Performance as Text. Text as Performance

Abstract

‘Performance as Text. Text as Performance: Love Like Salt, a collaboration between a writer and an artist’, by Jess Richards, was written shortly after a durational live performance, Love Like Salt by Morgan+Richards, which took place on Matiu/Somes Island in Wellington Harbour, New Zealand. Morgan+Richards are Sally J Morgan, who is primarily a visual artist, and Jess Richards, who is primarily a creative writer. This article discusses the collaborative processes involved in developing, performing and documenting this live performance, and is written from the perspective of a fiction writer. Taking the position that a live performance is ‘a multi-layered text’, this article explores theme, symbols, imagery, dialogue, creative writing and poetic devices as layers of meaning within performance. Visual documentation of the performance, alongside descriptions from witnesses and participants, add further ‘layers’ or accretions of meaning. There are, however, aspects of performance which, without written or verbal descriptions, remain undocumented. This article includes sections of creative writing to more fully express the sensory details and dialogue which were present within the live performance, thus creating a text that is a performance, of a performance which was a text.