Visual Theatre

This dissertation aims to assess the efficacy of puppet theater as a therapeutic
intervention for individuals grappling with depression and suicidal ideation and related
conditions. My study focuses on exploring the transformative impact of providing patients with
creative autonomy on a brightly lit stage within a dimly lit space where they bring their self-
crafted puppets and scripts to life. The conceptualization of this approach stemmed from the
need to address spatial constraints within our art therapy center. The decision to embark on this
research was an intuitive response to a recognized need. The remarkable result was that all
participants in the study successfully overcame their suicidal thoughts, with nine out of ten
reporting significant positive changes in their lives. While one participant remains homebound,
he still consistently communicates that his condition is stable and expresses a desire to continue
living.

This thesis is available for Library use on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. I certify that all material in this thesis which is not my own work has been identified and that no material has previously been submitted and approved for the award of a degree by this or any other University.

Taking as its focus the ‘actor-creator’s’ process in devising practices, this study explores the notion of the ‘poetic body’ developed by French theatre pedagogue Jacques Lecoq (1921 - 1999) and the writings of French philosopher Gaston Bachelard (1884 - 1962) on the ‘poetics of imagination.’ The overarching aim is to originate a new ‘embodied poetics’ whereby the sensate, feeling body actively explores correspondences with the ‘material elements’ of earth, air, fire and water. These are experienced as ‘poeticising substances’ – catalysts and conductors for an embodied imagination. More specifically, this thesis asks the following question: What new understandings can a relational encounter between Lecoq’s pedagogy and Bachelard’s ‘poetic imagining’ reveal about the ’poetic body’ and how might these new understandings originate a devising process? I combine three solo practical projects with accompanying written analysis, to first interrogate the working methods I have inherited as ...

Photos and video were encouraged. Images taken by the author with permission to publish from Ezequiel Garcia-Romeu. One of three immersive works by E. Garcia Romeu, Opus 2 of Le Petite Theatre du Bout du Monde (or The Little Theater at the End of the World) was staged in the gym of the Franck-Mozart Primary School, in Charleville. A large space with high ceilings, it is dark. An enormous white table-like surface, which is itself the size of a small room, is lit at the center. It is reminiscent of a skate park, made of undulating chipboard, bolted together to form the suggestion of a barren landscape. Entering along the side, one can examine tables and shelves that function like cabinets of curiosity, filled with little objects and statues to be used throughout the piece. There are only a few chairs because this is an ambulatory performance, and the audience will move around, encouraged to take photos and even film. The piece is a performative installation, where four puppeteers set up, take down, and arrange objects to form a stream of vignettes-some momentary. In this piece, sound helps build each scene, disconnecting us from where we are and were, rebuilding the world through our auditory perception. I think back to what puppeteer Omayra Martinez-Garzon asserts: 50% of each of her pieces is what she calls the "sound world." That is certainly the case in this piece and something that captured my imagination at the festival overall. Soundscapes are fundamental in worldmaking.

Strongly connected to the ritualistic roots of theatre, folk art and the Grotesque, puppets are easily framed by the modernist celebration of the primitive and the quest for origins. In this context, it is not surprising that modern artists, such as Pierre Bonnard, Ramón Casas, Oskar Kokoschka, Paul Klee, Emmy Hennings, Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Otto Morach and Alexandra Exter, as well as writers, such as Alfred Jarry, Maeterlinck, Michel de Ghelderode, Arthur Schnitzler, Ivan Goll, Marinetti, Luciano Folgore, Edward Gordon Craig, Gertrude Stein, Jacinto Benavente, Ramón del Valle-Inclán and Federico García Lorca, among others, cherished the artistic potential of puppets and appropriated them in stylised, explicit or subtle ways.Moreover, these appropriations parallel a heated debate on the actor versus the marionette, which marked theatrical theory in the early twentieth century, one example being the discourse of the playwright, theorist and actor Edward Gordon Craig.
Along with Spanish writers Jacinto Benavente, Santiago Rusiñol (also a painter), Jacinto Grau, Ramón del Valle-Inclán and Rafael Alberti, Federico García Lorca enthusiastically engaged with puppet theatre. Among the group of artists and intellectuals gathering around Café Alameda in early 1920s Granada, young Lorca, the composer Manuel de Falla and the artist Hermenegildo Lanz (1893–1949) shared an interest in puppets that would prove to be crucial for two key projects in 1923 – Títeres de Cachiporra, a performance for children that took place at Lorca’s family residence in Granada, and Falla’s El Retablo de Maese Pedro, an opera for puppets commissioned by Princesse Edmond de Polignac that premiered in Paris.
Besides the primitiveness associated with puppets, these puppet shows unfold two other sides of primitivism – the fascination with the child universe and medieval art, which often stimulated modern artists in their fights against mimesis, academic art and bourgeois taste. Chidren's drawings triggered Hermenegildo Lanz’s sets for the play La niña que riega el albahaca y el principe preguntón (The girl who waters the basil and the inquisitive prince), performed in the Títeres de Cachiporra show. Equally part of the Títeres de Cachiporra programme was the Misterio de los Reyes Magos (Mystery of the Magi) play. By reviving mystery plays, adapting a Spanish dramatic piece written in the late twelfth/early thirteenth century, and basing its sets and cut-out figures on an illuminated manuscript, it paved the way for the medieval imaginary that marked El Retablo de Maese Pedro.

This project/workshop report introduces the ways Matt Smith and PickleHerring Theatre approaches community puppetry. The report emphasizes the group experience, the participants' play and the levels of creativity in the workshops/ projects. The efficacy of puppetry as an important form of community arts practice is given in the summary.

Heute, wenn ich tanze oder einen Tanz kreiere, ist das nur eine Art von Reise, eine sehr komprimierte Reise, eine sehr konzentrierte Suche, eine Suche nach einem Zustand, der informiert. William Forsythe 1 Seit langem reisen und wandern Künstler und Meister durch ganz Europa, um sich weiterzubilden. Während der Reise tauschen sie ihre künstlerischen Erkenntnisse miteinander aus um neue Techniken zu lernen. Das Zitat des erfolgreichen amerikanischen Choreographen William Forsythe zeigt, dass der interkulturelle Aspekt im Tanz immer noch eine wichtige Rolle spielt. Auch im heutigen Tanz gibt es weiterhin Traditionen. Mit dem technischen Fortschritt werden Reisen von Künstlern immer häufiger und weiter. Es gibt verschiedene Anlässe für einen Künstler zu reisen: Das Artist-in-Residence Programm, internationale Tanzfestivals oder Messen, wie zum Beispiel die Association of Performing Arts Presenters (APAP) in Amerika oder Tokyo Performing Arts Market (TPAM) in Japan. Das Artist-in-Residence Programm bietet Künstlern die Gelegenheit, ein neues Stück unter interkulturellem Einfluss an anderen Orten zu schaffen. Durch die internationalen Festivals und APAP Sitzungen sind Tanzstücke auf dem Markt und zirkulieren in der Welt. Infolge dieser Zirkulation von Produktionen kann der Zuschauer den 1

TO YOU TO YOU TO YOU Book launch at Live Art Development Agency, London  on 4 October 2018
with Lisa Alexander, Demosthenes Agrafiotis, Season Butler, Claire MacDonald, Lois Keidan, Mary Paterson and Maria Sideri.
Documented by StudioMaBa.

TO YOU TO YOU TO YOU is edited by Lisa Alexander and builds on her curation of Love Letters to a (Post)Europe programme that took place at Bios, Athens in 2015 in which twenty six artists created short works in an act of gifting and assembly.

Full Programme notes of the two day festival:
Love Letters to a (Post)Europe at BIOS, Athens
conceived and curated by Lisa Alexander

02/10/15 - 03/10/15

Love Letters to a (Post-)Europe was an international festival of short works in the context of austerity and escalating humanitarian crisis that summer. Artists were invited to respond to a provocation (see below) with a work of no longer than 15 minutes in length - in any format - to be presented live.

Concept and curation: Lisa Alexander
Production: Lisa Alexander & BIOS
Contributing artists: Kate Adams, Demosthenes Agrafiotis, Brian Catling, cris cheek. Robin Deacon, Tim Etchells, Alec Finlay, Matthew Goulish, Guy Harries, Steven C Harvey, Catherine Hoffmann, Wendy Houstoun, Mikhail Karikis, Brian Lobel, Claire MacDonald, Georgios Makkas, Ivana Müller, Mariela Nestora, Kira O’Reilly, Florence Peake, Erica Scourti, Maria Sideri, Anna Sherbany, Jungmin Song, Yoko Tawada, Nikki Tomlinson.

Solitária is a performance that employs puppetry techniques to manipulate digital media. The<br> performance was designed upon the duality between the material and the non material existence, between<br> the physicality and the virtuality. A gestural vocabulary was developed to manipulate both sound and visuals<br> in realtime. We have built an interactive system to support both tangible and intangible manipulation, as<br> well to respond and react to a specific body movement. This work explores puppetry techniques with sound<br> and digital animation, engaging the audience with a dialog between the body language and the digital media.<br> We found that sound and visuals can be manipulated in a similar manner through puppetry methods, as if<br> we pull the strings from the same instrument. This framework was implemented with success responding to<br> the requirements of the performance. Solitária was presented at the Festival Internaci...

Introduction: Drama boreale network meeting as a Ulyssean Encounter in educational drama and theatre 1. Distansering på naert hold-En undersøkelse av betydningen av distansering i dramapedagogikk Stig A. Eriksson 11 2. Fantasins bilder-om estetiska ingångar till lärande Hannah Kaihovirta-Rosvik 3. Theater youth performances as educational experiences: Drama educators creating interpretive zones Liora Bresler 4. Three viewpoints on educational drama Erkki Laakso 5. TIE-in winds and calm-an attempt at reframing 'framing' Kari Mjaaland-Heggstad 55 6. Applied theatre & drama-a well qualified concept? Ida Krøgholt 67 7. Art-based research and drama as a way of knowing. Building a house in no-man's land. Bjørn Rasmussen 8. Drama måste byggas i vardagen-dramalärares ledarskap Eva Österlind 81 9. Researching drama and theatre education-are we telling believers´ tales? Hannu M. Heikkinen 87 10. Dramaturgy in teaching and learning Tor-Helge Allern 95

Die deutschsprachige Forschung beschäftigt sich nur wenig mit der besonderen Situation von hörenden Kindern und deren gehörlosen Eltern. Kinder von gehörlosen Eltern sind zu 90-95 % hörend. In den letzten Jahren hat sich auch in Deutschland für hörende Kinder gehörloser Eltern der Begriff Coda (children of deaf adults) durchgesetzt. Erste wissenschaftliche Veröffentlichungen drehen sich um die Frage der Lautsprachentwicklung [1]. Größere Arbeiten in der Folgezeit mit den Themen frühkindliche Entwicklung, Lautsprachentwicklung, Prävention und bimodal-bilinguale Sprachentwicklung sind in zeitlicher Reihenfolge des Erscheinens von Funk [2] Grüner [3)] Peter/Raith-Kaudelka/Scheithauer [4] und aktuell Chilla/Hofmann [5] veröffentlicht. Die englischsprachige Forschung kann auf den Beginn in den 70er/80er-Jahren des letzten Jahrhunderts zurückblicken. Auch hier liegt ein deutlicher Schwerpunkt auf der Sprachentwicklung, wurde jedoch z. B. durch die Werke von Preston [6], Meadow-Orlans/Spencer/ Koester [7] und Bishop/Hicks [8] auf die Bereiche aus

Each performance builds a language: a language set by the artist-s; a language read by the audience-s, a language based on visible and audible signs. As a puppeteer, I have been interested in the signs that are approached and worked in their materiality. Signs in which materiality conveys the meanings. I propose to focus our attention onto what I consequently called “material-thinking” or “puppetry-thinking” signs. In the course of this essay, I wish to explore some questions that accompanied me as a puppeteer during my studies, and are likely to follow me after still. What are signs (and more specifically puppetry signs), how do they relate to reality, how do they relate to each other and how do they convey meaning? Semiology – the “science” of signs – is one way to find answers. It offers analytical tools that unfortunately remain often purely theoretical, a playground for specialists. This essay is an introduction to some of the semiotic terminologies and tools, proposing practic...

Die ästhetischen Kriterien des ›zeitgenössischen‹ Tanzes in Europa sind in einen globalisierten eurozentrischen Diskurs verwickelt, der (neo)koloniale Verhältnisse der kulturellen Ungleichzeitigkeit reproduziert (vgl. u.a. Bhabha 1994 und Chakrabarty 2000). Als Choreografin, die in einer als traditionell markierten, außer-europäischen Tanzform ausgebildet ist, machten mir persönliche wie künstlerische ›Erfahrungen‹ 2 dies deutlich. Gleichzeitig sind es jedoch Charakteristika wie Vielfalt, Vielstimmigkeit und Heterogenität, die mir in Beschreibungen des zeitgenössischen Tanzes auffallen: Ansätze, die die Heterogenität und eine darauf begründete ›Nicht-Fassbarkeit‹ (vgl. Rosiny 2007: 9) des zeitgenössischen Tanzes zu beschreiben suchen. So z.B. der folgende Auszug aus dem sehr differenzierten Eintrag »Zeitgenössischer Tanz«

Im westafrikanischen Benin gibt es seit den späten 1970er-Jahren Schulunterricht in Gebärdensprache. Die Institutionen der Gehörlosengemeinschaft sind indes sehr ungleich über das Land verteilt, sodass Gehörlosigkeit sehr vielfältig gelebt und erfahren wird. Basierend auf meiner zwölfmonatigen ethnologischen Feldforschung möchte ich die Geschichte und die Vielfalt des Gehörlosseins in Benin vorstellen und
diskutieren.

Improvisationstheater ist eine weltweit erfolgreiche Theaterbewegung, die immer mehr Menschen erfasst. Während die Praxis blüht und gedeiht, fehlt bisher eine gründliche theaterwissenschaftliche Aufarbeitung. Das ändert sich mit diesem Buch: Gunter Lösel, selbst seit vielen Jahren Improvisationsschauspieler, nähert sich dem Thema aus theaterwissenschaftlicher Perspektive. Es gelingt ihm zu zeigen, dass Improvisationstheater ein Spiel mit den Prozessen der sozialen Konstruktion von Wirklichkeit ist, und er untersucht, wie diese Bühnenrealität scheinbar aus dem Nichts entsteht und immer neue, überraschende Formen hervorbringt. Gunter Lösel (Dipl.-Psych., Dr. phil.) leitet das Improtheater Bremen und lehrt an der Universität Hildesheim. Weitere Informationen und Bestellung unter: www.transcript-verlag.de/ts2398/ts2398.php

Wie sind die diversen Gebärdensprachen der Welt miteinander verwandt? Das deutsche Fingeralphabet stammt von dem österreichischen ab. Auch Polen, Ungarn, Russland, Dänemark und Island gehören zur Fingeralphabetfamilie der Weltsprache Österreichisch. Die USA wiederum wurden von Pariser Gelehrten beeinflusst und liegen in Sa- chen Fingeralphabet näher an Frankreich als an England oder Australien. Linguisten sagen voraus, dass im Zuge der Globalisierung viele Fingeralphabete einem Sprachensterben zum Opfer fallen dürften. Trotz all der bunten Regionaldialekte in Deutschland ist das Denglische auf dem Vormarsch

As a real-life figure who was extensively written about in medical journals after his death, but whose voice is entirely absent from the historical record, the character of Tarrare presents the theatre-maker with a number of ethical and artistic considerations. In documenting Tarrare’s life through puppetry and opera, Wattle and Daub engaged in both a literal and a metaphorical act of ventriloquism, wherein we put our own words into the mouths of the dead. Drawing on Levinas’s ethics of the ‘other’ and Salverson’s reflections on the ethics of documentary theatre, this article interrogates The Depraved Appetite of Tarrare the Freak as an example of documentary theatre and explores the unique opportunities and challenges presented when using puppetry to represent the historical ‘other’.

This article analyzes the effects of the collaboration between dance and puppetry within Crystal Pite’s Dark Matters (2009) and claims Pite’s work challenges nonhuman-human and object-subject binaries. Functioning within a new materialist philosophical framework, specifically in conversation with theorist Jane Bennett’s concept of vital materialism, this study argues that Dark Matters exposes the human body as an assemblage of vibrant multiple objects, and by positioning both the puppet and human corpse as agential matter, poses a radical rethinking of “liveliness” and “death.” Ultimately, this analysis reveals dance’s unique ability to evoke important posthuman reflection regarding physical matter, which always already includes the human body.

The first institutions for children classified as ‘deaf-mute’ were established in
Switzerland
at the beginning of the 19th century. The administrative intervention,
based on enlightened thinking, was intended to educate deaf children in order to
turn them into useful members of society via temporary social exclusion. This essay
considers related problems by focusing on the Taubstummenanstalt Hohenrain,
Canton Lucerne, from 1847 to 1942. It examines how social normality was defined
and negotiated ex negativo in an institutional context. Based on the premise of the
mutual organization of discourse and practice, it shows how in the field of educating
the deaf a medical premise displaced the primary pedagogically motivated
discourse.
This had a major impact not only on the discourse, but also on
the administrative
practice of the care homes for the ‘deaf-mute’. By the end of the
19th century deafness was more and more considered as a disease; the focus of
institutional approach was on healing or at least on therapy of deafness. This resulted
not only in an increased marginalisation and discrimination of deaf people,
but also had implications for identity-building processes.

The history of the Bengal Famine in 1943 is manmade. Since it is manmade, understanding and analyzing this phenomenon in detail is possible. The occurrence of the Bengal famine has been explained according to its socio-political reality and economic rationale. Yet, when we look into a considerable amount of literature available on hunger, one is not able to accurately identify the presence of a political or ethical subject though there is enough possible evidence of these historical subjects. This lack of recognizing this catastrophic historical event in adequate terms leads Paul Greenough and Amartya Sen to holistically represent this event according to economic, juridical and political elements. Yet, one might say that the figure of the destitute is the only one which canTo give this historical event any proper ethical consideration. This is what led some people around India, particularly in West Bengal, to start a movement encompassing all artistic mediums such as cinema, theatre, painting, and literature. This expanse of mediums became necessary in a sense. As Bijan Bhattacharya recalled in one of his interviews, his pen was by itself not powerful enough to describe the calamity, but when he came to depict it on canvas or through lyrics, a dramatic form became necessary, leaings him to write the text and perform it. This is how he created one of the most successful plays about Bengal Famine, Nabanna. Nabanna was written in 1944 and produced for the stage by IPTA at Shri-Rangam Auditorium. The modes of its theatrical representation transgressed the narrative boundaries of all existing theatre productions at the time. Samik Bandopadhyay writes in his forward to this production “everywhere there was a new outlook.”  Following his comments, one infers that to reproduce this historical event with proper analytical depth, such that its audience could experience the gravity of this human-made famine, a new form of dramatic form needed to be developed. Even though this new dramatic form includes many elements – stage design, performance styles, music direction, etc. – I would like to focus only the new visual grammar developed for the purpose of this paper.

Communication au Colloque international Politica dell'arte, politica della vita: Tadeusz Kantor fra teatro, arti visive e letteratura, Università La Sapienza / Istituto Polacco, Rome, 30 novembre -2 décembre 2015. DIDIER PLASSARD L'OPERA DI KANTOR COME PROLOGO ALLE SCENE DELLA DISSOCIAZIONE NEL TEATRO DI FIGURA CONTEMPORANEO Io penso che si possono trasmettere idee al pubblico, ma soltanto colle forme, cogli oggetti.

Exceptio-nal bodies is a theoretical and practical research project by Serenella Martufi. This investigates how the theatrical event can be a moment for artists and audiences to reassert their political agency. The space of the theatre offers an opportunity to fabricate a new imagery that may serve from a linguistic standpoint to challenge prescribed narratives and significations of contemporaneity.

Specifically this research focuses on the subject of migration to show how a different representation of the phenomenon can in fact reveal the political potential of migrants, who are directly challenging contemporary sovereign structures. The topic provides a magnifying and extremely contingent lens on the relationship between sovereign structures and language as well as offering an empirical terrain to observe how power rules over the bodies of contemporary women and men. An observation around the language of migration lends itself to a theoretical and methodological excursus that, starting with the biopolitical concepts of bare life and homo sacer, as discussed by Giorgio Agamben, allows this research to land on the theatre stage as a means of denunciation and of opportunity for independent linguistic and political assertion.

The concept of potentiality is the thread that connects philosophical theories to an understanding and practice of theatre that aims to preserve a fundamentally political function. The latter is built upon ideas of poetry and of performative use of the body as means for social and political emancipation and advancement for performers and audiences alike. In an effort to maintain the discussion and the research authentically practical, the theoretical elements introduced in this paper are discussed in relation to the development of the piece Practical Vocation which was deeply inspired and guided by the works of Raimund Hoghe. His choreographies indeed stand as successful examples of a theatre practice that fulfils the tension between historical contingency and poetical transcendence.

This article proposes puppetry as a practice uniquely situated to intervene in ideological constructions of the disabled body both onstage and off. Examining our current and recent practice-based research that uses puppetry to intervene in cultural perceptions of disability, we put forth a provocation, asking readers to consider the ways in which puppetry practices can be deployed to enable performances by disabled puppeteers as well as in ways that engage with cultural constructions of disability. We suggest that puppets, as bodies that are materially constructed, can both reinforce and rupture such constructions.

Die unkritische Übernahme von Liddells Gebärdensprachmodell in seinem Buch Grammar, gesture and meaning (2003) durch manche Gebärdensprach-linguistInnen (für einen Überblick vgl. Ferrara 2012, v) hat zu einer bedeu-tenden Strömung geführt, die annimmt, dass speziell in den komplexeren sequenziell-simultanen Konstruktionen von Gebärdensprachen (künftig: GS) systematisch nicht sprachliche (" gestische ") Elemente vorhanden seien. Das dieser Haltung zugrunde liegende Denkbild hat negative Auswirkun-gen auf die Methodik der GS-Forschung, weil Bereiche, die zu " gestischen " erklärt werden, nicht mehr mit der nötigen linguistischen Genauigkeit be-schrieben und analysiert werden. Würden unkritische Berichte über diese Annahmen in die Öffentlichkeit gelangen, geriete auch der gesellschaftli-che Status von GS als " in zentralen Bereichen gestischen " Kommunikations-systemen im Vergleich zu Lautsprachen (künftig: LS) erneut und völlig un-gerechtfertigt in Gefahr. Eine kriteriengestützte Diskussion über die Bedeutung der Begriffe " sprach-lich " und " Gestik/gestisch " in der GS-Forschung ist dringlich. Hier soll ge-zeigt werden, dass die bisher vorgebrachten, teils apodiktischen Setzungen der ‚GestikvertreterInnen' aus einer lautsprachlich orientierten Perspektive stammen, daher linguistisch-typologisch unplausibel und ihre Argumente durch Vergleich mit gesprochenen Sprachen falsifizierbar sind. Dazu ist die Anwendung allgemeiner Begriffe wie " Konventionalisierung " , " Gradienz " , " vollständige Aufzählbarkeit " und " Grammatik " auf die GS aus semiotischer und typologischer Sicht zu diskutieren; ebenso die Einführung spe zieller, ge-bärdensprachorienterter Begriffe wie " indicating " oder " depicting ". Im vorliegenden ersten Teil behandle ich methodische Fragen der Inklusion der GS in die sprachwissenschaftliche Arbeit unter dem Aspekt einer gemein-samen Typologie, betrachte die Gestikforschung und deren Übertragung auf die GS kritisch und schildere die Sicht Liddells auf GS unter besonderer Be-rücksichtigung ihrer LS-Lastigkeit. Im zweiten Teil (in der kommenden Aus-gabe) analysiere ich das zentrale Argument Liddells gegen den Sprachstatus räumlicher Kodierungen in GS (Index, Raum-und Übereinstimmungsverben, Referenzpunkte im Raum und Klassifikatoren), ihre " Gradienz ". Diese führt nach Liddell zu einer so ausgeprägten Unterbestimmtheit der genannten GS-Elemente, dass diese nicht mehr als ‚sprachlich' bezeichnet werden könnten. Kurz gehe ich auf die Verwendung der Mental Space Theory für die Beschrei-bung von GS-Konstruktionen durch Liddell, zwei Versuche, den Sprachsta-tus von GS-Elementen systematisch zu beurteilen sowie die derzeitige Pra-xis der Anwendung der Begriffe " Constructed Action " und " Constructed Dialogue " auf die GS ein. Das Resultat der sprachtypologischen Beurteilung des Liddell'schen Ansat-zes ist: Die Annahme, dass zentrale Elemente von GS-Texten keinen Sprach-status haben, ist methodisch nicht abgesichert.

Im Rahmen dieser Studie wurde ein bri-tischer Gebärdensprachtest auf die Deutsche Gebärdensprache (DGS) übertragen und evaluiert. Der adaptierte DGS-Test wurde mit gehörlosen Kindern im Alter von 3;9–10;10 (N = 54) durchgeführt. Die Ergebnisse sind vielversprechend in Bezug auf die psychome-trischen Eigenschaften und bieten eine gute Grundlage zur Normierung des DGS-Tests, der später den Schulen in einer Online-Version zugänglich gemacht werden wird. Zusammenfassung Wie komplex ist es, Gebärdensprachtests zu entwickeln? – Ein Beispiel anhand des DGS-Verständnistests

The article starts off by explaining characteristics of the German deaf community and its signed language with reference to relevant historical and social factors as well as in relation to spoken and written German. The state of research in the field of sign language-related text linguistics is summarized and the problematic notion of text is discussed in general as well as in relation to signed languages. The aims and methods of a project focussing on text types in German Sign Language (Deutsche Gebärden- sprache, DGS), carried out at the University of Applied Sciences Magde- burg-Stendal, are presented. On the basis of data generated in this project and taking so-called finger loci as an example, it is shown how text types and registers in a signed language can tentatively be identified with refer- ence to the concept of linguistic distance („Nähe- und Distanzsprache“, Koch/Oesterreicher 1990). In conclusion, the article looks at current trends of development in signed text types.

This paper will address a practice-led research project that set out to explore how the performance space and the performers’ bodies can be transformed through embodying images, and to reflect upon the body and space as a site where intimacy is constructed and deconstructed. The initial theme was an impossible love affair between Franz Kafka and Felice Bauer, and in response to this theme it became evident that key metaphors was were spatial metaphors. Through a process of the compression of visual/physical metaphors, which are articulated through the interrelationship of the performers’ bodies, the archetypal image of the home was constructed through a stark Paper Room design.
                    Bachelard suggests: ‘the house image would appear to have become the topography of the intimate being’. The Paper Room structure connotes a blank canvas filled with potential that evokes and provokes action. Throughout the performance the enactment of fantasies and desires, meetings and partings, the performers’ bodies transform and are transformed by the space. This gradually becomes un-homely or ‘unheimlich (Freud). Thus, a reversal of the metaphor of the ‘home’ as an intimate space to one of incessant physical and psychological eviction.

                    This process revealed that metaphor is a ‘thought process’, as Serig states: ‘the idea that visual metaphor in artists’ practices connotes ‘thinking’ and ‘working processes’ rather than determining objects’. This thought process is defined by Bachelard’s notion of ‘reverie’ and the practice draws upon Release Technique as a process of embodiment of imagery, that leads to a complex visual expression that requires seeing more and sensing more, an imaginative response ‘beyond the veil of words to an intuitive apprehension’ (Perkins).