‘Adjacent to the Live: paratextual augmentation of performance during the pandemic’

The plethora of paratextual materials such as digital programs, recorded interviews with artists and creative teams, behind-the-scenes videos, and curated playlists have been pressed into service to extend the reach of the core business of performance companies. Behind the scenes and ancillary activities have come to the fore, potentially altering the way Genette considered paratexts to work as thresholds to the core. Until the last year or so, paratextual elements such as the aforementioned existed primarily in the service of marketing and promotion. They were not themselves seen as separate or independently monetised ventures. They were tasters of the real thing or treats for loyal followers. Comparatively little attention in this field has been paid to live performances, although these too have similar panoplies of paratexts used to promote the core texts: advertisements, advance publicity and reviews for instance. Our concern here is with the way paratexts were used during the extended COVID lockdowns when live performance venues were closed, particularly instances where the usual relationship between core text and paratext, whereby the latter are shorter pieces supporting or promoting the former, is upset. There was a considerable range of sophistication in the paratexts operating as core texts during the pandemic. Most sophisticated ones, like those from the NT or Pinchgut’s The Loves of Dafne and Apollo did not call on audience members to produce the experience of liveness, even if the NT’s branding persisted. We have concentrated here on Dream because it was such a sophisticated piece with liveness at its very heart.

A Heretical Student in the Schopenhauerian School

The Schopenhauer-Schule was a group of original and diverse thinkers working in the wake of a common inspiration. This paper elucidates Nietzsche’s relationship with these thinkers specifically as concerns their intertwined theories of will. It shows that despite his efforts to suppress and ridicule them, Nietzsche was influenced by the Schopenhauer-Schule and adopted several of their alterations to Schopenhauer. But it will also show that Nietzsche was a heretical member of this school in the sense that his theory of will was not only different from theirs but also subversive. Whereas each member of the Schopenhauer-Schule posits a realist ontology of will, Nietzsche’s perspectivism undercuts the possibility of their ontological realism and puts in its place a semiotical system of expression. As a result of this contextualized framework, Nietzsche’s will to power is revealed, not as an intended reference to a real “thing” in the world, but as a symbol that expresses his perspective about an unknowable reality.

A Heretical Student in the Schopenhauerian School

The Schopenhauer-Schule was a group of original and diverse thinkers working in the wake of a common inspiration. This paper elucidates Nietzsche’s relationship with these thinkers specifically as concerns their intertwined theories of will. It shows that despite his efforts to suppress and ridicule them, Nietzsche was influenced by the Schopenhauer-Schule and adopted several of their alterations to Schopenhauer. But it will also show that Nietzsche was a heretical member of this school in the sense that his theory of will was not only different from theirs but also subversive. Whereas each member of the Schopenhauer-Schule posits a realist ontology of will, Nietzsche’s perspectivism undercuts the possibility of their ontological realism and puts in its place a semiotical system of expression. As a result of this contextualized framework, Nietzsche’s will to power is revealed, not as an intended reference to a real “thing” in the world, but as a symbol that expresses his perspective about an unknowable reality.