Citizen-Centred Dramaturgy And The Flow Quartet - European Capital of Culture, Wroclaw 2016, Poland

This thesis examines citizen-centred dramaturgy, an approach to making performance with citizens who have an imperative to tell, in the context of the making of The Flow Quartet, a project consisting of four interconnected multi-disciplinary performances made between 2013 and 2016 created as part of the Polish city of Wroc?aw's European Capital of Culture (ECoC) 2016 cultural programme. Through case studies the thesis examines how the project enabled citizens and those with historical ties to the city to make the four large scale performance works and in doing so to identify collective traumas associated with Wroc?aw. The case studies also examine how generations who experienced collective traumas give way to their descendants who still have a need to tell and mourn the victims of various catastrophes. The way this impacted upon dramaturgical decision making is examined in detail. The thesis also shows that curatorial practices, predicated on co-negotiation of dramaturgies and performance of stories (citizen-centred dramaturgy), can impact upon the effects of social and collective trauma and the way catastrophic events are remembered. Externalisation techniques, such as semi-open rehearsals, non-linguistic approaches to rehearsal, disruption of expected hierarchies in the creative and making processes, help negotiate the moving on from collective trauma to postmemory mourning.