【4月18日】Peter Eckersall：The Afterlives of New Dramaturgy（新戏剧构作之后）

New dramaturgy is a term coined by Marianne van Kerkhoven in the 1980s.  It is associated with the Flemish New Wave of interdisciplinary performance and is now widely practiced around the world.  New dramaturgy is a way to open theatre to new conversations and about how the dramaturgical forms of theatre and its means of production (bodies, space, time, audience, etc.) create meaning.  It is now 40 years since the formation of the idea of new dramaturgy and it is timely to reflect on the legacy of van Kerkhoven’s work.  This lecture will discuss my recent book Dramaturgy to Make Visible (Routledge 2024) and its discussion of the legacy of new dramaturgy and how it has shaped our theatre in the contemporary world.

Peter Eckersall is the Sidney E. Cohn Professor in Theatre at the Graduate Center CUNY.  He is the deputy director of the Marvin Carlson Theatre Center at STA.  His research expertise includes, Japanese Theatre, Dramaturgy, Contemporary Performance, Politics and the Arts, and Performance and Media.  Recent publications include Dramaturgy to Make Visible: The Legacies of New Dramaturgy for Politics and Performance in Our Times (Routledge 2024), (Asian) Dramaturgs Network: Sensing Complexity, Tracing and Doing, (coedited with Charlene Rajendran, Center 42 Singapore 2023), Okada Toshiki and Japanese Theatre, (coedited with Barbara Geilhorn, Andreas Regelsberger, Cody Poulton, Performance Research Books 2021), The Routledge Companion to Theatre and Politics (ed. with Helena Grehan, Routledge 2019), New Media Dramaturgy (co-authored with Helena Grehan and Ed Scheer, Palgrave 2017), and Performativity and Event in 1960s Japan (Palgrave 2013). He is resident dramaturg of the Not Yet It’s Difficult performance group (Melbourne). Recent dramaturgy includes Everything Starts from a Dot (Sachiyo Takahashi, LaMaMa), Phantom Sun/Northern Drift (Alexis Destoop, Beursschouwburg, Riga Biennial).