Dramatic Hypotheses

One of the most important French playwrights of all time proposes a workshop of discussion and debate around the ideas or projects that its participants are writing.

Deep down, the main idea of this workshop is very simple: dramatic writing is a solitary practice, however much it is addressed at the artistic theatrical collective (the adjective “dramatic” should be understood here in its broadest sense: any type of textual score designed for the theatre stage).

As any artistic practice, to advance and acquire a critical and prospective view, writing demands a thinking exempt of narcissism, capable above all things of “thinking against itself”. In this sense, philosopher Gilles Deleuze talked about “fighting against himself”.

The majority of us – writer(s), dramaturgs, etc., – have this capacity, but collective reflection and exploration facilitates and stimulates it. The differences, the disagreements, the singularities, all help us to place in doubt the intuitions that each of us has (evidences) and force us to rethink our works.

Others help us to think “against” ourselves, simply because they are not us.
The “dramatic hypotheses” that are proposed by participants for this workshop provide the material for our collective reflection.

We will “work” these hypotheses as if their author were about to develop them and write them for the stage.

We will do everything possible to not see them as problems which require us to contribute “solutions”, but to think about them taking them themselves as a starting point, exposing the differences in view that we have, our artistic projects and our singularities.

These kinds of meet-ups do not have teachers or students.

The exchanges that we have will not be debates, but work conversations: the aim will not be to reach an agreement, but to understand; we will not defend positions of principle, but rather we will place them in doubt.

In this working modality the only thing that we owe each other is to accept that any “evidence” can be questioned, examined, and even shaken up.

Enzo Cormann

PRACTICAL INFORMATION

• The “dramatic hypotheses” could consist of preparatory notes, references from readings, an outline, characters or figures, a dramaturgical device, fragments, a title, staging notes, etc. In summary, a kind of dramaturgical mini-dossier (1.500 words maximum). Once registered, participants will need to send this information to the Obrador, which will translate it into French and send it to Enzo Cormann so that he can read it before the start of the workshop.
• During the collective workshop, we will be working in a large group and, therefore, we will have to exchange opinions each day on various hypotheses: in each case we will devote time to asking questions of the proposal’s author to understand with the maximum detail possible their approach and, following that, we will start the conversation. In order to avoid repetitive – and non-environmentally friendly – opinions, we will exchange the text files with our laptops, which will also help to attach images and documents in various formats, if you believe that they might be useful.
• The conversations will be translated by Helena Tornero.