Script/Thesis, Performance, 2021-now.

Looking for Character, July 14th 2022, Centrale Fies, Italy.

The performance Looking for Character was presented as part of the Dutch Art Institute Aeroponic Acts 2022 in Centrale Fies, Italy.

Video Documentation by Baha Görkem Yalim Video

Material used during Lectures: Courtesy of the speakers.

©All rights Reserved, DAI & DAI-Guests

Performers: Morena Buser, Emmeli Person, Marika Vandekraats, Felix Bahret and Laura Dubourjal

Costumes by Laura Dubourjal

Make up: Alexandra Martens Serrano Vera Mühlebach Maud Gyssels

Production: Lissy Willberg

Technical assistant: @aemlx.global

And the amazing teams of Centrale Fies and Dutch Art Institute.

Thesis Advisor: Grant Watson 

June 2022

Abstract

The text “Looking For Character” follows the messy trains of thought of its main character Laï. Through numerous memories, testimonies of conversations and theoretical readings she tries to establish a chronological account of her family’s theatrical work’s influence on her psyche, and her own performative practices. Having grown up in a family of six actors, including both her parents, she recalls the constitutive confusion with which she assimilated the ways one becomes oneself, with the way one transforms into a character. She searches for the character’s location, firstly questioning whether physical transformation can be interpreted as the key space of assimilation of the character within one’s body. She then puts this in relation to some fundamental psychoanalytical texts from Melanie Klein, Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan with theatrical techniques, in an attempt to uncover identification protocols which occur on and off of the stage. Performances of selves taking place repeatedly, and through each repetition, gaining another component of one’s identity.