ASSITEJ Magazine 2019

Thinking
with
Theatre
LISE HOVIK IS AN ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR IN DRAMA
AND THEATRE AT QUEEN MAUD UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF
EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION, AND ARTISTIC DIRECTOR
OF TEATER FOT.
Making theatre for young
children is an art of
interdisciplinarity. Music and
sound, dancing and movement,
scenery and visuals, drama,
text or poetry will mix together
and affect all the senses of a
child. This crossing and mixing
might be an art in itself, and
might require some tools for
understanding.
‘Thinking with Theatre’ is important not at least
because our world has become so complex and
difficult to sort out, and we need deep thoughts
and thorough thinking about what we are doing and
making, and this is urgent. The human footprints
are soon covering up the whole globe, while human
sounds are drowning birdsong and whispering
trees. How can theatre contribute to a better
understanding of our role, how can theatre teach
us to listen to nonhuman life and beings?
In my theatre work for Early Years, I have been
searching for concepts and methods that can
help us to be better capable of being present,
to listen and to play. Through acting and making
presence together with each other and with the
young children audience we hope to give way for
new poetic experiences. In this process the concept
of sympoiesis have been helpful, and I will explain
how I have tried to use the term in relation to my
artistic research.
Neither Fish nor Fowl consists of two performances
Beginnings (3–5 years) and Baby Becomings (0–2
years). Together with my company Teater Fot, I
have been investigating the significance of affect
as philosophical, emotional, and material inspiration
in Theatre for Early Years.
The significance of affect in performance work
was initially inspired by Deleuze & Guattaris
Thousand Plateaus (1984), and the research
methods were theatre making, film making, and
writing. By reading and writing through the process
I discovered the philosophies of Donna Haraway
and her conception of sympoiesis in Staying with
the trouble (2016) 1 . Haraway proposes new ways of
thinking with other species in an ongoing process
of what she terms ‘sympoietic becoming’. Humans
are not exceptional beings, but equal to every other
species on our planet, in an ongoing rearrangement
of cells, organisms, microbes and earthly compost.
We eat and are eaten, we infect and become
infected, we affect and become affected by
one another in a process of ongoing creation
or sympoiesis (sym - meaning ‘with/together
with’, and poiesis (Aristotle) meaning ‘creation,
production’).
Haraways conception of sympoietic becoming
is in dialogue with autopoiesis which (in biology
and environmental studies) refers to a system
capable of reproducing and maintaining itself.
Autopoietic units tend to be centrally controlled,
homeostatic and predictable. Sympoietic systems
are, on the contrary, collectively producing
systems that do not have self defined spatial or
temporal boundaries. Information and control are
distributed among components. The sympoietic
systems are evolutionary and have the potential
42 Towards the Unknown – Confronting the Present