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DIY: 2019 – Daniel Oliver: Scripting Unscriptable Performance

Writing down and getting someone else to perform performances that can not or should not be written down and given to someone else to perform.

Deadline for applications: 2pm, Thursday 20 June
This DIY is supported by Cambride Junction

Project summary

This DIY emerges as a response to a recent Q&A about my performance Weird Seance, where I was asked if I would allow other people to perform it, and if so how I would script it. This felt surprising because I see my practice as very rooted in my body and subjectivity, my responses, and my modes of being with other people. It is also full of improvisation, site-responsiveness, and last-minute chaos.  I love it when it is very clear that no-one else could be performing a performance – that it comes from and is made for the artist’s body, subjectivity, voice, history etc. I also love it when a performance feels live and unplanned – that things can go in wild, unexpected directions. So this DIY is about asking if and how we might write our unwritable performances down so someone else can perform them. We’ll arrive with existing performances made for our bodies, our subjectivity, etc… or full of last-minute decisions, improvisation and spontaneity- performances where it feels odd or contradictory or uneasy to script it and let someone else perform it. We will then devise ways of producing scores or scripts for these performances. We will collate these texts together for a lo-fi publication. We will discuss the effects, challenges, and ethics of capturing these performances in this way and making them available for other people to perform.

How to apply

This is a workshop for people who make performances that are hard or impossible to write down and then give to someone else to perform. This might be because they are always made for your body or your voice or your history, or because they are improvised and responsive to specific audiences and specific sites, or for other reasons. In this workshop we will try and find ways to write down those performances and give them to other people to perform.

Dates, times and location

Dates: Sunday 8 and Monday 9 September
Location: Cambridge Junction, Cambridge

The artist

Daniel is a UK-based performance artist and researcher. They have been creating and presenting clunky participatory performance worlds inhabited by awkward participatory performances since 2003.

For questions about this DIY, please contact the artist.

Banner image credit:

Image credit: the artist

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Donation

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