Bodies Out of Time

Abstract

My research into the exciting realm of participatory theatre examines the centrality of the body as a vehicle for experiencing dynamic performance events. I sought to investigate how embodied participation means in such experiences by discovering a way to study its relation to generating, recording and transmitting knowledge. To do this I generated a theory of temporal embodiment which reveals temporality as key to the affective potentiality participatory performance events can possess. I used this theory to examine various embodied participatory event case studies, including Zuppa Theatre Co’s VISTA20 and UnSpun Theatre’s Lost Together, both of which explicitly theatrical performance events. I then applied Joseph Roach, Diana Taylor and Freddie Rokem’s work on how cultural performances transmit cultural memory and enact culture itself to my theory. Due to my interests in how these cultural processes parallel what my theory of temporal embodiment reveals is at work in explicitly theatrical case studies, I then explore a final, paratheatrical example; Parque EcoAlberto’s Caminata Nocturna. Through these case studies I uncovered complex interrelations that suggest embodied participation has the potential to simultaneously recontextualize, alter or develop both memory and identity and therefore impact action a participant will take in the future. By accommodating these disparate examples, my theory gauges both efficacies and drawbacks of types of embodied participation. This insight reveals the relationship between form/content as integral to the efficacy of a performance event to use to participation to promote future action or change.