A Dramatist's Intent : Performativity, Relationality & Being
Within the limitations of this document, written as supplement to the three portfolio texts developed in New York between 2007 and 2013 (Desire Lines, Troyanne and A / The Biography of a Thing), I have striven to achieve three things. Firstly, to contextualise the self (I) as dramatist in relation to the portfolio texts. Secondly, to contextualise the practice of Play Reading (as phenomenon), the dominant development strategy of the American (US) theatre ecology, and to chart my interest in that strategy to the point that it came to dominate my creative inquiry: for the reflexive text, A / The Biography of a Thing is a text about a play reading of Troyanne and the development of Troyanne through Play Reading processes. Thirdly, arising out of those development processes, I have, within the contextualising texts, identified key events that illustrate the performative intent and ideal spectatorship of the work resulting in a mode of enactment / reception I shall term Being. Indeed, this document could be considered in part a manifesto of Being necessitated by those who have insisted upon ‘normal directorial rights’ of my texts, and in so doing, have chosen to ignore authorial intent. This document is therefore both a revision of sorts and a blueprint for those who would engage both with the portfolio texts and the I dramaturgical meta-project within which the portfolio texts take their place.
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