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.