The Performativity of Intimacy in Theatre

Abstract

This thesis researches and explores the phenomenon of intimacy in sensory-corporeal-based encounters in contemporary participatory theatre exemplified in three case studies: Tino Sehgal’s Kiss, Wunderland’s Sommerfugleeffekter (Eng: Butterfly Effects) and Dries Verhoeven’s Guilty Landscapes: Episode 1 – Hangzhou. This thesis perceives intimacy in theatre as a (syn)aesthetic phenomenon that fuses and connects perceptions of closeness with distance and difference in a multitude of sense-making processes. The notion of ‘(syn)aesthesia’ is by Josephine Machon described as a multitude of perceptions and processes of somatic and semantic sense-making(s) dominating contemporary affective performance in both as means of expression and reception. The connectivity of closeness within distance and difference is by Liesbeth Groot Nibbelink perceived as the circumstance of intimacy in theatre. What generate intimacy in theatre is modes of interaction and engagements of senses and corporeality that is maintained through elements of mutuality, which is theorised by Bennett Helm. The analysis of the case studies shows that intimacy is not to be understood as one specific experience. Instead three different intimacies – affected by (syn)aesthetic perceptions and processes of closeness and distance evoking emotions and sense-makings – are generated as a result of the three performances’ different modes of affectivity, engagement and interaction. This research concludes that intimacy can be evoked in a theatrical setting despite theatre’s reproducibility and the unfamiliarity of performers in close encounters through new deconstructed understandings of closeness and distance in a society of today dominated by intermedial and technological influences. The ambivalent and challenged experiences of intimacy in theatre create potential for reflection over the role and phenomenon of intimacy in the social world.