Positive Negatives: Or the Subtle Arts of Compromise

Abstract

How slippery a term ‘collaboration’ is. Definitions aplenty tend to return to the notion of ‘working together’ (or ‘co-working’), and on this sort of basis we should be able to conclude that all performance-making collaborations are vital because performance tends to involve the input of a wide range of practitioners, working together. Amongst these practitioners we can list stage, sound and lighting designers, stage managers and many others who work alongside both performers and—in general terms—a lead decision-maker. Does this model fit widespread understandings of the meaning of the terms collaboration or ‘Collaborative Theatre’?² The lead decision-maker might be the stage director or choreographer, familiar to many performance-making traditions, or might equally be one key member of a performance collective—as is the case of the long-established and internationally-renowned UK company Forced Entertainment and key decision-maker Tim Etchells, and, in theory at least, the Théâtre du Soleil, Paris, and the central decision-making role of Ariane Mnouchkine. However, few of the chapters included in this collection seem to be concerned with collaborations viewed from this default perspective.