For a Canadian dramaturg (specializing in new play development and creative process, often within non-text-based work) set down amidst the frenzy of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival for six unrelenting days, unexpected parallels emerged between uncurated, large-scale amounts of Moose Art and Fringe theatre performances:

1. Art and the Fringe. Both projects strive to ensure that the public at large has access to a vast amount of artistic product, as well as providing artists at all levels of their careers (and works at all stages of creative process) equal access to venues, publicity and audience contact. Sometimes this is a positive outcome; sometimes it isn’t.

2.  The shows that I saw seemed to operate within a disparate and largely undefined field, with all the performances identifying themselves as physical-visual theatre, much as the Moose Art boldly presents itself as creative product.

Invited by the editors of this virtual journal to explore the actual and potential role of dramaturgy within the context of the physical-visual theatre performances at the Fringe, I would propose, first and foremost, the challenge of identifying an organic - and perhaps amorphous - set of parameters for this type of devised work. Such parameters must offer flexible principles of creation, bearing in mind that physical-visual performance encompasses such a range of styles that it may be easier to discern criteria for exclusion than for inclusion.

This type of dramaturgical input could certainly give a frame of reference to the cornucopia of work presented and give some sense of balance to any appraisal of it. Within the context of the Fringe - and particularly of the Total Theatre Awards, which aim to promote recognition of this kind of theatre - I found it impossible to compare work dramaturgically without understanding what consitutes physical-visual theatre here.  I tried to find commonality in what companies were creating thematically and examine the ways in which they communicated those ideas. I appreciated and examined the repercussions theatrically of the driving need to move away from traditional Eurocentric, androcentric, linear theatrical conventions shared by all of these companies. I looked to their production values, their states of development, the skill of the artists realizing ideas and images; but without guidelines, how can the assessment criteria for the Awards, for instance, be based on anything other than a personal aesthetic?

Further issues arose during the week. I found myself asking repeatedly how art can be equitably evaluated at various stages of process, especially when the creative groups presenting work range from the emerging to the established? How can the efficacy of the art be assessed without any clear demarcation of genre boundaries or indication of artistic goals? And perhaps, secondarily, is the iconography of the art intelligible within an international context or outside of a familiar, local constituency?

The works I saw that had been short-listed for Total Theatre Awards, all of which were to be judged in the context of physical-visual theatre, there was wide-ranging diversity in terms of style, content and artistic skills.  I was, however, drawn repeatedly to the primary questions I ask of any type of creative work: “Why is/are the artist(s) telling me/showing me this, here and now?” “To what end am I experiencing this series of images?” “Do I have a clear understanding of the artistic intention of the creative team and has the production fully realized that intention?” “Do I understand the world of the play and am I aware of the nature of the journey of the people inhabiting this world?”

Sometimes I could answer these questions and at other times the only thing clear to me was that while the collaborative team devising the work had answers, I was unable to penetrate the visual imagery or physical vocabulary to connect with the ideas within. With the intention of refining a definition of physical-visual theatre within the Fringe context, I began to catalogue mentally the uses of physical vocabulary and image within the work I saw. Here are four examples:

1. I watched a primarily text-based, fairly conventionally structured linear play that employed a degree of  movement and some non-realistic physical vocabulary and I understood the play primarily because of the work of the written text. The applied physical element established the world of the characters within an ecology clearly defined by text. The strikingly staged physical and visual images were more analogous to costume than any other aspect of performance.

2.  I entered into the raucous energy of an outdoor play (with defined if limited characters and a narrative thread) that was staged on a set of swings upon which performers climbed in a type of physical “groundscape”. This groundscape operated much as a soundscape or lighting design, enhancing an already fully functional though only partially realized piece of theatre. The groundscape didn’t provide a physical or visual language to communicate the play’s idea, or to delineate character, but helped to shape the general world of the play.

3.  I was catapulted into a wholly choreographed, hour long piece without text. Sitting in a crowded, hot, small room, I was immediately assaulted by an overwhelming sound score that by virtue of the level and intensity of the music induced something akin to a trance state in the audience within which the physical component of the piece could operate outside of real-world logic. This artistic choice forced spectators to enter the play in a non-intellectual way: the messages of this performance came and went in waves that were evocative rather than cognitive, and we were involved in the journey of the characters despite any attempt to withstand immersion in the world of the play. Physical theatre, in this case, involved audience reaction as well as artistic interpretation.

4. I was ushered through a series of  recognizable travel experiences and then immersed in a post-apocalyptic world of trauma, left to fend for myself in a bold theatrical manipulation of fears and unconscious memories of abandonment. Sharply drawn, connective images were abundant, such as a tower of dying people clutching for an electric appliance as one character made the decision to share its life-giving warmth, passing it ritualistically from hand to hand. Yet, there were moments within this piece that lacked clarity. A woman clutching at her bottom with great fervour, or a character repeatedly excusing herself and leaving the performance space only to return quickly were beyond my understanding.  The attempts to draw the audience into a series of physical and emotional reactions within this piece were less simple to effect, as the more ambitious promenade staging and the length of the piece allowed for moments of spectator “reality check”. Nevertheless, this was a piece that used non-text-based physical vocabulary and imagery as its primary means of communicating ideas.

At the Festival I often saw work that contained flashes of brilliance subsumed in ninety minutes of floundering and over-extended bits of physical business; or pieces that suffered from lack of judicious editing. I saw images of escalating lust and longing in a darkly comic series of entwined vignettes brought to a crashing halt as an entire Jacques Brel song was performed in a physically adept interlude, deflating the exquisite balance of action and activity. I shrugged at images as frustratingly obtuse as a man in a suit, barefoot, his back to the audience, slopping water from a bucket onto a series of roof top door frames in an activity that hinted at ritual but was internalized to the point of obscurity. The  role of the dramaturg in working with and for productions such as these is clear: to help realize the fullest potential of the work that is already inherent in its component parts, but as yet not available to uninitiated spectators. And to ensure that images speak clearly to the audience.

Dramaturgy has the potential to alert performance groups that devised imagery can, for example, convey one set of meanings in a European or even North American setting but can also have very different connotations elsewhere. A ring of water-filled plastic litre bottles bordering a performance area, poured by each actor over their bodies at the climax of the play, might be interpreted as a painful image of waste and death in an underdeveloped country (where water is scarce and those very same bottles are scavenged and hoarded), while it could conversely communicate the positive image (in another context) of thirst quenched, of birth and rebirth.

Similarly, in an international context, how are the messages of imagery transmitted to audiences potentially unfamiliar with the specifics of localized iconography?  Dramaturgical input can ensure that clarity is at a universal, archetypal level when necessary and that cultural specifics of time and place are used only when they can be interpreted as intended. I came away with from many performances with the perception of difference portrayed as Otherness. Otherness was envisioned as problematic and often resulted in violence. Difference and diversity were not positive features of the worlds within which the plays were operating, but rather distinctly difficult aspects of context that were microcosmic (the family/the home/the neighbourhood) or macrocosmic (the country, the world). Representing Germans as Nazis was a type of shorthand image that recurred in at least four of the works I saw. Spanish-speaking characters, no matter what their country or continent of origin were portrayed uniformly in the plays I saw as excitable, irrational, fast-talking and as The Other.  Individual nationality and personal identity rather than themes of diversity were also emphasized and as a result many plays focussed on invasion, alienation, disenfranchisement and disempowerment of the individual.

Within uncurated art events of magnitude and variety work is often presented that is still very much in process, usually in early draft or short-form. There are times when this can be useful to the artists, in that audience/spectator reaction can highlight the flaws, the unrealized or over-realized moments and give the artists an opportunity to re-work their material. Alternatively, the public showing of a piece can solidify it, effectively ending the development process prematurely. Dramaturgical input can keep the sense of evolution of artistic product fluid by emphasizing process over product and by tempering audience reaction with a balance of internal and external perspectives on the work.

Another good use of dramaturgy in a festival of the size, depth and breadth of the Edinburgh Fringe (the programme cites 1400 shows in 600 venues) is as an impartial respondent to artistic product still in development. Many audiences at festivals are family, friends and colleagues who are unquestioningly supportive. The environment created by generous, familiar audiences can do more harm than good, because they tend to be under-critical and generically positive. Similarly, the “no expectations” attitude of many of the non-familiar theatre-goers out to experience a festival to its fullest can lead to what amounts to thrill-seeking, a type of theatrical voyeurism that does the artist no good other than perhaps the quick fix of applause from a set of warm bodies.  For example, when an actor in the role of a superhero throws panties at the audience and this activity is rewarded with cheers one can only wonder what is motivating the response to such “Theatre of the Great Silliness”.

Furthermore, how does a performance group get the type of audience reaction they might need when, at the end of a performance, that very audience is already out the door and running up (or down) the hill to the next venue for the next show? The one conversation I did undertake with one of the artists in a show I saw happened by accident, at a reception, and was almost immediately interrupted.

Huge amounts of publicly accessible art rarely offer audiences any real sense of how to choose a piece to watch. With so much competition for spectators, posters and flyers are often misleading. Audiences can end up at a play that has little to do with what was promised and in fact may end up at something which they have no interest in - so they leave; or sit politely, mystified; or get hostile. This can result in a sense of disaffection between non-familiar audiences and the play they are watching, even in the most intimate of venues. Dramaturgical work can extend beyond developmental process into areas of public relations and profiling the work with the goal of audience recognition.

To return to the question posed by the journal, and the potential or actual role of dramaturgy in the creation of devised and/or physical-visual theatre. Art of any kind needs to connect and communicate with its audience as opposed to just enabling an artist (or anyone calling themselves an artist) to express a message to no one in particular, in no specific context, for no discernible reason. Whether you fill the streets with Moose Art or with theatre performances, without substance it all becomes disposable. And at that level, what’s the difference between art and tourism, which is arguably more about location and accessibility than content or communication? Art shares a point of view through chosen images, ideas and statements with an audience which, on some level, engages with and understands those images.  And maybe that’s the ultimate dramaturgical message that I want to offer in the context of a major Fringe theatre event (as well as Moose Art): if creative product doesn’t communicate beyond external physical and visual shapes, people are going to ignore it or dismiss it or forget it. No matter how attractive it first appears, how much of it exists, or how accessible it is...

Judith Rudakoff is a dramaturg, playwright and theatre writer based in Toronto,

Canada where she is on faculty at York University. Her most recent book is Questionable Activities: Canadian Theatre Artists in conversation with Canadian Theatre Students and her most recent play, Cola, was

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