Site-specific Theatre: Enacting Spaces

Student: Gordienko Elena

Supervisor: Nina Sosna

Educational Programme: Visual Culture (Master)

Year of Graduation: 2016

The thesis analyzes site-specific performances. The cases selected are the «Radio Taganka» at the Taganka Theater directed by Semen Alexandrovsky in 2014 and «Next, Moskvich!» directed by Georgiy and Valeria Surkov at the rooms of the former factory «Moskvich» employees in 2015. The object of the research is the character of the interaction between a performance and a host space. The means of transformation of internal tactics and rules are revealed, according to the methodology of Michel de Certeau and André Lefebvre. The thesis proposes three concepts that can explain the functioning of the space during a site-specific performance: a Foucault’s heterotopia, Charles Pierce’s and Rosalind Krauss’s indexicality, the Jacques Derrida’s figure of the ghost. The text is followed by interviews with the creators of the performances, which trace the transition in theatrical discourse from the semiotic to the affective paradigm.

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