Dramaturgies for languaging: Developing linguistically sustainable theatre and performance

As European theatre, performance and film artists increasingly invite the diverse languages and language practices of a globalised, decolonial and postmigratory Europe into works across the stage and screen, pressing questions arise concerning the representation of minorities.

Dramaturgies for languaging (DRAMALANG) aims to interrogate the core principles and systems driving European multilingual performance, articulate an interdisciplinary methodology for analysing the reproduction of potentially damaging knowledges for minority and low-status language speakers and make suggestions for linguistically sustainable dramaturgies to a new multilingual performance network.

DRAMALANG asks the central research question: How are several languages and language practices invited into European dramaturgies to provide access to and legitimise the cultures and knowledges of minoritised and low-status language speakers?

The secondary research questions are: How is a lingua franca other than Standard English negotiated in interactions?; and, how do the knowledges about minoritised languages and language practices within a European context rearticulate my findings about Indigenous and migrant languages in the global south?

DRAMALANG will take shape at Aarhus University (AU), Denmark, through my observation of multilingual theatre, performance and film artists locally in Denmark and beyond, including Germany, Iceland and Romania.

I will develop an interdisciplinary methodology between sociolinguistics and performance studies for analysing the reproduction of knowledge from multilingual dramaturgies and create a multilingual network of scholars and practitioners across the continent. I have pioneered a multilingual methodology like this in the global south.

AU provides the necessary disciplinary guidance through the most specialised dramaturgies department in Europe and access to the artistic processes of innovative multilingual European artists through longstanding relationships.