‘The idea was to have equal input, but you are in Maastricht. So they were already at a disadvantage. Given that, the project is essentially more interesting for them than for us, because they meet more Maastricht than we do Manchester. Ideal would be a month here and a month there.’

[2] Kuhn, T. S. (1962). The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1997 third ed.). Chicago University Press.

‘The project was not evaluated in the group. I didn’t mind that then and I like talking about it now, a bit later, now that I have some distance. Although at first I thought: not I’ll be Gone again, I’m already gone! The performance was evaluated of course, but it would be better if students were evaluated more in terms of their processes during projects.’

‘We were desperate. All of us.’

‘If you are not used to this, I can understand that you might … freeze up. We are quite… BAM. We didn’t want to be limited by them. And then you are foreign and you don’t know anyone and you don’t naturally take initiative. Then it becomes very difficult.’

‘They didn’t know any of the artists we commonly refer to. I mean, they had not heard of Peter Greenaway.’

‘Can you make a successful performance if you do not fully understand the issues you are exploring within it? If you do not understand your performance, how can an audience?’

‘You see a story, in form. You don’t have to understand the words. It is more about their sound and rhythm. It had a kind of holy atmosphere.’

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Dear representative of a theatre school,

The documentation of I’ll be Gone reaped insights that may be useful in the planning of future collaborative, educational projects.

In the I’ll be Gone project, nine students were asked to work together, under supervision of Peter Missotten for several weeks in 2010 in order to make a performance that spoke to issues around the virtual body. Four students from Manchester worked together with five students from the theatre school in Maastricht. Three of the Manchester students were in their third year, and one in his final year of their Bachelor degree of the Department of Contemporary Arts at MMU Cheshire Manchester (Manchester Metropolitan University). The five Maastricht students were from different tracks in the school (performance, directing, acting) and had chosen to participate in this project, either because they wanted to work with director Peter Missotten or because they were interested in working together with foreign/British students. All students were in the later stages of their Bachelor education.

The reason to combine these students from different schools was to introduce to one another both styles of education and by implication theatre: The style of education at the Manchester Metropolitan University may characterized by a theoretical take and teaches students to investigate and reflect on theatre, primarily by writing. The education in the Maastricht theatre school is grounded in stage-experience and allows theoretical concerns to emerge in and through practical work on performances. This difference was one of the reasons for creating the project. The aim was to create a project in which all participants would bring in their own expertise and background and to allow these diverse inputs to determine the outcome.

The project was considered by all participants to have been difficult. This evaluation ranged from a mild noting of differences to an extreme experience of dissatisfaction and frustration. The performance that concluded the project, however, was evaluated positively by audiences and other external viewers, as well as by some participants. By some other participants the performance was evaluated very negatively.

What can schools learn from this project? Most experiences within this project relevant to theatre schools are to do with the incommensurability occurring among participants, combined with attempts to come to a shared finished project, and shared quality criteria.

On whose turf is the project executed?

This project was conducted in Maastricht. This created a lack of balance/power between the Maastricht and Manchester students in which the stakes were highest and the options to act lowest for the Manchester students. This resulted in a project that was not intended to be “Maastrichtian,” but turned out to be largely so, as a “local” way of coping with problems that arose in the working process.

In collaborative projects with participants from different backgrounds, attention should be paid to who owns the location of the project. One might consider either choosing a location alien to all participants, or a switching of locations during the process, so all participants are sometimes at home and sometimes away.

However, this difference was not the only important one. Read on.

Are “the others”¹ incommensurable or bad?

In this project all participants spoke of experiences that could be labeled using the term incommensurability (Kuhn 1962)²: not only did people not understand one another, all the “natural” ways of attempting to bridge such misunderstandings were also not shared among participants. This means that attempts to solve problems were equally alienating as the problems themselves. A pretty bleak situation for all involved.

At the same time, many participants spoke of their experience of a difference in the quality of the work of “the others.” Participants tended to think of what “the others” did as not only incommensurably different, but bad. They thus applied their own terms of defining quality to a manner of working they at once experienced as alien. The use of one’s own categories of judgment is at once unavoidable and problematic.

In collaborative projects with participants from different backgrounds, the issue of how to judge one another’s work should be made an explicit part of the project. Reflexive work should be done on whose categories of judgment are applied and attempts should be made to allow new categories of judgment to emerge. 

No fun, let’s grunt

Participants were eager to start this project. Yet it turned out that what they thought would be fun, was very difficult and painful work. Trying to work together turned into a process in which most participants over time retreated, took steps back. This retreating process is a common phenomenon in collaborative work with heterogeneous parties. Participants attempt several things at once: they try to avoid painful confrontations by hiding in what they know, but they also revert to more basic levels and terms of communication in order to try and find a level on which collaboration is possible: An if-you-do-not-speak-my-language-maybe-we-can-share-each-other’s-food-and-grunt-approval type of logic. The problem here is that you would like the outcome of the project to be good. Not basically good, but good in a sophisticated way appropriate to your own categories. There is a pressure to succeed, but at once for different participants success is defined differently.

In collaborative projects with participants from different backgrounds, participants should metaphorically and literally share a lot of food, i.e. a lot of time should be spent in searching for ways of interacting that all participants find basically meaningful. Moreover, reflexive work should be done on whose categories of success are applied and attempts should be made to allow new categories of success judgment to emerge.

It will end in tears

The project ended with the performance being shown at the 2010 ITs festival in Amsterdam where it won the ITs Guest Award. After having been assigned roles offstage by Missotten as an attempt to save the working process, the Manchester students were also not full-blown participants in these performances. Moreover, the project seems not to have been evaluated in any structural or meaningful way within the group, while at the same time, talk in the hallways about the problems in the project were rife. Though during the documentation of the project, participants were generally mild and willing to empathize with the position and experiences of “the others,” they also presented an image of a project that was very, very difficult. Most did not feel that by speaking about the project, their views about it changed, although some appreciated the opportunity to speak neutrally about it, by way of “closure.” Some resented having to go back mentally to the project at all.

In collaborative projects with participants from different backgrounds, thought should be given to ways in which students enter and leave the project. It seems important to create opportunities (or to force occasions), maybe also during such projects, for participants to calibrate their insights and experiences in and of the project. It also seems important to think about how such occasions might be experienced as safe by all concerned.

Recipes and failure

Was I’ll be Gone a success or a failure and to whom can we ascribe such success and failure? Participants both heralded and complained about the way in which the project was managed. Some recognized the necessity, especially in a later stage, for authoritarian decisions and valued their content, while others felt stifled and unrecognized by the same acts. More, some felt that the course of the project was following a course that was predetermined and thus not subject to change by their attempts at intervention, while others felt the project to develop along the way, due to all efforts to direct it.

In collaborative projects with participants from different backgrounds, thought should be given to styles of leadership and habits of ascribing responsibility, success and failure. An authoritarian nor a more democratic or open style of management are in themselves no recipes for success, when success itself is such an incommensurable concept.

Besides these general points, in documenting this project, substantial differences became apparent in how participants approached/viewed the project. (The stances have been exaggerated for clarity.)

- Some students see the project as a way of exploring themes such as power, sex, fear, while others see it as a stance on such theme.

- Morality for some students is something to present and allow audiences to develop perspectives on, while for others the performance seems itself to perform a moral/political view.

- For some students, the performance could (or should) come about without their own determination beforehand, or later, of the meaning of the work. When asked what the performance was about, they took the position of the audience to interpret the work. For other students, it was imperative to attribute and fix meaning to the performance in the making of it. It could only really become a performance if and when they could understand and interpret it themselves. They felt that their understanding of the work was a necessary support of the work, as well as a prerequisite for audiences to be able to deal with it meaningfully.

- For some students, theory happens within and through the research process of making the performance, for others a position before, next to or outside the process and the performance seemed necessary to be able to theorize at all.