A car, burnt-out, on the roadside: the experiment of a theatre writing laboratory

Abstract

This article reflects about the Theatre Writing Laboratory, promoted by the National Theatre D. Maria II (Lisbon), which I coordinated from September 2015 to September 2019. In these four years, twenty-three new playwrights wrote twenty-three original plays. The project is part of a broader program to support emerging dramaturgies and to encourage the new Portuguese dramaturgy, consisting, in this case, in the approach of young dramatic authors to processes of sharing, experimentation and collaboration that can challenge, influence and stimulate the original writing of a text for theatre. In the first edition (2015/16) we walked around “A state of permanent exception”, under the aegis of Terry Eagleton (2003) and the idea that contemporary dramaturgy has no choice but to account for the state of war - a state of permanent exception - between individuals and institutions of power. In the second edition (2016/17), we questioned “The politics of everything”, in a gesture of homage to the hundred years of the October Revolution and an inquiry into the contradictions of the 20th century, inspired by the lesson of Alain Badiou (2005). In the third edition (2017/18) we lingered on “The daily life of the common man and other unimportant things”, led by Jean-Pierre Sarrazac's reflection on the poetics of contemporary dramaturgy and his “microepopies of the anonymous”. In the fourth edition (2018/19), we wanted to “Interrupt the real to return to it”, trusting in the possible political gestures that the theatre can understand.