Larping audiences into theatre: Reflective affective structures of participatory performance
Date
2020-05-07Embargo Date
2024-05-01
Author
Hoover, Sarah
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Abstract
This thesis asks what strategies and structures of larp-led
participatory performance encourage participants to reflect on their affective
embeddedness within evolving differential structures of becoming as
represented within the performance space. It argues that the embodied
responses of participants in such performances constitute an encounter with
self that dives into the pre-conscious impact of affect, producing a kind of
self-presence that reflects on the dynamic and porous nature of that self
within systems of relation. It develops a “reflective affective” model of
performance-making and analysis in order to foreground the embodied
knowledge(s) generated by such co-creative practices. The first two chapters
outline the research processes leading to the reflective affective model and
provide a theoretical underpinning for the performance development
discussed in the following case studies.
The performance projects developed as part of this thesis are
intended to provide transformative experiences that ripple beyond the
boundaries of the performance space and to encourage awareness of those
ripples in its participants as they develop a generosity towards difference.
Three chapters each explore case studies of participatory performances
developed as part of this thesis that demonstrate the process of performance creation and of analysis that is intrinsic to the iterative methodologies. The
Prison and New Voices in Art, outlined and analysed here, represent two
theoretical and methodological “explosions” in the development of the
reflective affective model. The third, Two Truths, deeply explores the
process of performance-creation within the contexts of gaming and theatre
audiences by building a production from devised workshops to
performances at gaming conventions to performances in a regional theatre
festival.
In doing so, this thesis develops transdisciplinary models of
performance development and analysis, incorporating performance-as-research and larp design methodologies within a performance studies framework. It argues that in the context of increasingly agentive performance production such frameworks are necessary in order to
utilise fully the empowering potential of such performances. In its reflective affective model this thesis seeks to offer both scholars and practitioners a radically alternative approach to participation design that provides a means to conceptualise and intervene in a deeply embodied form of knowing rooted in pre-conscious, shared affective experience.