal of and to dramaturgy in performance making, exploring conditions of translation in which this question may be explored in its manifold potential. Informed by my own teaching experience, this concern is both practical and conceptual, reflecting on the translatability of the very word, dramaturgy, where the resonance of the Greek—in its vernacular assimilation—lends a canonical aura to its (being) thought. Distinct from the Greek philosophical resource in European languages, how might this resonance change when translation also concerns thinking through the theme of potential with a Chinese source such as the Tao Te Ching? It is in this context that the question of necessity in my title broaches that of its own potential in (and as) the work of translation.
This article introduces inter-embodied dramaturgies as a theoretical and practical framework for understanding interrelational dynamics in participatory performance practices. Drawing on the Practice-as-Research (PaR) project From Haptic Deprivation to Haptic Possibilities, the discussion centres on Are We Still in Touch?, a case study investigating the convergence of participatory dynamics in workshop and performance formats. The work invites participants to explore self-directed touch as a method for embodied presence, relational dynamics, and inquiry, even in the absence of physical contact with others. Grounded in Merleau-Ponty’s fleshy intersubjectivity, refined by Sarah Ahmed and Jackie Stacey’s inter-embodied differentiation, and Ahmed’s ethics of encounters, the proposed methodology aims to foster ethical awareness through embodied attention in encountering the self and, by extension, others. In dialogue with Maaike Bleeker’s “doing dramaturgy” and Vida Midgelow’s “dramaturgical consciousness”, inter-embodied dramaturgies position embodiment as dynamic relationality, differentiation, responsiveness, and care, expanding the roles of performer-facilitator and participants as co-creators. By unpacking performative facilitation and somatically inspired witnessing methods alongside participants’ contributions, this project proposes the potential of self-directed touch in cultivating empathy, inclusivity, and social change. The article concludes by outlining wider applications of inter-embodied dramaturgies within and beyond performance contexts, proposing a praxis of being-with others differently.
I used to see the bleeding wound in performance art as a conduit that transforms and transfers a sense of pain. Yet, developing this idea further via Jean Baudrillard’s reformulation of reality and Ludwig Wittgenstein’s conception of pain, I contend in this article that the act of wounding—whether performed on skin or latex—is also where ethical and philosophical dialogues take place. Drawing on performances by SUKA OFF, VestAndPage, and Franko B, I argue that wounds in these works do not reveal trauma or inner pain but instead operate as sites of painful (hyper)reality where pain is enacted, not expressed, and where the distinction between real and simulated sensation collapses. Taking a different route from Peggy Phelan, who theorizes the ungraspable depth of vision, love, and subjectivity, I shift attention from the wound as a vanishing point of interiority to its emergence as a surface that seduces, generates affect and relational force. In these performances, wound becomes a situation where pain is encountered through a reversible operation and creative enactment—a cut that realizes pain through appearance rather than through reference to an autonomous suffering subject. The wound, like the proposition “to” in Luce Irigaray’s phrasing “I love to you,” sustains an intersubjective relation that resists possessive logic. Understanding Irigaray’s approach through the lens of Baudrillard’s theory of seduction, the wounded surface, as a seductive plane of simulation, gains an ethical dimension, seducing both performer and audience into uncertain reciprocity. Far from indexing hidden depth, torn latex and dripping blood mobilize affect at the level of surface, compelling response without grounding it in trauma. From this perspective, a wound is not merely a conduit but an ethical relation calling for mutual engagement.
As a language play, SPEECH/ACT is a piece of performative writing (and writing for performance) exploring linguistic performativity. It personifies speech and action to stage a dialogue playfully testing the limits of J. L. Austin’s famous claim in How to Do Things with Words (1955) that performative utterances cannot be “felicitous” within the theatre. As the character ACT contentiously notes in a footnote to Act III: “Though Austin famously asserted that theatrical utterances are necessarily ‘hollow’ or ‘void’ as performatives, this notion has been vigorously contested by theatre and performance theorists for half a century.” My text’s humorous yet melancholic meditation on hollowness, emptiness, and the void—in relation to speech acts and linguistic performativity in particular, but also climate change and existential dread more broadly—moves across stylistic, tonal, affective, and structural registers to test the edges of narrative description and performative action. In the indicative, imperative, and subjunctive moods, my script grammatically and syntactically stages speech and action as ambivalently entwined amidst a backdrop of continuously shifting theatrical, poetic, and philosophical contexts. Ultimately, it invites the reader to contemplate the criteria for “felicitous” performative utterances within a dematerialized theatre of the mind.
This contribution is the result of a collaboration between a movement and performance practitioner, researcher and educator; and a dance historian. It takes as a starting point the circumstance of ‘being late’—be it for a dance class or for keeping up with choreographic trends—in order to explore how Western dance practices and theoretical discourses about dance perform, reflect and reinforce power-laden concepts and enactments of spacetime. ‘Not all lateness is the same’ is a dialogue between dance history (conceived as researching, writing, teaching and learning) and dance practice (conceived as learning, doing and watching). We explore these fields as situated within specific epistemic frameworks that define modes, limits, and values of knowledge production. Our engagement with the notion of lateness probes and pushes these frameworks—as well as the wider capitalist frameworks of production in which they are embedded—considering how dominant Eurocentric, modernist dance historiography places dance in a linear temporality of periodisation and a centre/periphery spatialisation, thus creating a hierarchical dynamic whereby peripheralised scenes, practices and even peoples are in a constant state of ‘lateness’ (typified in the 2000s with the expansion of Europe). In an interwoven way, our engagement with lateness simultaneously confronts dominant modes of practicing and teaching dance in the Western tradition which posit lateness—to the dance lesson, to the beat, to the rhythm of expected progress, to the conformity of a synchronised group—as a flaw, despite improvisational and somatic practices’ acknowledgement of, and even desire for, the open-endedness of immanence in the ongoing-ness of doing. Expansions of dance practice, provision (conditions, education, funding, infrastructure) and research, seen for instance through counter arguments to its prohibitive ableism through notions of crip time, have questioned forms of duration but not erased the dominance of setting timeframes of events that define and separate. Investigating these negotiations, we propose that some lateness can be reclaimed in a multitemporal and decentralised epistemic-practical framework.
In an increasingly dystopian world, the notion of ‘utopia’ might seem all but obliterated, yet at the same time, it has become a productive concept for social theory and cultural practice. Joining many utopian revivalists who have addressed utopias as real, critical, minor, or sustainable, this essay makes the case that utopia could also be fruit-fully understood as a matter of performance, or ‘doing differently’—not in the sense of representing let alone feigning, that is, but as bringing something into being. Noting a shared suspicion over both ideas (“only performative,” “just a utopia”), the essay’s two central sections ask how each concept could shed light on the other’s perceived blind spots. Defining performativity as a ‘doing of things,’ first, the very opposition of utopia and reality opens out toward a dramaturgy of real-world utopias at different stages of their performance: people ‘do’ something, and it begins to look like some ‘thing.’ Based on definitions of utopia as a ‘no-place’ that is ‘not-yet,’ second, the ‘realities’ that make it impossible are identified with all those routines that actively take the time, space, and energy from doing anything more aspirational. Hence performative utopias are located in oppositional practices that begin with simply taking the time and making the space.
This piece is written to be performed in front of an audience. It can also be read as a paper, in the way that a play is written to be performed but can also be read as a script. Like a play, it includes stage directions. These are designed to draw attention to the actions of the speaker and the responses of the audience. The piece plays with form in order to explore the role of performance and communication style in our philosophical work. Both content and performance (including staging, sound and imagery) affect how the audience receives and responds to the work. In the course of the piece, I try to show how audience feelings matter in philosophy, and why they are worthy of further examination. Alongside the usual philosophical objectives, I hope to make the audience feel entertained, attentive, and open to new experiences. I aim for us to experience and accomplish something together.
Improvising musicians—especially towards the “freer” or more “experimental” end of the spectrum—are often seen as having the space to do just about anything. But actual improvisations are (also) processes of what enactivist philosophers Hanne De Jaegher and Ezequiel Di Paolo call “participatory sense-making”; musicians’ active choices are both enabled and constrained by musical phenomena, or “autonomous organising principles”, that emerge between them. Here we explore one example of such phenomena: groove. We begin by theorizing groove more broadly as a “grid” and as “participatory discrepancies”, emphasizing how groove shows a form of agency in processes of sense-making. We then analyze sense-making at work in a case of emergent groove performed by the 21-piece experimental improvising ensemble Splitter Orchester. We conclude that collective sense-making is a dynamic process in which individual agents negotiate not only with each other, but also the shared norms and emergent other-than-human processes that they enact.
I argue that, from the performer’s perspective, there are significant differences between analogue and digital instruments. The unique nature of the relationship with digital instruments transforms the performer’s practice in ways that aesthetic discourse has yet to fully address. From a post-phenomenological perspective, I will demonstrate how this relationship differs from that with analogue instruments, prioritizing reading over bodily sensations. In contrast to post-phenomenological accounts, however, I will also argue that the concept of digital instruments as extensions of the human body remains ambiguous and is even further removed from traditional notions of skill and virtuosity. Although this analysis focuses on musical instruments, I emphasize that the argument applies to all artistic practices that engage with digital tools. In this respect, the article will be of interest to theorists of digital media, digital art practitioners, historians, and philosophers of technology.
Initiation ceremonies in theatre education have been met with many assumptions that have been proven to be widely held. Some of these assumptions include views that the ceremonies are heathenistic, unnecessary, and even unprofessional due to their occurrence at the start of theatre training rather than at its conclusion, as is common in other professions. Through an integration of specific African philosophical frameworks, we discover and reveal the profound cultural and pedagogical significance of these rituals and their implications for decolonial practices in theatre. Central to this exploration is the concept of Ubuntu, which emphasises interconnectedness with its maxim “I am because we are.” It positions initiation rituals as a means of integrating new members into a communal fold, as is also obtainable in the African rites of passage, which mark significant transitions across life phases. This has transformative goals similar to those of theatre initiation practices. Additionally, the mytho-ritual framework, rooted in African mythology and prevalent in the works of African playwrights like Wole Soyinka and Femi Osofisan, is examined for its resonance with these initiation practices. This paper highlights how theatre initiation ceremonies offer unique insights that challenge and enrich global performance discourses by situating these indigenous philosophies within the broader context of performance philosophy. The research thus provides a critical lens for reimagining theatre education as a site of decolonial praxis and cultural affirmation.
Through a decolonial feminist lens this paper unpacks the artistic project Sangre de mi sangre (“blood of my blood”). understood as an art protest by the feminist Mexican art collective Colectiva Hilos (“threads collective”). This work situates Sangre de mi sangre in the history of feminist textile artistic interventions, and specifically within those interventions that aim to take the public space in the context of gender violence. The work of Colectiva Hilos is also socio-politically situated in the history of Latin American political artistic interventions in the context of extreme forms of violence such as feminicide (killing of women because of their gender) and forced disappearance, and forms part of a plural and vibrant feminist movement present across the region. The members of the collective seek to repair the social fabric through collective weaving while using this long red textile to make visible the absences of those who have been victims of disappearance and feminicide in Mexico. Violence is an experience that has meant a fracture of our relations. This is also a painful experience. Where there is pain, there is loss and the need for grieving. This work considers decolonial thinker Rolando Vázquez’s (2018) ideas on healing and grieving to unpack the power of repair in the work of Colectiva Hilos.
In this time of political uncertainty, many of us are striving to create ways of being that will generate more care, compassion and equity in the collective. However, it can be hard to sustain this work when we are weighed down by untended grief. In the West, numbing or distracting ourselves when we feel discomfort or grief is very common. How can we reclaim our ability to be with grief, as part of the rhythm of our lives? I sense that we must re-learn to identify where our bodies are holding grief, to make space to be with it, when this feels supportive for us. Once we can notice where grief is sitting within our bodies, we can choose how to respond. This is a practice, not a one-time event. Grief is not limited to the death of a loved one; we can grieve the loss of our homelands, the loss of former versions of ourselves or the pain of war and state violence. Untended grief can linger, smothering our creative capacity and ability to vision, until we give it space to be acknowledged. This exercise may support you to touch into grief that might be present in your body. After the practice, you can decide how you want to be in relationship to what arises.
In this paper I put forward the African and Shamanic belief of the Daoist tradition that ancestors and their memory are real, passed on from generation to generation. This memory includes the trauma memories of enslavement, and post slavery. This understanding becomes important in the field of trauma and grief healing, as the transmission of ancestral trauma and grief memory, from one generation to another is not fully understood. This has wide implications for those of African descendants who have suffered from ancestral, historical and continuous trauma. And for all who have suffered harm to the body, mind, and spirit resulting from loss of land, home, culture, and torture in its many forms. I examine the images of Kwame Akoto-Bamfo Memorial Heads installed in water, as a visual way to guide and lead this discussion. Understanding the transmission of ancestral trauma especially in relation to African descendants is like climbing the Mount Everest of the Trauma field. If this trauma can be understood more fully, recognition that such trauma exist can open the field of trauma to profound exciting ways on how to effectively shift these sort of trauma memories up and out of the memory of the waters of the body. Above all, we give dignity to those who suffer from ancestral traumas of this magnitude by acknowledging their trauma is real.
Grief is a radically social phenomenon that can be used to connect the unique experiences of individuals across space, time, and place. Organizers and activists within various social justice movements have used collective grief and public mourning to transform political landscapes and to process systemic forms of oppression. Understanding the ways that grief is central to organizing and activism deserves critical analysis. Pairing death doula activism with Stop Cop City organizing, I argue that grief and mourning is foundational to activism and organizing and I intend to examine what can be learned from frontline organizers who both respond to and hold compounded grief with and for others while holding solidarity and action at the center.
Through a decolonial feminist lens this paper unpacks the artistic project Sangre de mi sangre (“blood of my blood”). understood as an art protest by the feminist Mexican art collective Colectiva Hilos (“threads collective”). This work situates Sangre de mi sangre in the history of feminist textile artistic interventions, and specifically within those interventions that aim to take the public space in the context of gender violence. The work of Colectiva Hilos is also socio-politically situated in the history of Latin American political artistic interventions in the context of extreme forms of violence such as feminicide (killing of women because of their gender) and forced disappearance, and forms part of a plural and vibrant feminist movement present across the region. The members of the collective seek to repair the social fabric through collective weaving while using this long red textile to make visible the absences of those who have been victims of disappearance and feminicide in Mexico. Violence is an experience that has meant a fracture of our relations. This is also a painful experience. Where there is pain, there is loss and the need for grieving. This work considers decolonial thinker Rolando Vázquez’s (2018) ideas on healing and grieving to unpack the power of repair in the work of Colectiva Hilos.
The Erotics of Grieves explores grieving as a portal to liberation and social transformation. Written at the time of the ongoing genocidal violence against Palestinians in Gaza and the repression of solidarity movements in Berlin, this piece situates grieves in political, historical, and embodied contexts. Moving away from a singular, universalist concept of grief, this work conceptualizes grieves as plural, relational, and metabolically intimate processes that shape and unsettle bodies, communities, and social infrastructures. Drawing from Audre Lorde’s Uses of the Erotic and Fred Moten’s Erotics of Fugitivity, it asks how grieving can resist hegemonic power structures and create generative spaces of solidarity, refusal, and world-making. Through autotheoretical reflection, cultural analyses, and embodied performance practices this article traces the visceral, affective, and sonic dimensions of grieves. Engaging with legacies of mourning rituals, racialized and planetary grief, and the vibratory intimacies of sound, it proposes an erotics of grieves as a mode of attunement to loss, connection, and futurity beyond the fantasy of separation. In a time of structural violence, erasure, and epistemicide, The Erotics of Grieves insists on grieving as a radical force of resistance, fugitivity, and transformative care.
