Collaborative Playwriting

Polyvocal Approaches from the EU Collective Plays Project

Paul C Castagno

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781000709551
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medien & darstellende Kunst
• Subtopic: Schreiben von Theaterstücken

In Collaborative Playwriting, five collectively written plays apply polyvocal methods in which clash and frisson replace synthesis, a dialogic approach to collective writing that has never before been articulated or documented.

Based on the EU Collective Plays Project, this collection of plays showcases each voice in dialogic tension and in relation to the other voices of the text, offering an entirely novel approach to new play development that challenges the single (and privileged) authorial voice. Castagno's case-study approach provides detailed commentary on each of the various experimental methods, exploring the plays' processes in detail. The book offers an evolutionary path forward in how to develop new work, thus encouraging and promoting the writing of collective, hybrid plays as having profound benefits for all playwrights.

The ground breaking approaches to playmaking in Collaborative Playwriting will appeal to playwriting programs, instructors, academics, professional playwrights, theaters and new play development programs; as well as courses in gender LGBTQ studies, script analysis, dramaturgy and dramatic literature across the theater studies curricula.

1 Darkness: The Enemy Inside

Commentary and process

Project director Gian Maria Cervo and playwright/director Gianluca Iumiento discussed the theme of the play Darkness: The Enemy Inside for the first time in 2014 as they prepared an application to the EU Creative Europe Programme. Iumiento, who is an Italian native residing and working in Oslo, Norway, had been commissioned by Cervo to direct perennial Nobel Prize finalist Jon Fosse’s new play É Ales for the annual Quartieri dell’Arte festival in Viterbo, Italy. As a professor at KHiO (Oslo National Academy of the Arts) Norway’s premiere institution in theater, Iumiento proposed assembling a playwriting group from Northern Europe with KHiO as an affiliate partner in the EUCP! grant. The project aim was to research current psychological conditions in Scandinavian life that are not widely understood. Because of its various safety nets, such as universal health care, comprehensive maternity leave, and subsidies to support most cultural matters, Scandinavia appears to be a society with few conflicts. Ironically, despite ample socio-cultural provisions, citizens experience strong existential battles and struggles. Historically, these internal conflicts, the so-called “enemy inside,” have led to extreme actions such as violence toward family members or even suicide. Thus, the title was was created to include the word, Darkness, a larger signifier inclusive of not only the socio-cultural phenomena but also the notion of landscape in a geography where darkness defines the winter months.

After the EU Collective Plays launched in 2015, Iumiento contacted experienced Tromsø playwright and dramaturg Tale Næss to compile a list of playwrights who might collaborate on a Nordic-oriented play. Coincidentally, Næss had just been appointed as a Ph.D. candidate at KHiO with a project that supported polyvocal, collective playwriting as providing a continual feedback loop for the playwrights. Næss and Iumiento were enthusiastic that her Ph.D. research and EUCP project dovetailed with her professional skills as an accomplished dramaturg and playwright. Both felt the theme of “Darkness” held significant promise for a collective, polyvocal approach. With her considerable knowledge of Nordic playwrights and languages, she agreed to act as the head writer and dramaturg.

The KHiO duo of Gianluca and Tale wanted to include a Sami language writer, as integrating this indigenous culture deepened the authenticity of a Nordic worldview. Historically, the Sami were a nomadic culture traditionally associated with Lapland, a subarctic area that extends across Norway, Sweden, Finland and northwestern Russia. Currently, some Sami herd reindeer across northern Scandinavia, but the reality is far more heterogenous with dialects, customs and livelihoods varying considerably from region to region. In the nineteenth century, as with the Native Americans, the Sami were heavily persecuted as Norway enacted punitive laws in an effort to eliminate their language and customs. The Sami language was banned from schools, prized artifac...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Biographies of contributors
• Preface: Testimonial
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 Darkness: The Enemy Inside: Commentary and process
• 2 Bitch (Kučka): Commentary and process
• 3 FREETIME : Commentary and process
• 4 And So My Face Became a Scar: Commentary and process
• 5 Narcissus: Commentary and process
• Epilogue: Monologue
• Index