The Dramaturgy of Wine, the Terroir of Performance: Multi-Sensory Performance-Making in Through the Grapevine

This chapter focuses on the creation of Through the Grapevine, a series of performed wine tastings. It discusses the role of the imagination in an unusual devising process that takes its stimulus from the taste and smell of wine. Thomas Aquinas distinguished the cognitive senses of sight and hearing from the noncognitive senses of taste and smell, arguing that only the first could provide the perception of beauty. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel emphasizes the distinction between the enjoyments of the palate and the aesthetic experience, because the latter provides the embodiment of an idea. Steven Poole rails against chefs like Heston Blumenthal and Ferran Adria creating ‘works of art’ meant to be eaten. Why this bias against the senses of taste and smell? Surely the enjoyment of these senses too can be an aesthetic experience? The creative process discussed in this chapter takes as its starting point the idea that wine has memory of its own, which is separate from — although of course in dialogue with — the individual’s subjective experience of tasting it. Further, not only does wine have its own memory, but by engaging with the olfactory senses it also generates a vivid imageresponse often connected to personal memory. In Through the Grapevine, the creative team translates this image response into a performance that captures the essence of a wine. The audience then tastes the wine, both literally and embodied through the actors’ performances. Examining experiences at the intersection of wine tasting and performance-making, the authors propose an imaginative reengagement with the multisensory, and a questioning of aesthetic bias toward the visual as stand-alone creative stimulus.