Output details

DON JUAN.WHO? / DON JUAN.KDO?

This UK/Slovene research explored several interlocking questions: thematic, methodological, technological and strategic. The project sought to explore contemporary gender relations via the Don Juan myth, asking: what tools (text, action, imagery) might we employ for exploring and expressing findings in theatrical form? How could we harness extant historical and contemporary Don Juan texts – poetic (Byron), dramatic (de Molina, Moliere, Shaw, Von Horvath), operatic (Mozart/da Ponte) and cinematic (Vadim, Sherman, Korda, Jarmusch) – as a dramaturgical framework within which to pose questions about sexuality, seduction, gender and power relations? How might the transnational aspect of such questions be explored?

The central methodology sought the effective transfer of research from cyberspace to theatrical space by geographically dispersed collaborators, asking: how might a dramaturgy reflect an archive of eighteen months’ collective writing online? How does cyborg presence become fleshed out? Can the devising process adapt research conducted virtually into expressive 'liveness’? It sought to forge a common theatrical language for audiences in the UK and in Slovenia. One strategic research intention was to test a pragmatic model for international co-production.

Furse identified cyberspace as a practical and apposite research tool. Used globally as a forum for intimacy, anonymous erotic encounters and masquerade, it connected theme (mutable gender positions) and method (co-creation process). A password-protected ‘CyberStudio’ was commissioned, adapting the ‘Upstage’ platform, permitting collaborative contribution to a performance text by a multilingual company of researcher-actors (four Slovene, one Italian, one English) across different countries simultaneously, collaborating weekly via live-graphical and text-based chat. This 500-page archive was used in the creation of a published tri-lingual text (in Furse’s anthology Theatre in Pieces: Politics, Poetics and Interdisciplinary collaboration, Methuen, 2011). Work-in-progress productions took place in 2007, with full production at Mladinsko 10-11 July 2008 and the FeEast Festival of Eastern European Arts, Riverside Studios, London, November 2008.

This is complex PaR, generating an extensive project in cyberspace, studio and theatre, whose durable remains include a self-assembly CyberStudio, DVD (ArtsArchives) and a comprehensive/contextualised text. A radical experiment in sexual political theatre research, methodology, thematics and instruments stretched across 6 years. An 18-month collective online writing experiment produced a 500-page archive, edited to a tri-lingual text (published in Furse’s anthology Theatre in Pieces: Politics, Poetics and Interdisciplinary Collaboration) for international performance plus talks and workshops. It involved a major Slovene producing house, seven professional actors, two new commissions (video and sound), technical/creative teams and a chorus of supernumeries (Slovenia/UK).