Blast Theory: Intermedial Performance Praxis and the Generative Conditions for Performance Subjectivity J. Luis Manuel Campos In Submission for the Degree of Doctorate in Philosophy The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama University of London, 2014 1 Dedication This manuscript is dedicated to my late grandmother, Dolores, and late aunt, Rosario, who continue to guide me with their courageous spirits. 2 Declaration of Plagiarism I hereby declare that the work contained in this thesis is my own and that all sources have been properly referenced. Signature: London, 22nd August 2014. 3 Acknowledgments My deepest gratitude is for Dr. Tony Fisher, my first supervisor, for his unique and unrelenting vision and for being an extremely generous and supportive individual. You have been an exemplary participant subject to this research event and I cannot thank you enough for your belief in the project. You are here between the words. I would also like to thank Dr. Zachary Dunbar who took over the role of my second supervisor in the middle of the project for all his support and continual inspiration. Thank you for your generous contributions of ideas, practical scholarship, emotional support and energy. Thanks are also due to my colleague and friend Dr. Experience Bryon for her frank and honest words of wisdom throughout this process. I have learnt so much from you. I would like to express my gratitude to Professor Andy Lavender for all his support, supervision and advice during the early stages of this research. Also, I am grateful to Professor Robin Nelson who made innumerable suggestions on the final stages of this project without which this thesis would not be what it is today. My gratitude also goes to Matt Adams and the Blast Theory team. Matt, thank you very much for “opening the drawers” of Blast Theory and allow me to navigate through trajectories of documentation. Thanks are due to my colleagues at Rose Bruford College Professor F. Jane Schopf and Rebecca Pollock who read and made comments on the final versions of this manuscript as it moved towards its current state. Also, I very 4 much appreciate the support of my colleagues at the European Theatre Arts department, Andy Crook, Thomas Wilson, Alexia Kokkali and, especially, Anka Makrzanowska for their support during the final year when full-time lecturing became multiple and intensive and when, at times, it was difficult to territorialize my mind and focus. Thanks are also due to the library staff at The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama – especially Sara – for always providing me with a caring and welcoming space. Rachel Cockburn and Rebecca Reeves, you both have been truly an inspiration and very good friends throughout this project. I would not know where to begin expressing how important you two have been. Your traces inhabit these pages. Also, thanks are due to my best friend Corey Olin. Your support and friendship never go unnoticed. Heartfelt thanks are due to my immediate family for showing me that life is always tending-towards. Thank you for installing in me the belief that I could accomplish anything that I set out to do in life. This is also dedicated to my sister Pilar and my nephew Marcos who has a remarkable adventurous spirit and an insatiable curiosity for the new. As always, my warmest thanks go to my partner, Paul Williamson, who has, through everything, provided me with unconditional and unwavering support and love. You belong to a new solar system. Thank you for making me brave and for showing me the wonders of the present where time and space pass us by. This is a project I could never have carried out without you. You are a thousand beautiful things and, like lovers do, always handsomely know how to make the change from major to minor. 5 ABSTRACT J. Luis Manuel Campos Blast Theory: Intermedial Performance Praxis and the Generative Conditions for Performance Subjectivity The work of the British theatre company Blast Theory explores intermedial dramaturgies that this thesis claims can be categorized as radical because they present a generative characteristic. Intermediality, understood here as the impact of analogue and digital technologies in theatrical performance, establishes complex relationships between physical and virtual spaces, structures that create a rich polyphony of multiple temporal orchestrations, and narratives that present a multiplicity of performative arrangements. Intermedial performance, as a performative and experiential event, encompasses a triad of performative interactions between performers, spectators and the media itself executed at and concentrated on the moment of the performance encounter. This research argues that this encounter displays a generative character – a moment at which all the attending performance variables come together in a constant process of performative re-activation thus generating the intermedial performance event. Within this descriptive parameter, this research claims that recent performance conceptualizations fail to account for the work of Blast Theory. Contemporary performance and liveness debates focus principally on the ontology of performance. So, notwithstanding their differences, performance theorists such as Lavender (2002), Fischer-Lichte (2008), and Schechner (2003), and presentness/presence theorists such as Phelan (1993) and Power (2008) all agree that performance is an ontological, ephemeral, and fleeting event. While there are many valid points in these diverse approaches, 6 they only offer a partial account of the specificities of the work of Blast Theory and, by extent, the intermedial performance event. This thesis therefore relocates the terms of the debate on a constructivist epistemological basis. In this way, the thesis proposes that an intermedial performance event must be understood beyond the ontological approach by specifically interrogating the conditions of intelligibility; that is, its operative and intelligible architecture of attending elements and the participating subject. The key hypothesis shared is that in introducing a constructivist reading of epistemology, as described by Alfred Whitehead and Gilles Deleuze, a new account of intermediality in performance emerges as a radical dramaturgy, incorporating generative aspects, and with this, a unique type of intermedial performance subjectivity is enabled. 7 Table of Contents Dedication. Page 2 Declaration of Plagiarism. Page 3 Acknowledgments. Page 4 Abstract. Page 6 Table of Contents. Page 8 List of Figures. Page 11 Introduction. Page 14 1. Blast Theory: An Instance of Intermedial Performance Practice. 2. Liveness, Presentness, and the Ontological Debate. 3. Intermediality: Some Initial Considerations. 4. The Organization of the Chapters. Chapter 1. Methodology: The Introduction of a Constructivist Reading of Epsitemology. Page 55 1. The First Onto-epistemic Condition: A Constructivist Reading of the Temporality of the Event. 2. The Second Onto-epistemic Condition: A Constructivist Reading of the Spatiality of the Event. 3. The Third Onto-epistemic Condition: A Constructivist Reading of the Narrativity of the Event. Chapter 2. Execution: Blast Theory’s 10 Backwards (1999). Page 110 1. 10 Backwards: Description of Practice. 2. 10 Backwards: The Differential Temporal Aspect of the RadicalDramaturgy. 2.1. 10 Backwards: Differential Temporality and the Production of Multi- temporal Rhythms. 8 2.2. 10 Backwards: Repositioning Actuality. 2.2.1. 10 Backwards: Actuality as a Construction of Multiplicities and Mutualities. 2.2.2. 10 Backwards: Actuality as a Rhythmic and Differential Construction of Slowness, Waiting, Repetition and Imitation. 2.3. 10 Backwards: Becoming, Final Thoughts and Problematics. Chapter 3. Execution: Blast Theory’s Something American (1996). Page 162 1. Something American: Description of Practice. 2. Something American: The Spatial Relational Aspect of the Radical Dramaturgy. 2.1. Something American: Relational Spatiality and the Topological Dynamism of the Interval. 2.2. Something American: Intermedial Spatiality as Landscape. 2.3. Something American: the Generative Aspect of the Intermedial Scenographic. 2.4. Something American: Becoming, Final Thoughts and Problematics. Chapter 4. Execution: Blast Theory’s Day of the Figurines (2006). Page 208 1. Day of the Figurines: Description of Practice. 2. Day of the Figurines: The Complex Mereotopological Aspect of the Radical Dramaturgy. 2.1 Day of the Figurines: Intermedial Dramaturgy as Spatial and Temporal Inter-engagements of Narrative Occasions and Dramaturgical Assemblages. 2.2. Day of the Figurines: Spatial and Temporal Expansions in the Generation of Intermedial Narrativity. 2.3. Day of the Figurines: Intermedial Narratives as Multiple Intertextual Worlds. 9 2.4. Day of the Figurines: Becoming, Final Thoughts and Problematics. Chapter 5. The Execution of the Intermedial Performance Subject in the Construction of the Event. Page 259 1. The Intermedial Subject: The univocity of Being. 2. The Intermedial Subject as a Learner: Hermeneutics, Multiple Literacies, Learning, and Affect. 2.1. The Intermedial Subject: Learning as Engaging with Multiple Literacies. 2.2. The Intermedial Subject: The Affective Dimension. 3. The Intermedial Subject as Intersubjective. 4. The Intermedial Subject: Final Thoughts and Problematics. Conclusion. Page 300 Bibliography. Page 312 10 List of Figures Chapter 2 figures: Figure 1: 10 Backwards. Production poster. Copyright: Blast Theory. P. 113 Figure 2: 10 Backwards. Still image. Niki in 1999 against a background