Duska Radosavljevic wins AHRC Network Support for ‘Porous Dramaturgy: ‘Togetherness’ and Community in the Structure of the artwork’

Duska Radosavljevic has secured AHRC network support for the project ‘Porous Dramaturgy: ‘Togetherness’ and Community in the Structure of the artwork’. Duska is a Co-Investigator with Cathy Turner from Exeter University as PI.

The purpose of the network will be to discuss communities formed or implicit in interactive, immersive, site-specific or otherwise 'porous' artworks, identifying their implications for the theatre institution and its social role. There will be two network meetings, one to be held at the University of Kent and one at the University of Exeter and two closed meetings for selected participants in Northern Ireland and Croatia. 

They will be taking the work of two companies as 'case studies' to involve all network participants in experiencing work, as well as discussing it. One will be The Shadow Casters, from Croatia, whose trilogy, 'On Togetherness' approaches the specific context of the theatre building and its communities. The other will be Wrights & Sites (UK), whose work has its basis in theatre, although it addresses public space in a way that makes the walker into the performer. Duska has detailed knowledge of the former company, who will attend both events and will run a workshop in Kent. Cathy is a member of the latter and we hope to take network members to experience the company's recent public art work in South West England. These case studies are intended as springboards for further discussion.

The aim of the network is to generate discussion between contexts, practitioners, producers and academics, hopefully prompting new collaborations and research projects. We are working together with The Shadow Casters and with dramaturg Hanna Slattne (N. Ireland) in order to shape a project that is relevant to contexts where the notion of 'community' is placed under pressure by political and socio-geographical circumstances, and we hope to create new relationships between Croatia and the UK through these exchanges.