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Paper short abstract

This paper draws on fieldwork with actors and directors, for whom the role of chance was pivotal to creative production in theatre. I herein theorise the seeming oxymoron of what it means to 'rehearse serendipity'.

Paper long abstract

This paper draws on fieldwork with actors and directors, for whom the role of chance was pivotal to creative production in theatre. I herein theorise the seeming oxymoron of what it means to 'rehearse serendipity'.

For several years, I have accompanied German, Italian, and migrant theatre makers who worked in an idiosyncratic post-migrant theatre in Germany's Western industrial region. Their work has been characterized by a strange paradox: on the one hand, they were preoccupied with the power of improvisation and even adhered to a dogma that was frequently reiterated among interlocutors: 'directing theatre is to allow for serendipity'. On the other hand, the ensemble of actors and directors was particularly concerned with questions of habitus, propriety, and order; the director could be described as a charismatic authority and rehearsals were technically and socially extremely routinised spaces and modi of creative production. How then, can we theorise the rupturing potential of serendipity in a context that is not everyday but highly professional, neither free-flowing improvisation nor mere rule adherence, but defined by a belief in the capacity to rehearse chance, to create the conditions for serendipity. Drawing on fieldwork examples from many rehearsals that I observed, described, and analysed with the director, actors, and other members of the theatre ensemble, I seek to theorise the exceptionality of chance, serendipity, and the unexpected in professional performance creation.