Justitia: Multi-disciplinary Readings of the Work of the Jasmin Vardimon Company provides a series of responses to Jasmin Vardimon Company’s production of Justitia, a multi-layered, multi-media dance theatre piece. Told through a series of film-like replays of events, the performance sets its audience as jurors unravelling the conflicting truths concealed behind a violent death. Set on a large rotating stage, audience witnesses the action from different perspectives – at the crime scene, in the court house, inside an intimate group therapy room – revealing new realities as a series of secrets unfold.
Through a visually annotated ‘text’, including the original script by Rebecca Lenkiewicz, Justitia attempts to record the experience of the performance, and to give the reader a rich, nuanced understanding of the work. The subsequent section contains nine responses to the performance that explore it from various perspectives, both academic and practitioner: through ideas of agency, of time, of the jury, of collaboration, of writing, of responding, of devising, of confession, of the law. The book closes by returning the circle from response to a performance, to the work in the rehearsal room prior to performance.
