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International Conference | 29 June - 03 July 2005 Birch: Anna | UK Anna Birch (PhD), Associate lecturer BA (Hons) Theatre: Design for Performance and researcher at SMARTlab UK, Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, University of the Arts London, www.smartlabcentre.com She is Artistic Director for Fragments and Monuments, site-based, new media Abstract: Dramaturgcal Matrix: a toolkit for representation and analysis of ‘gender visibility’ in live and mediated performances saved on DVD-Rom . The dramaturgical toolkit is designed to analyse live and mediated performance case studies through the matrix of cross-dressing, transhistorical character and interior/domestic and exterior/public space (referred to as “the dramaturgical categories”). This DVD presentation will demonstrate the research and learning and teaching potential of the toolkit. Participants will be encouraged to try the toolkit for themselves and to offer feedback on future developments of the toolkit. The project as a whole offers a method for reframing live and mediated performance in multi-media format. The visual and written texts on the DVD-Rom give equal weight to the performance and written analysis. The demonstration will show how the toolkit can be used by theatre artists, future practitioners and scholars to make their own recut versions and using the tool to contextualise and review their role in the creative process, and then to share the work visually as a tool for discussing the work critically. My aim by the project’s end is to share these new performance examples with their makers and wider audiences online, and to create a space for dialogue on gender visibility in live and mediated performance, with and through this original technology intervention tool. Types of Knowledges being developed and where these knowledges are located: One of the key roles of the toolkit is to bring the debate about gender and performance to a wider audience and to contribute an original toolkit to take that debate, in both practical and theoretical and academic or scholarly terms forward. Pedagogical research: learning and teaching of performance and cultural studies. Knowledges around the practice and performance of research in a feminist performance context (Ferris 1993, 1990, Diamond 1997, Case 1996, 1990 and Goodman 2000, 19996, 1993, Phelan, 1993,1997). The theoretical base of this work brings together and interrogates the usefulness and possible applications of performance theory, feminist theory and selected approaches to social semiotics. In my selection of key thinkers from these areas and careful analysis of the tools as well as the ideas that each has to offer, I have engaged in a cross-disciplinary study and attempted to apply a range of linked methodologies, and then to create my own analytical toolkit: the “Dramaturgical Matrix”. Important instances of transformative theatre processes – as exemplified in the work of Bertolt Brecht and as re-read from a contemporary feminist theoretical perspective by Elin Diamond (1997) – provide the two main poles within which my own body of work has been developed and analysed. The term “recontextualisation” (Van Leeuwen, 2001, 1999, 1986) has emerged as a key concept to analyse the movement from conventional, text-based proscenium-arch theatre to unconventional site-based, devised performance practices such as those used in my work. Isolating and analysing the processes of recontextualisation in my work has involved taking the Brechtian theatrical processes of “alienation” and “gestus” forward from a live medium and transposing them into a mediated form, while paying all due attention to the distinct creative and cultural distinctions of each format. Institution: University of the Arts, London Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design SMARTlab UK Southampton Row London WC1 E-mail: silvabirch@btinternet.com Telephone: 020 7241 0555 Mobile: 07791778432
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