lois brown / ctr 155 summer 2013 doi: 10.3138/ctr.155.009 “Peter? What are you doing?” Thea Patterson whispers these words into a microphone. Her voice interrupts a frenetic movement section of Peter Trosztmer’s Eesti: Myths and Machines. Whether watching a rehearsal or performance, I found myself startled by this question in the text, then implicated by my engagement in the way the work provoked my own unconscious and conscious meaning-making. I was challenged to revisit my position as a dramaturg and collaborator. What is he doing? What am I supposed to think he is doing? What am I doing when I observe and analyze the work? The Choreography Eesti: Myths and Machines is Peter Trosztmer’s choreographic examination of his family history and how it has shaped his own identity, largely framed by war and his family’s escape from Estonia to Canada. This exploration is fused to an amplified sound sculpture—the machine—created by Jeremy Gordaneer. The machine moves imperceptibly through the space suggesting the castle where an uncle was tortured, the escape by boat, and so forth. Themes of man versus the war machine, heroism, and survivor guilt thread through the dance, materializing and disappearing. In contrast, Peter and his machine remain always present and intimately accessible to the audience. Background In 2010, Peter began work with his two long-time collaborators visual artist Jeremy Gordaneer and choreographer Thea Patterson. Jeremy provided rafts on winches for by Lois Brown What Are You Doing? Dramaturgical Approaches to Eesti: Myths and Machines © University of Toronto Press, all rights reserved. This article is protected by Canadian and international copyright laws. It may be retrieved and downloaded solely for personal use and may not otherwise be copied, modified, published, broadcast, or distributed without the prior written permission of University of Toronto Press.