Performance Research: On Repetition
Volume 20, issue 5 Volume Editors: Eirini Kartsaki and Theron Schmidt
‘The love of repetition is in truth the only happy love,’ wrote Søren Kierkegaard in 1843 in the guise of Constantin Constantius, describing his attempt to relive a love affair that was always-already lost. But to love repetition is to love impossibility and paradox, and a number of these contrary impulses are foregrounded in On Repetition: between originality and repeatability, between boredom and excitement, and between the now of performance and the longed-for not yet or never again. Explored in relation to ritual, protest, gender, and trauma, as well as dance, theatre, and performance, this issue combines perspectives from artists and scholars; and, as to attend to repetition is to attend to the form of writing itself, it encourages textual interventions that blur the lines between the two.
