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ToolsBuratta, Ben (2020) And The Rest of Me Floats: Capturing Queer Potentiality through a Dance-floor Dramaturgy (REF 2021 Practice Research Submission). The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, University of London. ISBN 978-1-8383967-3-2
Abstract
And The Rest of Me Floats is a multi-component practice research output incorporating a professional production, that I conceived and directed for Outbox Theatre, performed at internationally renowned theatre venues (the Bush Theatre, London; The Birmingham Repertory Theatre); the play text published by Oberon Books; an article based upon the methodology; and a series of funded workshops delivered to LGBTQIA+ youth groups across the UK. This research invents a methodology, ‘Dance-floor Dramaturgy’, establishing a distinct approach to theatrical form that explores and captures queer potentiality. I define ‘potentiality’ as the set of possibilities and potentials that exist outside of the present.
Central to this practice is a performative exploration of the ‘dance floor’, which I reconfigure as a transformative framework allowing the performer (and audiences) to explore their past and future selves, their dreams, and desires. This practice mobilises queer futurity, looking to the past to illuminate the future, using a philosophy of hope and collectivity to reach for the utopic. Dance-floor Dramaturgy proposes an alternative to the exclusion and lack of representation of queer and trans* narratives and performers in mainstream theatre. I use the term ‘trans*’ with the asterisk indicating that there is not a fixed destination to gender transition.
The production has been recognised by the V&A, who have included a digital recording of it in the National Video Archive of Performance. The practice research has also led to changes in theatre industry practices as major arts organisations, such as National Theatre, Southbank Centre, and Spotlight, have invited me to engage in consultation on transgender-inclusive routes into training, casting, and performance.
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