Amputating Shakespeare: Theatre Becoming-Theatre

This dissertation partially converts an academic stage to a theatrical one. Multiplicities composed of human and non-human bodies, forces, events, texts, concepts, and materials make up this theatrical stage within a dissertation machine, then engage in a collective creative act of art-as-research that attempts a momentary break from that machine’s strictures. Concepts drawn from philosopher Gilles Deleuze, at times in collaboration with Félix Guattari, appear as characters on stage. This dramatic action aims to creatively reanimate material debris of a live theatrical event that amputated and transformed Shakespeare scenes using methods taken from Antonin Artaud’s First Manifesto of the Theatre of Cruelty to create a theatre becoming-theatre. This second creative act dramatizes the live performance with Deleuzoguattarian concepts and processes in an effort to generate affects on a dissertation stage. By wedging itself among cracks in the dissertation machine, the present experiment attempts to dissect, alter, dis-organ-ize, and vivify the material remains of an Artaudian Shakespeare performance, creating a new theatrical event on a conceptual stage and discussing implications of those moves