The Makerly Text & the Spectatorly Text: A Narratological Analysis of Rimini Protokoll's Remote Jerusalem

Abstract:Remote Jerusalem, a site-specific walking performance by German theatre group Rimini Protokoll, sets out to explore the ways in which we move through the urban "meadow" and to what extent these movements are manipulated or navigated and by whom. We can translate these questions into questions of dramaturgy: If we consider any performance-text as an urban meadow and the audience as a herd led by a shepherd, then we can ask: To what extent is the individual spectator manipulated by this shepherd? How much freedom of choice and interpretation is given to the sheep? This paper leans on concepts from literary narratology and defines the shepherd as a performative narrator while analyzing the relationship between the performative narrator and the audience using Roland Barthes' concepts of the writerly text vs. the readerly text.