Buratta, Ben (2024) Dance-Floor dramaturgy : new approaches to making theatre queerly. Doctoral thesis, The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, University of London.

Abstract

'Dance-Floor Dramaturgy' is a constellation of practices, rehearsal techniques, and modes of meaning-making that I have created and developed to make theatre queerly. The aesthetic, languages, and interdisciplinarity of the dance floor establish key methods and philosophies for queer dramaturgies (Campbell and Farrier 2015) that are discovered through my practice research process. Dance-Floor Dramaturgy establishes a distinct approach to theatrical form that explores and captures queer potentiality, mobilizing Jose Esteban Munoz's concept of queer futurity, which looks to the past to illuminate the future using a philosophy of hope and collectivity to reach the the utopian. Dance-Floor Dramaturgy goes beyond theorizing to make an intervention into practices of theatre-making, dramaturgical frames, methods of audience engagement, and deeper representation of queer narratives and performers.
This thesis is underpinned by over a decade of work as Artistic Director of Outbox, a company that collaborates with LGBTQIA+ communities, artists, and performers, and uses as case studies three productions that explore timely and critical facets of queer culture. Affection deals with queer people living with HIV, And the rest of me floats interrogates the construction and performativity of gender, and Groove is the culmination of the project, exploring the queer dance floor as a site of cross-generational exchange.
Through this practice research, I invest constituents of the queer making process that I term pulses. The pulses can be used as distinct dramaturgical functions, or work in conjunction to produce queer work. By commingling co-created theatre-making, dramaturgical theory, and queer futurity, Dance-Floor Dramaturgy produces a transformative framework that allows the performer (and, by extension, audiences) to explore their past and future selves, their dreams, and desires.