W is a research collective that studies action in a performance setting. What does it mean to act as others watch? What characterizes the relation we call theater?
To answer these questions, W simultaneously develops three complementary approaches: a practice, which builds tools and techniques for the actor; a critical method, which suggests reception guidelines for the spectator; and a theory, which works towards defining notions useful to the first two approaches.
In particular, W produces games, a score writing software, a lexicon of operational notions, workshops and practical sessions, critical seminars, as well as articles and conferences.
The W-practice attempts to build and experiment with tools for the performed action, that is, all situations where one acts in front of someone.
The first tool, the W-lexicon, is an operative lexicon that proposes to name the different aspects of a performed action.
The second tool, the W-notation, is a system for writing and articulating the action in the form of scores using the Organon software.
The third tool, the W-method, consists of an assortment of techniques for performing.
These tools are developed and passed on during research sessions bringing together performers of all kinds. They are also practiced in the form of games iin which the activity of the actor, playwright or author is formalized to become a specific object of work.
The W-notation makes it possible to write and articulate action in the form of scores. W calls a score a set of successive, simultaneous or alternative actions, organized according to rigorous formal criteria, allowing an actor not only to literally write down his own line of actions, to compose it with those of others, but also to modify it on paper. If shared, this system of notation also makes it possible to transmit a score to another actor for him to perform or augment.
In 2017-18, W has developed the software Organon to write the scores in the form of the W-notation.
Look up the W-notation on the website organon.pw