Researcher: Johannes Maria Schmit
In my research, I´m investigating the possibilities of directing after the deconstruction of the auteur-figure. Equally unhappy with the notion of absolute, monopolized authorship formerly granted to the director (see "Regie-Theater") as well as with contemporary forms of devising (too often confusable with the exertion of neoliberal control), I am looking into finding a position for the director that can be ethically sustainable and aesthetically excessive at the same time.
I am looking at the two sites in the work of the director, where notions of excess and sustainability can be allocated. For example: how can sustainable processes possibly lead to excessive artistic results? How to create spaces of uncertainty for our audiences, whilst providing safe spaces during our rehearsals? Furthermore: how to distinct “aesthetical“ from “ethical“ transgressions, when it comes to process and result? And: what if all collaborative crisises were always treated as artistic crisises, inaccesible to the solution-oriented strategies of organizational management?
The practice informing the research will foremost be rehearsal processes with professional actors. The aim is to conduct three studies, that each have a very different “contract” as a basis. These “artistic contracts of collaboration” that are to be signed by both the actors and the director (the PhD-candidate) regulate the mutual reach of power and control - and the leveling of the two. The overall aim is to make existing modes of directing explicit and put up for discussion; as well as to instigate new hybrid forms, unknown to the field.
Start and end year for the research 2019 - 2023.