Possibilities of Reading Contemporary Performance Theatre through the Thought of Gilles Deleuze: Becoming, Body without Organs and Immanence in D’Epog’s Saldo Mortale
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| Year of publication | 2018 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
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| Description | The aim of this paper is to examine the possibilities of reading contemporary performance theater throught the crucial concepts in the thinking of Gilles Deleuze. Deleuze’s philosophy used to be rarely applied in the theatrical theoretical discourse due to Deleuze‘s general disinterest in theater but lately has been gaining attention of contemporary poststructural performance theorists. The main theoretical works incorporating Deleuze’s philosophy are the two publications of British performance philosopher Laura Cull – Deleuze and Performance and Theaters of Immanence. In the Czech enviroment, Cull’s work has been elaborated by Jan Suk in his work on so-called poetics of immanence. The paper should introduce the work of these Deleuzian theater theorists and explore their contribution to the performative and postdramatic theater theory. Furthermore, the paper will attempt to introduce Gilles Deleuze’s core concepts: plane of immanence, becoming and body without organs. This introduction shall be performed on a case study of contemporary performance theater D’Epog. D’Epog is a theatrical troupe based in Brno, operating since the year 2010 in various spaces, creating unconventional productions with elements of performance art and site-specific theater. The paper shall mainly focus on one of their latest productions Saldo Mortale, a piece inspired by Anton Chekhov’s Cherry Orchard. Viewing specific phenomenons in performances of D’Epog through the lenses of Gilles Deleuze can broaden the theoretical discourse of contemporary performance theater and develop new ways of thinking about some problematic issues, such as the subject/object relationship, the performer/audience dynamics, the dichotomic perception of presence and representation and creation of meaning in contemporary performance theater. |