Goodnight, Sleep Tight
Training performers as palliative carers in an age of system collapse
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21687723 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Kesia Guillery (0000-0002-2682-0758), Jorge Lopes Ramos (0000-0003-4868-9700), Persis-Jadé Maravala |
| Year | 2022 |
| Volume | 27 |
| Issue | 6-7 |
| Pages | 212-220 |
| Publication date | 2022-10-03 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Performance Research (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1352-8165 • E-ISSN: 1469-9990 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/13528165.2022.2198865 |
| OpenAlex | W4385507993 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 3 |
ZU-UK artists and associate analyse care in immersive work through case-study of Goodnight, Sleep Tight (ZU-UK, 2016-19), a performance exploring intimacy and childhood, merging VR input with live, physical performer-participant interaction, and a desire to understand human loneliness through the medium of touch. The analysis exhibits excerpts of ZU-UK Artistic Director Persis-Jadé Maravala’s instructional and explanatory materials, used to train performers who deliver Goodnight, Sleep Tight by embodying the role of a maternal carer. Reflecting on these excerpts through the lens of collapse theory (Spagnola 2022) and psychology and healthcare research into breath and physical touch as communicative methods of social care (Goetz, Keltner & Simon-Thomas 2010; Van der Kolk 2015), Guillery, Lopes Ramos and Maravala put forward a case for the social role of performers and performance-makers as agents of metaphorical palliative care: generating spaces in which individuals experiencing the effects of collective grief for a social order in ‘catabolic crisis’ (Spagnola 2022) can safely contemplate and process a twenty-first-century sense of an inherently moribund reality from a perspective of co-presence and compassion, given and received. This role arises as a necessity within political systems that allocate minimal value to forms of mutual, interpersonal, psychospiritual and sociocultural care (Kolcaba 2003) despite acute need as these systems themselves collapse. Through case-study of Goodnight, Sleep Tight, it is also possible to trace derivation of these methods of care within ZU-UK’s work from practices rooted in the makers’ Indian, Zoroastrian, Brazilian and working-class cultural heritages - pertaining to rhythm, collective synchronicity, and performer-bodies as hosts and guides as opposed to objects of consumption. Considered as a response to the disintegration of Western capitalist hegemony, ZU-UK’s work and this article claim the subversive importance of these fundamentally marginalised aesthetic priorities within the current participatory performance landscape
Aesthetics · Art · Compassion · Grief · Loneliness · Political science · Psychoanalysis · Psychotherapist · Sociology · Art Therapy and Mental Health · Diversity and Impact of Dance · Psychology · Social Psychology · Theatre and Performance Studies
| Highly cited | No |
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