ABSTRACT
411-411-31-31-411 could be an algorithm, password, or even an interesting arithmetical code. Instead, these digits are the starting point of the contemporary circus performance “Square Two” (2020). Based on the mathematical artwork of the Dutch visual artist Don Satijn, the Tall Tales Company explores how codes can serve as the basis of movements and juggling. The fact that Square Two is a contemporary circus performance is evident in its two main characteristics: the predominance of metadiscursive and intertextual strategies. These characteristics require a comprehensive understanding of circus as an embodied practice in which language and discourse are crucial and create specific challenges for dramaturgical work. This chapter investigates the advantages of applying a cultural-poetic reading of contemporary circus to the creative, dramaturgical process.
Belgian dramaturge Marianne van Kerkhoven (1946–2013) stated, “Dramaturgy is always concerned with the conversion of feeling into knowledge, and vice versa. Dramaturgy is the twilight zone between art and science” (Kerkhoven 1994a, 142). This statement was written in white chalk on the black dance floor of the University of Münster Theater in Germany, where the project “Reading Circus. Dramaturgy on the Border Between Art and Academia” (2019) was held. “Reading Circus” was a collaboration between the artists of the Tall Tales Company and graduate students of Cultural Poetics of Literature and Media (University of Münster, Germany). They collaborated to read circus as a dramaturgical praxis based on a dialogue between art and science, practices (academic and artistic), knowledges (academic and artistic), and traditions (academic and artistic). For one week, fifteen graduate students of the study program Cultural Poetics of Literature and Media joined the Tall Tales Company in the creation of the contemporary circus performance Square Two.
