Tijdens de lancering van MoMo in Februari heeft Suzan Tunca de eerste staat van de dramaturgie voorgedragen. De publicatie daarvan hadden jullie nog tegoed! Hierbij..

11.2.2026 Theater de Richel

Prologue: The state of humanity

We are confronted daily with a world order where democratic values are becoming an endangered species, and where human, other than human and planetary dignity is being violated on large scales.

The state of the world appears to become increasingly dominated by greed for power, wealth and false facts.  

Instead of unquestioningly embracing the innate potential of the arts to improve the state of humanity, the recognition of that – for many of us more than evident – potential of the arts – needs to be continuously pressed into political agendas.

The labor of defence, strategic advocacy and search for resources to create and to maintain the necessary place in society for the arts – and more specifically, the performing arts – subtracts precious time from the actually very necessary work of creating a more humane culture.

A culture, that forwards our understanding of the complexities of being human, that invents and elaborates strategies to stabilize our inborn capacities for hope and  inspiration and trust in a yet unknown future waiting to be co-created by us, together.  

In this time, we need to learn how to keep reconnecting to the truth-force of our inner being to be able to stay on course with our callings and vocations. We need to learn how to keep attending with care to our daily encounters and tasks and to remain consciously aware of our privileges, cultural missions and responsibilities.

This against the background of, or as an act of resistance against, or as a counterforce to atrocities against human beings, animals, plants and  our magnificent planet earth that happen at the same time.

As professionals guided by our humbly humane human hearts and by creative imagination, we need to actively prevent our souls from hiding and our hearts from hardening, for the sake of making the reality of the current state of humanity bearable.

We need to actively prevent our minds from becoming dull and too pragmatic, unreceptive to creative visions that could enhance, upgrade and evolve the current state of humanity.  

This also implies to rearticulate our sense of being human in fundamental ways.

How can we navigate the motoric momentum powered by life and fueled by desires to manifest artistic truths rather than inhumane atrocities with our individual bodies

and as a collective body of theater practitioners?

In our profession, this can happen by working with theater practice as a life science, and with the stage as a magnifying glass to observe and to study the human being.

We can reorient our sense of being human through our evolving multisensory bodies as instruments for multidimensional perception.

We can sharpen our embodied minds, our mind infused bodies – and with them, the body of dramaturgy – like a multifaceted diamond lens.

As localized and specific focus point of life energy equipped with with flesh, bones, eyes, ears, hearts, feet and hands, as well as with intuitive, imaginative and creative faculties as instruments for perception, connection and projection.  

As performing artist, creators, idealists, intellectuals and hyper empathic theater creatures, our labor is to inspire, uplift, confront, enrich, connect and entertain audiences.

We do this by creating worlds that don’t deny the current state of humanity.

We create experiences that transmute the grief of the world by drawing out the best in human beings for other human beings. By developing new perspectives to reflect on where and how we are and towards where we are going and by embodying visions that allow us to not lose faith in the potential of humanity to improve.

1. The body of dramaturgy

Because the public discourse around the performing arts is currently dominated by the language and logic of cultural policy, I propose to create more openings for the inner spaces of performing arts practice to resonate, speak and express themselves in their own terms.

I propose to stretch the time that is needed to articulate their own logic.

To allow new ways of thinking and speaking about the forces that are inherent to performing arts practice to emerge from within the dramaturgical nerves and veins that traverse the living organism of a theatrical creation.

Dramaturgy is a wide and deep field of knowledge, wisdom and expertise. I highlight here one aspect that I understand to be relevant across the performing arts including theater, dance and performance:

In the introduction to her book “Doing Dramaturgy: Thinking through Practice” (published in 2023), Maaike Bleeker describes one of the response-abilities of dramaturgical practice as attending to “…the emergence of that which is immanent in the performance-in-becoming and that supports its emergence”.

To see the dramaturg as something like a midwife for the birth of performances implies also to see dramaturgs as intrinsic to the coming into being of the body of a performance which is constituted by many limbs, multiple hearts and layered tiers of experiential dimensions.

The corporeality of a performance –  that is the continuum of being that unites body, space, presence, the self, the other, the world and the cosmos – integrates not only physical bodies and objects. It is also to a large extent constituted by invisible but tangible, subtly perceivable materialities. Such as for example the state of mind of the spectators – attuned or not with that of the performers, the gaze, the quality of listening and attention, the living aura of a historical building and the Zeitgeist.

As a midwife for the coming into being of the body of a performance, a dramaturg needs to be receptive to subtle signals that evade rationalization or temporal logic. To signals that resist verbalization and that lure a creation towards the timeless and the ineffable.

The dramaturg is aware of the mighty forces of creation and the immanent, almost impersonal and quasi objective artistic will and agency of a becoming creation that manifests during creation processes.

It requires utmost attention, heightened sensibility and fearlessness to support the making of intuitive and radical choices so that can be materialized and manifested what asks to be called into being, what seeks to be expressed through us.

Are we giving sufficient attention in contemporary dramaturgical practices to what is immanent to the human bodies through which a performance comes into being?

To what a human body needs, to the state of mind which invades and influences its inner spaces, to what it wants to become, to where it hurts, to the inner voices that are silenced, to its vulnerabilities, to its highest potential, to what kind of state of being it can and wants to evolve towards? 

Can we conceive of the art and craft of dramaturgy as a collective body of consciousness that incarnates in individual bodies and mediates in between them, that materializes sense in text, in speech, in language, in sound, in light and in movement and in the spaces between our bodies and the spaces we inhabit and perform in?

Can we think together how we might move this performing, mediating, remembering, creatively envisioning and sense making body of dramaturgy towards the future in ways that allow us to find new ways to respond to the current world stage scenario?

Can we enact this movement from a securely grounded and steady vertical and horizontal alignment with the life that animates and that connects us, with time and the timeless, with our innermost necessities, hopes, convictions and aspirations?

How can we move this collective body of dramaturgy with humility, grace and generosity while being acutely aware of the responsibilities we carry towards ourselves, towards each other, towards the arts, towards society and towards our audiences – and of the exceptional gift of being alive, now?

2. Dancing dramaturgies between mind and matter, between corporeal theory and discursive practice

As an alternative to mind-body and theory-practice dichotomies at play in the discourse on dramaturgical sense making, I propose to explore a dramaturgical logic and playground that unfolds within a spectrum ranging from dense to subtle matter-consciousness.

A dramaturgy of matter-consciousness as I imagine it, draws together physically sensible and intuitively intelligible realms of life, being and meaning making.

On the dense end of the spectrum, matter-consciousness inhabits the walls of a theater as well as the muscles and bones of an actor, dancer and spectator.

On the subtle end of the spectrum, there are thoughts, scents, texts, movements, sounds, the auras of people, things, plants, animals and spaces, and the quality of the texture of the space in between them.

A dancing dialogue between corporeal theory and discursive practice can move along and connect the outer edges of a spectrum of matter-consciousness.

I understand corporeal theory as nonverbal and verbal reflections on performance experience articulated from the first-person, bodily perspective.

It navigates on an intuitive, arational (not irrational and not negating rationality) edge between conscious and semi-,  un- or superconscious performative states of being.

These states of being are based on corporeal logic; but the ways of knowing derived from a corporeal kind of logic have barely found verbalized modes of expression yet.

They can communicate performatively through a frequency of intensity of presence, coupled with distinctly performative states of being. 

Discursive practice can be described as verbally languaging movements of thought in dialogue with diverse fields of spoken and written discourse.

To interweave corporeal theory derived from first person, but also intersubjective, embodied, performative experience with discursive practices in complementary ways, is a methodological proposition towards elaborating ways of speaking and writing about theatrical practice that creates bridges between the physically sensible and the intuitively intelligible.

This mode of languaging, dancing between the physically sensible and the intuitively intelligible, is intended to create living connections and energetic links between ideas and experience in ways that unify and transcend dichotomies between theory and practice, between the mental and the physical.

This approach towards developing corporeal and verbal, performative and theatrical languages, expressed through the body and words, could potentially support the coming into being of creative spaces for performing art practitioners to articulate more explicitly what is at stake in their work in their own terms.

At the same time, this methodological proposition might also contribute to the evolution of some fibres of the dramaturgical and performative textures of matter-consciousness from the unconscious towards the conscious, and possibly, maybe, towards the superconscious.

This might also help us to learn to speak our own language and logic as an act of resistance against the infiltration of the language and logic of cultural policy into artistic autonomy and choice making.

3. Altered states of dramaturgy: suspended between non-verbal corporeal and verbal languaging

What kind of individual and collective mind-infused corporeal consciousness and theatrical languages does this time ask us to develop?

A corporeal dramaturgy, a dramaturgy of the body, can be understood in the sense of negotiating matters of meaning in dialogue with the deeper layers of the silently mute human body and its participation in larger fields of matter-consciousness.  

We learn to read and to write and we think in text and words but we don’t have a language yet for the subtle signals that arise from within our bodies, in life and – in intensified and amplified ways – in a theatrical setting.

Maybe a mind infused, corporeal kind of dramaturgy is waiting for us to be actively searched for, to be discovered and to be remembered.

To be listened to intensely, to be heard, to be made sense of and to be shared. 

To activate this search, and to remember – can we balance our orientation in this world mainly through our outer senses and rational mind with giving more attention to our inner senses?

To our sense of balance, of grounding and of vertical alignment as mediators between the earth and the cosmos?

To our sense of movement, of interconnectedness and viscerally perceived common sense?

To our intuitions, innate inspirations and fantasies, to our sense of artistic truth and the sense of the creative potential of not knowing?

Can we develop a new consciousness that informs the structure and logic of theatrical language from the perspective of the body?

Can we develop a new language that speaks from the deeper layers of our inner being and that is also attuned with vertical, transpersonal and timeless axes and dimensions of being?

Can we develop uncompromising theatrical languages that draw together non-verbal corporeal and verbal languaging to weave textures of matter-consciousness into the fabrics of time in ways that can be heard and understood, that change who we are, who we are becoming and the worlds that we are creating? 

Sense making then happens in a state suspended between not knowing and a heightened state of supersensory awareness; in undefinable, ineffable spaces where metaphors, myth, ambiguity and mystery resonate and resound from and through a vast spacious silence to touch, melt, stir, soften and awaken our hearts and inner knowing of the potential of becoming more than we are.

4. Altered states of Knowing: Embodied Knowledge

Knowledge processes that assist the coming into being of what is immanent in creative processes require alternative perspectives on what knowledge is or can be.

For example, a quote from Martha Graham: “Every dance is to some greater or lesser extent a kind of fever chart, a graph of the heart”.

The embodied knowledge implicit in dramaturgical processes grows through lived experience. It matures through witnessing modulations of matter-consciousness that encompass the full register of being from the depths of suffering to the heights of ecstasy and illumination.

Knowledge processes embedded in creative, performing arts work are open ended and in flux by definition. They can be maddeningly complex, polymorphous and contradictory, paradoxical and ungraspable.

These knowledge processes can be fueled by an ideal that is ever becoming and that one is moving towards. They are related to intuitive, embodied, and intersubjective kinds of knowledge. They also integrate and interrogate analytic aspects of knowledge. They can produce an awareness of artistic imperatives that are relative to creative minds, communities and the evolution of theatrical genres.

Artistic imperatives can also be perceived as absolute or as objectively given in relation to visible and invisible, conscious and unconscious agencies at work in an artistic creation. They ask to be deciphered and realized.

They imply radical openings towards the unknown, enabled by a sense of vulnerability and receptivity to inspiration – like breathing in – followed by choice making and creative action – breathing out. 

I understand the difference between embodied knowledge and tacit knowledge as related to consciousness and awareness and to its corporeal and verbal articulation.

Tacit knowledge is crystallized in our bodies, unconsciously habituated.

To articulate embodied knowledge as corporeal theory, has to do with making an attempt to make tacit, habituated patterns of thought and movement, of movements of thought embedded in our bodies more conscious and explicit.

To create the conditions for another kind of knowledge, for altered states of knowing to come out of the body, to be expressed in one way or the other, because something wants to be expressed through us.

Embodied knowledge has to do with shining the light of our conscious awareness on the yet unconscious intelligence of our bodies. This might eventually lead towards an intersubjectively shared kind of consciousness, networked and distributed between bodies that articulate it through individual bodies and unique perspectives on life, art, theater and on what dramaturgy is all about.

Specificity matters. 

Embodied dramaturgical knowledge or “the dramaturgy of the flesh” (Pieter C. Scholten) can also be seen as a dramaturgy of energy rooted in the ability to construct, to read and to hold the space, and to the craft of orchestrating “energies that shape the space” (Emio Greco).

Embodied dramaturgical knowledge can be seen as relative to the state of expansion of sensory awareness that encompasses inner and outer senses.

It can be related to modes of cognition and states of being that are coupled with balanced perception of inner and outer spaces.

These mental-physical states of being can enable us to read, to cognize and to be with what is unfolding in life and on stage.

Embodied dramaturgical knowledge can encompass states of consciousness that access dimensions of experiential reality that underlie or surpass sensory perception and rationalizing cognition. 

Developing embodied dramaturgical perception and knowledge allows us to participate in a slow but steady movement where the body becomes more and more conscious, where the mind incarnates deeper and deeper into the body.

The more we expand, sensibilize and nuance our inner and outer awareness and sensory or suprasensory capacities, the more impossible it becomes to hurt another being, as it is understood and experienced to be a part of the same field of matter-consciousness, as a part of one’s own body.

5: The future of the body – the body of the future: towards a new state of being human

Performing Arts enact a continuous investigative practice that moves from an awareness of the past towards a presumed future through an intensified sense of embodied presence of a now moment which is continuously in flux.

Conceiving theater and the performing arts as the art of the future that exist only by the grace of bodies acting for other bodies – what is immanent to her becoming and how can we assist her coming into being?

How can we create the conditions that allow the immanent potential of the body of dramaturgy, of the future of the body, of the bodies of the future and their theatrical and scenographic texts, languages, voices and mutual interconnectedness to be realized?

How can we develop theater practices that allow us to discover more of who we are or can become?

What comes after postdramatic theater and after postconceptual dance and what does it mean to become a visionary body of dramaturgy?

Could this imply to become aware of our connection to earth, to be able to listen, to hear and to be with her deep, slow and enduringly evolutionary sense of time?

How to act and what kind of theatrical languages are we to develop from a state of awareness of being connected to the earth, to the cosmos and to each other as one body?

How can we enable the speaking, the being heard and the recognition of textures of matter-consciousness of humans, animals, plants, objects, spaces and souls?

In one of the seven propositions of her keynote lecture at the Nederlandse Dansdagen in 2025 on “How to create dance when the world is burning?”, Gabriele Klein reflects on dance as a field of experimentation for new, democratic forms of existence and invites us to consider whether it is enough “… today, in times of extensive erosion of democracies, to develop experimental fields of democratic coexistence in the arts”, or whether this approach is “exactly the right strategy, because these spaces make alternative spaces of experience tangible”.

If we see theater practice as a magnifying glass to study the complexities, the failures but also the highest potentials of human nature and of other than human entities;

If we see the diverse dramaturgical textures in the performing arts unfolding in studios and on stages as interconnected fields of matter-consciousness that can contribute positively to the further evolution of life and of theater practice as lifescience –

then we can affirm that despite and even because the current state of humanity, it is necessary to keep creating alternate worlds. To enable spaces of experience that contribute positively to the total fabric of life and consciousness that constitutes our contemporary reality.  

To exemplify other modes of being – as co-creative acts of “esthetic resistance” and life affirming pro-activity. 

Epilogue: speculative potentialities, towards a dramaturgical body

The dramaturgical body is anchored within an absolute, yet temporally bound, physical reference point of individual and collective bodies and of the body of the earth. At the same time, it is also vertically aligned with transpersonal and transtemporal dimension of being, with an upward thriving force while hanging from the earth, with vertical gravity, falling towards the skies. 

The dramaturgical body lives in a state of suspense between pathos and ethos.

The dramaturgical body unites inner and outer spaces to become one body.

It creates fields of matter-consciousness that excel in one-ness, in unity consciousness, that transform and transcend polarities and ideologies.

The dramaturgical body enacts creative connections between consciousness, energy and matter.

The dramaturgical body intuits a metaphysical matrix of oneness and uplifts and solidifies fields of matter-consciousness towards it.

To explore the ontological, arationally epistemological, spiritual and evolutionary dimensions of the dramaturgical body supports a re-definition of its value for society.

The dramaturgical body cultivates and intentionally attunes states of corporeal consciousness to be receptive to our innermost knowing, to the impulses we receive within from without and within.

The dramaturgical body learns to navigate a multiplication of performative surfaces and dramaturgical interfaces by blending physical with digital and virtual worlds .

It navigates expression and communication across multidimensional latent spaces that wait for us to choose what to to look at, and how to look, what to highlight, what to bring our attention to.

The dramaturgical body performs in and for spaces of pure potential, available to be imprinted with values derived from historical awareness coupled with embodied intelligence, wisdom and a sense for the future.    

It feels the future and connects it with archaic forces by the re-discovery of the innate intelligence of the organic, biological technology of the body and by explicitation of its intelligence through the mediation of new technologies. 

The dramaturgical body knows that creation and preservation belong together and are needed to create culture.

The dramaturgical body draws together the physically sensible and the intuitively intelligible by means of horizontally and vertically attuned inner and outer, sensory and supersensory awareness.

The dramaturgical body is a corporeal discipline that moves among many bodies, it is a medium, a source, and an instrument to create theatrical bodies.  

It stretches time from vast inner spaces of silence, meaning and purpose.

It crafts and projects time onto theater stages to contribute to the coming into being of a new state of being human.

The dramaturgical body surrenders to being in time, in process, to the duration of things.

The dramaturgical body seeks to align body, soul and spirit with the time of the now at all times.

The dramaturgical body lives in time, the mother of all becomings.

It shapes time and impregnates time with meaning.

The dramaturgical body is also a collective body that cannot be accessed with verbal language and rationalized thought only. It is to be found underneath and beyond rational cognition, in the somatic unconscious of our collective body.

How to move this collective body of dramaturgy forwards in time?

If time is love moving forwards, if Love is the force that sets time in motion (Dante Alighieri), then it is time to be in time, from out of time, now and always.

Thank you.