School of Performing Arts - Theses

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    Re-imagining Kassandra
    Dorney, Marcel Damian ( 2014)
    This exegesis examines possibilities of re-thinking current approaches to the relationship between the practices of writing and directing within the field of Australian performance-making. The basis of this research project is the bringing to bear of directorial practice on the practice of developing new work as a playwright.  In this case, that practice involves a re-examination of the role of text generation in a contemporary theatrical framework, in which the primacy of the text in the determination of both process and reception can no longer be assumed. From this re-examination, the question of the relationship between writing and directing is posed in terms of their potential for mutual - and perhaps productive - resistance to one another’s habitual practices. This project’s research into directorial practice involves the conception of a playscript - as spoken language and as a blueprint for action - which is placed in a tense and subversive relationship with both visual composition and the performative apparatus. It includes an account and analysis of the creation of an original 100-minute performance work, Kassandra, from script to production. The work investigates placing the mythographic titular figure in a problematised and self-reflexive relationship with the performance event. The concept of ‘productive resistance’ between the practices of writing and directing for performance is theorised in the first section, and thence reflexively investigated through practice, in order to to demonstrate how the re-investigation of received models of praxis at each phase of development might be best arranged and conducted so as to create a ‘productive resistance’ between text and performance.