A silent prelude to a dance

ABSTRACTThe concept of performance in the concentration camps is not a new one. Rovit and Goldfarb (1999) have chronicled a range of inmate performances from the cabarets of Theresienstadt to the variety shows at Auschwitz-Birkenau, created for many diverse reasons. Yet since the liberation of the camps there has been virtually no theatrical performance in these sites of memory. The very notion is generally seen as taboo, but the reasons for this are somewhat vague and appear to centre around the widespread idea of performance as ‘frivolous’; to perform within a concentration camp would be to somehow deface Holocaust memory and mock the suffering of those imprisoned there. Such ‘profane’ performance can be located within the ‘selfie’ photographs of tourists visiting the camps. But what of the daily shows that take place in the guise of guided tours – ‘sacred’ performances? What makes these performances acceptable to the public and the camp authorities, when theatrical performances are not? Can there ever be an acceptable theatrical performance within a concentration camp?Taking Auschwitz-Birkenau as a case study, this article seeks to address these questions through a considered discussion of ‘sacred’ and ‘profane’ performances in the camp. It begins by outlining the components of the guided tour, from the learned script of the guide to the ‘promenade performance’ nature of the space, and what makes this a ‘sacred’ performance. It defines the ‘profane’ performance hypothesis through a reflection upon several examples of tourist photographs taken within Auschwitz. It questions where site-specific theatrical performance would fall within these parameters through an interrogation of aspects including its purpose, the identity of the performers, the (intended) audience, and the short- and long-term ramifications for the performance and the camp. Ultimately, this article probes whether site-specific performance at Auschwitz could ever be efficacious and anything but profane.

Site-specific performances are shows created for a specific location and can occur in one or more areas outside the traditional theatre. Social gathering restrictions during the Covid-19 lockdown demanded that these shows be shut down. However, site-specific performances that apply emergent and novel mobile digital technologies have been afforded a compelling voice in showing how performance practitioners and audiences might proceed under the stifling constraints of lockdown and altered live performance paradigms, however they may manifest. Although extended reality (XR) technologies have been in development for a long time, their recent surge in sophistication presents renewed potentialities for site-specific performers to explore ways of bringing the physical world into the digital to recreate real-world places in shared digital spaces. In this research, we explore the potential role of digital XR technologies, such as volumetric video, social virtual reality (VR) and photogrammetry, for simulating site-specific theatre, thereby assessing the potential of these content creation techniques to support future remote performative events. We report specifically on adapting a real-world site-specific performance for VR. This case study approach provides examples and opens dialogues on innovative approaches to site-specific performance in the post-Covid-19 era.

Reviewed by: On Site: Methods for Site-Specific Performance Creation by Stephan Koplowitz KT Shorb They/Them On Site: Methods for Site-Specific Performance Creation. Stephan Koplowitz. New York: Oxford University Press, 2022; pp. xvii + 303. Written by veteran site-specific dancer and choreographer Stephan Koplowitz, On Site: Methods for Site-Specific Performance Creation is part of a proliferation of books published in the last five years on live performance created site-specifically. With COVID-19 shutting down traditional theatres and recital halls, many artists and organizations pivoted to site-specific performance to keep artists and audiences safe while addressing a hunger for live and in-person cultural experiences. During quarantine, we saw a wide range of approaches to site-specificity, with varied levels of success. While the desire to maintain some kind of normalcy by continuing the ritual of in-person attendance has shown audiences to be exceedingly patient with technical and creative glitches, the ability to work adeptly with "site" has revealed itself to be a unique creative muscle—one that requires cultivation. Despite most traditional venues reopening, site-specific work addresses more needs now than ever. For many performing artists, to work "on site" is no longer an idiosyncratic approach limited to a select experimental few. It is now a skill required of every director, choreographer, and performance artist. On Site is a timely and detailed manual to guide those seeking to hone such a skill. A practical handbook for artists, On Site draws heavily from Koplowitz's three-decade long career as a choreographer, director, and producer. In addition, it includes information Koplowitz drew from his interviews with twenty-four artists, producers, and writers of site-specific work, including: Joanna Haigood, Debby Kajiyama, Noémie Lafrance, José Ome Navarrete Mazatl, Jennifer Monson, and Amara Tabor-Smith. Their words and documentation of their creative work appear in the book seamlessly alongside the author's. Koplowitz makes an argument for the heightened need for well-considered site-specific work in our current sociohistorical moment. He also notes that the history of site-specific work has been dominated by white practitioners and explicitly states one goal of the book is to provide tools for practitioners to diversify the field. Structured in six parts, On Site follows a loose production calendar, starting with conceptual definitions of "site-specific" through developing an idea, securing a site, preproduction, content generation, rehearsal, and concluding with performance and postproduction. Two parts explicate business considerations for producer-artists. Sections covering the actual genesis and process of creating content for site work are practice-as-research case studies from Koplowitz's most well-known works. Unlike a few other books that provide exercises for developing work (Phil Smith's Making Site-Specific Theatre and Performance and Mike Pearson's Site-Specific Performance, for example), Koplowitz instead offers examples with reflections and questions for artists to contemplate in relation to their own creative processes. A chapter on collaboration incorporates the voices of his interviewees and explores multiple modes of engaging with designers and design elements. Several chapters address various "challenges" that include performer and audience safety as well as ways to expand accessibility for collaborators and audiences who are both disabled and nondisabled. On Site is a strongly written, well-organized reference manual for the early to mid-career creator-producer. Koplowitz's clarity of prose interwoven with other well-respected artists' observations and advice makes On Site well poised to become a foundational practical text for future site-specific choreographers and directors. It offers concise information on potential pitfalls and ethical considerations for the artist. In addition, Koplowitz includes many philosophical and thoughtful asides on important contemporary subjects such as land use in colonized Indigenous territory, capacious notions of accessibility, and reflections on the democratizing and politically engaged effects of site work. Parts I and II offer introductory information on site work that could be useful in studio and criticism classes wishing to impart some basic concepts to students. Parts III and VI cover business and documentation issues valuable to all independent artists, not only those creating site-specific work. These parts could be assigned in arts management courses. Parts IV and V are useful to...

Reviewed by: Off Sites: Contemporary Performance Beyond Site-Specific by Bertie Ferdman Amanda Rose Villarreal Off Sites: Contemporary Performance Beyond Site-Specific. By Bertie Ferdman. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2018. Pp. x + 195. $38.00, paper. Bertie Ferdman’s Off Sites examines the evolution of site-specific performance through the dual lenses of visual and performing arts, arguing that the continuous and shifting effects of technology, the global economy, and climate change [End Page 272] are altering our perception of preconceived notions of both time and space. Ferdman considers the political, economic, and technological impacts on the wide array of site-specific works analyzed in this book, concluding that “the outdated theatrical engagement of the term will no longer suffice for its many contemporary variations” (9). Off Sites draws the reader into a discourse of physical, temporal, and mental sites—each one with its own set of political implications. A broad spectrum of performances is detailed within this work, ranging from David Levine’s works challenging theatricality to the legal and social implications of removing a meteorite from its sacred resting place in el Campo del Cielo, Argentina. The introductory chapter traces the genealogy of site specificity in the Americas and introduces the reader to Ferdman’s concept of “off site” performances. Ferdman analyzes the evolution of site specificity, first through the theories and practices of visual art and then through the evolution of site-specific performance. Doing this, she grounds the reader in a synoptic understanding of the ongoing changes within both fields and their parallel development, regardless of the reader’s point of origin. The thorough introduction offers the opportunity for readers of any background to follow her argument as presented within this work. Ferdman then introduces her categories of sites, integral for her concept of working “off site.” She dedicates the four remaining chapters to disciplinary sites, spectator sites, temporal sites, and urban sites. In chapter 2, “Disciplinary Sites: Situating Theatre,” Ferdman ties the parallel evolutionary pathways of visual art and performance together, analyzing the work of David Levine, which “is a very deliberate attempt to interweave and therefore question disciplinary histories that define, separate, and categorize theatre versus art histories” (34). Focusing on Private Moment (2015), Actors and Work (2005), and Habit (2012), among others, Ferdman argues that the notion of site reaches beyond physical space and into the artist’s theoretical framework, affecting the audience’s point of reference. The breadth of performances explored within this chapter are unified in the ways Levine situates—or sites—the performances outside of traditional theatrical spaces: in a park, on a farm, at a place of employment. Ferdman argues that Levine is situating theatre as a “disciplinary site,” creating performances that work outside that site, thereby challenging theatrical conventions and influencing the audience’s observational patterns. “Spectator Sites: Artistic Intervention and the Unintended Audience” further explores sites of spectatorship by focusing on the removed spectator who interacts with, and affects, the artwork without witnessing the performance itself. Ferdman highlights El Chaco en Kassel, (2012) and the off-site international [End Page 273] audience engagement that transformed this piece into The Weight of Uncertainty, as well as Mi Vida Después (Argentina 2009). These performances “made art from the real, and also, simultaneously, intervened in the real, by establishing a communicative kind of off-site spectatorship that existed not as independent from the work, but, on the contrary, in conversation with it” (65). These performances had tangible legal impacts, creating changes in law and in public perception and spurring conversations and reactions even from those who had never witnessed the works in person. El Chaco en Kassel and Mi Vida Después garnered off-site spectatorship, an occurrence that becomes increasingly possible with technological advancements. Engaging with Rebecca Schneider’s work on theatrical reenactment, Ferdman explores temporal sites in chapter 4, “Temporal Sites: Moving Site, Moving Time.” Ferdman highlights Geyser Land (2003) to demonstrate nonlinear experiences of time created by site-specific performances that situate the history of a location and a people within the present audience’s experience, illustrating the political and social implications of leaving the site of linear temporality. Recounting RFK in EKY (2004)—a...

The main goal of the article is to investigate the dialogical relationship between mimesis and diegesis in contemporary counterfactual stage worlds since the mid-1980s. It focuses on an extensive analysis of the ways of subverting the spectators’ understanding of historical facts and their plausible artistic representation. That, in consequence, affects both the participants’ individual experience and its theoretical modelling, which is no longer possible without taking into consideration the corporeality of experience (time, place, and bodies of the audience). To illuminate today’s understanding of the intersection of contemporary theatre and performance with counterfactualism, three case studies have been chosen and analyzed as representative examples of different trends in challenging the ability of theatre to plausibly represent the conditions and ramifications of past periods and actions. The article starts with a close look at two contemporary historical plays: Helene Cixous’s L’Histoire terrible mais inachevee de Norodom Sihanouk, roi du Cambodge (1985) and Suzan-Lori Parks’ The America Play (1994). The first one asks the important questions about human agency within history and truth claims of history stage representations based on the assumption of causality, insisting on past’s contingency. The second one makes visible and reflects upon the forms through which we engage the past, get access to the specific, material details of historical experience. What follows is an indepth analysis of MS 101 (ArtBoom Festival, Cracow 2015), a site-specific performance by the Polish performer and filmmaker Karol Radziszewski, clearly conceived as an experiment with counterfactual and mockumentary strategies. It premiered in the space where the real and the fictional events took place in order to gain a new vantage point on the past through friction between them, one that is inaccessible through other means. This vantage point is, then, used in a broader context of Bruno Latour’s concept of circulating references to theoretically access the relation of mimesis and diegesis in counterfactual stage worlds, built upon an active experience of the audience, and to formulate new research questions that arise as a result of this approach.

Charting the rise of the immersive theatre phenomenon, this is the first survey of immersive theories and practices for students, scholars and practitioners of contemporary performance. It includes original interviews with immersive artists and examines key topics such as site-specific performance and immersive technologies. (as on publisher website)

Site-Based TheatreThe Beginning Penelope Cole (bio) Editors Penelope Cole and Rand Harmon co-organized and led a working group titled Site-Based Theatre as a Trans-Contextual Experience at the American Society of Theatre Research (ASTR) conference in Minneapolis in November 2016. Mike Pearson and Michael Shanks, speaking about site-specific performance in their book Theatre/Archaeology, contend that "performance recontextualises such sites: is the latest occupation of a location where other occupations—their material traces and histories—are still apparent: site is not just an interesting, and disinterested, backdrop." Further, they suggest that "interpenetrating narratives jostle to create meanings."1 Inspired by the insights of Pearson and Shanks and the idea of the multiple occupations, or contexts, present in sites, the goal of our working group was to explore the very specific moment in the performative event when these multiple contexts intersect. We hoped through close analysis to unpack how performers and viewer/participants navigate between and among the disparate, and often competing, contexts of the theatrical event. The strength and breadth of the ideas exhibited in the papers by the participants in this working group, as well as the discoveries engendered through spirited, impassioned dialogue, inspired this collection of articles and conversations for Theatre History Studies. Some of the articles in this special section were first presented as part of the working group and have been revised and refined. Other articles represent the ongoing scholarly work in site-based theatre of working group members. Still others are written by scholars new to the field who bring a welcome fresh voice to our collective scholarship. Our explorations of the interactive moment in site-based work emphasized how contexts collide, shift, blur, merge, and are reimagined, revealing the [End Page 91] power embedded in the moment of performance. Our discussions also exposed how ripe these moments of interaction are for transgressive social behavior or the promotion of exclusivity, or both simultaneously. We aimed to articulate the unique dramaturgies of site-based theatre as defined by those moments of interaction through this work. By centering our discussions on the affective responses generated in the negotiation of multiple contexts by the performer and the spectator/participant in interaction, we gained compelling analytical perspectives on site-based theatrical events. Potent ideas about how creators of site-based work can engage with and capitalize on moments of interaction emerged. Finally, these exchanges led us to questions surrounding ethics and site-based theatre. As the ideas for this special section developed, we became most interested in grappling with how the visceral/affective impact on the spectator/participant of a site-based event is created as well as how the spectator/participant may come to embody characters, the narrative itself, and/or the themes and ideas of the event. Additionally, raising and addressing concerns regarding potential societal and behavioral transgressions created by the unconventional spectator/ performer relationships and interactions found in site-based events was another area of extreme interest. To these ends we sought, as articulated in our call for papers, "case studies that explore the unique dramaturgies of site-based performances or engage the ethical implications of disruptive audience conventions." We also welcomed "submissions analyzing spectator embodiment and engagement or exploring aesthetic innovations or ethical challenges experienced by audiences in site-based productions." The articles found within this section speak to these questions in a multitude of ways. The first three papers are case studies of three widely different site-based performances personally experienced by the authors, and the next article examines how the creators of site-based work utilize various dramaturgies and techniques in the conception of site-based events. The final portion of this special collection is a curated conversation between four scholars/directors revolving around distinctive ethical concerns raised by their personal experiences with either attending or creating site-based work. Terminology and Definitions A large body of work attempts to define the multiplicity of terms used to signify theatrical work performed outside the boundaries of more conventional theatre spaces.2 The editors of this special collection have deliberately chosen the [End Page 92] generic umbrella term "site-based" to encompass the ever-growing variety of these types of...

In this short article and accompanying visual essay, I trace the development and implementation of a dialogic site-specific performance in public space. I propose a scenographic method for how to make an empty, abandoned urban public space ‘speak’: how to choose the site for the performance and how to construct a narrative based on the history of the site. The actual ‘set’ of the performance, the analogue AR (Augmented Reality) boxes, played with some of the central features of AR technology. These characteristics were, in several respects, consistent with the site-specific performance characteristics presented in the case study. The concept raised in the study builds on the meeting points of these two. The performance created a blurring of real and virtual space through an analogue technique.

This article sets out the notion of a Field Broadcast from the dual perspective of Rebecca Birch, one of the developers of a bespoke version of Flash Media Live Encoder and Bram Thomas Arnold, an artist who uses a case study from Sideways Festival, Belgium, 2012. Field Broadcast enables an artist to be in a field, suitably equipped, and stream live footage to an audience. It is an experiment in place, site and the notion of a field. It is a new method of making work in the space between site-specific performance and the digital realm: a way of working that enables artists to generate new artworks within the non-place of the Internet. Birch introduces the technology from a number of perspectives before it is fleshed out with evidence and experience from a live project that took place in Belgium in 2012. Sideways was a festival that traversed Belgium over four weeks and 400 km, with artists walking and generating work en route. The possibilities offered by Field Broadcast are explored in relation to the expanded field of ecology amidst Bourriaud's The Radicant (2009), Guatarri's The Three Ecologies (2005) and Morton's Ecology Without Nature (2007).

The article studies the principles of expressiveness in modern Ukrainian social posters, which serve as a powerful communication tool amidst social and cultural transformations. Special attention is paid to analyzing the visual language of posters that effectively convey socially significant messages. Key principles, such as conciseness, symbolism, emotional intensity, and cultural relevance, are examined, highlighting their role in achieving a high impact on the audience. The article addresses contemporary challenges for Ukrainian social posters, including the need to adapt to global trends and local realities. Examples of visual solutions are analyzed, demonstrating cognitive and emotional effectiveness through a harmonious combination of graphic elements and meaningful content. The study emphasizes the importance of visual clarity and semantic unambiguity in enhancing the effectiveness of social posters as tools of influence. The purpose of the article is to analyze the implementation of the principles of unambiguity, visual conciseness, and synchronicity in modern Ukrainian social posters, as well as to evaluate their effectiveness in achieving communication goals in the context of current social and cultural challenges. The methodology includes a comprehensive approach. The theoretical foundation includes an analysis of academic literature and prior studies concerning the principles of unambiguity, visual conciseness, and synchronicity in the design of social posters. A comparative analysis method was used to examine the application of these principles in modern Ukrainian social posters alongside examples from other countries and historical periods. Semiotic analysis served as a tool for studying the symbolic content of the visual and textual elements of posters, their semantic coding, and their role in message formation. Empirical methods, including case studies of Ukrainian poster artists, allowed the evaluation of the adaptation of classical principles to the contemporary social context of Ukraine. Additionally, a qualitative study involving audience surveys assessed the perception and effectiveness of social posters in shaping public opinion. The results reveal several critical findings: 1. Ukrainian social poster art is based on the principles of unambiguity, visual conciseness, and synchronicity, making it a powerful communication tool in society. The use of a minimalist approach facilitates quick message perception, focusing attention on the core content. Visual simplicity is combined with symbolism, enabling a deeper reflection on social issues and themes. Moreover, modern posters incorporate cultural codes and national identity, emphasizing their role in shaping Ukraine’s social space. 2. Symbolism is a basis of social posters, as it enables the creation of multilayered images that are comprehensible to diverse audiences through the principles of unambiguity, visual conciseness, and synchronicity. Modern social posters aim to evoke emotions—whether compassion, anxiety, or pride. The use of color, imagery, and text is meticulously selected to foster a profound emotional connection with the audience. 3. Social posters play a unique role in modern society as instruments for influencing public opinion, educating, and shaping values. They draw attention to global issues such as environmental preservation, human rights protection, war resistance, and support for national culture. Additionally, posters serve as vital mechanisms for transmitting ideas across generations, fostering a sense of unity and solidarity. Their ability to respond quickly to social challenges ensures relevance in addressing Today, social posters are not only a communication medium but also an artistic phenomenon that contributes to the development of Ukrainian culture, preserving its uniqueness and national traditions. The scientific novelty. The scientific novelty of the study lies in the comprehensive analysis of the implementation of the principles of unambiguity, visual conciseness, and synchronicity in modern Ukrainian social posters within the current socio-cultural context. The work systematizes and compares traditional design principles of social posters with their adaptation to modern Ukrainian visual communication. It also analyzes the transformation of semiotic codes in Ukrainian social posters, reflecting the specifics of wartime and cultural self-identification. The research contributes to the development of social poster design theory, taking into account the specifics of the Ukrainian socio-cultural environment and contemporary challenges. The practical significance of the article. The article provides practical value by offering a detailed analysis of the principles of unambiguity, visual conciseness, and synchronicity in modern Ukrainian social posters, serving as a guide for designers to create impactful visual communication. The insights into the integration of symbolism, cultural codes, and emotional intensity can be directly applied to enhance the effectiveness of social posters in addressing pressing social issues. By exploring case studies and audience perceptions, the research highlights actionable strategies for using posters as tools for public influence, education, and cultural preservation, especially in the context of Ukraine’s contemporary socio-cultural challenges.

In *Eco Soma*, Petra Kuppers asks readers to be alert to their own embodied responses to art practice and to pay attention to themselves as active participants in a shared sociocultural world. Reading contemporary performance encounters and artful engagements, this book models a disability culture sensitivity to living in a shared world, oriented toward more socially just futures. <br/><br/> Eco soma methods mix and merge realities on the edges of lived experience and site-specific performance. Kuppers invites us to become moths, sprout gills, listen to our heart’s drum, and take starships into crip time. And fantasy is central to these engagements: feeling/sensing monsters, catastrophes, golden lines, heartbeats, injured sharks, dotted salamanders, kissing mammoths, and more. Kuppers illuminates ecopoetic disability culture perspectives, contending that disabled people and their co-conspirators make art to live in a changing world, in contact with feminist, queer, trans, racialized, and Indigenous art projects. By offering new ways to think, frame, and feel “environments,” Kuppers focuses on art-based methods of envisioning change and argues that disability can offer imaginative ways toward living well and with agency in change, unrest, and challenge. <br/><br/> Traditional somatics teach us how to fine-tune our introspective senses and to open up the world of our own bodies, while eco soma methods extend that attention toward the creative possibilities of the reach between self, others, and the land. *Eco Soma* proposes an art/life method of sensory tuning to the inside and the outside simultaneously, a method that allows for a wider opening toward ethical cohabitation with human and more-than-human others.

This paper describe a transition from specialised performance interventions – for example, GeoQuest and A Tour of Sardine Street (both 2010) – in heritage sites to a handing over of the tactics of those performances to general tourists and visitors for the making of their own performance-like counter-touristic visits. This change is based on a re-valuing; moving away from assumptions that tourists are essentially passive in making their visits and that the sites of those visits are neutral spaces to a valorisation of tourist visits as constructive and agentive and of the sites as places of ‘chorastic’ potential. The paper describes the use of a multi-modal research methodology; predominantly mixing participant observation and practice-as-research. It narrates the key moments of transition in the research: a double movement of exorcism and spectral return on a ‘mis-guided tour’ (Water Walk, 2010), the discovery that volunteer panel members were not simply observing tours but beginning to re-perform them, the shift from a dispersal of specialised, technical knowledge to a more generally accessible toolkit model exemplified by the publication of A Sardine Street Box of Tricks in 2011, and a series of experimental visits by the author (some accompanied by panel members) to heritage sites on which ‘tactics’ were both tested and new ones devised. The paper sets the emergence of a performative counter-tourism strategy as a development of practices and ideas informed by or originating in site-specific performance, contemporary Performance Studies and Tourism Studies, walking arts (including disrupted versions of the standard guided tour), and mythogeography.

Analysing an expanding body of theatre and performance works, Science Fiction and Contemporary British Theatre examines how the themes and images of science fiction are enabling practitioners to intervene on the most urgent social and political issues of the present moment. By exploring the genre’s impact on the live theatrical event, the book presents an original and topical interrogation of issues that remain at the heart of the national and global political agenda, including military conflict, social injustice, economic inequality, migration, nationhood, anti-democratic populism, and climate collapse. The author draws upon a wide range of dramatic forms, from critically acclaimed plays by writers such as Alistair McDowall, Caryl Churchill, Dawn King, Anne Washburn and Ella Road, to devised work, site-specific performance, Shakespearean drama and physical theatre. The book's chapters are based on some of the genre’s most resonant images, including post-apocalyptic wildernesses, dystopian regimes and artificial lifeforms. Furthermore, by placing examples in dialogue with a range of theories and scholars, this book constructs an innovative interdisciplinary framework comprised of theatre studies, sociology, philosophy, economic and political science. Providing an engagingly written, intellectually rich and uniquely compelling analysis, Science Fiction and Contemporary British Theatre charts a new and growing landscape of scholarly research, and establishes science fiction as an exciting, expanding and urgent dramatic and political practice.

This essay will investigate a series of performances in Greece that showcase the theme of crisis discussed through the particular frame of their expanded scenographic strategies as dramaturgies of crisis. This expanded scenography is not restricted to politics and aesthetics of scenographic representation extending well beyond traditional staging paradigms to aspects that reinstate the emergence of social realities and a fundamentally social conception of space. Indicatively, this includes strategies like introducing various charged elements from lived experi-ence and contemporary visual culture, as well as conflictual aesthetics of the crisis and visual and spatial dramaturgies of the precarious. Sce-nographic dramaturgies of crisis seem to thrive on new spatial perfor-mance forms that directly interact with social realities and real spaces (like site-specific performance), while they mobilize a renewed address to found, shared public space putting to use strategies of participation. In this context of the crisis, the widespread multimedia idioms and the proliferation of video and cinematic idioms are also notable. Perfor-mances that thematize aspects of the crisis, such as Revolt Athens (2016), and the twin site-specific performances built with a core topographical address, Tea Time Europe (2014-15) and Eat Time Europe (2016) will be an-alyzed as key case studies to exemplify and further contextualize their scenographic approaches as content and context-oriented formulations, as visual and spatial dramaturgies that provide us with an entryway into performing crisis.

Following the framework of affect theory and performativity, the investigation traces how doubt emerges among subjectivities and constructs structures of feeling around recent history in Argentina. To develop its affective theory of doubt, the paper presents a case study of Última(s) catástrofe(s), a site-specific performance by Compañía de Funciones Patrióticas. Through an immersive, first-person dramaturgical analysis of the performance event, the paper re/constructs the sensations at play and postulates doubt as a vital tool of societal re/making.