Veronika Hudetz

Abstract

The aim of this PhD project is to investigate the relationship between dramatic text and performance in British and Irish Fringe Theatre Productions of the 2000s and 2010s. It is based on the premise that the dramatic text is appropriated, incorporated and embodied in performance in a process which can be approached by means of contrastive analysis as well as by drawing on the processual knowledge of artists involved in the production. Focusing on new plays by small companies will provide the opportunity to work with unpublished dramatic texts. In recent decades, opinions about the relationship between script and performance have seen fundamental changes. The dominance of the script as a text to be ‘faithfully’ realised in performance and the reliance on the authority of the playwright’s intentions have given way to more complex notions, such as in theatre semiotics (Fischer-Lichte, Pfister) or in approaches informed by deconstructivism (Issacharoff and Jones, 1988). In order to reveal instances of transmedial isomorphism between text and performance, a contrastive analysis of structural, thematic and linguistic patterns in the scripts as well as multimedial patterns in the performances will be undertaken. Shklovsky’s notion of art as device (1925), Pavis’ questionnaire for analysing performances (1985) and the Salzburg PLUS Kultur / CORE research programme for exploring productions will provide the theoretical framework. Interviews with artists involved in the productions will complement the analysis with access to the artists’ knowledge of the appropriation of the text in the productions. The cultural dynamics at work in processes of transmedial appropriation as well as in memorialisation in the context of processual knowledge are of special interest.