Vasiliki Angelaki

Performing Interspaces: Social Fluidities in Contemporary Theatre

Drawing on theatre studies, sociology and geography, the book delivers the transdisciplinary perspective needed to evidence the significance of performance for society and community at a time when, due to COVID-19, the arts have never been more precarious. The monograph addresses liminal spaces as depicted in Anglophone theatre since 2000, capturing the social, political, cultural and geographical possibilities of in-betweenness and investigating its complexities. As global crises, from military conflict to financial collapse and from the climate emergency to the pandemic, have marked the past 20 years, the book investigates how theatremakers have used formal experimentation and the concept of in-between space, defined as interspace, in its different iterations, to capture fluid mental, emotional and physical states. Benefiting from an internationalist approach and extensive previous research while being an entirely original project, the book draws on a Swedish perspective of landscape, tracing the term 'mellan-' [in-between] within Anglophone theatre. It examines fixed and mobile spaces, concentrating on both natural environments and human-made structures. Ultimately, the book offers a re-evaluation of the spatial non-binary and its socio-political implications: it reveals the interventionist role of theatre in the 21st century, accounts for our definitive contemporary conditions -- exposure and transition -- and creates a new model for future transdisciplinary studies.
Final report
Purpose of the project and how it has developed during the project period

The purpose of the project was to complete a monograph for submission to Palgrave Macmillan/Springer. The book, contracted with the publisher on an Open Access agreement supported by RJ Sabbatical funds, was successfully completed during the sabbatical period (end date: 31 December 2022). The book will be published under the title Environment and Fluidity in Contemporary Theatre: Staging Interspaces and it has a length of 120000 words. This is longer than the 90000 words originally envisaged, as the sabbatical period provided valuable time for international fieldwork and exchange, for the attendance of new plays in performance, as well as for the collection, documentation and incorporation of such emerging research data, which was conducive to the book expanding accordingly. Upon agreement with the publisher, then, the book length has been extended by 30000 words.

A short description of how it was implemented

A chapter-by-chapter breakdown was developed with updates to ensure timeliness, and to allow for the incorporation of new materials that enhanced the book’s topicality and originality. Dedicated time was allocated to the writing of each chapter, while, in parallel, conducting the international visits to theatre institutions, archives, specialist libraries and academic institutions/colleagues that supported and enriched the project. The book writing process progressed according to schedule so that all targets were met. Research trips to London took place in February, June, September and November 2022. Attendance at academic conferences that engaged with environmental and sociopolitical concerns of direct relevance to the book and which bolstered its interdisciplinary span, primarily supported by Sabbatical funds, took place in November 2022 (European University Institute, Florence) and November and December 2022 (Fondation Descartes and Institut des sciences juridique et philosophique de la Sorbonne, Paris, respectively).

The project’s three most important results and contributions to the international research front and a discussion about this

The project delivered a plethora of positive results, and for the purposes of this report I would like to prioritise the following three:

1) Completion of the extended research monograph Environment and Fluidity in Contemporary Theatre: Staging Interspaces, which will be published open access by a leading international publisher (Palgrave Macmillan/Springer), one of relatively few Arts and Humanities (especially Theatre) titles that are published open access. This will ensure international reach and wide accessibility for readers that, although we can reasonably expect will be in their majority students and academics, due to the absence of a paywall can also be reasonably expected to be theatre practitioners, teachers and more broadly pedagogues and educators at different levels, as well as the general public.
2) The book is delivering a transdisciplinary methodology that is making a considerable contribution to the ongoing definition of the Environmental Humanities, placing contemporary theatre at the centre of the discussion and bolstering its viability as not only a reference but, also, as a primary methodological tool for the social sciences and the earth sciences in terms of producing and evidencing claims on civic engagement. This applies especially to discourses relating to sociology, particularly the economy; neoliberalism and mobilities, as well as community cohesion and exclusion; to the health sciences, particularly discourses relating to COVID-19, pandemics and epidemiology, including at the level of mental health impact; to the earth sciences, especially dialogues regarding the effective communication of scientific fact/data to audiences and the engagement in dialogues concerning civic agency, environmental preservation and action towards the management of the climate crisis. The book concerns contemporary Anglophone theatres, and engages with international debates, taking on the three greatest crises facing humanity in the recent period: environment; economy; health, and, as such, advancing dialogues across different intersecting disciplines.
3) The book has contributed to the bolstering and nurturing of internationalist theatre scholarship at one of the most at risk and crucial periods for theatre’s very survival, engaging with new paradigms of theatre-making in the form of new plays written in English staged in prominent international venues, not exclusive to Anglophone contexts, and, therefore, exploring cultural interspaces as well. Due to the extreme recency of a considerable amount of the theatre work covered in the monograph, it will be, if not the first, then certainly one of the very first to engage with several of the texts and productions that are discussed. In so doing, it breaks new ground in theatre historiography while building bridges between Swedish and international academia – especially British/European – and offering a robust and firsthand account of its case studies. This was a direct benefit of conducting fieldwork in London.

New research questions generated through the project

The project generated the following new research questions:
What forms will theatre performance take in the post-COVID era and how can theatre and performance that deal with the environmental crisis also be conceptualised and executed more sustainably?
How pivotal a role does technology have to play in such theatre and sustainability discourses?
How can theatre be conceptualised as a crucial methodological tool for the development of discourses relating to environmental civic pedagogy, to cultural geography and mobility studies, and to climate and earth science discourses, synchronically and diachronically, through international exchange?
These questions will continue to inform my work going forward and will be engaged with in subsequent projects and funding bids.

The project’s international dimensions, such as contacts and material

During the sabbatical period, I spent a considerable amount of time in international educational and creative/artistic contexts in, primarily, the United Kingdom and Italy, while, at the same time, also conducting research and participating in academic conferences in France and Portugal. International libraries and archives were consulted rigorously. Specifically: the academic resources of the University of Roma “La Sapienza”, home to the leading English Studies programme in Italy (for 2022); the European University Institute in Florence; the British Institute in Florence; the UNESCO library in Paris; the National Theatre Archives in London. The project is international(-ist), and drew on my extensive networks of academics and practitioners in Europe as part of my fieldwork. It involved conducting meetings with prominent academic colleagues in Theatre Studies (especially in the United Kingdom) and further expanding my networks in the Social Sciences and Environmental Humanities (especially in Italy, France and Portugal). The book is concentrated on Anglophone plays and production case studies and employs theoretical and critical frameworks developed by leading critical thinkers internationally across the different disciplines that the study engages with. For a three-month period during the sabbatical I was appointed Visiting Professor – Research at the Department of SEAI (European, American and Intercultural Studies), University of Rome “La Sapienza”, and was embedded in the local research culture, participating in events and fostering contacts, as well as preparing the ground for future collaborations. During this time, I also presented my research, other than at Sapienza, at the University of Parma, where I was invited along with colleagues from Sapienza. It is anticipated that these links will lead to further collaborative opportunities. My contacts with academic colleagues in the UK (especially University of London and University of Glasgow) have also produced new funding bids and publication collaborations.

How the project team has spread the results to other researchers and groups outside the scientific community, as well as about and how collaboration has taken place

During the sabbatical period, I presented my work related to this monograph upon invitation at the University of Rome “La Sapienza”; the University of Parma; Södertörn University; the University of Lisbon; Freie Universität Berlin, Humboldt Universität Berlin and Bard College Berlin, in funding collaboration with the Volkswagen Foundation and the Mahindra Humanities Center at Harvard. The latter dissemination action took place as part of the panel “The Pandemic and the Anthropocene”, which was documented for inclusion in the exhibition of Viral Theatres, the broader research project of which it formed part, at the Theater Museum Düsseldorf, accessible by the general public. The event was also live-streamed. Similarly, my invited talk at the University of Lisbon within the framework of the “Empathy Colloquium” at the Centre for Philosophy of Science was also live-streamed and recorded for further dissemination. Collaboration took place both remotely and on site, and has involved dialogues internationally with academics working across different disciplines, as well as theatre practitioners. As above, the forthcoming confirmed/contracted open-access publication of the primary sabbatical output, the monograph, will guarantee reach across a broader audience beyond the scientific community.
Grant administrator
Mid Sweden University Campus Sundsvall
Reference number
SAB21-0006
Amount
SEK 1,723,000.00
Funding
RJ Sabbatical
Subject
Performing Art Studies
Year
2021