Collapse tactics in performing arts: on the urgency of surviving and standing up

ABSTRACT This article evokes The Tower tarot card as an allegory to discuss collapse tactics within a specific performing arts project: the research staging process of the play The Vagabond, a One-Woman Music-Hall Show, developed during the Covid-19 global pandemic and produced by the Xama Teatro group (Maranhão state, Brazil). It reveals possible alternatives for a combined writing process of both script and staging, based on experiences of vulnerability and drawing on collapse as a tactic to provoke a process that constantly feeds back into itself. The procedures that stand out in the process are: improvising in an atelier environment; choosing references and mapping thematic fields; exploring problems; and experimenting with performative programs as a means to insist on surviving the Covid 19 global pandemic.

摘要 本文以塔罗牌《高塔》为喻，探讨某一特定演艺项目中的坍塌式创作策略：即由巴西马拉尼昂州Xama Teatro剧团出品、新冠疫情全球大流行期间研发的单人音乐厅剧《流浪者》（One-Woman Music-Hall Show）的研究式排演流程。本文基于创作过程中的脆弱性体验，以坍塌策略作为引发自我闭环反馈过程的手段，揭示了剧本创作与舞台排演相结合的整合创作路径。该排演流程中凸显的创作手法包括：在工作室（atelier）环境中开展即兴创作；遴选参考素材并梳理主题领域；深挖创作难题；以及尝试表演性创作方案，以此坚持挺过新冠疫情全球大流行。