Where is the Author and What is He?

I have started a line of enquiry in relation to Whose Cloud is it Anyway that rotates around the nature and position of authorship / creation in the performance. I was asked somewhat directly whether I was the author of the work and it is this provocation that I wish to explore. My immediate response was one of fear, one of reticence, I was uneasy with admitting authorship over the work - a work that always felt collaborative and democratic. Which leads on to my first question, in a democratic ensemble, can there (should there) still be a single author?

The performance itself was a 6 hour durational work that aimed simply to represent live the materials of our exploration over the past several months. The whole company was exposed in the space, making and shaping a work for multiple audience, utilising, live and recorded performance, sound, light and video. The piece took in themes of leaving/making traces, the digital age we exist within and cloud culture (from Charlie Leadbetter's Counterpoint Essay). During the 6 hours I was constructing the work through a series of skype messages that the audience could read - I was fielding questions and leading the work from fragment to fragment, offering new pieces of work, repeating existing fragments and observing, editing, composing throughout.

In many ways I was a conductor - but more than this, I was authoring the dramatic context live (to varying degrees of success and failure).

However, this authorship, live and of the performance work itself was built upon the co-created material from weeks of workshop and rehearsal. Here is the distinction I feel I should reflect upon. By exposing the director in the performance, like a conductor - a certain responsibility is placed and control over the direction, beginning, end and totality of the performance event is accepted. However, this is only facilitated by the strength of co-created material across weeks of ensemble exploration. This for me is a fascinating development of the role of the director and I think takes me closer to understanding the possible future and roles for a director in a collaborative ensemble of theatre artists.

Co-creation is something that I have also been spending a lot of time with, in preparation for a research conference presentation in late April at CSSD, London. More on that I am sure over the coming weeks, (but for now...)