Project changes (81)

A few posts back, I mentioned how I had been feeling a bit adrift lately with regards to my research, how I was unsure about whether or not there was any point in what I was doing, whether I was just grasping at air.

Thankfully, after a very productive meeting today, I’m back to feeling somewhat grounded in something. To be honest, I think some of the unease I had been feeling these past few days had something to do with fear of plunging into another unknown.

In short: I’m abandoning my research on Genet to focus on something I have been mentally obsessing over for a while, the notion/dynamics of ‘space’ in relation to contemporary theatre. It feels weird to cast off something that has been a part of my academic journey for the past 5 or 6 years, but at one point it had started to weigh down on me more than anything. That’s the thing about this kind of work: we attach ourselves to certain elements, authors, concepts, ideas, and we wear them down until they are transformed into a burden, forward propulsion turned dead weight. I found myself trying to twist things to fit a contrived thought process that would have included his work for the sake of feeling that I thought it needed to be there rather than that it should, or that it added to anything in particular.

Besides, enough people have written on him, and I’ve never been one to retread someone else’s footsteps.

So I’m finally where I want to be, in theatre, in the now of theatre, at least with regards to theatre in Paris.

Reading is going to be infinitely more bearable from now on.