10-MINUTE PLAYS: The Art of Being Lost
LaRonika Thomas, Dramaturg, illuminates the 10-Minute Play Lost & Found group with an excerpt from Laurene Vaughn’s The Art of Being Lost: An Alternate Approach to Mapping
“It is interesting to consider the relationship between the Art of Being Lost and the creation of maps and atlases. Although it is generally assumed that maps, atlases and other cartographic way-finding devices are designed to help us find clarity, there are many who see the value of breaking this rule. For the readers of maps there is a belief that what lies within a map is true. Maps and atlases have authority. They are designed and presented in a manner that reassures the reader of their validity, that truth lies within their representation; for this is what a map is, a representation, a visualization of something else. A map is not a place, a map is an thematic articulation of somewhere (Ackerman & Karrow 2007, Harley 2001).
It is by reading maps that we can make sense of our world and place ourselves, we create some sense of here in relation to there (Noble Wilford 2002, p.6); and it by reading maps that we translate these representations to create our own meaning and understanding of where we are. We trust that maps will enable us to find our way, that we can place ourselves along or within their marks and from there move toward our destiny (this is true whether it is a map of a place or a thing).”
