Dramaturging the I-voicer in A Voice Is. A Voice Has. A Voice Does.: Methodologies of autobiophony

Abstract

This practice-research piece proposes autobiophony (vocal autobiography in/through voice) as both a new area of research for interdisciplinary voice studies practitioner-scholars and a distinct methodology for probing the interconnections of selfhood, narration, performativity, intersectional positionality and voicing. Using as a point of departure the PaR performance-lecture A Voice Is. A Voice Has. A Voice Does., devised by the author, this Voicing interrogates the makings of the polyvocal self as monophonic chorus. The I-voicer of the PaR piece is examined as both constitutively plural and communicatively dialogic (but never resolved as either), enacting a complex dramaturgy of belonging. Framed by a working manifesto on autobiophony, the Voicing below is itself composed in a way that invites autobiophonic engagement by the reader-listener and proposes suggestions of using autobiophony as pedagogy, performance analysis tool and research methodology.