Spinning extraterritorial yarns : notes towards pirate dramaturgy

english

2026

volume 14, issue 1

islands studies   oceanic epistemologies   performance studies   schoal   transpasifika

Slovenski gledališki inštitut (SLOGI)
(Obvezni izvod spletne publikacije)

Based on the framework that both piracy and dramaturgy have shaped and reshaped the collective imaginary, this contribution proposes the notion of “pirate dramaturgy” as an entangled mode of thinking-through-practising radical ecologies (and alternative world- making). Exploring the Exterritory Project (2009–ongoing) by artists Maayan Amir and Ruti Sela as both a material and immaterial site for rethinking the threads between ecology and performance while sailing through international waters of the Mediterranean Sea and the juridical voids they constitute, the article questions the urgency of reconceptualising modes of worlding beyond terrestrial-based frameworks. Drawing on blue humanities and anarchist studies, the article brings these fields together around the concept of extraterritoriality and proposes the concept of pirate dramaturgy as both an epistemic category and an operational tool – an engaged mode of looking at performances that navigate the margins of the legal– juridical as well as the edges of forms of representation. Through close analysis of Amir and Sela’s interventions in extraterritorial waters, the contribution examines how maritime zones of legal ambiguity become dramaturgical sites for alternative modes of thinking and performing ecological–political practices, while foregrounding the radical potential of extraterritoriality to engage with the oceanic turn in performance studies.

31.08.2026