Superfluities Redux
A Theatre Surrounds a City:
Vienna's Burgtheater
Superfluities Redux |
A Theatre Surrounds a City: |
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Tuesday, 02 March 2010 From the archivesFrom Organum II, originally posted on 22 April 2009. Lightly edited. The theatre is my representation. There is no
more certain knowledge, once achieved, than this: that the theatre, like
the world, is a re- Once this realization, with all its horrifying, isolating, exhilarating
and ecstatic possibilities, has been experienced, it cannot be
unexperienced, unlearned, unrealized, and it will color all my theatre and
theatrical experience from then on. Only the hard press of voluntary,
willful ignorance — and this is not uncommon, for some of us fear
our own bodies and desires more than anything else in this world —
will be able to eradicate this realization from my consciousness. I remain
a member of what is called the collective of the audience, or the
collective of the experience, but I now define myself as simultaneously a
constituent and opponent of it. I gauge my reaction, consciously and
unconsciously, from within that collective, from my privileged unique
perspective. I am also aware that my own perspective is colored by the
culture of that collective: not merely the aesthetic and cultural
perceptions with which I enter the theatre, but as an individual body
amongst other individual bodies, sharing perceptual tools such as the eyes
and the ears. Though ultimately it is not through their eyes and ears with
which I witness the play, but through my own. Like Creon, Antigone and the
chorus of Sophocles' tragedy, I am empathetic and antipathetic to the
collective simultaneously (any chance of ultimate reconciliation between
these is illusory; violence unutterably and always follows upon violence,
whether Creon or Antigone's perspective is privileged, the play would end
in slaughter in either case, witnessed by the silent and in any event
illusory gods). I am always a unique and individual object, when alone or
with others, but the collective is a mere abstraction and does not exist
without the voluntary or involuntary gathering of several individual
bodies within one space at one time. For this reason my individual
perspective becomes primary, the primus inter pares in the
individual/ If I were a performer rather than an audience member, I would still experience the theatre as my representation, and whether I am an individual member of a theatrical company or a member of the audience, this experience is identical. On stage I move my body through space among objects and other bodies, and my movement and perspective remain unique. His lehrstücke, Brecht insisted, were learning plays not for the audience (at least not primarily for the audience), but for those who performed in them. As cast member too I remain individual. If the theatre remains my representation, we have an understanding of the perspective of cast members of Richard Foreman's plays, for example, many of whom have told me they feel no more utterly and fully themselves as individuals than when they appear in one of his plays. Finally there is the evidence of performers of other contemporary work, which demonstrates the untapped resources that can be called into practice once (but not before) the realization of the theatre as my representation occurs. My theatre is then charged with desire, disgust, fear, ecstasy,
possibility from each moment to each moment. It is a charge which both
unites and separates auditor and audience, spectator and performer,
performer and performer, in a process of seduction. Theatre is there and
not there, always passing, explicit and present only in my representation
and my body's status as privileged object. What differentiates the theatre
from the world is its disciplined self-
Once the representation is evacuated, my imagination rushes into it. Possibilities form, and all else necessary is the courage to explore them. Posted in /Archives |