“We need to shift the register of our thinking to gain new perspectives on our own experience.”

I came across Ruth Little’s paper on the Dramaturg’s network site today. She calls for a dramaturgical thinking that is non-linear and instead concentrates on the observation of energy and movement.

I love what she writes about the place of dramaturgy at the heart of the storm and reading this paper my thinking moves swiftly to the maelstrom of narratives we are experiencing currently and our mistaken need for the linear at a time of energy and movement. In the right story we feel safe and assured and so we gravitate to them: but there are many stories, every one of them human and no single one is right.

How do we find a way for us all to live comfortably within the possibilities of the storm – at least sufficiently for us to gain those new perspectives and run with them?

DYNAMIC STRUCTURE and LIVING SYSTEMS: An unreliable pocket manual for the dramaturgical human