My (Other) Other Collaborator: Philosophy Alongside Practice

By Simon Jones
Source: Flesh and Text , pp 30-37
Publication Date: April 2025
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1386/9781835950715_8
Language: English

I make an argument for an entirely different way of thinking about the relationship between the practice of making a performance and philosophizing or theorizing about performance. I challenge the orthodoxy that the one can be explained by the other, or that the one explicates the other. However, the two do work productively alongside one another. This notion of alongside-ness informs how collaborations and materials in Bodies in Flight's practice develop, such as the choreographic and textual in Do the Wild Thing! or the musical and textual in Skinworks or the choreographic and photographic in Model Love. Being in-between is established as both a fundamental practical approach in the devising workshop and a fundamental philosophical insight into writing about performance.

Keywords: decisiveness in theatre practice ; embodied performance practices ; Heidegger ; performance phenomenology ; performance philosophy ; using theory in performance

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References

Derrida, Jacques (1978), ‘The theatre of cruelty and the closure of representation’, in Writing and Difference (trans. A. Bass), London: Routledge, Kegan and Paul.
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References

Derrida, Jacques (1978), ‘The theatre of cruelty and the closure of representation’, in Writing and Difference (trans. A. Bass), London: Routledge, Kegan and Paul.
[Google Scholar]
Heidegger, Martin (2006), Mindfulness (trans. P. Emad and T. Kalary), London: Continuum.
[Google Scholar]
Levinas, Emmanuel ([1961] 1969), Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority (trans. A. Lingis), Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press.
[Google Scholar]
Aston, Elaine and Harris, Geraldine (2006), Feminist Futures?: Theatre, Performance, Theory, Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan.
[Google Scholar]
Foulkes, Julia (2002), Modern Bodies: Dance and American Modernism from Martha Graham to Alvin Ailey, Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press.
[Google Scholar]
Lehmann, Hans-Theis (2006), Postdramatic Theatre, London: Routledge.
[Google Scholar]
Reinelt, Janelle (1992), Critical Theory and Performance, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.
[Google Scholar]
Shepherd, Simon (2016), Cambridge Introduction to Performance Theory, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
[Google Scholar]

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