THE GENERATOR:: for Any Number of Staged Readings

Abstract

In the paper, the authors discuss the concept of staged readings, arguing that they are the predominant performance format for presentations of young playwriting. However, such presentations should not be understood as an intermediate stage between reading and performing but as a fully-fledged and independent artistic genre. Many staged readings thus lose the function of “first information” about the text and its author. Instead, they have become a proper way of performing a text, thus opening up a wider area for theatrical experimentation. Using concrete examples, the authors will reflect on practices characterised by the text becoming the main or even the only thing necessary for a theatrical event and reading (in all its possible ways and forms) becoming the key theatrical means.