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Communication Dans Un Congrès Année : 2013

New Visions of Organicism on the British Stage

Résumé

This paper examines ways in which scientific references to the natural world tend to suggest hidden coherence and connections in dramatic works. These connections can be a theme in the face of fragmented human experience, but also a formal trait in cases where the shape of the play is itself discontinuous. The suggestion of coherence through images drawn form the natural world then plays a metaphorical role, implying that such coherence also underlies fragmented dramatic forms or narratives. In Theatre de Complicite’s Mnemonic (1999), a theatre piece about human memory in which a tree leaf provides a structuring image for the multiple fragments woven together by the company, organic form thus produces a sense of underlying organicism1. But a sense of structuring coherence can also derived from non‑organic forms, such as constellations, sub‑atomic particles, or even models of turbulence. In fact the physical world provides contemporary artists with organicist images that often do not derive from organisms, and the filter of science plays a key role in this process. I begin by exploring the idea that conflicting desires for instability and coherence are the reason for which contemporary theatre artists are attracted to these sciences. This leads me to examine two cases in which a discontinuous theatrical form is given continuity by the natural world, but crucially by a scientific view of this world. Both are devised pieces created collectively by a company : collaborative approaches provide the most striking examples of these organicist impulses working within non‑linear dramatic structures, as they tend to work from more fragmented forms than contemporary playwrights.
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Dates et versions

hal-01443985 , version 1 (23-01-2017)

Identifiants

  • HAL Id : hal-01443985 , version 1

Citer

Liliane Campos. New Visions of Organicism on the British Stage. Living Matter / Literary Forms (20th-21st centuries), liliane campos, Apr 2013, Paris, France. ⟨hal-01443985⟩
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