Social Dramaturgy
A lecture by Bojana Cvejić and Ana Vujanović
Our talk draws on the research Performance and the Public, which we carried out together with Marta Popivoda a few years ago. In the research as well as in the present lecture we will focus on the problem of the public sphere as political sphere, determined by the performance on/of the public stage. The two experiences are formative for our approach, one being the public sphere in socialist Yugoslavia, the other the public sphere in present-day capitalist and democratic Europe.
The analytical perspective we entertain in this research could be referred to 'social dramaturgy'. It is comprised of two complementary analytical models, 'social choreography', developed after Andrew Hewitt's Social Choreography: Ideology as Performance in Dance and Everyday Movement (2005), and 'social drama', furthered from Victor Turner's social anthropology. While social choreography accounts for the aesthetic component of ideology in its normal functioning, social drama focuses on conflictual social processes expressed in public performances. Both models emphasize bodily gestures and movements, organization of bodies in time and space, mise-en-scène, and dramaturgy of public gatherings.
The screening of Marta Popivoda's documentary Yugoslavia: How ideology moved our collective body on June 25 extends this lecture, by providing an aesthetic outlook of the concepts crucial for social dramaturgy.