WHAT HAPPENS TO A WORK WHEN IT STOPS TRYING TO MAKE SENSE?

I often work with a red thread — in drawing, and in dramaturgy.
The red thread is not a narrative device. It is not a line of progression, nor a metaphor for coherence or continuity. It does not organise material toward resolution. It resists linearity and teleology. It loops, tightens, loosens, disappears, reappears. It refuses to move efficiently from origin to destination.

This refusal is also a response to a dominant dramaturgical tradition that continues to shape contemporary creation, often invisibly. A tradition that does not only influence storytelling, but imposes a deeper dramaturgical grammar — an organisational logic that governs how works are composed, perceived, evaluated, and legitimised.

This dramaturgical grammar is large. It structures far more than narrative. It silently influences the expected length of a piece, the acceptable use of time, the rhythm of attention, the place of repetition, and the moment when something is supposed to “happen.” It determines when a work should intensify, when it should resolve, and how catharsis is meant to arrive — if it arrives at all. Even works that resist narrative are often still shaped by this grammar, calibrated against inherited expectations of proportion, progression, and payoff.

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