Porous Dramaturgy: 'Togetherness' and Community in the Structure of the Artwork

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This network will discuss communities formed or implicit in interactive, immersive, site-specific or otherwise 'porous' artworks, identifying their implications for the theatre institution and its social role. We have coined the term 'porous' dramaturgy to describe this work, as a counterpart to Kully Thiarai's idea of a 'porous' theatre institution, which is open to collaboration, is flexible in its use and which catalyses activities beyond its own walls. We ask whether 'porous' artwork has the democratic aims of this porosity built into its own structure, and/or whether it is a critical partner in modifying and developing concepts of 'togetherness' and community, with implications for producing organisations. Our project partners are practitioners from Dubrovnik, Croatia and Belfast, Northern Ireland. As Croatia prepares to join the EU, we are interested in exploring network ideas in relation to this political context and forging new links with this country. Northern Ireland also provides an opportunity to discuss the political significance of the work within a politically pressurised local and national context.Two events will bring all network participants together to discuss these questions and will also engage the network participants in direct experience of 'porous' strategies through workshops on the work of Shadow Casters (Croatia) and Wrights & Sites (UK). The first event will focus on the work of Shadow Casters, in a workshop examining the principles and processes of their trilogy, 'On Togetherness', which takes place within a theatre building, making the audience-as-community its direct concern. The second event will focus on Wrights & Sites' site-specific practice in South West England as an engagement with identities connected to place. The network will visit their public artwork in Weston-super-Mare, 'Everything you need to build a town is here' (2010). By introducing these case studies, we aim to acknowledge Helen Freshwater's suggestion that theatre scholarship has tended not to examine the experiences of audiences themselves (2009) by making an experiential enquiry (albeit not a sociological one) part of our approach. Network participants will include theatre producers, artists, dramaturgs and academics. Each network will end with an open forum to enable wider debate with academics from a range of fields and with local stakeholders from arts organisations.The PI and CI will produce papers reporting on these discussions to two further public panel events which will take place in Dubrovnik, Croatia and Belfast, Northern Ireland, where the PI and CI will discuss network findings with project partners, Shadow Casters and Hanna Slattne, dramaturg for Tinderbox Theatre (N.I). This will enable the network findings to be considered and inflected through relationship to the challenges of specific national and socio-political contexts.Throughout the project, an online blog will document and disseminate its progress and will also provide a forum for edited commentary and extended contributions from network members, who will contribute papers, discussions and other contributions. Links will be placed on relevant websites to raise awareness in relevant academic and professional contexts. Subsequent to the four events described above, the PI and CI will deliver papers at international academic conferences (e.g. IFTR 2013) and publish two articles in peer reviewed publications (including a cross-disciplinary publication such as 'Social and Cultural Geography') and a book chapter (in 'Dramaturgy and Architecture', contracted to Palgrave Macmillan). An online report will be included on the blog site.