Collaborative Theatre Production as a Method of Re-defining and Re-distributing \'the Directorial\': the Case of \'Caries of Capitalism\' Performance

"Performative aesthetics" in theatre studies and "relational aesthetics" in art theory claimed political, social and ethical experience to be inherent in aesthetic experience. Nowadays, artists turn to explore politics and ethics not only in the "events" (instead of "artworks") that occur between performers and audience, but in the events and human relations throughout production process. "Caries of Capitalism", by Alena Papina, Ada Mukhina, Daria Iuriichuk and me, premiered in 2019 at the Meyerhold Theatre Centre in Moscow, is one such example. "It is a collaborative project, and this is important. It is a social experiment, a political gesture and a search for new theatrical aesthetics. <...> All the decisions are arrived at by consensus", we state when explaining why no roles such as director, dramaturge or others were assigned to any team member. While theatre seems to be an inherently collaborative artform, the emphasis on consensual decision-making puts "Caries…" in line with utopian thinking on collaboration as collectivity, democracy and critique of power structures. Moreover, it opposes the production to the modern idea of "director’s theatre". In my thesis, I address the way collaborative production can be seen as a critical praxis of redistributing and thus redefining "the directorial". I do so by conducting interviews with creators, and analyzing them as well as autoethnographic writing and digital trails of the production process.