The Corporeal in Contemporary Social Theatrical Practices: Projects of the 2020s

Abstract

The active turn of modern theatre towards democratization and social forms of existence took place in a foreign context in the early 1990s and was associated with the desire to change the usual ways of producing art, as well as with the cultural policy of neoliberal states aimed at supporting artists whose efforts make social problems visible. In Russia, similar processes began in the 2010s, when the documentary trend provoked the interest of theatre in the oppressed, and together with that, inclusion and the idea of diversity — cultural, social, and bodily — began to develop. At the same time, contemporary dance makes a turn from strong author’s choreography to practices that are more minimalistic and focused on a specific body in its vulnerability. In the field of theater as a whole, a performative turn is taking place — its influence affects the work with the categories of presence, everyday life, procedurality and multidisciplinarity. All this is accompanied by a trend towards the social in contemporary art. We understand the social as an umbrella term, which implies different types of work with citizens, the community, and representatives of excluded groups in the forms of theatre or produced with the help of theatre tools. The social is also a quality immanent to theatre and signifying the desire of artists to overcome the alienation project that dominates the world and poses a threat to the future. Though the practices described in the article encompass different things, they all converge in their interest in an engaging, that is social, way of communication. From this point of view, these works are performatives in the classical sense, when the gesture is real, the spoken word is equal to the action, and the participants’ co-creative work either directly affects their lives or changes the viewer’s lens.

Keywords

• social theater
• inclusion
• a person with disability
• corporeality
• post-dance
• performative