W. B. Yeats the dramaturge: Space dramaturgy in Four Plays for Dancers - the investigations of a research-practitioner

Abstract

The research investigates the dramaturgical composition of William Butler Yeats’s four dance plays (At the Hawk’s Well, The Dreaming of the Bones, The Only Jealousy of Emer, Calvary), published in the collection Four Plays for Dancers in 1921. The analysis discusses Yeats’s dramaturgical methods applied in the dance dramas by focusing on the processes of their textual evolution and first productions between 1916 and 1939, and by exploring the playwright’s dramaturgical devices in a practice-based context. The investigation is grounded on the thesis that Yeats developed a distinctive and innovative dramaturgical approach in his dance dramas, which is based on his unique uses of space. Yeats started to explore this new approach in 1916, during the composition of his first dance play, At the Hawk’s Well, and developed it into an organic system by the time he published his collection of dance dramas, Four Plays for Dancers. The method of dramatic composition Yeats applied in these early dance plays could be regarded as a dramaturgical system on its own, whose defining features could be identified and explored through the textual and practical investigation of the given play texts. Besides providing new insights to the interpretation and performance of the dance plays themselves, discovering the working mechanism of this system is important for two reasons. Firstly, it provides significant contribution to the research on Yeats’s later plays, which largely build on aspects of the same dramaturgical principles that the playwright began to explore in Four Plays for Dancers. Secondly, a better awareness of Yeats’s dramaturgical methods in the dance plays demonstrates his invention and pioneering stance in the broader context of twentieth-century theatre-making. The project integrates a practice-based component into its method of inquiry, which is combined with analytical and historical approaches. With its complex research methodology, the research attempts to fill the gap between literary analysis and practice-based research by providing a practical insight to staging Yeats’s dance dramas, and by presenting the practice-based findings in a clear analytical structure, in a dialogic relationship with the scrutiny of the plays’ manuscript materials and performance history.