Output details
35 - Music, Drama, Dance and Performing Arts
University of Exeter
Writing Space
This is a Practice-as-Research project funded by a £13,000 AHRC research grant (2008), which trials a methodology for dramaturgical work with writers.
Approaches and Strategies
Turner brought together a group of 8 writers across a spectrum of performance practice. After sharing core questions and approaches to the theme of ‘narrative’, each writer wrote a 5-minute piece in response. These were performed by students and the experience and outcomes were discussed.
The project asked the following research questions:
•What kinds of dialogue and work may be generated by taking a ‘radically inclusive’ approach (MacDonald, 2007) in curating dialogues between diverse writers and artists?
•How might one work non-hierarchically with writers, rather than as expert ‘mentor’ or critic?
•Might it be productive for conceptual and formal questions to drive a new writing initiative, rather than to arise from it?
•What can the university context offer as a space for developing new or ‘expanded’ dramaturgies?
Outcomes and Evidence
1)Special issue, Studies in Theatre and Performance, 30.1, 2010, edited by Turner. Includes scripts, documentation and an article by Turner, ‘Writing for Contemporary Theatre: Towards a Radically Inclusive Dramaturgy’, pp 75-90.
2)Report, available online, expandeddramaturgies.com.
3)‘Learning to Write Spaces’, 23.2, 2013, Contemporary Theatre Review, pages 114 - 119.
4)‘Something to Glance Off: Writing Space’, 2.2, 2009, Journal for Writing in Creative Practice, pp.217-230.
5)‘Getting the “now” into the written text (and vice versa?): developing dramaturgies of process’(2009), Performance Research, 14.1, 2009, pp.106-114.
6)‘Nowe dramatopisarstwo a praca nad sztuką w nurcie devising theatre: Strategie dla dramaturgii na poszerzonym ppolu działania’ Notatnik Teatralny, 58/59, 2010, pp.158-165.
7)‘Creating a Writing Space’, a paper contributed to ‘Dramaturgy as Applied Knowledge: From Practice to Theory and Back’, Tel-Aviv University, May 2009, available at http://www.tau.ac.il/~dramatur/
