Evolution, hybridity and mutation: three generations of hybrid performance texts from contemporary bioethical fables

This is an annotated document which supports my Doctorate of Creative Arts (DCA) creative submissions. Over the period of this Doctorate, (2002-2006) I have developed three Hybrid performance texts - a radio script, a puppetry script and a bio-performance/installation - from original bio-ethical fables. These fables explore the moral and bio-ethical issues associated with the complex Post-natural environments that we find ourselves living amidst in this century, and the futures they suggest. I am suggesting a new term 'Post-natural', which I define as a human or natural environment that incorporates the Life Sciences. These sciences are recombinant genetic technologies and biotechnologies that mould and create futures, which radically alter our pattems of reproduction, food production and health management. Some of these natures and futures, where incorporation of new technologies are involved, have been dubbed 'Post-human' by cyber-theorists and 'Reworked Nature' by sociologists. In this annotation I examine and discuss my creative process, as well as its theoretical context and implications. For reasons that will later become evident, I use biological concepts to chronicle my own creative processes for my Doctorate of Creative Arts. I argue that biological principles such as evolution, mutation, metamorphosis and hybridity within the natural and bio-technological realms have informed my creative practice. When I started to develop the themes for this thesis, looking at changed forms in nature resulting from biotechnologies, it was clear that these biological principles and metaphors could also be applied to the creative forms with which I was working as they evolve, hybridise, mutate and are influenced by new technologies. The annotation is in four parts, examining the underlying theory, the generation of the original fables, and the creative cultivation of two further generations of Hybrid performance works.