Performing Collaboration in Solo Performance
Performing Collaboration in Solo Performance (Book)
A Duet Without You and Practice as Research
Includes the full-length performance score of A Duet Without You, an original piece of collaboratively devised theatre by performance artist and scholar Chloé Déchery and her collaborators Karen Christopher, Pedro Inês, Simone Kenyon, Martin Langthorne, Tom Parkinson, Michael Pinchbeck and Deborah Pearson. Also includes a series of essays and critical responses from leading theorists, theatre-makers and artists who were part of the creative team /w illus.
Edition
The book provides an investigation grounded in creative writing and practice-as-research methodology and explores the issues of authorship and collaborative labour in contemporary performance. This investigation is set in the context of a world more and more characterized by fragmentation, displacement and virtual communication and relationships. It addresses and playfully engages with the following questions: what is a collaborative body? Can a sole performer carry out a collaborative practice ? Can we stand in for others? What forms of “coming-together” might take place when distance remains between those who perform and those who spectate?
The book contains the full-length version of the score from A Duet Without You, an original performance piece created between 2013 and 2015 by Chloé Déchery in collaboration with a range of artistic collaborators working inter- and cross-disciplinary, including Karen Christopher, Pedro Iñes, Simone Kenyon, Marty Langthorne, Tom Parkinson, Michael Pinchbeck and Deborah Pearson.
Alongside the playtext, the book entails a collection of essays written by independent writers, artists and academics and dedicated to the politics of collaboration, ranging from performative responses and co-authored articles to in-depth theoretical essays.
Primary readership will be those teaching, researching or studying in theatre and performance studies, visual arts, fine arts, art history, creative writing, poetry, philosophy or French literature. Will also be of interest to art school students and those with an interest in theatre.
Chloé Déchery is a performance-make, writer, pedagogue and Lecturer in theater and performance studies at the University of Paris 8 in Saint-Denis, France. Her research interests include everyday corporeality and embodiment; authorship and creative labour; the atmospheric turn and eco-feminism in performance.
She is the co-director of Performer Les Savoirs (Performing Knowledge) a research programme and curatorial platform. Recent publications include Performing Collaboration in Solo Performance: A Duet Without You and Practice as Research (ed); Artist.es-Chercheur.es, Chercheur.es-Artistes, Performer Les Savoirs (eds. Marion Boudier, ArTeC/les presses du réel, 2022) and theatre journals Documents-Matériaux, in thaêtre [online], Chantier #7, (eds. Marion Boudier), 2022 and Staging Atmospheres: Theatre and the Atmospheric Turn, volumes 1 and 2 (eds. Marion Martin Welton), ambiances [online], issues 6 and 7, 2020 and 2021. Atmosphères en scène : le théâtre à l’ère du tournant atmosphérique.
www.chloedechery.com
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Performance Credits
Foreword
Introduction: The Making of A Duet Without You: Working With and Without Others in the Neo-Liberal Performance Context – Chloé Déchery
PART ONE: A DUET WITHOUT YOU
1. A Duet Without You: The Performance Score – Chloé Déchery, Pedro Inês, Simone Kenyon, Deborah Pearson and Michael Pinchbeck
PART TWO: CRITICAL WRITING AND PRACTICE AS RESEARCH: THE COLLABORATORS’ INSIGHTS ON THE CREATIVE PROCESS
2. A Dance of Absence: (In)visible Dramaturgies within A Duet Without You – Michael Pinchbeck
3. On Friendship and Collaboration – Deborah Pearson
4. Distance and Occupation: Notes on the Recorded Voice – Tom Parkinson
5. Staging Absence and the (Un)Making of Memory in A Duet Without You – Chloé Déchery
PART THREE: CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES AND PERFORMING THEORY AROUND A DUET WITHOUT YOU
6. An Invitation to Dance: Chloé Déchery’s A Duet Without You – Mary Paterson
7. Folding and Unfolding: A Close Listening to Chloé Déchery’s A Duet Without You – Karen Christopher
8. Absence: Chloé Déchery’s A Duet Without You and Marguerite Duras – Clare Finburgh Delijani
9. An Electronic Conversation on Bridges, Pregnancies, Bookends and Encountering Histories – Diana Damian Martin and Chloé Déchery
Coda, On Blue – Chloé Déchery
Bibliography
Notes on Contributors
'Performing Collaboration in Solo Performance, written as a companion to the live performance ‘A Duet Without You’, is exemplary practice-based research. The work at its centre, ‘A Duet Without You’, is a conjuring act, a sleight of hand(s) performance of absence made present. Rather than a eulogy for what’s missing – the without you calling out some loss or lack – it is instead an overture for the possibilities of presence and present-ness.
[The book] invites us backstage into the hidden world of the rehearsal studio as Chloé Déchery and her collaborators navigate collective authorship and shared creativity mapped on to the journey of solo performance making. The reader is immersed in the re-sounding of the live performance in these eloquently written chapters which resonate on a level both singular and choral. Original and compelling.'
'Framing the author’s solo performance piece A Duet Without You (2013-2016), this fascinating academic artefact stages, conceptualises and comments on the cardinal principle of performance-making: collaboration. Both as an artist and academic, Chloé Déchery illuminates the space of absence belonging to invisible collaborators in performance-making and makes a powerful argument in favour of the fundamentally relational, intersubjective and composite nature of solo artworks.
The significance of this recognition can never be greater than in the aftermath of a global lockdown! This book will be a reliable companion for students in any field of the creative arts and a source of inspiration for artists and scholars exploring modes of performance documentation.'
'Performing Collaboration in Solo Performance edited by Chloé Déchery offers a unique perspective from within on artistic research, practice-based reflexion and creation. The book addresses a question which is both complex and simple, especially in our post-everything times: what does it mean to work together in solitude? Chloé Déchéry literally opens up the rehearsal space as a site for dialogue, friendship and exchange, where reflexion and hands-on research dance an elegant pas-de-deux. But above all this book testifies of an unshakeable belief in artistic creation itself as a locus of creative sociality. Deploying different types of performative writing, Performing Collaboration in Solo Performance reveals what Clifford Geertz actually meant with ‘thick’ description and what it can offer for rehearsal studies, ethnography and artistic research: a situated, profound understanding of creative labour and artistic relationships. But above all, Chloé Dechery enthusiastically defends the idea of the studio as shared space where affects and ideas can converge or collide. In times of individualized competition and formated research output, Performing Collaboration in Solo Performance is therefore also a hopeful book, which will empower young and not so young artists and researchers.'
