Spectacles against The Spectacle: Is a new politics of paradox emerging in British experimental theatre of the 2010's?

这个以实践为基础的博士学位将确定和进一步英国戏剧的独特矛盾静脉。这样做是为了探索这个剧院的政治潜力，包括蒂姆·克劳奇、露西·麦考密克、奈杰尔和路易丝以及我自己等戏剧制作人的表演。研究将借鉴居伊·德波的《幽灵社会》（2014 [1967]），该著作将先进资本主义视为一个包罗万象、令人恍惚的幽灵，并将其作为一个观察表演的透镜。在主流剧院内进行实验，为政治目的寻求人气，并在一个既体现文化边缘又体现精英的戏剧行业中创造反对《幽灵》的奇观，这些表演涉及形式和背景的无数悖论。这可能会助长和抑制他们的政治效力。这种戏剧的政治力量在多大程度上取决于它是否有能力迂回地利用它在这个自我批评的项目中被指责的非常矛盾甚至妥协的性质？通过将形式置于对政治戏剧的文化唯物主义探究的核心，我的项目将解决当前辩论中的一个重大空白。学术研究将重新评估从二十世纪六十年代到现在的政治化戏剧实践的理解。然后，它将探讨“政治”的突出当代戏剧制作人的工作，总是问如何上下文（谁是制作和接收性能，在什么样的空间由什么样的社会规则，以及以何种方式）影响形式（近距离分析性能）。我的专业地位作为一个著名的实验剧作家在英国剧院的中心地带的边界操作，提供了一个理想的Vantage位置，从实际解决这些问题。在与学术研究的密切对话中，我将创造三个专业的表演，尝试新的形式和主流语境，通过这些形式和语境颠覆性地上演奇观。其中包括与社区的合作（剑桥和利兹的年轻人，蒂赛德的产业工人）以及我与作曲家（汤姆·帕金森）的第一次合作。

This practice-based PhD will identify and further a distinctively paradoxical vein of British theatre. It will do so in order to explore the political potential of this theatre, including performances by theatre-makers such as Tim Crouch, Lucy McCormick, Nigel & Louise and myself. Research will mobilise Guy Debord's The Society of the Spectacle (2014 [1967]), which conceives advanced capitalism as an overarching and trance-inducing Spectacle, as a lens through which to view performances. Experimenting within mainstream theatres, seeking popularity for political ends, and creating spectacles against The Spectacle in a theatre industry that epitomises both cultural margins and elite, these performances engage with myriad paradoxes of form and context. These may both seed and inhibit their political efficacy. To what extent might this theatre's political potency reside in its ability to deviously utilise the very paradoxical or even compromised nature it stands accused of in this self-critical project?By placing form at the heart of a cultural-materialist enquiry into political theatre, my project will address a significant gap in the current debate. Scholarly research will reassess received understandings of politicised theatre practices from the nineteen sixties to the present. It will then explore 'the political' in the work of salient contemporary theatre-makers, always asking how context (who is making and receiving performances, in what spaces governed by what social rules, and in what ways) impacts on form (close analysis of performances). My professional standing as an acclaimed experimental playwright operating at the borders of UK theatre's centre-ground, offers an ideal vantage point from which to practically address these questions. In close dialogue with scholarly research, I will create three professional performances that experiment with new forms and mainstream contexts through which to subversively enact spectacles. These include collaborations with communities (young people in Cambridge and Leeds, industrial workers in Teeside) and my first collaboration with a composer (Tom Parkinson).