Critical Making and Theatre - Annotation
This post discusses a scholarly article: Ratto, Matt. "Critical Making: Conceptual and Material Studies in Technology and Social Life", The Information Society: An International Journal 27:4. 2011. 252-260. This article attempts to contextualize its theory of critical making as a mode of engagement through a connection between practical, craft and material-based work and its correlating theory. It relates technology and human action through three stages of critical making: the collection of relevant concepts and theories, the building of technical crafts related to those concepts and theories, and the reflection on the correlation between a chosen theory and a chosen craft. Ratto's theory of critical making has an emphasis on critique and expression, and attempts to bridge the gap between technical and theoretical studies. He does this by emphasizing the link between the practical and theoretical levels of critical making practice, exercised in two workshops wherein he asks a group of theorists to participate in a technological craft-building exercise. In the first workshop, Ratto asks a group of theorists on distance education to apply the experience of building a craft using both online and in-class resources to their theory, but found the exercise unsuccessful because there was not enough of a link between his chosen craft and the theory being applied to it. In the second workshop, a craft which uses a network of information sharing was used to discuss Web 2.0 developments. Ratto found this workshop successful because the interaction between the theorists and their craft were more directly related in subject matter, and because the nature of the craft required the theorists to engage with it emotionally and cooperatively. Ratto concludes that in order to have effective critical making which links theory and practice, there must be a level of engagement that involves “caring for” the work. This theory, while applied in this article to general social sciences, is likely best applied--and indeed, already applied--to theatre work. Theatre making which applies Ratto’s theory of critical making will value the process of making theatre to achieve a critical end. A theatre artist with these values may use the same three stages as Ratto does in his work: beginning with the collection of relevant theories and concepts (dramaturgical research), creating a technological prototype (a theatre workshop or performance), and then reflecting on the correlation between the two (audience engagement and discussion). Of course, as with many theatre pieces, in order for the theoretical component to have any bearing on the practical component, there must be a component of “caring for” the work. Rotto’s research relates directly to multi-media performance which specifically addresses the correlation between technological and human action, and the prototypical craft that Ratto suggests lends itself in theory to a technically-involved theatre piece and its correlating theories.
