In French-speaking Belgium, dramaturgical practices are not well known. We notice a real lack of knowledge of this function, although unavoidable in our sector, both within the creative teams and within the distribution venues, and consequently a crying lack of means to support those who practice it. This is why, since 2015, La Bellone has been developing and proposing various tools that modestly attempt to make up for this lack.
CYCLE OF SEMINARS
More than learning about a history or a theorization of dramaturgy, participants are invited to grasp, identify and practice dramaturgy by trying to map dramaturgical practices and to situate themselves within them.
The annual cycle correspond to 4 activations of dramaturgy today. Its orientation is the sharing of knowledge and experimentation. It is a question of starting from a problematic that the invited practitioner faces and of opening this research or reflection rather than making a presentation of a knowledge; putting to work and sharing rather than an academic training.
Each module, spread over a week, involves the intervention of a dramaturgic practitioner, chosen and invited to activate one of the specific modalities of this activity and to thus draw up its singular stakes with the participants. It is also a question, for each speaker, of being able to share tools, research and writing protocols or to propose situations allowing the application of this type of dramaturgy. Each module thus embodies, on the concentrated scale of a week, the general and transversal spirit of the cycle: a circularity between presentation and practice, between the word of one and a collective and shared re-examination of questions and experiments. It is a question of putting oneself, within a space of research and artistic creation, in a state of “study”, i.e. an alliance between “investigation” and “application” (cf. etymology of the word). The modules will therefore always be structured in at least two stages: a time “at the table” in which the group is brought together to listen to and discuss a question, a problem and a time of experimentation which may lead the participants to their own work.
For whom: anyone with experience as a viewer, artistic advisor, outside eye or dramaturge. On application.
The 2021 cycle consists of 4 modules initiated by Sara Vanderieck, Bart Vanden Eynde and Camille Louis.
MODULE WITH SARA VANDERIECK
In this module, the focus will be on dramaturgical practice within multidisciplinary processes of creation and research. This dramaturgy is about finding a way to speak through listening, to open up channels of communication and to create connections that allow decisions to be made in the artistic creative process – those that include and exclude materials and ideas. This balancing act is not a knowledge or a skill, it is an attitude, a process, a sensitivity. This dramaturgy is both a practice and an awareness, a state of mind. In order to be able to participate in “live” creative processes, the dramaturg does not only use his/her own (intellectual) background and information from the preparatory exchanges, but above all relies on a strong trust in his/her own intuition. In this module Sara Vanderieck shares her search for strategies that support an intuitive dramaturgical practice that listens to every step of a creation.
The traces of this module can be found here (in French):