Guest blog: “The Other in the Theatre, the Other in Me” – Jolien Akkerman

In the Transmission in Motion Seminar on plant-based dramaturgy, a talk was organized with Chilean theatre director, playwright and musician Manuela Infante. The talk was moderated by Liesbeth Groot Nibbelink, who asked Infante about the artistic creation process of her work Estado Vegetal (Vegetative State). In this work, Infante explored plant-based logic to formulate several procedures as a dramaturgic strategy and structure for the performance (read more about Estado Vegetal here). Furthermore, the seminar went into the idea of theatre as a place to practice thinking by doing. Infante elaborated on her appreciation of the theatre as a place for embodied philosophy, a place to practice an embodied thinking about the idea of what is plant in us and how are we plant in our thinking? I would like to continue this line of thinking towards the approach of other things that are radically different from ourselves in the theatre. How can the theatre function as a place to encounter otherness? What is other in ourselves or in our thinking?

These questions start with a conception of theatre as a place to practice embodied philosophy, where you can encounter concepts, ideas and problems in an open and relational way and establish a relational practice. It is not representational thinking or talking about, but an encounter with things that are other. But the theatre may trap us and catch us in representational thinking nonetheless. To encounter otherness easily becomes letting the other speak, giving the other a voice. This, however, upholds a hierarchical structure with the otherness. It presumes the expectation that the other will speak on our terms. Still, the idea of embodied philosophy holds the possibility to not represent ideas or concepts, to not appropriate ideas – but to encounter them.

For Estado Vegetal, Infante explained that this meant that the plant-based logic could be encountered in a way that was not thinking about plants or plant-based logics, but to work from the plant within ourselves. This is not mimicking or representing, but a becoming. It is this becoming-plant that could be practiced in this creation process through embodied philosophy. To further expand this idea of becoming, one can look at the works of Deleuze. The idea of becoming is prominent in his work where he asserts becoming as a process of entering into a composition with the other (for further reading, see The Antropology of Becoming). This entering into composition allows to explore the otherness in oneself without discarding the differences.

To deepen the academic understanding of these ideas, one can also look at the work Vibrant Matter by Jane Bennett (see Vibrant Matter). In this book, Bennett asks how to understand matter as vital and whole in itself, away from the reduction to a usable, comprehensible object. Again, this is a certain non-representational thinking. Bennett also uses Deleuze in her thinking, by her use of the idea of assemblage, which is the idea that one object or thing or entity, is connected to other entities in a unique constellation of leaking, that puts forward a unique kind of ecology. She searches for ways to exercise a reimagining of matter that flattens or undoes hierarchic structures and encounters assemblages as whole, a practice that could be extended to the theatre. Bennett asks for imaging of equivalence of all things to create assemblages by which we can imagine how things might interact. Evidently, it is for a reason that Infante mentions Bennett as a starting point of her research for Estado Vegetal.

The encountering of otherness without discarding its differences may be the key here. To always encounter the other without erasing its difference, to retain its otherness to you. Infante said something similar in the seminar that I wish to use as my conclusion here. What she said is about allowing the other to leave something in the dark and thereby respecting its otherness. It is about acknowledging the areas that you do not understand, to allow the other to remain obscure in these areas. It is a respect to the notion that “the other is always non-exhausted in its relationship to me.”

Image credits: Estado Vegetal – Manuela Infante, photographed by Maida Carvello.