Exploring the practices for sustainable site-specific performance in intentional communities

Anderson, Gemini 2022. Exploring the practices for sustainable site-specific performance in intentional communities. PhD Thesis, Cardiff University. Item availability restricted.

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Abstract

Once again, people are leaving the city and moving to the countryside for the hope of connection found in the intentional community (Howard, 2021; Shenker, 1986, p.3). Similarly, the orthodox theatre has competition. Cries of inaccessibility and now regulations in response to Covid-19 mean site-specific performances are also on the rise (MacPherson, 2021), and entering previously un-used community spaces. Combining cultural theory and performance studies, this thesis explores the unique point of interaction that is site-specific performance within intentional community spaces. An evocative auto-ethnographic methodology underpins (Ellis and Bochner, 2016) active-participant fieldwork at the intentional community of Coed Hills Rural Artspace. Here I lived off-the-grid, observed, and actively participated, in addition to employing practice-as-research methodologies of the ‘self’ for two years. The ambition was to divine the experience of the visiting performer to an intentional community, as well as the role of the community member in hosting the visiting performer. For the culmination of my two-year residency and research, I conducted interviews with core community members and co-produced a site-specific performance event. Through reflexive praxis I was able to test theories and refine the answers to my research question: What practices for sustainable site-specific performance are being explored in intentional community spaces? This thesis utilises the idea of shifting away from the final performance being paramount for analysis. Instead it moves toward the relationships a performer has with an environment and community during the rehearsal process as an indication of sustainability. The ideological concepts I devised from my fieldwork were form, freedom, community-minded-ness, and self-sufficiency. From these four seemingly binary principles, the concepts of art and exchange are born. These ideological concepts are explored as embodied practices to evaluate the three site-specific performances this thesis presents: The Bliss of Wildness (2018), promenade with PYLON (2019), and Coed Roots & Legends (2019).

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Date Type:	Completion
Status:	Unpublished
Schools:	Journalism, Media and Culture
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > H Social Sciences (General)
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	6 April 2023
Last Modified:	06 Apr 2023 09:55
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/158422

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