Superfluities Redux
On culture and theatre, by George Hunka
A new journal for theatre minima and organum posts exclusively can now be found here.
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Wednesday, 09 July 2008
Andy Propst's relaunched American Theatre Web is a unique online resource that gathers original material, press releases, news stories and blog posts relating to theatre from around the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. The indefatigable Mr. Propst posts several times a day, and each time there's something of interest.
Despite the name of the blog, his purview seems to be all
English-
Posted at 8.27 am in /Miscellaneous
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Sunday, 29 June 2008
In an attempt to more conveniently arrange my work to see just what it is I've got flung about this World Wide Web, I posted a new page of all my writings, on and off line, at my personal Web site today. This also includes details of my published work for the Guardian and the New York Times, as well as a list of the panel discussions in which I've participated and other sundry details: the chunks, bits and dust of a professional life.
As you'll note, the plays (all five hours of them in the past four years) come first, prior to the theory, as they must; but lacking an actual stage for the moment, it's the theoretical stage that's immediately available. Anyone interested in exploring it will probably find it best to begin with the "95 Sentences About Theatre" before carrying on to the more grisly and nearly book-length (by this point) Organum, though the seed began to sprout in 2006 with "Preparing a Theater: Presumptions of an Erotic Tragedy" in Masthead. Those presumptions made, perhaps the sentences and the organa are easier to follow.
Links to the individual Guardian and Times articles – a far more lucrative endeavor than either the plays or the theory, to nobody's surprise, least of all mine – will follow as time permits.
Posted at 2.02 pm in /Miscellaneous
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Saturday, 21 June 2008
On Michelangelo, Nietzsche and Nitsch
"Through my artistic production (a form of life worship) I take upon myself all that appears negative, unsavoury, perverse and obscene, the lust and the resulting sacrificial hysteria, in order to spare YOU the defilement and shame entailed by the descent into the extreme."
"I also believe that, with regard to both the tragic aspect of suffering and instants of extreme ecstasy and affirmation of life, art needs to have a sense of sacred solemnity. [...] We propagated a very aggressive type of art, not a cozy art but an art that displayed tremendous power and intensity."
Hermann Nitsch
The June 2008 issue of Hyperion: On the Future of Aesthetics, which is online now, features new translations of the poetry of Michelangelo by Mark Daniel Cohen as well as several other elegant essays and reviews.
Those interested in theatre will certainly want to read David Kilpatrick's essay "Superficial Simulacra from Nietzsche to Nitsch," which explores theatrical representations of sacrifice and mythology in the context of Nietzsche's pronouncement of the death of God. Kilpatrick also draws upon the work of Georges Bataille (who almost single-handedly revived the reptuation of Nietzsche in France in the post-war years) in considering the performances of the Austrian Aktionist Hermann Nitsch, whose Orgien-Mysterien Theater exploited the intersections of violence and culture in almost 100 productions between 1962 and 1998. Nitsch's work culminated in the 6-Day Play, which took place at the Schloss Prinzendorf in 1998.
Erasing traditional Western dichotomies of body and mind, emotion and intellect, Nitsch's work shares with the plays of Howard Barker, Sarah Kane and David Ian Rabey and the production of I Am Blood by Jan Fabre's Troubleyn company (a review from their January 2007 visit to the United States is here) an obsession with sexualised violence and sacrifice, calling attention to both their contemporaneity and status as the basis of ancient and tragic rituals of radical, catastrophic experiences. The more one opens oneself to these texts and performances, the paler seems most contemporary theatre (often paling to complete nothingness); images and texts linger in the imagination long after the direct experience. And all of them are quite of this time and this world.
Powerful video footage from the third day of the 6-Day Play, the "Day of Dionysus," is available for online viewing below; it originally appeared at UbuWeb. The video is accompanied by Nitsch's "Geräuschmusik" ("Noisemusic"). A warning: like the plays of those theatre practitioners mentioned above, it is not for the faint of heart or mind, nor for the weak of stomach. Others, however, will be moved.
Posted at 8.58 am in /Miscellaneous
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Thursday, 19 June 2008
Jana P, a Melbourne-
After considering both the positive and negative reviews of the show, Jana remains dissatisfied. She writes:
[Even the positive reviews are] commendable, yet inadequate. For here we have all the usual ails: the need to assess as good or bad, the need to decipher the theme, the meaning, the purpose of the exercise, and an idea of art as a polemic, rather than what Susan Sontag called a thing in the world, something to sensually experience, appreciate for its own sake.
Going on, Jana also quotes from a recent post on Andrew Haydon's blog, in which Andrew goes into somewhat more detail about the qualities that British critical culture, at least as that which takes theatre as its subject, currently displays:
In many ways, partly because of this lack of a serious intellectual culture in British public life, having a more creative, interpretative critical culture wouldn't make much sense as there simply aren't that many plays being produced that would benefit from such rigours being applied to them. While say Martin Crimp and Howard Barker might enjoy such a regime change, current critical favourites from Alan Bennett to Roy Williams would find themselves left a bit out in the cold. The fact of the matter is, not much British theatre is actually very arty. It wears its messages and meanings plastered all over its sleeves and generally prefers to offer stories that anyone can readily understand with messages that it would take serious concentration to overlook. I generalise, but not by much. At the same time, this divergence of critical thought does explain why both Crimp and Barker, not to mention Sarah Kane and Mark Ravenhill, receive so much warmer receptions on mainland Europe than in Britain. It also provides the answer as to why so many normally intelligent, thoughtful British critics treat work by some of Europe’s more successful but idiosyncratic directors as if it is something to be debunked and dismissed.
Time doesn't permit me to apply Jana's and Andrew's assessments to current American critical culture.
So long as Lyn Gardner is offering modest proposals to place a moratorium on new
productions of plays by Shakespeare, perhaps it's an interesting thought
experiment to consider one more. Given the place of the reviewing and
critical community in the post-capitalist ideology that
maintains journalists, the business community and artists as
closely-
Of course there are a number of reasons why this remains a
thought-
Jana's entire post, once again, is here.
Posted at 9.09 am in /Miscellaneous
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Tuesday, 17 June 2008
At Newsstands (and Online) Now
"The Evolving Relationship between Artist and Patron," my review of Robert Schanke's Angels in the American Theater: Patrons, Patronage, and Philanthropy in the latest issue of Yale University's Theater magazine, is now available at better newsstands everywhere. Those with subscriptions can download the article itself right here.
Posted at 4.33 pm in /Miscellaneous
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