Daramtic structures for JTA

As a workshop starting point, but also to secure a small but variable structure for the journey to Abqdyl project JTA. I designed a deck of cards of sixteen cards that could be played from four players’ different starting points. I applied what I learned with the dramatic model of “sausage dramaturgy” in which the “players” are moved between static and dynamic situations. The structure is built on the idea See fig 1

Fig 1 Dramatic model for Journey to Abadyl

The deck of cards was designed based on the work that Jette Lund och Katrine Nilsen and Pramnet had done in the Journey to Abadyl book.

In the computer, “the choice” might be seen as a sort of tool, which helps you to fulfil your intentions – hopefully. One-click – and the program pops up as expected. Hopefully. The computer supports “multiple-choice tests”, which can be answered with a click and computerized into diplomas and statistics before you can twinkle – as if any question in the whole world really could be answered with a yes or a no –

“Have you stopped beating your wife, just answer yes or no?”

The computer cannot decide how a question is asked and is not wiser than its programmer is. But of course, there are questions, which can only be answered in one way: We think it is a scientifically proven truth, that if you jump out of the window on the sixth floor, you will fall down, according to the law of gravity. So “the anatomy of choice” might perhaps rather be “the philosophy of choice” or “the aesthetics of the choice” – “aesthetics” meaning the question of form.

No one wants to be “left with no choice” – with the mafia euphemism: “To get an offer, you can’t refuse” To have a choice is principally freedom, a right, a good thing – how come, that we are left with frustration in nearly all our (conscious) choices? “It is in the choice you recognize the sage from the fool”

A special variation of choice is the democratic choice, the right of choice that allow us as citizens or members of a group to have a voice, to be in some aspect in charge of the prevailing conditions, under which we have to live and work. The notion in English is “suffrage” – coming from Latin “under the noise/applause from the crowd”. We hardly use this term except for the “suffragettes” – that women should have a voice too or even be seen as citizens is in a historical perspective rather new. Our forefathers would not have seen it as “undemocratic”, that women, children and slaves had “no voice” in the crowd. Democracy – the word is gerundial, “what ought to be” – as the name Amanda: “She, who should be loved”. Just like Amanda is no description of the actual girl or her conducts, the notion “democracy” can mean a lot of very different things, and not all of them automatically deserves “to be loved” in all situations.

I also designed a physical deck of cards that we used in groups to develop and understand how the journey to Abadyl could be realized.

Paper card deck being used in one of the initial workshops in Bremen 2014

With only 16 cards a Play can be executed in 32 different ways so that the Play can be unfolded differently each time it is played. This was designed so it could be transferred to a variety of venues and with limited space.