Papers by Katherine Graham
Stage@Leeds, Feb 26, 2015
Margarita is a pile of constantly changing drafts ready to be revised, retold, forgotten, erased…... more Margarita is a pile of constantly changing drafts ready to be revised, retold, forgotten, erased… Can we keep Margarita going? This performance installation asks for the audiences’ participation in constructing a collective consciousness: Margarita. It is created as part of Xristina’s Practice Research on performance design, and cognition at PCI using recordings, live performance and ‘scenographic contraptions’. The project contributed to the collection of qualitative data (images, post-show interviews, and participant questionnaires) for the analysis of the interaction between audience-participants, and the scenographic environment. Xristina is testing here a methodological tool brought into her research from her performance design and practice background: the contraption. She situates the metaphorical notion of consciousness as ‘multiple drafts’ following Dennett, who, when trying to explain how consciousness works ‘avoids supposing that there must be a single narrative (the “final” or “published” draft, you might say)’ (Dennett 1991: 113), but rather that there are multiple drafts or ‘narrative fragments’ at various stages of editing in various places in the brain (Dennett 1991: 113). This metaphor is used as a critical design-practice tool (contraption) for generating dynamic and reflective exchange between the audience-participants, the artists-collaborators, the environment and the practitioner-researcher. The audiences’ engagement and experience with this environment is further analysed using embodiment, the socially collaborative and ecological nature of human cognition.The composition of the work consists of pre-recorded voices of friends/colleagues/acquaintances of the practitioner-researcher and of live-streamed voices of random passers-by, answering the same set of questions regarding themselves or a female person they know well. The show is divided in 11 chapters, which correspond to the above questions and form a sonic collage, heard through a surround sound system controlled live by the sound designer, and the lighting designer. Container-structures invite the audience to literally immerse in them and listen to the more intimate audio recordings (i.e. the secret pleasures of Margarita). A folk English song talking about an apple and a head is performed live every 15 minutes, while multiple transcripts of the recordings are printed out ad hoc and placed on the floor for the audience to read; a button box waits to be explored and the lighting designer intervenes live corresponding with different lighting atmospheres. The audience-participants visiting the installation are invited to freely explore this sonic, performed and material environment and piece together the experience of Margarita.CePRA Revealing Practice bursar
Theatre and performance design, Oct 2, 2023
This article examines the dramaturgy of light, addressing ways in which its ephemeral, spatiotemp... more This article examines the dramaturgy of light, addressing ways in which its ephemeral, spatiotemporal materiality may be understood as a crucial infrastructure of performance. I propose that ideas of new and expanded dramaturgies provide a productive frame with which to explore the generative impact of light on performance. Correspondingly, examining ways in which light operates within performance provides a fruitful means of analysing the dramaturgical structure of a work. I demonstrate ways that light sculpts both the form and the content of a specific example, the recent contemporary dance work <<both, and>> by the Russell Maliphant Company, and use this analysis to offer insight into the dramaturgical potential of scenographic light more broadly.
Conference Papers by Katherine Graham
In performance it is light that reveals all other elements, making it physiologically possible to... more In performance it is light that reveals all other elements, making it physiologically possible to see what is there. However, in the case of artificial lighting environments, this is not a neutral process of showing, but instead an active, and often transformative, form of mediation. This paper explores light as a performative agent of affect, considering the revealing action of light in relation to Heidegger’s interpretation of the Greek aletheia as unconcealment. Within this framework the interplay of light and dark in the theatre can be understood as a dynamic process of disclosure and concealing. In this discussion I will draw on the specific example of Samuel Beckett’s Play, where light is granted an active position of power. In this text, Beckett explicitly positions light as a ‘unique inquisitor’, with a single, swivelling light source compelling each of the three characters to speak in turn. Exploring samples from this work in performance, in the script, and on screen, this paper aims to demonstrate the transformative impact of light on the characters’ behaviour, and how variant approaches to light may influence interpretation. In the interrogative role of the light in Play, we encounter light, not as a responsive medium, but, rather, as an affective force of unconcealment.
This provocation for discussion presents some issues in the examination of light as a performance... more This provocation for discussion presents some issues in the examination of light as a performance material. It investigates the conceptual and linguistic positioning of theatrical light, noting that the words ‘light’ and ‘lighting’ can refer to equipment, effect, or scenographic praxis. This terminological confluence obscures the distinction between lighting equipment and the light produced. How might this division be possible, or constructive? Is there an extent to which light can be considered a physical presence on the stage, or does this physical dimension belong solely to hardware? Could the consideration of light as a physical substance explicate its dramaturgical agency?
Without a medium such as haze in the air, light will remain invisible whilst rendering visible the objects it touches. This paper uses Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s concept of the ‘chiasm’ to imagine the beam of light as a physical intertwining between the source and the object of illumination. Using the theoretical model of the chiasmic flesh of Merleau-Ponty’s embodied perception provides, at least metaphorically, an anatomical language with which to consider light. An exploration of light in these corporeal terms is intended to facilitate discussion around potential haptic interplay between light and the illuminated.
This paper will trace relationships between light’s ‘touch’, ‘flesh’, and source using examples from the work of UK based choreographer, Hofesh Schecter. His works often include the use of haze, and therefore display individual beams of light. Additionally, his scenography often exposes both surface and source of light. Political Mother (2010), for instance, features a scene in which light inscribes a circle on the floor; dancers appear confined to this circle as they move continuously within it. Untouchable (2015) presents a prominent display of lighting sources, with rows of individual lamps facing the audience directly.
Events/Practice by Katherine Graham
A world premiere at the White Light Festival 2015, Lincoln Center, New York. A new adaptation of ... more A world premiere at the White Light Festival 2015, Lincoln Center, New York. A new adaptation of Samuel Beckett's "Texts for Nothing," co-created with Lisa Dwan and designed by Katherine Graham.
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Papers by Katherine Graham
Conference Papers by Katherine Graham
Without a medium such as haze in the air, light will remain invisible whilst rendering visible the objects it touches. This paper uses Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s concept of the ‘chiasm’ to imagine the beam of light as a physical intertwining between the source and the object of illumination. Using the theoretical model of the chiasmic flesh of Merleau-Ponty’s embodied perception provides, at least metaphorically, an anatomical language with which to consider light. An exploration of light in these corporeal terms is intended to facilitate discussion around potential haptic interplay between light and the illuminated.
This paper will trace relationships between light’s ‘touch’, ‘flesh’, and source using examples from the work of UK based choreographer, Hofesh Schecter. His works often include the use of haze, and therefore display individual beams of light. Additionally, his scenography often exposes both surface and source of light. Political Mother (2010), for instance, features a scene in which light inscribes a circle on the floor; dancers appear confined to this circle as they move continuously within it. Untouchable (2015) presents a prominent display of lighting sources, with rows of individual lamps facing the audience directly.
Events/Practice by Katherine Graham
Without a medium such as haze in the air, light will remain invisible whilst rendering visible the objects it touches. This paper uses Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s concept of the ‘chiasm’ to imagine the beam of light as a physical intertwining between the source and the object of illumination. Using the theoretical model of the chiasmic flesh of Merleau-Ponty’s embodied perception provides, at least metaphorically, an anatomical language with which to consider light. An exploration of light in these corporeal terms is intended to facilitate discussion around potential haptic interplay between light and the illuminated.
This paper will trace relationships between light’s ‘touch’, ‘flesh’, and source using examples from the work of UK based choreographer, Hofesh Schecter. His works often include the use of haze, and therefore display individual beams of light. Additionally, his scenography often exposes both surface and source of light. Political Mother (2010), for instance, features a scene in which light inscribes a circle on the floor; dancers appear confined to this circle as they move continuously within it. Untouchable (2015) presents a prominent display of lighting sources, with rows of individual lamps facing the audience directly.