A Dramaturgy for Upcoming Times

The world in where we live and develop our work is full of traps that promise and suggest all kinds of futures inspired by an overwhelming vision of technology and obsolete echoes of the past that still persist and insistently hinder the approach to audiences who increasingly seek honest and meaningful experiences when they come to the theaters or scenic spaces.

All the visions, trends, styles, methodologies, systems, genres in the so-called performing arts, which have appeared and developed throughout human experience in time, coexist today, offering practitioners endless possibilities. Such an offer opens the doors to combine, mix and hybridize processes, which clearly lead us to play in borderlands, or better, in areas where borders are already dissolved.

Leaving aside the contributions of a, let’s say, traditional dramaturgy, without forgetting at any time that this dramaturgy has laid the foundations for our way of understanding the scenic fact, we focus on another way of approaching this work that must necessarily embrace the physicality of the performer, the redefinition of terms that are exhausted, the hybridization of techniques and methodologies, the relationship between all members of the creative team and the constant research to connect with a contemporary audience.

From a position as far away as possible from conventions and prejudices, from practices that rely on routine or commercial demands, we deal with all the issues that have been occupying those who practice any performing discipline, with a critical look at the present. With the headstrong intention that these reflections will be useful and provide suggestions that will serve as permanent inspiration for all of us.

With passion, subjectivity and the continuous intention to provoke, as well as with a sense of humor that wants to relativize those questions that push us to impossible discussions, we expose everything we have learned -and what hopefully we are still experiencing- about dramaturgical work.

There is an ENGLISH & SPANISH version available.

 

CONTENTS

1

Introduction
New challenges

2

An organic dramaturgy
Approach to a definition

3

The why of the performer
Targets & Strategies

4

Physicality on Stage

5

What to do with the posthuman body?

6

Poetics of the object

7

Time & Space
The supporting skeleton

8

The power of images
Sign & Iconography

9

Deconstructing the text

10

How does it look like?
About Composition

11

Dealing with Sound & Media

12

For them
The Audience and the policy of reception