Fluid stages, morphing theatre spaces, ambulant spectators, and occasionally disappearing performers: these are some of the key ingredients of nomadic theatre. They are also theatre's response to life in the 21st century, which is increasingly marked by the mobility of people, information, technologies and services. While examining how contemporary theatre exposes and queries this mobile turn in society, Liesbeth Groot Nibbelink introduces the concept of nomadic theatre as a vital tool for analyzing how movement and mobility affect and implicate the theatre, how this makes way for local operations and lived spaces, and how physical movements are stepping stones for theorizing mobility at large. This book focuses on ambulatory performances and performative installations, asking how they stage movement and in turn mobilize the stage. By analyzing the work of leading European artists such as Rimini Protokoll, Dries Verhoeven, Ontroerend Goed, and Signa, Nomadic Theatre demonstrates that mobile performances radically rethink the conditions of the stage and alter our understanding of spectatorship. Nomadic Theatre instigates connections across disciplinary fields and feeds dramaturgical analysis with insights derived from media theory, urban philosophy, cartography, architecture, and game studies. It illustrates how theatre, as a material form of thought, creatively and critically engages with mobile existence both on the stage and in society.

List of FiguresAcknowledgements 1 Introduction: Deterritorializing the Stage Primary CoordinatesOn the MoveTheatre, Technology, MobilityA Note on ParticipationTheatre, Performance, MovementDeterritorializationPauseDeleuze's NomadsNomadic Theatre: A Concept, a ToolboxTheory as Tool: How to Do Things with Deleuze?Spatial DramaturgyPoints Are Relays on a Trajectory: Chapter OverviewPlaygrounding 2 Encounter: Meeting Multiplicity in Dries Verhoeven's No Man's LandOf Horses and WaspsThe Rhythms of a Smooth StageMind the GapPerformance InstallationsStaging the SpectatorWalking with AbderraghmanTriads and ConstellationsA Problem of ReferentialityThis Is Not My Voice: A Problem of Referentiality, Part 2Fractured ReciprocityBuilding PerformanceExpanding Spectatorship 3 Displacement: The Situated Pathways of Rimini ProtokollUrban MovesThe City as StageTheatre Goes GlobalThe Production of SpacePerforming LocalityNavigating RepresentationOutsourced PerformanceParallax 4 Cartographies: Trail Tracking and Map-Making as Staging StrategyYou Are HereCartography: Fifth Principle of the RhizomeThe Theatre of CartographyPerforming CartographyCharting the VirtualNavigational SpacesPersonal VelocityMaterial MapsThinking Subjectivity Through Space: Politics of LocationWitnessed PresenceThe Cartography of Theatre 5 Diagrams: Staging Proximity in Ontroerend Goed's The Smile Off Your FaceA Nomad Does Not Necessarily MoveA Wheelchair's ThresholdsPleats of ProximityEvent/SituationInto the LaboratoryThinking Through the DiagramThe Grid of CapitalDistributions of the SensibleA Spectator in the DarkThe Dramaturgy of ProximityA Theatre of Folds 6 Architextures: The Rhizomatic Gameboards of Signa's The Ruby Town OracleDrifting /DwellingBorderzonesNarrative Architecture and Environmental StorytellingArchitectural PerformancesEvocative SpacesProcedural PassagewaysPlaying at the LimitsThe Entirety of the MapTissue, Traces, Tracks 7 Distributed Performance: EpiloguePop-up StoresTrajectories of the StageFolds of SpectatingLived Space and Diffractive Reading Staging ConnectionsProcedural Dramaturgy /When Attitude Becomes Form Thinking Through PracticeThresholds of the Imagination NotesBibliographyIndex