Bruce Barton

Intersections: The Possibilities of/in Intimacy in Interdisciplinary Performance

My Working Group contribution describes the initial stage of a large scale research-creation project, funded by Canada’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, that I am currently conducting. Since 2007, in a substantial portion of my research activity, I have explored the potential for/in/of intimacy—between performers, between performers and audience members, and between audience members—in intermedial performance contexts (see Barton 2008, 2009, 2010). A central strategy in that exploration has been to consider the interrelationship between theatricality and performativity in these contexts and the strategies both performers and audience members utilize to navigate these dynamics. The current project involves: 1) the adoption of specific aspects of contemporary affect theory as a framework for examining the relationships between interpretive and affective experience generated within performance contexts; 2) a focus on theatrical contexts that utilize explicitly interdisciplinary performance practices – and which thus evoke explicitly interdisciplinary theoretical strategies of analysis; and 3) the application of research-creation priorities and methodology as the bases of empirical data acquisition and analysis. Ultimately, the global objective of the full research program is to establish an understanding of the affective experience of intimacy at the intersections of intermediality and interdisciplinarity in theatrical performance—one that is both theoretically robust and rich in creative utility. The specific goals of this initial stage of the research include the following: 1) a thorough review of the relevant scholarly/critical literature and creative practice with a focus on affective experience in interdisciplinary performance contexts; 2) the formulation of a robust interdisciplinary theoretical framework for the study of affective experience; 3) initial engagement with four artists from distinct disciplinary backgrounds in a preliminary “research-based practice” exploratory ‘laboratory’; 4) the formulation of a broadly informed yet practically focused interdisciplinary methodological framework and project design for the next, full stage of research.

Bruce Barton

University of Calgary
bruce.barton@ucalgary.ca