The Mystery of the In-Between. A Methodological Approach to Intermedial Performance Analysis

How is the concept of intermediality used in theatre and performance studies? And how can we understand the notion of ‘the in-between’ that is at the core of intermediality? This article will develop a methodological approach to theatre practice and perception that goes beyond media difference and media comparison. I will take the very destabilizing of media difference and media identity as a phenomenological issue, and concentrate on the transactions between media, the mediated, and the observers that are activated by internal structural effects of multistability: the shifting of figure and ground, the switching of aspects. In doing so, I will argue for performance analysis that considers the whole ensemble of relations between media and between those phenomena that are brought to light by media: the interplay of seeing and speaking, of sounds and images, of words and things, the visible and the audible. Using the performance Forever Godard by Igor Bauersima, I will highlight the complex interplay between theatricality, performativity and mediality to offer a methodological approach that departs from the so-called vortex effect that brings forth processes of intermedial transfigurations in performances.