veridiction:s

William James. A Pluralistic Universe (1909), Lecture VII

“Pluralism lets things really exist in the each-form or distributively. Monism thinks that the all-form or collective-unit form is the only form that is rational. The all-form allows of no taking up and dropping of connexions, for in the all the parts are essentially and eternally co-implicated. In the each-form, on the contrary, a thing may be connected by intermediary things, with a thing with which it has no immediate or essential connexion. It is thus at all times in many possible connexions which are not necessarily actualized at the moment. They depend on which actual path of intermediation it may functionally strike into: the word “or” names a genuine reality.Thus, as I speak here, I may look ahead or to the right or to the left, and in either case the intervening space and air and ether enable me to see the faces of a different portion of this audience. My being here is independent of any one set of these faces.
If the each-form be the eternal form of reality no less than it is the form of temporal appearance, we still have a coherent world, and not an incarnate incoherence, as is charged by so many absolutists.”

A long quote that frames my starting point connecting Science Studies and Dramaturgy. It is a story of Archimedes proposing an experiment to King Hiero, told by Plutarch in Parallel Lives and dissected by Bruno Latour–a story in experimentation, experiment as a performance, as an experience, and how in the story, the narrative connects the experiment to science, politics and society. In the end what concerns me is the insight into the conditions that enable us to act and speak truthfully in the setting of science and in the setting of theatre–and to valuate the truth of the actions. Let’s get to the quote, of the very beginning of Latour’s text, and then I make some comments.

Latour, B. The Force and Reason of Experiment. In: Experimental Inquiries, edited by H.E. Le Grand et al. 1990, Dordrecht, the Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

“Archimedes, who was a kinsman and friend of King Hiero, wrote to him that with any given force it was possible to move any given weight; and emboldened, as we are told, by the strength of his demonstration he declared that, if there were another Earth, and he could go to it, he could move this one. Hiero was astonished and begged him to put his proposition into execution, and show him some great weight moved by a slight force. Archimedes therefore fixed upon a three masted merchantman of the royal fleet, which had been dragged ashore by the great labours of many men, and after putting on board many passengers and the customary freight, he seated himself at a distance from her, and without any great effort, but quietly setting in motion with his hand a system of compound pulleys, drew her towards him smoothly and evenly, as though she were gliding through the water. Amazed at this, then, and comprehending the power of his art (sunnoesas tes tecnes ten dunamin), the King persuaded Archimedes to prepare for him offensive and defensive engines to be used in every kind of siege warfare.” (Plutarch, 1961x: iv,78-9)

In this famous report of what may be the oldest public scientific experiment, several features are remarkable. The performance has almost certainly never been staged (at least with a fully loaded ship); it is thus a tale of a staged thought experiment, but a story which for hundreds of years played a continuous role in shaping the relations between Kings, mathematics,war and mechanics. It is a public show before all the assembled ‘media’. It is a direct application of a theoretical demonstration that Archimedes had just completed following a Platonist research program that Plutarch sketches in the paragraph before. It is Archimedes himself who takes the initiative of boasting to the King that he can move the Earth; the King, quite reasonably, challenges him to a ‘show down’ by way of a smaller scale public experiment before believing in the demonstration, as if he was unable to be convinced by the strength of mathematics alone; but it is the King who, in an instant, makes the connection of this striking but futile experiment with a technical and military research program headed by Archimedes (o demiurgos) to protect Syracuse against the Romans.

This is the end of the quote. Latour spends pages to deepen the study of this story. (The whole chapter is available here.) I am concerned here with his attempt to distill a lesson from a Hellenic periode text. Plutarch’s text is partly history, partly story, and anyway it is a narrative with recognizable dramatic elements and style (even more than its concern for historical accuracy or substantiating evidence): a dynamic in time, cumulation of events and chain of actions explicated with connectives, excitement, changing relationships, and of course characters and a setting (war coming to Syracuse). These elements are far from irrelevant to Latour’s study in ‘sociology of science’–in fact they are home in it. There is much thrill in the fact that Archimedes is an old man moving the merchantman single-handedly–it helps Hiero being amazed and convinced to even a greater degree.

Another example is Archimedes’ initial bold claim that he can move the earth, which in any solemn and academic philosophy of science could be ignored or criticized for being an exaggeration, or being unscientific. But in Latour’s reconstruction, Archimedes’ proposal is a metaphor for his (and Plutarch’s) Platonism–that there is another world (that of certain knowledge) from which Archimedes can manipulate a population, or move an army. Obviously, Platonism of those days was not merely a category of weird abstract philosophy but embedded in communicative and political practices.

I want to move beyond the point of scientific activity being imbued with elements interesting for humanities scholars and also beyond the point that peoples of the hard sciences need to recognize the significance of dramatic and narrative elements in the work of their old teachers and their own’s. My proposal is to carefully craft a tool repository with tools from both dramaturgy and science studies that extends the power of the theatre maker and the writer in creating more truthful work and makes the scholar sensitive to the subleties of human action, what they say, how they say it, when and to whom they say it, and ultimate the correspondence that actions and utterances have to what we call reality. Ultimately, we should become able to know why Julia did not take teenage Romeo for a smooth playboy when he approached her with his flamboyant speech. That being much studied, we should become conscious of the conditions of true speech in live situations instead in texts, thus in theatre for a beginning, when making or viewing theatre. (Continued later.)

Dieho, Bart. 2009. Een voortdurend gesprek. De dialoog van de theaterdramaturg. Lectoraat Theatrale Maakprocessen, Utrecht/Uitgeverij International Theatre and Film Book, Amsterdam. P.36-37.

In learning what it is to be a contemporary dramaturg, I am seeking to dissect what Bart Dieho’s proposal to describe the dramaturg’s function. Let’s read the quote in which he makes this suggestion:

"[The dramaturg] has become the figure who accompanies the maker in his artistic journey... To fulfil this role of guiding and communicative importance the dramaturg more and more becomes the researcher of the making process, the researcher of theatre as a phenomenon. He contemplates making of contemporary theatre and making processes. He reflects on actual issues within theatre, the arts and society. He provides makers and audiences with ideas that can germinate into theatrical productions. In doing so he attends as much to the private context of the ideas as to their aesthetic, scientific and civic connections. He contributes to the detection of contemporary relevant issues and questions in the world of theatre, and to their clarification... And [so] he converses continuously with stakeholders about the long-term cultural processes of making artistic theatre." [My translation]

"[De dramaturg] is degene geworden die de maker bijstaat in zijn artistieke zoektocht... Om die coachende en communicatieve functie waar te kunnen maken wordt de dramaturg steeds meer de onderzoeker van het maakproces, wordt hij steeds meer de onderzoeker van theater als fenomeen. Hij ontpopt zich meer en meer als denker over het maken van theater in deze tijd. Hij reflecteert daartoe op wat er gaande is in theater, kunsten en maatschappij. Hij reikt ideeën aan makers en toeschouwers aan om zowel vanuit persoonlijke contexten als vanuit grotere contexten van kunsten, wetenschap en maatschappij theatrale maakprocessen te initiëren. Hij draagt eraan bij om de vragen die het maken van theater in deze tijd en omstandigheid oproept, op te sporen en vanuit die contexten te duiden... En hij communiceert doorgaand met belanghebbenden over de langlopende culturele processen van het maken van theater als kunst."

1. First and most important the verbs here have a distinc character, which evince the actions that define the work of the dramaturg: accompany, research, contemplate (even more benign, ’emerge as a thinker’)…provides, contributes, communicates, and clarifies. The dramaturg clearly does not make, neither does he shape, steer, enforce, design, protect or anything in that order. We might bunch up what the dramaturg does in two categories: researching and contributing.

Why does the dramaturg take no forcible action in the creating process? The dramaturg has changed many clothes and has done almost everything with theatre; she has been close to the manager, has even done some finances and funding activities; she has been close to the producer in finding and matching the tones of style. He has been writing and selecting music. But never have we seen claimed that a dramaturg does what the maker does. The dramaturg is explicitly not creative. Is this just that the dramaturg is so close to the figure of the maker that we need courtious but unreal distinction between the two? We can tell from experience that the position of the maker is heightened beyond the rest in European and American theatre. But if the dramaturg was only distinct in linguistics and not reality, his function wouls cease toe exist.

Let’s be satisfied with the assurance that the damaturg still does something that is different from the maker’s job. We should get back tot the question why the dramaturg is defined to softly, or even passively. There are no internal forces that would eject the dramaturg from her position, to make her job superfluous. Neither are there force from within that would withhold her from almost any kind of actively contributing, since the dramaturg is the person who is present at virtually every moment of creation. Why would the dramaturg then resort to some much reflection and find her media in journals, debates and book? What external forces are to pull her into such domains outside the rehearsal room?

My hypothesis is that these external forces are the forces of project management, time management, and financial management. This should not surprise anyone and surely not the dramaturg because these discourses are all-pervasive and the theatre professionals for its every corner are taught in this matter. Management discourses enable and constrain making processes more than ever. Financially, spatially and materially they make it possible. In terms of time, scope and depth, they delimit it. Anyway, we can expect that the degree of conditioning of the creative work is so much that the dramaturg’s power has become quite limited, although the number of roles that he plays is still diverse and broad. This hypothesis goes beyond the simple idea of austerity, and points out the managerial (re)formation of theatrical studies and practice.

If I can bring in my value of the dramaturg’s work–the power of making space and catalysing the composition of theatrical/veridical effects–in dealing with this potential feebleness, it is important for the dramaturg to detect these enabling and constraining factors, make the conscious, and play with them in a way to make this creative space viable for the maker and the actors. This will be the aim of the dramaturg in communicating with the stakeholders, those who have a hand in managing the conditions of the work. If the dramaturg is the communicator between multiple agents and enables of a work, then she can be significant in change the one-way direction of communication from the financial authority to the stage. Makers and actors can turn to actively perform the truth behind the absolute naturalness of financial discipiline and its supposed priority to human expression.

So yes, agreed, the dramaturg is a researcher, he researches not only artistic, societial and scientific themes, but more directly the concrete and exact conditions under which a piece is produced, and therefore he is also the active agent in creating the best possible space for the creation to take place. Yet, he will not be a mere organisational consultant, inserting model solutions. Neither will he be another manager, meddling with the conditions and leaving the composition. Nor will he be the producer, executing the possibilities within the conditions that are set. He connects to all these aspects, and he adds to it what he only can do: he connects these aspects to the creative process itself, produces a narrative of the making process that is at least consistent with the subject of the production, or even a nourishing part of it. That is, he actively composes the assembly that works to produce theatre with elements/conditions that seem pre-given (finances), but will appear negotiable/malleable/changeable.

2. Time constraints–one of those seemingly predetermined conditions–is exactly what requires the dramaturg to work on-the-go. This is one main reason why the dramaturg’s work has become ongoing and contained within the present (sometimes even reduced to the mere psychology of the maker–hence the word ‘coaching’).  If we imagine the maker as the train driver, the dramaturg would have the option of suggesting to slow down, speed up or stop, since she is the maker’s fellow traveller. But ‘ongoing’ means that the maker is not the driver, or, at least, is not in full control of the acceleration gears/gas pedal. Both are finding themselves on a moving train!

This is the ironical circumstance in the which the dramaturg together with the maker functions. They are not in full control of their making process. The autonomy of the making process is partly conditioned (and of course enabled) by more factors than only the maker’s conscience. This is my rather strong explanation of the dramaturg’s low-potency actions. Yet it equally leads to a potent suggestion: it is the dramaturg’s role to negotiate the autonomous space, to stretch the circumscriptions as far as they go, not taking the limits as granted and given.

[Modern management hangs on a notion of decision by necessity, necessity by (economic) scarcity, by survival in the ever-transforming 'market', by the orders of the boardroom, by foretold yet meaningless uncertainties and risks. Yet it exists in a background of 'freedom of choice'.]

[Theatre is the realm of possibilities, of human wilful action and choice, of freedom itself, its constant discovery, in a context of other compelling dramatic forces, of tragedy, of unforeseen but meaningful consequences--of modern management.]

The dramaturg does not accept the preconditions but plays with them in both directions and so creates a buffer zone; the direction of those who set them and might want to relax or change them, and the direction of whom will experience the consequences of them. Equal to importing themes, news, knowledges, working conditions and rules into the creative space, he does the opposite by punching holes in the space from the inside-out, exporting theatrical experimentation, emerged practices and utterances to the producers, managers, beneficiaries, and extends the theatrical space to the office, building, street, neighbors, etc.

3. Since the dramaturg’s job is to operate under such pressures and make space despite them, we can expect that the dramaturg tries to make space in particular in the more liberal realm of ideas, by “providing” “ideas” and “contributing” to “processes”. This, at least, is Dieho’s representation. To be true to his investigative commitment, however, the dramaturg should try to expand the process not only on the side of ideas but also the physical and empirical circumstances under which the makers are working. She must be committed not only to research theatre as a phenomenon, but anything that would feed and nourish the aesthetic creation. Not that this is not the case already, but it is good to emphasise it and spread it.

On all three counts, the dramaturg’s job is a boundary work. This boundary work gives her the distinct charasteric vis à vis the maker. Her job is shaping, protecting, stretching and expanding boundaries of time, and conceptual and physical possibility to create the right conditions for the creative process to take place. This does not exhaust the list of functions but is formative of contemporary process dramaturgy.