The Exquisite Corpses are a series of experimental theatre texts made in collaboration with different numbers of other directors, writers, performers and artists.
Each process was developed online from one initial image or text. One person then posts a response to that text to which another person responds with their own text. The process continues in this manner until an end to that Corpse presented itself. The collaborators remain anonymous when posting their responses. The rules and contexts were different for each Corpse.
The Exquisite Corpses grew out of an interest in developing multifocal narratives; where a narrative is developed as a hidden rhizome structure in which no one person can control its development. The collaborators become parts of the same brain and the different viewpoints and voices of interpretation essentially become that brain.
Each completed Corpse then demanded different ways of being re-interpreted for the stage space and determine what form that stage space should take. From the poetic abstraction of each initial Corpse a more pragmatic and detailed description was developed that also allowed the act of translation to continue within another form.
Exquisite Corpse # 1
Text: Luis Guerra/Simon Vincenzi
7th October – 2nd March 2020
A simple thread of images were developed between Guerra and Vincenzi online. These images were then used as a text that was translated into two intimate performance worlds.
Part One: Bougainvillea
Explored the development of images as a narrative thread, the consequences of each image following on from the last.
new pages**
Part Two: The Harbinger
Explored dismantling the narrative and looked at ways that Guerra responded to a random projection of the images as an internal landscape.
new pages**
in association with Estúdios Victor Córdon, Lisbon.
Exquisite Corpse # 2
Accademia di Danza Moderna Sconosciuta
Text: Lucia Amara/Valentina Formenti/Frances Scott with BAROKTHEGREAT
29th March – 21st June 2020
Explored an association of ideas around rhizomatic structuring and Deleuze & Guattari/A Thousand Plateaus
In association with Queen Marys University, London.
The Exquisite Corpse (The Thirteen)
Text: Amanda Hadingue/Andrew Hardwidge/BAROKTHEGREAT/Frances Scott/Kath Duggan/Lucia Amara/Luis Guerra/Luke Stoneham/Peter Mills/Rose English/Simon Vincenzi/Tim Spooner/Will Saunders
29th March – 21st June 2020
The Exquisite Corpse (The Thirteen) began at the beginning of the COVID lockdown and exploited the dark strangeness of that time as part of its narrative and context. Thirteen collaborators were chosen in a reference to Jacque Rivette’s 13 hour film Out 1 that in turn referenced Balzac’s History of the Thirteen collection of stories (1833–35). They were told they were both within and searching for mystery. The Thirteen were given the task of developing theatre texts that would become a reality when (and if) theatres reopened. A complex viral structure developed of wild and unknown narratives.
Text: Helena Goldwater/Paolo Gabriotti/Claire MacDonald
A smaller group of people were brought into the project as The Diviners. Their job was to observe the work of The Thirteen and try and decipher the development of their texts, to try and translate and predict what was being produced as a poetic parallel presence.
Exquisite Corpse # 4
Text: Undisclosed Participants
29th June – 29th August 2020
Towards the end of the unfolding meta narratives of The Exquisite Corpse (The Thirteen), twelve of the collaborators were announced dead and photographs of their gravestones were posted as proof. One participant remained alive, Luis Guerra. As the first lockdown was coming to a close it was decided to pause and have an interval.- until the idea of the future looked clearer. Behind this curtain undisclosed participants developed a play/script of what Luis Guerra was secretly doing alone behind the theatre curtain while the interval was taking place.
Exquisite Corpse # 5
The Exquisitum is a work in development. An expanded theatre work developed from The Thirteen, The Interval and The Diviners
Exquisite Corpse # 6
An Exquisite Corpse: Towards Opening Night
Text: Gill Addison/Kath Duggan/Daniel Oliver/Simon Vincenzi
2022 - 2025
A Process In Five Parts
Part One: Towards Opening Night
The context/process began with the four collaborators being shown the two hour video documentation of Kath Duggan performing Opening Night: The Second Woman. From this initiation a linear construction of 22 image/texts were developed, each in response to the last.
Part Two: An Exquisite Corpse: Towards Opening Night
Using the 22 image/texts that the four had developed, they then used each image as an initiation for a scene in a developing script - firstly for a film and secondly for a performance in a gallery. They developed four scripts at the same time, four parallel versions of scripts that respond to both the initial 22 images as well as the response that was given to the previous image by one of the other three collaborators. Each image would have four translations. Each of the four scripts would become four separate worlds but have strange subliminal clues that link them. They were instructed to only cast themselves in the unfolding dramas.
Part Three: An Exquisite Corpse: Towards Opening Night
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Part Four: Behind The Scene
After the linear narrative of Towards Opening Night ended, the collaborators began a new narrative thread that used the thirteenth text/image as a starting point or wormhole (a video of Kath Duggan looking away with her eyes closed). This was described as an escape and what developed presented no final end but a…
Part Five: An Exquisite Corpse: Behind The Scene
the final proposition
The texts that make up Behind The Scene take on a different tone and become a series of repeated journeys, starting points of tales that are imagined through the night and clues to the disappearance of Kath Duggan. A state is developed from the details each text contains…