Bordering a documentary and a video essay, this output relates to an interdisciplinary laboratory led by members of the Centre for Experimental Practices (CXP) at the University of Huddersfield at the Lawrence Batley Theatre in Huddersfield on November 27 and 28, 2023. This was the first of the two training phases I have undertaken within the framework of my practice-based project NePraMusT (Networks of Practice in New Music Theatre) funded by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Action and hosted at the University of Huddersfield. My project addresses the intersections of practices in those experimental forms of theatre with/in music broadly defined music- theatre, which were devised by composers between 1960s and 1980s.
The method governing our studio work was Spatz’s Dynamic Configurations with Transversal Video[1], which articulates alternate forms of interactions among practitioners in the laboratory space. In rotation, each participant takes the lead directing her partner, thus subverting the conventional power dynamics expressed by the actor-training setting where a director oversees the actor’s improvisations and dictates the interactions among all agents involved. The videographer’s work is an integral part of the laboratory work, and in this context could also be steered by a director with whom they take turns. The presence of videographer somehow “cuts” the lab work, in ways that are subjective and emanate directly from the impressions generated by the immediacy of practice.
I thank Claire Bend at the CXP for helping me edit this output and members of CXP for their participation to my research.
[1] Ben Spatz, Making a Laboratory: Dynamic Configurations with Transversal Video (New York: Punctum Books, 2020)
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