Media Dramaturgies of the Mind: Ivana Müller's cinematic choreographies

Abstract

The development of 20th century theatre is intertwined with the rise of media culture. This article engages with the effects and implications of this development from the relationship between the ‘mind-set’ of the audience and what is presented on stage. Being ‘natural born cyborgs’, we are not merely users of technology, we are also used by it. Technology places demands on us, affords modes of interaction, and mediates in the development of new skills that impact how we enact perception, and even how we think. This incorporation of media technology is staged in a self-reflexive way in Ivana Müller's While We Were Holding It Together (2006) and Playing Ensemble Again and Again (2008), two durational performances that play with modes of perceiving and thinking characteristic of cinema. The direct way in which these performances address their audiences is typical of the shift in axis of theatrical communication that according to Hans-Thies Lehmann is an important characteristic of the post-dramatic theatre. Instead of aiming towards the construction of a closed, unitary and coherent world on stage, the post-dramatic theatre engages more explicitly and directly with the modes of perceiving and thinking of the audience. The implication that follows from Lehmann's observation (but is not elaborated by him) is a ‘shift in axis’ with regard to dramaturgy as well, from a focus on constructing worlds on stage towards the relationship between the ‘mind-set’ of the beholder and what is presented on stage. With her performances, Müller draws attention to how the cinematic mode of thinking that Deleuze has termed terms ´thinking through images´ has become part of this mind-set and how this allows for a rethinking of the notion of choreography as a ´writing of movement´ in the beholder rather than on stage, movement in which we are implicated.