Aristotle – “Poetics” (introductory essay by Francis Fergusson)

Through his monumental work, “The Poetics”, Aristotle has paved the way for playwrights, actors and theater thinkers, for centuries on end. The first to disapprove with him was Seneca, four centuries later, but that is understandable, both through the progress demanded by the passage of time, and through the cultural differences implied by the geographical positioning of the cities they lived in (Attica, or Athens, resembles Rome as much as Bucharest resembles Abu Dhabi). In fact, “The Poetics” is itself an argument addressed to Aristotle’s teacher – Plato – who believed that artists should not be allowed in the Republic for the sole reason that art serves no function, because it is an imitation of an imitation. To best understand Plato’s stance on this issue, one has to be familiar with the concept of Platonic Ideals. Plato had the conviction that there is a world where Ideals, or the most complete blueprints of objects, reside, and that we all are tasked with rediscovering them through imitation (physically trying to best replicate that Ideal). Therefore, when art imitates a concrete object (such as a painting of a chair), or even an abstraction, (contemplation for example), it actually imitates an imitation and loses that initial utility – an object on which you can sit down, or the process of thinking, respectively. Aristotle strongly disagrees with this way of thinking, and, against it, he presents his masterpiece, a treatise on Poetry, which at the time included all forms of literature and drama.

For Aristotle, function is less important than the making of Poetry, or poiesis, if we were to use his own terms. He identifies three main types of Poetry – the lyrical poem, the epic poem and drama – from which he chooses to focus on the latter due to its complexity and rather large influence on society through public performance. As Fergusson highlights in his introduction, although Aristotle makes note of it too, drama, in its primitive form, seems to have emerged from the festivals held in honor of Dionysus, as a manifestation of the mystery that surrounds human nature and destiny. Slowly, but steadily, drama splits into two very distinct directions: Tragedy and Comedy. For the purpose of his treatise, Aristotle focused on the study of Tragedy, as a higher institution than Comedy, although this is an assumption at its best, since what we have of the original text is incomplete.

In Aristotle’s view, Tragedy surpasses Comedy, because of the way in which it is constructed, especially in terms of characters and plot. For it to be worthy, a piece of Poetry has to affect the reader in a moralizing manner, and Comedy, with its flawed and often immoral characters, seems to instigate the spectators to an opposite type of behavior. Tragedy, on the other hand, is “an imitation of an action that is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude; in language embellished with each kind of artistic ornament, the several kinds being found in separate parts of the play; in the form of action, not of narrative; through pity and fear effecting the proper purgation of these emotions” (61). In contrast to Plato’s point of view, Aristotle sees imitation, or mimesis, not just as a mere replica of an object or action, but one that does something crucial – it evokes the same reactions and emotions that the initial object or action did. Seriousness is implied by the central idea of the Tragedy, which always leads to death, and also by the tragic characters, who are higher in status than the spectators, but not as high in rank as a God, because that would hinder the construction of the plot and the purpose of the Tragedy. By magnitude, Aristotle means a certain length of time, appropriate to the action being depicted; while epic poems can afford to extend their action over the span of a few years or more, Tragedy is restricted to a couple of days at most by the fact that it has to be performed in front of an audience. Similar to other forms of Poetry, Tragedy too contains “artistic ornament[s]” in its language conferred by the words themselves (in metaphors), harmony (in choric odes) and rhythm (metrical pattern in use). In terms of “manner”, or the way in which the action is portrayed, it is significantly different than epic poems, because it employs characters who hold dialogs, monologues, and even sing (the Chorus). Despite the fact that Aristotle argues that one can have a Tragedy without characters, I fail to see how that would be able to sustain the integrity of the genre. For me, Tragedy as a form of drama requires characters, otherwise it becomes what Aristotle calls an epic. It might retain all of the characteristics that dissociate it from Comedy, but it will never be the same. Furthermore, it has to produce a purgation of emotions through fear and pity, or catharsis, which becomes almost impossibly to achieve without performance. Through astonishment (or Recognition), the character’s fall from good to bad (or Reversal of the Situation) and the Scene of Suffering, catharsis is assured. The embodiment of strong emotions, which have the source in an error in judgement, or hamartia, that the character made at some point, stirs something in the spectators, who are then careful not to make the same mistake.

Aristotle’s conception of Tragedy has laid the foundation for the genre, and for drama in general, for hundreds of years. But, for the number of people who agreed with him, there is an equal or even larger amount of people who disagree with his perspective. I am one of those people. For a start, I do not believe that Comedy is a lesser form of drama. As Ion Luca Caragiale (one of the greatest Romanian playwrights) said, Comedy can be moralizing as well, since the spectators experience vices and bad behavior in a controlled environment, and can make a decision on their own whether to pursue such a behavior or not, in light of the characters’ progression from the start to the end of the play. Furthermore, Aristotle places too much importance on the chronological structure of the play, disregarding the disrupted type of plot, which is prominent in modern theater. Is chronology vital to the purpose of Tragedy? I would say not, since Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman” and “All My Sons” fare well as tragedies, even though they contain flashbacks, or the intertwining of the past with the present. And last, but not least, I refute Aristotle’s belief that the spectacle is the most unimportant part of a Tragedy. Indeed, the construction of the Tragedy is essential if one wants for the play to detach itself from others as a success, but, after all, isn’t theater about enactment? Think about the word’s etymology – “theatron” is the Greek word for a seeing place. While no one can deny the value of Aristotle’s “Poetics”, the world has evolved and the demands of theater have changed, rendering many Aristotelian principles obsolete and, in fact, damaging to modern tragedy.

 

Citation:

Fergusson, Francis. Introduction. Aristotle’s Poetics. By Aristotle. Trans. S.H. Butcher. New York: Hill and Wang, 1961.

 

Clifford Geertz – “Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight”

In his article, Clifford Geertz explores the Balinese society through a central element of its cultural life – cockfight -, seen from the perspective of the outsider who has to prove his loyalty before being acknowledged as a physical presence. Geertz is therefore as much as an objective observer as one could be, a fact that allows him to notice the subtleties involved in this Balinese pastime and its impact on both the performers and the audience. Although illegal in Bali under the Republic, due to the puritan elite’s concern that it is an activity “unbecoming [of] an ambitious nation” (1), cockfight still takes place in a sort of semisecrecy, sometimes aided by bribing the police. For Balinese men, cockfights are what golf, racing and poker are to Americans, a high stakes venture in which masculinity, money and social status are reaffirmed. Geertz discerns a strong bond between men and their cocks, as a symbol of their manhood, for in both English and Balinese “cock” plays with a double meaning – rooster and penis. In a cockfight, “it is apparently cocks that are fighting there. Actually it is men” (3). In this sense, cockfights act as a liberation device for men, which allows them to indulge in what is usually considered repulsive behavior – animal-like behavior -, and connect with their inner selves, their masculinity, their penises.

Geertz cleverly describes cockfights as a “bloody drama of hatred cruelty, violence, and death” (4), in which the opposites attract and enhance each other: good and evil, man and beast, ego and id. Cockfights are primarily a blood sacrifice to the demons in order to pacify their cannibal hunger, with numerous such events organized before the Balinese holiday called “The Day of Silence”, in which it is believed that demons are chased momentarily out of hell and roam the Earth. This explains to some extent the rules behind a cockfight, particularly the fact that the winner is obliged to take the carcass of the dead cock and cook it for his family. These rules are passed on from generation to generation through palm leaf manuscripts, but the actual script remains unwritten, being similar in this respect to Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s orature. What is interesting to note is that surrounding all this melodrama, the participants reach the level in which they begin to identify with the cocks that are fighting, “moving their bodies in kinesthetic sympathy with the movement of the animals” (5). Therefore, the entire cockfight becomes a sociological entity, something Erving Goffman has called a focused gathering: “a set of persons engrossed in a common flow of activity and relating to one another in terms of that flow” (5).

Geertz then touches upon Jeremy Bentham’s definition of deep play, by which the latter means “[a] play in which the stakes are so high that it is, from his utilitarian standpoint, irrational for men to engage in it at all” (7). From this perspective, what makes a cockfight deep is not the gambling that takes place in the inner circle, nor the one of the outer circle, but the changes mediated by the circulation of money. When two people from two different villages compete, for example, it is their townsfolk’s moral obligation to bet for their cock as a sign of solidarity and respect. In this sense, there is a “migration of the Balinese status hierarchy into the body of the cockfight” (8). Whenever a match brings closer together people of the same social status, it deepens this migration, and consequently leads to the constant restructuring of social ranks inside each step of the hierarchical social ladder.

“The Balinese never do anything is a simple way that they can contrive to do in a complicated one” (6). It is as if everything they do could be considered the basis of a deep play, the only means compatible with their lifestyle and way of thinking. When  one narrows it down to its essence, the cockfight and its function becomes clearer: “it is a Balinese reading of Balinese experience; a story they tell themselves about themselves” (9). This aspect is the most striking for me. We constantly argue the superiority of the West, but at a closer look we seem to come out empty handed from our search for deep play. Other than the phenomenon of Hell Houses, the West is bereft whatsoever of significant high stake ventures. With this in mind, I believe that one should take the time to look at the rich culture of the East, and only then feel entitled to engage in a discussion about the merits of the cultural heritage of the civilized versus the one of the primitive, of the savage.

 

Citation:

Geertz, Clifford.  “Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight.”

Ann Pellegrini – “Signaling Through the Flames: Hell House Performances and Structures of Religious Feeling”

Hell House performances have received quite a lot of attention in the past decade due to their rather controversial nature, and thus became even more popularized on TV and in social media through criticism. Described by Fox News as “controversial Halloween practices”, these theatrical experiences of Hell stretch the boundaries of psychological comfort, and often times leave their spectators with a bad taste in their mouths. In her essay, Ann Pellegrini discusses theater in light of the recent proliferation of this type of performance, which uses the medium as a means of evangelization, and she brings in evidence in the shape of various scholarly perspectives in an attempt to deepen our understanding of the phenomenon. In this case, it is also worthwhile to discuss George Ratliff’s 2001 documentary on Hell Houses in parallel with Pellegrini, in order to have a broader view on what a Hell House is, what its purpose is, how it achieves that purpose, and whether or not it is an effective practice.

The concept of Hell House surfaced among the “conservative U.S. Protestants [who] have long worried that Halloween’s associations with paganism and the occult leave young people susceptible to Satan’s seductions” (911). With this in mind, Hell Houses emerged as an alternative to common Halloween practices, providing a safe environment in which “common sins” – such as homosexuality, abortion, suicide, rape, drinking irresponsibly – are portrayed, with a view to scaring the audience to Jesus, to Christianity. In many ways, Hell House performances seem paradoxical, due to the involvement of religious institutions in the creative process of what is, in fact, a theater piece. The Church has often criticized theater, because it acted as a gateway towards unnatural or sinful behavior, in the sense that once a person is allowed to perform certain unlawful actions in a fictive universe, they feel a legitimization of sorts for those actions in real life too, and therefore they sin. Moreover, these so-called Christian haunted houses rely heavily on secular culture in order to convey a distorted Christian message, and so they further reinforce their Machiavellian and contradictory nature. It appears that no importance is given to the process so long as the Church achieves its goals – which, for the purpose of this discussion are: the conversion of disbelievers to Christianity and the reaffirmation of commitment to the divine from believers respectively.

Starting off in 1972 as Scaremares, developing into Judgement Houses in the 1980s and then into Hell Houses, this evangelical phenomenon acts as a tie between the different denominations within Protestantism through the cultivation of feeling. In a Hell House performance, “the appeal is to the heart, not the head” (914), aiming towards a spiritual transformation. There seems to be a clear parallel to the Iranian Ta’ziyeh, both good examples of religious deep play, through their higher-than-just-entertainment purpose. The means they employ to accomplish their own purposes though are situated at opposite ends of the spectrum, meaning that, while Ta’ziyeh exudes honesty and a sense of cultural rightfulness from any given standpoint, Hell Houses are extremely questionable. The main concern in this context is their targeting, seen as both audience and performers, because they all seem to steer themselves to the most vulnerable group of all – teenagers. This practice has received strong critiques from the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF) and other groups around the world, because it fuels discrimination, hatred, stereotypes, and it perpetuates a narrow-minded way of thinking, which is obsolete in our 21st century society. For example, gay marriage is perceived as a sin (the scene being cut exactly before the kiss) and all gay men supposedly have AIDS and are dying because that is God’s punishment for their sexual orientation. For teenagers who have trouble understanding or coming to terms with their sexuality, the psychological impact of such interpretations is tremendous, and might even push them towards taking rash decisions – such as committing suicide in fear of eternal damnation -, which constitutes the opposite of what Hell Houses are supposed to do. On the other side of the fourth wall, there is also a sense of manipulation based on immaturity. For example, the majority of students at the Trinity Christian School want to audition for various roles in the Hell House (the most popular being “the suicide girl”, “the abortion girl” and the dancers in the rave scene) either as a means of reaffirming their faith or as a means of escaping the constraints of Christianity without risking the salvation of their souls. While Pellegrini sympathizes with the concerns that maybe Hell Houses have a negative effect on youth, she also points out a positive aspect, which is that, perhaps, they provide a window towards aspects that the teenager in the audience might not have even thought about: “[Hell Houses] reveal possibilities they [teenagers, Ed.] were not otherwise supposed to contemplate” (920).

Hell Houses are not theatrical masterpieces, but their success relies in the ability to play the most basic structure of feeling, which we call affect, through melodrama and psychological pressure. Affect is a feeling in its initial phase, when it doesn’t even have a name; instead it courses through our entire body as a type of energy in search for recognition and expression. The audience is vulnerable after having just seen a series of emotionally intense performances, and it is this vulnerability which makes the core of what the Hell House coordinator aims for. Spectators still have to process their experience and discover where they place themselves in relation to it, when they are suddenly asked to demonstrate their loyalty to their Savior by praying or simply leave. Many of the people who choose to pray agreed to this as a result of peer pressure and a sense of guilt, and when the pastor and the other members of the community start speaking in tongues over them, they feel like they have no other choice than to be there. Seen from this perspective, Hell Houses are characterized by some incipient form of oppression, which again contradicts the very principle that lies at the foundation of the Assemblies of God Protestant Church – free will. Following this train of thought, performance studies scholar Debra Levine identifies Hell Houses with Antonin Artaud’s “theater of cruelty”, which “privileges feeling over thought” and “bombards the audience from all sides with new sensations” (926), subsequently breaking the imaginary delimitation between the performers and the audience and allowing them to interact with each other in a silent manner.

Echoing Pellegrini, “Hell House is theater, but it is also something more than theater” (930). I do acknowledge its importance strictly in terms of performance and deep play, however I could never become complacent with such a limited way of thinking, nor could I ever agree with the purpose of a Hell House. As a human rights activist, reading about and watching a Hell House performance left me with an unpleasant feeling that our society regresses in terms of building mutual understanding between people, instead of advancing towards a better place as we all hypocritically advocate for.

 

Citation:

Pellegrini, Ann. “”Signaling Through the Flames”: Hell House Performance and Structures of Religious Feeling.” American Quarterly 59.3 (2007): 911-35. Project Muse.

Hell House. Dir. George Ratliff. Cantina Pictures, 2001. DVD.

Richard Schechner – “Drama, Script, Theater, Performance”

In his article, “Drama, Script, Theater, Performance”, Richard Schechner explores the often-misused concepts of drama, script, theater and performance, by delving into their historical backgrounds and examining the subtle differences in meaning that sometimes draw them together, and sometimes pull them apart. He identifies the paleolithic times as the source of these phenomena, having the acts of singing, dancing and impersonation (of others, of the supernatural, of animals) as a solid foundation. In fact, it is through this kind of manifestations, depicted in cave paintings or carvings, that performance evolved into the concept we currently know and appreciate. Highly representative for this slow but intense process are the caves at Tuc d’Audoubert and El Castillo, which represent the earliest performance spaces for various rituals concerning hunting and fertility, often depicted through erotic symbols.

In analyzing these prehistoric moments of artistic expression, Schechner makes a strong distinction between theater as a manifestation and theater as communication. He pairs both prehistoric ritual theater and contemporary ritual with the idea of manifestation, whereas contemporary Western theater is tied to the idea of communication. In other words, manifestation presupposes the transfer of knowledge (be it intellectual or emotional) through the act itself, through “doing”, while communication achieves the same goal through content, and therefore could be read as “a result of”.

However, Schechner’s strongest argument in the first part of his article is for the importance of distinguishing between the four elements of what is commonly known as “theater”, in order to further one’s understanding of this imposing cultural institution. He envisions these elements as concentric circles, where drama is firmly enclosed in the center,  script is encompassing drama, and in turn is encompassed by theater, which then leaves performance as an outer shell, not clearly delimited from what one can assume is the real world. From his perspective, drama represents the written piece, the rigid part of the artistic expression, which “can be taken from place to place or time to time independent of the person who carries it” (8). In contrast, the script is the “recipe” for enacting the written text (see Ta’ziyeh), a flexible part which can be seen in progression from one performance to the other, even though it is based on the fact that it pre-exists any given enactment. “The script is transmitted from person to person and the transmitter is not a mere messenger; the transmitter of the script must know the script and be able to teach it to others” (8). Continuing his exposition, Schechner delimits theater as the realm of the performers, defining it simply by considering it as “what actually occurs to the performers during a production” (8). In this sense, “theater is concrete and immediate” (8), because it stands for the embodiment itself of a text/script. As an extension, performance is the realm of the audience, and it stands for “the whole constellation of events, most of them passing unnoticed, that takes place in both performers and audience from the time the first spectator enters the field of the performance – the precinct where the theater takes place – to the time the last spectator leaves” (8). For many reasons, Schechner’s attempt at deciphering this interconnected and rather complicated artistic world could be seen as a game of limens, overlapping and thus making the process of discriminating between its constituents even harder.

The author explores the seams between these four elements through a close analysis of the production of Sam Shepard’s “The Tooth of Crime”, in which the conventions of classical theater are shattered. Performers mingle with audience, which is free to move through the space, and even encouraged to do so. By breaking the boundaries between public and private, the spectators are forced to interact with their surroundings, all with the hope of getting a better grasp on the notions of drama, script, theater and performance, and acknowledge the strong connections between them.

In the second part of his article, Schechner focuses on the concept of play seen across different species, as a way of testing different behaviors in a controlled environment (governed by rules), without having to suffer the consequences of the real world’s laws and regulations. Play requires commitment and absorption in order to be successful, and in the author’s understanding of evolutionary processes, it is this activity that leads to ritual, which in turn leads to performance.

So we come full circle. By way of human development, primate behavior is passed on to the first humans, who transform it into an intricate mental activity, that with the passing of time becomes more structured and stands as the primary expression of culture. In my opinion, Schechner has done an impressive cultural and psychological analysis of the human condition, and I cannot agree more in stressing the importance of properly understanding the components of “theater”, as a means to rationalize its being a vehicle to knowledge.

Citation:

Schechner, Richard. “Drama, Script, Theatre and Performance.” The Drama Review: TDR 17.3 (1973): 5-36. Jstor. Web. 31 Aug. 2010.

 

Peter J. Chelkowski – “Eternal Performance: Ta’ziyeh and Other Shiite Rituals”

In his book, “Eternal Performance: Ta’ziyeh and Other Shiite Rituals”, editor Peter J. Chelkowski compiles historical information about and deep analyses of the Iranian theater genre of ta’ziyeh. Performed during the month of Muharram (the first month of the Islamic calendar), ta’ziyeh represents a condolence play or passion play of the Shiite Muslims in Iran, which recounts the barbaric slaughter of Imam Hussein and his male children and companions by Yazid, Sunnite caliph in Damascus. The genre was recently registered on the UNESCO List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity due to its being integral to the spiritual and cultural life of the Shiites since the Battle of Karbala, the name by which the massacre came to be known over time. Profoundly influenced by the namaayesh (dramatic arts), theater in Iran reached its acme during the Qajar dynasty (1785 – 1925), when it was exposed to the Western legacy of the Greeks. Following this train of thought, Dr. Ardeshir Salehpour remarks in his Tehran Times interview, “The Modernity of a Live Tradition: Theater in Iran”, that: “Classical theater in Iran was entirely an intellectual phenomenon, mostly restricted to the narrow circle of the elite and those educated in the West. […] Ta’ziyeh, which is rooted in the religious beliefs of the Iranian people, was accepted with more enthusiasm as a public art.” (March 7, 2012).

As a performance, a ta’ziyeh can be be easily deconstructed into two main elements for further analysis and commentary: content and form. In terms of content, the ta’ziyeh is the reenactment of the Battle of Karbala, which took place in 680 AD and marked the schism between the Sunnites and the Shiites. After the death of Prophet Muhammad, “two factions arose with competing views on the process for determining the new head of the community, or caliph.” (1). On one side, the Sunnites believed that the caliph should be chosen according to an ancient Arabian tradition, while on the other side, the Shiites promoted the Imamate, or the belief that the caliph should be a descendant of the Prophet. Due to the lack of an agreement and the fight for power, Yazid’s troops cornered Hussein, which by then had become the head of the Shiites, and his companions and forced them to swear an oath of allegiance to the Sunnite leader in return of their freedom. Even though cut off from water in the desert and subjected to both physical and psychological torture, Hussein refused the oath and chose martyrdom instead. His brutal death marked the 10th day of Muharram, or Ashura, and led to the intensification of the Shiite-Sunnite conflict, which continues even in the present times. Turning our attention back to the ta’ziyeh, we can now clearly see its purpose – an expression of lamentation for the “ultimate example of sacrifice, the pinnacle of human suffering” (3), as well as a commemoration of Imam Hussein through mourning. Therefore, the Iranian tragedy becomes the dramatic locution of centuries’ worth of emotions, of loyalty, of spirituality, often times creating the context for a cathartic response from the audience through weeping and wailing, a shocking reaction according to Western theater audiences.

In terms of form, ta’ziyeh is seemingly minimalistic (“the Euphrates River is denoted by a basin of water; a tree branch indicates a grove of palms” (7)), but one has to keep in mind to not judge a book by its cover. Ta’ziyeh evolved over time, but its key construction elements remained relatively constant. The performance takes place in a large tent, decorated opulently through the cooperation of the entire community, so as to create a sense of communitas, or intersubjectivity, a space were social class loses its importance, and everyone becomes equal through the sharing of wealth. This temporary theater is built as a circular arena, in order to encourage the interaction between the audience and the actors, often times the former being involved in moving the props on and off the stage. Performers, all male, begin their training at the young age of 5 and dedicate their entire lives to bettering their technique and passing on their knowledge to the next generation. In addition, there are certain rules regarding performance, such as: the protagonists sing their lines, while the antagonists have to declaim theirs; the scene changes are indicated by circling the scene, while the passage of time is marked by jumping off the stage and into the sand that surrounds it. Costumes are also of great significance, acting as a way to identify a character and his nature; for example, villains usually wear red (as a symbol for blood) and sunglasses (reflective of the Western influence; see Ngugi wa Thiong’o on globalectics), while the protagonist is dressed in white cloth (a symbol for sacrifice). Another substantial addition in terms of form is the use of horses or camels, which further complicates the task of the actor and demands even more training, besides movement, expression and singing.

In conclusion, it can be said that the ta’ziyeh, although seemingly unsophisticated and primitive, compares to Western theater and even surpasses it in some respects. As Beeman and Ghaffari emphasize: “The impact of the drama lies in the stylization, and the simpler realization is far more powerful and effective.” (88). Ta’ziyeh makes an impression on the audience not through extravagant costumes, bright lights or intricate plot lines, but through simplicity, authenticity and honesty, which make anyone resonate, mundane hierarchies notwithstanding.

 

Citation:

Ala Amjadi, Maryam.  “The Modernity of A Live Tradition:  Theater in Iran,” The Teheran Times.  Vol 11388, 12 March 2012.

Chelkowski, Peter J., ed. Eternal Performance: Ta’ziyeh and Other Shiite Rituals. London: Seagull Books, 2010.

 

Marvin Carlson – “Theatrical Performance: Illustration, Translation, Fulfillment, or Supplement?”

In his paper, “Theatrical Performance: Illustration, Translation, Fulfillment, or Supplement?”, Marvin Carlson explores the dialectic relationship between text and performance, and isolates four theories through which one can define a theatrical experience. Prior to Shakespeare, a central figure of romanticism, there was a relative unanimity among theater theorists about the unity of time, space and genre as a key element in every work of art. However, Shakespeare’s genius could not confine itself inside the neoclassic canons, and thus “created as nature created” (5), in a way that is characterized by inner structure, by the state of being organic. This fundamental change disrupted the standards of what it meant to create theater, to perform theater, and most importantly to critically analyze theater, demanding a re-envisioning of all values due to the separation between the written and the oral, and forming the basis for the presently most common interpretations of theatrical performance.

The first approach, best presented by Charles Lamb, is that of illustration, or “let[ting] the text speak for itself” (6). He uses Shakespeare’s tragedies as an example, stressing the importance of the text over that of the performance, as every bit of interpretation the actor introduces in his performance takes away from the original text, and will always be inferior in value to it, “unless the performer is a genius superior to the originating dramatist” (6). Other critics, such as Castelvetro,  did not entirely condemn performance, but still aligned themselves to the practice of illustration, seeing it as a means of educating the masses without making any changes to the essence of the text.

Critics such as Stark Young devised yet another approach – translation -, a bridge between text and performance, which attempts to balance the two on the same level while maintaining their authenticity. Young’s argument is that the script once performed suffers a transformation, a translation from one medium to another, and therefore contributes to the communication of ideas.

Contrasting with Charles Lamb and Castelvetro, the third approach sees the text as incomplete and advocates the idea “that organic unity is achieved only in performance” (8), the latter being considered to be an agent of filling the gaps the text intentionally leaves open, and therefore it is called fulfillment. Two of its representatives, English directors Ashley Dukes and Harley Granville-Barker, argue the importance of fulfillment against the background of artistic freedom, emphasizing the importance of not hindering the creative process behind a performance by sticking to the rigors of the written text.

Finally, the fourth approach, again in contrast with one of the above-mentioned theories, militates for a double dynamic within performance –  to add a supplemental element to the original and to add so as to fill a void – , consequently being dubbed performance as a supplement. Jacques Derrida, one of the main theorists for this particular approach, goes back to Rousseau in order to demonstrate that “all manifestations of culture … [are in fact] supplements to Nature” (9), and, by not allowing either of the two elements of a theatrical piece to become more important than the other, one can find an endless source of various interpretations.

Personally, I have to agree with Marvin Carlson, not only because “the concept of supplement avoids the problems attendant upon privileging either performance or written text” (11), but also because of it acting as a window towards a new meaning with each passing performance. Performance should be an ever-evolving creature, not a static and repetitive endeavor, because it is among the only means of communicating raw emotion and strengthening inter-human bonds.

 

Citation:

Carlson, Marvin. “Theatrical Performance: Illustration, Translation, Fulfillment, or Supplement?” Theatre Journal, Vol. 37, No. 1, “Theory” (Mar., 1985), pp. 5-11.

Heiner Mueller – “Despoiled Shore Medea-material Landscape with Argonauts”

In his work, “Despoiled Shore Medea-material Landscape with Argonauts”, Heiner Mueller re-creates the ancient Greek tragedy by relocating its elements into the contemporary reality. The action takes place in East Germany, in an environment strongly influenced by capitalism, where gruesome images abound and an incessant  feeling of drowning in a murky pool of decomposing waste suffuses into the audience. What confounds the reader at first is the fact that Mueller refuses the traditional form of a play – there are no punctuation marks, no stage directions, and not even proper characters, but rather fractured subjects -, and also the complete freedom of interpretation, so long as “the naturalism of the scene” (1) is kept.

Medea loses her supernatural powers from Euripides’ version of the play, and instead becomes a product of monstrosity shaped by the unyielding society in which she lives. Furthermore, the fractured subject is depleted by its ancestral grandeur, her grandfather being a mere “IDIOT IN BOATIA” (6), instead of the great God Helios. She loses her identity in her quest of seeking revenge for her brother’s murder, the rupture “between I and NolongerI” (7) clearly marked. Medea evolves from an individuality to a collective we, prompted by the lack of separation between each of the character’s lines. She is the human conscience in search of validation for its past, while getting closer to its demise with every second that passes. Mueller’s “Medea” ceased to be a love story, and transformed into a melodramatic lamentation of a destructive relationship between a self and the world at large, its universality punctuated by the dark and vivid imagery included in lofty descriptive passages.

Personally, I am still confused by the text and I am certain that I have yet to grasp its full meaning, but I consider that to be its beauty. By integrating two of the negative categories that Hugo Friedrich introduces in his work, titled “Die Struktur der Modernen Lyrik” (1956), namely the aesthetic of the ugly and the process of depersonalization, Mueller offers a new tone to a classical piece of literature, and brings it closer to the contemporary frame of mind.  Most importantly, I feel that the author acted as a catalyst in Medea’s liberation from the confines of the conservative, and provided her with the means of putting her soul on a silver platter for the entire world to see.

 

Citation:

Mueller, Heiner. Despoiled Shore Medea-material Landscape with Argonauts. Trans. Dennis Redmond. 2002.

Euripides – “Medea” (431 BC)

In “Medea”, Euripides delves into the generous theme of love, which is intertwined with its derivatives – betrayal, jealousy -, eventually leading to murder. Through his tragedy, the Greek author tries to express the process known as the colonization of the mind by presenting the reader with extreme answers to the same situation. The story is what one would call a classic love story: a marriage takes shape from passion and compromise, and strengthens itself over time, but then is disrupted by an affair. However, nothing is as simple as it appears; everything is intensified by the genre of tragedy.

The story is centered on the character of Medea, princess of Colchis, endowed with supernatural powers, granddaughter of the God Helios, but otherwise considered a barbarian by the people of Corinth, where she was exiled after killing her own brother in order for Jason, the man she fell in love with, to ascend to the throne. Now married, with two sons, Medea finds herself in a deep depression after she learns of Jason’s affair with the daughter of the King of Corinth, Creon, and his intention of marrying her. She feels dishonored and her emotions become overwhelming: from sadness to anger, to despair, to the desire to murder her rival and her own children in order to hurt Jason. Medea is a model for women empowerment taken to the extreme so as to produce a cathartic experience for the audience. Her actions seem confusing at times – her initial heated argument with Jason, which then leads to the false sense of understanding of her husband’s actions as a means of providing a better future for their sons, and then evolves into a deal with her spouse -, all just to conceal her real objectives. Creon fears her irrationality and orders that Medea and her children be exiled immediately from Corinth, only to fall prey to the woman’s manipulation himself. Medea is able to achieve her goals, murdering Creon, his daughter and her own sons in cold blood, and she even creates an alternative escape route through Aegeus, the King of Athens, whose protection is returned by helping his wife conceive an heir. Medea fights with her conscience, but in the end she demonstrates enough strength of character to live the rest of her life with the consequences of her actions.

I strongly believe that what is important to remember from the play is not the atrocities committed by the central character, nor her monstrosity, but rather the power of her will, which made her invincible in the face of betrayal. Granted, she is flawed, just like any other human being, but she does not let her shortcomings define her or intervene in accomplishing what she sets her mind onto. What is also important to point out in this text, in connection with our previous readings, is the concept of oral literature, which was of great relevance in the 5th century BC when this tragedy was first produced, and how it affected the play as it was passed on from generation to generation, transforming it into the universal cry for help of a woman taken for granted by a selfish man. It is a story which resonates with every woman, because it is the very essence of maternal love and sacrifice, the human condition seen from the point of view of the weaker.

 

Citation:

Euripides. Medea trans. Ian Johnston. https://records.viu.ca/~johnstoi/euripides/medea.htm

 

Coco Fusco and Guillermo Gómez-Peña – “The Couple in a Cage: A Guatinaui Odyssey” (1993)

Coco Fusco (L) and Guillermo Gómez-Peña (R) have devised a series of performances to be played in key cities around the world, generically titled “The Couple in a Cage: A Guatinaui Odyssey”, which explore the clash between the Old World and the New World, inadvertently touching upon the ideas of colonization, slavery, the oppression of natives and the other (by portraying the process of othering). Both having South American origins (Puerto Rico and Mexico, respectively), the two actors have decided to center their act around a couple from a tribe whose permanent residence is on a fictional island in the Caribbean Sea named Guatinaui. The duo has documented their experience in a 1993 film, which is instrumental in understanding the relationship between the performers and the audience, as well as how the latter reacts to the ideas conveyed by the piece. The audience is not informed that this is indeed a performance, rather it is presented with various hints towards it (such as the cap, the TV set, the sunglasses, the hip hop music etc.). What the audience knows is simply that they have to pay $1 to gain access to the exhibition of a caged couple.

The film begins with the striking image of two business women (the docents of the exhibition) who carry the two natives on a leash towards their cage, while the audience remains seemingly undisturbed. Everything functions on the same principles as a freak show at the circus, where people in the audience can feed the exhibits bananas, touch them or let themselves be touched, and for the small fee of $5 they can even see the male’s genitals. All the elements point towards the idea of a performance, whose aim is to suspend beliefs and spark an emotion with regards to the human condition inside peoples’ hearts, which in turn should lead to a thinking process. However, the visitors let themselves fall prey to the easy way out – objectifying the couple -, feeling protected by the concept of a museum as a space of power, of authority.

During the tour in NYC, Madrid, Chicago, Sydney, various members of the audience where interviewed about their feelings towards the exhibition. Many of them felt somehow constrained about being filmed, especially because art is known to make people insecure, giving the answers that they thought were expected. But, there were quite a few who were unafraid to voice their opinions on the exhibition/the performance (depending on whether they made that realization or not). While some were fascinated by the woman’s physical beauty and felt puzzled by her shaved legs, others were completely horrified by the act in its entirety. I particularly remember an American woman from NYC, who got very emotional about the fact that Americans are shallow, which then led to her feeling resentful of being American – “[It feels like] a slap in the face.”

In the end, the couple swaps places with the docents, the latter now being taken away on a leash; a simple, but powerful way of describing the fine line between who is in control and who is controlled. I think that this performance should be seen as a lesson in humility, in understanding, in thinking, and also in defining the other and our relationship to him/her.

Citation:

The Couple in a Cage: A Guatinaui Odyssey. Dir. Coco Fusco and Paula Heredia. Perf. Coco Fusco, Guillermo Gómez-Peña. 1993. Film.

Ngugi wa Thiong’o – “Oral Power and Europhone Glory: Orature, Literature, and Stolen Legacies”

In his book, “Penpoints, Gunpoints, and Dreams: Towards a Critical Theory of the Arts and the State in Africa”, Ngugi wa Thiong’o dedicates an entire section to the concept of oral literature, and stresses its importance to the colonized African states and to the world at large. In many ways, it mirrors another of the author’s works, “Globalectics: Theory and the Politics of Knowing”, for which it actually stands as a starting point, a condensation of the ideas Ngugi will expand on.

The fourth lecture emphasizes the importance of cultural heritage, in particular that of the language for the African continent, and positions Ngugi as a strong advocate of the idea that “its artists and intellectuals [should] return to the languages of the people” (103), in order to develop and nourish the identity of African literature, as well as create a pan-African consciousness that everyone can relate to, even if they are a part of the diaspora. But how can one achieve this? The author isolates three widespread traditions upon which most of the creative products of this geopolitical space were founded. The first one is that of the linguistic agent, largely popularized by the colonial state through the increase in English and French departments in universities, and which presupposes the use of European languages in the interpretation of local history and culture. It is this particular practice which led to the uprising against colonialism and fueled the reintroduction of the second tradition, which is that of writing in the African languages. Ngugi considers this to be the stepping stone in finding the commonality between all the colonized states, the cradle of the African cultural and scientifical heritage, and demonstrates how time is the essential factor in this process rather than the dialect used (Kiswahili, Amharic, Yoruba or Zulu). The third tradition, strongly intertwined with the previously presented, is that of orality or works of imagination produced through word of mouth (105). It is by far the most important of the three, because it fosters the bulk of what Africa means, and also because it was the most vital element during the anti-colonial struggles due to its fluidity, gained by eliminating the written word as an intermediary between orality and aurality and replacing it with performance. “Each performance was a new imaginative creation” (110-11), partly because of the performers and their own state of mind, and partly because a performance was a fusion between various art forms (dance, song, riddle, myth etc.). It was this wholeness, this totality, which pushed Pio Zirimu to coin the term orature. 

“Orature is the great legacy of African life and languages” (126), concludes Ngugi, and I have no other choice than to strongly agree with him. Relying on the oral to impart your cultural knowledge with the future generations and your peers, does not necessarily make you an illiterate, as common stereotypes perpetuate. In fact, it provides you with a new range of stylistical devices and methodologies, which are not applicable to the written word, and contribute to the formation of the above-mentioned identity or commonality. If the power of orature was all but an illusion (as Europe argued during the colonial era), then why would the civilized Western world continue “stealing from the peasant and the worker” (127) in order to develop itself and prosper?

 

Citation:

Wa Thiong’o, Ngũgĩ.  “Oral Power and Europhone Glory” In  Penpoints, Gunpoints, and Dreams:  Toward a Critical Theory of the Arts and the State In Africa.