Post-anthropocentric Rehearsal Studies. A conceptual framework to account for the social and material mediations in performance-making

ABSTRACT

This article uses the concept of ‘mediation’ to account for the sociomateriality involved in the rehearsal of a new play. Drawing on ideas from the ‘New Sociology of Art’ that has its origins in Science and Technology Studies, we show how the sociomateriality of the rehearsal is an essential part of the process of theatre-making. It means giving to materials, bodies and matters in the rehearsal room a crucial role in the process of developing and refining a scene. Using ethnographic research methods, with particular emphasis on excerpts from video recordings, we analyse specific activities that take place in the rehearsal room to give a less anthropocentric and a more nuanced reading of the processes that contribute to the creation of a scene. Analysing the dynamics of entanglements in work practices of performance-making, we reveal the material base of the easily overlooked professional processes that constitute the craft of theatre.

KEYWORDS:

• Rehearsal studies
• new sociology of art
• sociomateriality
• mediation
• performance-making practices
• theatre-making practices
• ‘performance yet to arrive’
• ethnography

Acknowledgments

The article is a collaborative work and has been thought and planned by both the authors. In any case, if for academic reasons it has to have a specific individual responsibility, consider that Carmen Pellegrinelli has written the following paragraphs: introduction; The Rehearsal Studies; The New Sociology of Art; The mediation of bodies; The mediation of improvisation. Laura Lucia Parolin has written the following paragraphs: The role of mediations; The empirical research and methods; The mediation of the bodies in the space; The mediation of artifacts. The conclusion and the analyis have been written by both together. We are grateful to Tom Cornford - editor-in-chief of this journal - for believing in this work and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions. For the final revision of the English text, we thank Fraser King. This work is dedicated to the memory of Anny Ballardini, who helped us with corrections of English in a preliminary version of this article.

Notes

1. This resonates with our background and the purpose of giving account to social and material work practices in creative processes and arts, in particular, in design (Mattozzi and Parolin 2020; Parolin 2010a, 2010b; Parolin and Mattozzi 2014, 56, 2013, 56) and theatre (Parolin and Pellegrinelli 2020a, 2020b). Indeed, we share a similar research interest in the rehearsal as particular work practices that occur in a specific place and time to stage a new play.

2. A recent stream of literature called ‘studio studies’ works within the tradition of STS and looks at the places where the cultural products are manufactured (Farías and Wilkie 2016). Indeed, as Bruno Latour points out, in architectural studios – or an engineer’s design departments – the object’s controversial nature is made visible (Latour 2005, 80). Farias and Wilkie similarly maintain that ‘[s]uch perspectives make it necessary to turn our gaze to the actual sites in which practitioners engage in conceiving, modelling, testing and finishing cultural artefacts (Dubuisson and Hennion 1995, Hennion 1997), the studio, although a preoccupation in the visual arts (e.g. Jacob and Grabner 2010), has not been an object of systematic and intensive analysis for the social sciences (e.g. Zembylas 2014).’ (Farías and Wilkie 2016, 7). Inspired by ‘studio studies’ in a previous work (Parolin and Pellegrinelli 2020a) we suggested the interpretation of the rehearsal room as ‘creative laboratory’ of performance-making.

3. For a deeper explanation of these processes see the chapter ‘The “Topofil” of Boa Vista-A Photo-Philosophical Montage’ in (Latour 1999).

4. Exactly in the same way science cannot exist without material objects like cells, plants, samples, pipes, tubes, shelves, classifiers, diagrams, sheets of figures, and papers. Hennion (2015) underlines how science and technology studies and sociology of culture may mutually benefit each other. Like the production of cultural products, scientific knowledge is a construction process. The work of Latour and colleagues has demonstrated how material objects are part of the process of building facts showing how trails and experiments are translated into inscriptions which makes up the components of the scientific text. A similar approach in sociology of culture gives attention to the sociomaterial entanglement that allows cultural object to emerge (Hennion 2015).

5. As Latour (1999) points out not all the intermediaries are mediators that change the meaning that they carry.

6. It should be noted that this method can be used to trace the components and explain the transformations of the meaning of both in the artwork’s creation process as well as its consumption.

7. It is worth noting that Tim Ingold (2013) also grounds his proposal on Deleuze and Guattarian philosophy of becoming.

8. This use of descriptions which carry analytical potential derives from Actor-Network Theory. Indeed, according to Latour there is no difference between description and analysis (Lise 2020). The analysis can be considered a description of relations (Mattozzi 2019).

9. As argued by Paul Allain (2016) the lack of thick descriptions in theatre-making is connected with the difficulties of negotiating (and maintaining) an access to the field (see also Harvie 2010; McAuley 2012).

10. The term ‘object yet to arrive’ is used by Beaubois (2015) to focus on the tension toward a future object, a thing, while avoiding considering it an image in the mind of the designer.

11. We come from an interest in understanding collective knowledge and learning within work and organizational practices. Our interest here is related to the understanding of elements of professional practices of theatre. Even our choice of a play addressed to children, was made to avoid any possible misunderstanding regarding our focus on the craftsmanship of theatre. We have not written about this specific theatre play because of its importance or to talk about the ‘signature’ (Melrose 2007) of the playwriter/director, indeed, the practices we describe can be observed in many theatre productions.

12. However, we understand more investigation is needed to fully grasp the relevance of a post-anthropocentric gaze to rehearsal and theatre studies. Nevertheless, we hope our article could offer inspiration to ethnographers working in the field of theatre.

13. It is without saying that not all the matters that are relevant for performance-making will be visible as such in the scene of the performance. We will see examples of mediations that, despite contributing to the development of the scene, they are no longer present in the performance.

14. Other elements we did not take into consideration in this article would be relevant for the Rehearsal Studies. However, we limited our analysis to the ones related to the development of such a scene to account for the role of material and matters in the emergent process of morphogenesis of artwork (Ingold 2013).

15. We made specific choices to exemplify the potential of the non-anthropocentric ethnography approach in contributing to explain the craftsmanship of theatre. Only a small part of the elements we observed were relevant to the development of the scene. As noted by a reviewer, we could have been focused on the characteristics of the space or the layout of the rehearsal room as those elements affect and constrain the activities in the rehearsals. However, in our case the group had the opportunity to use a theatre for the rehearsals, thus, those reflections seem not particularly relevant for the development of such mentioned scene.

16. We agree with one of the reviewers – whom we warmly thank – who suggested that this approach could offer relevant insights on ‘how the performers or other creatives make material use of their bodies – or indeed how their bodies are deployed as material per se – in giving expression to identities’. However, we chose to limit our analysis to the elements that clearly contributed to the development of the specific scene (and the development of its meanings). Nevertheless, we deem the potential in explaining how bodies are used to express identities during the rehearsals is huge and it surely deserves further investigations.

17. The choice of Michele exemplifies what has been defined as cross-gender casting – the casting of female actors in male roles or vice versa – that adds new and unexpected meanings to the scene. As Fischer-Lichte (2014) suggested, cross-gender casting is a practice in which the choice of casting unconventional bodies in certain theatrical roles contributes to renegotiate a series of meanings regarding ‘masculinity’ and ‘femininity’.

18. Our analysis resonates with several conceptualizations produced by postdramatic literature. For example, Conkie (2012) notices how ‘producing a play the creative practitioners have fixed, by a series of performance choices, the “myriad possibilities” (Hartley 2005: 41) of the text’ (Conkie 2012, 413).

19. As the actor Michele is also a skilled cartoonist the group is used to work with drawings and the overhead projector in their plays for children.

20. The lines of the mother and the diligent silence of Alfonsina gives the idea she is complaining with her mother’s request.

21. It should be noted that interpreting the images of the embroideries projected onstage as the result of Alfonsina actions (her embroidering onstage) is not a natural process or prescription, rather, it is based on specific conventions (another kind of mediation) developed within the fictional world of theatre.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Carmen Pellegrinelli

Carmen Pellegrinelli is PhD fellow at Lapland University in the faculty of Social Sciences. Her research interests are focused on creative practices, distributed creativity and posthuman philosophy. She studied Arts and Performance Studies and the University of Bologna and Clinical Psychology at the University of Bergamo. She is also a professional playwright and director of theatre.

Laura Lucia Parolin

Laura Lucia Parolin is Associate Professor in Organizational Communication at the University of Southern Denmark. She is interested in the role of artifacts and materiality in organizing, knowing and learning processes. She is a sociologist who uses Science and Technology Studies (STS) and, specifically, Actor-Network Theory (ANT) to account for technology as well as materiality in work practices. In recent years, she has become interested in the relationship between knowledge, body, sensitivity, affect, materiality, innovation and creativity in work and organizational practices.