The shared practice of

Arie Rain Glorie and

Mark Pritchard, exploring what dramaturgy and curation can do together.

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Sunday Lunch event at The Centre.

We conduct experiments, produce creative projects, provide mentorship and project consultation, and have lots of conversations about art and how it is made.

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We believe that the visual arts and theatre have lots to learn from each other. There are gaps in knowledge on both sides, that can be filled by looking more widely for answers. And yet we often work in silos, and these two fields can seem worlds apart. 

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The architecture of galleries and theatres are different, the education that a visual artist gets is different to theatre studies, and they can operate with fundamentally different economic and cultural rationales. 

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And while they might seem at odds, we believe that engaging with a fuller spectrum of how art can be made can be transformative for your practice. The breadth of thinking helps you find the middle ground (‘the centre’, if you will) where more dynamic and multi-faceted creative projects can be made. It is a question of design—not what you are making, but how you are making it. 

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Dramaturgy and curation can help you think and make differently.

By working together, we can also embrace the wider applications of these disciplines – understanding creativity as being at the centre of everything we do.

Dramaturgical support on Lynda Roberts' Public Art Field Guide.

 

What is Dramaturgy?

Dramaturgy is the study of how theatre works. It's something that all theatre makers are engaged with, knowingly or unknowingly, when they work on a project. Naming and approaching it as 'dramaturgy' is about understanding how your work works, so you can improve the ways you create, collaborate, problem solve, innovate, and articulate what you do. A dramaturg is a practitioner who specifically attends to this dramaturgical conversation. Every artwork has its own dramaturgy, and the dramaturg's role is to help identify and cultivate it. The dramaturg sits at the intersection between theory and practice, working through processes of reflection, articulation, investigation, provocation and integration to support the artists, the audiences, and the art. Their core task is to try to understand all the elements at play in a given project, and how they work together to create a dynamic whole. ​ At the centre, we're interested in the dramaturgy of theatre projects, but also in the broader applications of dramaturgical strategies in unconventional contexts. Dramaturgy is a way of considering the anatomy of an experience, the conversation with an audience, and the way in which stories and ideas are understood and communicated.



What is Curation?

Curation is the act of presenting art and cultural artefacts and other cultural expressions. There are many different types of curators, who work in cultural institutions, museums and galleries, public space and who work with communities. There are artists who are curators and curators who are artists. Curation is something that everyone engages with, regardless of whether you are a visual artist, theatre-maker, musician or even a publisher putting together a book. Today, the use of the term 'curate' has extended to people using it when they have "curated a playlist" or a "curated a selection of wine" or "curated a window display at the department store". Curation is the selection, arrangement and editing of items in a particular space and time that tells a story, albeit it not always a linear one. To "curate" is to make connections between histories and cultures, hidden in artworks and cultural artifacts and other cultural expressions. At the centre, we are interested in all curation, with knowledge and experience in how curation can support artists to make new work, by working through processes of reflection, articulation, investigation, provocation and integration to support the artists, the
audiences, and the art. A curators core task is to try to understand all the elements at play in a given project, and how they work together to create something dynamic. Curation shares similar pragmatics as dramaturgy or producing, but is rooted in an understanding of the visual arts, which is fundamental to any cultural or creative expression.