Browsing by Author "Jordan, Kelly"

Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
    The Ethics of Participation and Participation Gone Wrong
    (De Gruyter, 2019-11-15) Jordan, Kelly
    This article examines the way that ethics underpin and affect audience participation in contemporary theatre, illustrated in the performance practice of British-German ensemble Gob Squad. It looks at how a proliferation of participatory practices has opened up a space for ethics to be reconfigured, and establishes that the ethics of participation may intimate that a ‘good’ performance is interchangeable with the idea of an ‘authentic’ performance. It emphasises a double dimension to the ethics of participation: the first is concerned with the self and the second is about everyone else, drawing on the corresponding theories of Nicholas Ridout (2009) and Erving Goffman (1959). Importantly, the article disentangles participation gone wrong and brings into view a new categorisation of spectator which I am calling the ‘dis-spectator,’ who deliberately challenges the structures and processes of the performance. At the centre of the discussion are a group of hecklers in the audience of Gob Squad’s War and Peace (2016), and their targeted jeering at a participant-spectator. My analysis develops a taxonomy of dis-spectatorship that outlines varying levels of transgressive behaviour from testing out the boundaries of participation to sabotaging the performance. Lastly, I call attention to a lack of consideration given to care and responsibility in participatory practices, which can leave participants in a precarious position.
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
    The Morning After (the night before): Emancipating Spectators in Participatory Live Art
    (De Montfort University, 2017-04) Jordan, Kelly
    This thesis develops a theoretical framework for the analysis of spectator-participation in live art by examining the performance practices of Guillermo Gómez-Peña’s La Pocha Nostra, Marina Abramović, and Gob Squad. It explores the potentialities and limitations of participation from all sides of the performance border, drawing on my experiences as a performing-spectator, watching-spectator, and as an artist-collaborator with La Pocha Nostra. Unravelling the relationship between these roles, it reveals how participation can create a new hierarchy amongst spectators. The thesis offers a new way of looking at the phenomenology of participatory live art by determining these encounters as a complex network of contradictory and interdependent relations, underlined by the “paradox of participation”: the duality of holding the position of both performer and spectator at the same time. Accordingly, it argues that these performances constitute a “symmathesy” of participation, to use Nora Bateson’s term, which should be viewed as a whole experience rather than as a series of parts. Advancing on from “the emancipated spectator”, as outlined by Jacques Rancière, the study reconsiders its meaning within live art. In doing so, it demonstrates how ritual, presence and ethics converge to underpin the transformative and emergent processes that foster and manage participation, while acknowledging the way that imposed sanctions serve to uphold the performance. Moreover, it maintains that spectator-participation has developed into a practice in its own right, and charts the birth of a new breed of spectator who anticipates the possibility of co-creation. It recognises several emerging types of participant, namely the “expert participant-spectator” and the more transgressive “dis-spectator”. The thesis establishes that participation can offer spectators a licence to act in ways outside of their everyday political and social reality, at the same time; it calls attention to the lack of consideration and after-care given to spectators post-participation.
  • No Thumbnail Available
    ItemMetadata only
    A Night at the Cinema in the 1960s
    (2016-03-03) Jones, Matthew; Wright, Ellen; Chibnall, S.; Clarke, Alissa; Jordan, Kelly
    Using the findings and data of the AHRC-funded 'Cultural Memory and British Cinema-going of the 1960s' project, this immersive theatre performance recreated the experience of visiting a cinema during that decade. Bringing together 30 actors, 2 directors, 2 producers and 2 cinema venues, 'A Night at the Cinema in the 1960s' was performed twice, once at Phoenix in Leicester on 3 March 2016 and once at Picturehouse Central in London on 29 June 2016. As well as being an output of the AHRC project's research and a means of generating impact from that work, it also enabled the project's researchers to develop a new understanding of their materials.
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
    On the Border of Participation: Spectatorship and the ‘Interactive Rituals’ of Guillermo Gómez-Peña and La Pocha Nostra
    (De Gruyter, 2016-05-12) Jordan, Kelly
    As the popularity of audience participation in contemporary perform- ance continues to rise, this article examines the extraordinary form of spectator- ship found in the work of Guillermo Gómez-Peña’s performance group La Pocha Nostra. The essay draws on the insights I have gained of their practice as both a spectator and collaborator, and how these experiences converge with critical concepts on participation, borderlines, and the emancipated spectator as outlined in Jacques Rancière’s writing. A primary concern is to investigate the way that participation invites a reconsideration of the borders between performer and spectator. This is explored with reference to theories regarding those that do and those that do not participate, and how this establishes a hierarchy amongst spectators, which includes what I call ‘expert participant-spectators’. I also offer an analogy between a participatory performance encounter and a one-night stand social encounter as a way of unravelling the mixed emotions that can follow a participatory experience, while taking into account the paradox of participation – the phenomenology of being both participant and spectator at the same time, and how this complicates reflection. The article determines that, although audience participation may collapse and re-orientate borders, participation yields its own limitations, as fresh borders are drawn up.