ABSTRACT
The chapter explores another perspective on aural/oral dramaturgies by focusing on how contemporary theatre-making trends might manifest a continuation of the storytelling tradition reconfigured by contemporary technologies, and the subsequently altered conceptions of narrative authorship. It takes forward some of the ideas explored in the previous chapter concerning the intersubjective engagement of the audience in experiencing live performance, but it expands the notion of polyphony to account for the inherent multimodality of theatre as a form.
The chapter's five headings mirror the theoretical structure of the Serbian epic: exposition, emplotment, culmination, peripeteia, and resolution. The exposition provides a frame by reference to how disabled storytellers (e.g. Kate Caryer's The Unspoken Project) may resort to technology and multimodality in order to overcome communication barriers and generate new dramaturgies. Following the emplotment section which reviews relevant histories of authorship, the culmination revisits the tradition of Serbian orature and how its reactionary manifestations in the 20th century are countered by the example of artist Rambo Amadeus using hip hop, sampling, irony, music video, and dialectic intertextuality in order to engage his audience in a process of critique. This is followed by the peripeteia which explores the multiplicity of dramaturgical techniques generated by the contemporary artists’ use of technology (both software and hardware), drawn from the interviews collected in LMYE issue #3. Kieran Hurley's Heads Up (2016) emerges as an example of storytelling that reconfigures the contemporary storyteller-audience relationship, while the work of Silvia Mercuriali, ZU:UK, Melanie Wilson, and Quote Unquote, among others, offer further insights into the role of technology, layering, and multimodality in fostering polysubjectivity and dialogic consciousness in amplified storytelling. The multiple strands are tied together in the resolution section to note the inherent technicity of storytelling itself in amplifying the voices of the marginalised.
