Performing Collaboration in Solo Performance

'Performing Collaboration in Solo Performance, written as a companion to the live performance ‘A Duet Without You’, is exemplary practice-based research. The work at its centre, ‘A Duet Without You’, is a conjuring act, a sleight of hand(s) performance of absence made present. Rather than a eulogy for what’s missing – the without you calling out some loss or lack – it is instead an overture for the possibilities of presence and present-ness.

[The book] invites us backstage into the hidden world of the rehearsal studio as Chloé Déchery and her collaborators navigate collective authorship and shared creativity mapped on to the journey of solo performance making. The reader is immersed in the re-sounding of the live performance in these eloquently written chapters which resonate on a level both singular and choral. Original and compelling.'

-- Helen Paris, award-winning artist, artistic director of Curious and co-author of Devising Theatre and Performance: Curious Methods

'Framing the author’s solo performance piece A Duet Without You (2013-2016), this fascinating academic artefact stages, conceptualises and comments on the cardinal principle of performance-making: collaboration. Both as an artist and academic, Chloé Déchery illuminates the space of absence belonging to invisible collaborators in performance-making and makes a powerful argument in favour of the fundamentally relational, intersubjective and composite nature of solo artworks.

The significance of this recognition can never be greater than in the aftermath of a global lockdown! This book will be a reliable companion for students in any field of the creative arts and a source of inspiration for artists and scholars exploring modes of performance documentation.'

-- Duška Radosavljević, Royal Central School of Speech and Drama

'Performing Collaboration in Solo Performance edited by Chloé Déchery offers a unique perspective from within on artistic research, practice-based reflexion and creation. The book addresses a question which is both complex and simple, especially in our post-everything times: what does it mean to work together in solitude? Chloé Déchéry literally opens up the rehearsal space as a site for dialogue, friendship and exchange, where reflexion and hands-on research dance an elegant pas-de-deux. But above all this book testifies of an unshakeable belief in artistic creation itself as a locus of creative sociality. Deploying different types of performative writing, Performing Collaboration in Solo Performance reveals what Clifford Geertz actually meant with ‘thick’ description and what it can offer for rehearsal studies, ethnography and artistic research: a situated, profound understanding of creative labour and artistic relationships. But above all, Chloé Dechery enthusiastically defends the idea of the studio as shared space where affects and ideas can converge or collide. In times of individualized competition and formated research output, Performing Collaboration in Solo Performance is therefore also a hopeful book, which will empower young and not so young artists and researchers.'

-- Karel Vanhaesebrouck, professor of theater and performance studies, Université Libre de Bruxelles (