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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.
'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.'
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