Amfiteater - letnik 1, številka 2, 2008 by UL AGRFT

Amfiteater Revija za teorijo scenskih umetnosti Letnik 1, številka 2 (2008) Journal of Performing Arts Theory Volume 1, Number 2 (2008)

Mehanizmi nadzora in moËi Mechanisms of Control and Power Uredila Edited by Barbara Sušec Michieli Ta številka je nastala v sodelovanju z Mednarodno zvezo za gledališke raziskave (Delovna skupina za zgodovinopisje). This issue was prepared in collaboration with the International Federation for Theatre Research (Historiography Working Group).

Izdaja v sodelovanju z

Univerza v Ljubljani, Akademija za gledališče, radio, film in televizijo Društvom gledaliških kritikov in teatrologov Slovenije

Published by University of Ljubljana, Academy of Theatre, Radio, Film and Television in cooperation with the Association of Theatre Critics and Researchers of Slovenia Ljubljana, 2008

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KAZALO

CONTENTS

Barbara Orel 7

Načrti za prihodnost

Looking Ahead

Mehanizmi nadzora in moËi

Mechanisms of Control and Power Barbara Sušec Michieli 11 Introductory Notes

RAZPRAVE PAPERS

Rosemarie Bank 13 Recurrence, Duration, and Ceremonies of Naming 30 Ponovno pojavljanje, trajanje in obredi poimenovanja (Povzetek) Barbara Sušec Michieli 31 Out of Control? Theatre in the Grip of the Economic and Political Crisis 51 Brez nadzora? Gledališče v primežu ekonomske in politične krize (Povzetek)

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S. E. Wilmer 52 Performing Statelessness 68 Uprizarjanje oseb brez državljanstva (Povzetek) Jan Lazardzig 69 Syphilis on Stage: The Production of Evidence and Theatre Censorship Around 1900 83 Sifilis na odru: Produkcija dokazil in gledališka cenzura okrog leta 1900 (Povzetek) Yael Zarhy-Levo 84 Between Reviewers and Dramatists: The “Playwright Construct” 99 Med kritiki in dramatiki: “Konstrukt dramatika” (Povzetek) Jim Davis 100 Redefining the Nineteenth Century London Theatre Public: Questions of Evidence and Interpretation 114 Redefiniranje londonskega gledališkega občinstva v devetnajstem stoletju: vprašanja dokazil in interpretacije (Povzetek) Pirkko Koski 115 Control vs. Subversion: Popular Theatre on the Move 133 Nadzor proti subverziji: popularno gledališče na pohodu (Povzetek) Helmar Schramm 134 Explosion Events: On the Theatricality of Fireworks in the Seventeenth Century 150 Eksplozivni dogodki: O teatralnosti ognjemetov v sedemnajstem stoletju (Povzetek)

RECENZIJE BOOK REVIEWS

151 Denis Poniž

Vprašanje krize

(Tomaž Toporišič: Ranljivo telo teksta in odra)

165 Aldo Milohnić

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Performativnost in iterabilnost v scenskih umetnostih

(James Loxley: Performativity)

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173 Tomaž Toporišič

Estetika performativnih umetniških praks

(Erika Fischer - Lichte: Estetika performativnega) 178 Katja Mihurko Poniž

Uprizarjanje feminizmov

(Staging International Feminisms, ur. Elaine Aston in Sue-Ellen Case) 187 Vabilo k razpravam Procesi dela in sodelovanja v sodobnih scenskih umetnostih 189 Call for Papers Work and Collaboration Processes within Contemporary Performing Arts 192 Navodila avtorjem 194 Submission Guidelines

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NaËrti za prihodnost

Pred vami je druga številka revije za teorijo scenskih umetnosti Amfiteater z naslovom Mehanizmi nadzora in moči. Nastala je v sodelovanju z Delovno skupino za zgodovinopisje, ki deluje v okviru Mednarodne zveze za gledališke raziskave (International Federation for Theatre Research), in je v letih 2007 in 2008 intenzivneje preučevala strategije nadzorovanja in razmerja moči na področju gledališča in scenskih umetnostih. Objavljene so izbrane razprave, ki odkrivajo zanimive zgodovinske povezave gledališča s politično, ekonomsko in širšo kulturno sfero, družbeno pogojenimi hierarhijami, ideologijo in znanostjo. Posebna pozornost je v člankih posvečena tudi (samo)refleksiji gledališkega zgodovinopisja ter temeljnim epistemološkim in metodološkim problemom stroke. Tako se slovenskim raziskovalcem, ki so v prvi številki revije z naslovom Scenske umetnosti in politike predstavljanja razgrnili vprašanje politike in politične umetnosti našega časa, pridružujejo avtorji mednarodne raziskovalne skupnosti s premislekom, kako umetnost sooblikuje polje vednosti. Revija Amfiteater želi vzpostaviti prostor mednarodnih povezav in raziskav s področja gledališča in scenskih umetnosti. Zato je tematski blok revije tokrat objavljen v angleškem jeziku. Čeprav ta ni materni jezik večine avtorjev, ki so prispevali svoje razprave, je angleščina jezik, v katerem si dnevno izmenjujemo informacije, spoznanja in izkušnje v globaliziranem in multikulturnem svetu. Odločitev o izbiri jezika je torej pragmatična. Poleg tega je v slovenskem prostoru, iz

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katerega izhaja revija Amfiteater, angleščina najbolj uveljavljeni in najpogosteje uporabljani tuji jezik v mednarodnih diskusijah. Razprave spremlja rubrika »Recenzije«, v kateri so poglobljenemu in kritičnemu pogledu izpostavljene tiste monografije, ki so zanimive za slovenski prostor, vanj vnašajo nove perspektive in spodbujajo premišljanje o sodobnih scenskih praksah. Ta rubrika je namenjena slovenskim bralcem in je objavljena v slovenskem jeziku. Revijo Amfiteater izdaja Akademija za gledališče, radio, film in televizijo Univerze v Ljubljani v sodelovanju z Društvom kritikov in teatrologov Slovenije in izhaja dvakrat letno, junija in decembra. Namenjena je objavljanju recenziranih prispevkov s širšega področja scenskih umetnosti. Ime je dobila po prizorišču, v katerem že od antike potekajo gledališke predstave, raznovrstne igre in manifestacije javnega uprizarjanja. Tako naj se tudi strani revije Amfiteater razprejo kot prostor za njihovo refleksijo. Zaželene so interdisciplinarne študije uprizarjanja v kontekstu različnih medijev, kultur, znanosti in umetnosti. Dobrodošle so teoretske in zgodovinske razprave ter študije primerov – tako tiste, ki se posvečajo tradiciji umetnosti in še posebej tiste, ki se spoprijemajo z umetniškimi izzivi naše sodobnosti. Načrtujemo redne in tematske številke. Prve bodo sledile logiki, ki jo bodo narekovali avtorji s ponujenimi razpravami in bodo tako neizogibno vsebinsko hibridne; tematske številke pa bodo usmerjale izbrane teme. Tokrat objavljamo vabilo k razpravam o Procesih dela in sodelovanja v sodobnih scenskih umetnostih. Pripravljamo namreč tematski blok, v katerem želimo reflektirati raznovrstne oblike umetniških sodelovanj v razmerju do širšega družbenega, kulturnega in političnega prostora. Vabimo vas, da se odzovete našemu povabilu, s študijami na ponujeno temo ali raziskavami, s katerimi se ukvarjate, in se nam pridružite pri ustvarjanju revije Amfiteater. Barbara Orel, glavna in odgovorna urednica

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Looking Ahead

Welcome to the second issue of Amfiteater, a journal dedicated to the theory of performing arts. Produced in collaboration with the Historiography Working Group which operates within the International Federation for Theatre Research, this issue bears the title Mechanisms of Control and Power. During 2007 and 2008, the working group focused on control strategies and power relations in the area of theatre and performing arts, thus this issue brings you selected papers revealing compelling historical links between theatre in relation to the political, economic and wider cultural sphere, to socially determined hierarchies, and to ideology and science. Special attention is devoted to (self-) reflection within theatre historiography and fundamental epistemological and methodological issues in this field. Slovene researchers, who in the first issue of the journal, entitled Performing Arts and the Politics of Representation, discussed questions dealing with politics and political art of our time, are now joined by authors from the international research community who consider how art influences and shapes the field of knowledge. Since Amfiteater aims to create a space for international exchange and research in the field of theatre and performing arts, the thematic section of this issue is published in the English language. Although English is not the native tongue for the majority of contributors, it is a language in which we share information, knowledge and experience on a daily basis in the globalised and multi-cultural world. Accordingly, our choice

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of language has been a pragmatic decision. Apart from that, in Slovenia, where Amfiteater is published, English is a firmly established foreign language that is most frequently used in discussions involving international participants. The section of presented papers is supplemented with a section of book reviews containing in-depth and critical views on the monographs that are most pertinent to the Slovene cultural scene, introduce new perspectives and encourage deliberation on contemporary performing practices. This latter section is intended for the Slovene readership, so the language is Slovenian. Amfiteater is published biannually, in June and December, by the Academy of Theatre, Radio, Film and Television of the University of Ljubljana, in collaboration with the Association of Theatre Critics and Researchers of Slovenia. Its mandate is to publish peer reviewed articles dealing with a wide variety of topics in performing arts. The journal is named for the type of space used since antiquity for theatrical productions, various games, spectacles and other forms of public performance. We would, therefore, like to see the pages of Amfiteater become a forum for reflection on such events. We seek interdisciplinary approaches to performing arts research that incorporate perspectives from various media, cultures, arts, and sciences. We welcome theoretical studies, comprehensive historical overviews, and case studies â&#x20AC;&#x201C; those dedicated to traditional forms and, in particular, those tackling with the artistic challenges of our times. Both regular and special issues are planned. While the former will be organised around a particular set of submissions and will inevitably be hybrid in their content, the thematic issues will be centred around a specific topic as outlined in our calls for papers. As we are preparing a special issue of Amfiteater in which we will reflect on various forms of artistic collaboration and their relation to the wider social, cultural and political space, we have included a call for papers dealing with Work and Collaboration Processes within Contemporary Performing Arts. We invite you to send contributions on this topic or on your current research area and become our collaborators in creating Amfiteater. Barbara Orel, Editor-in-chief

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Introductory Notes

Barbara Sušec Michieli

The meaning of the Medieval Latin word contrarotulare, from which the word “control” is derived, was relatively simple and concrete: “to check against a duplicate account”. Today this notion marks complicated and abstract concepts; control theories are studied in the fields of mathematics, engineering, economy, military science, psychology, medicine and law. The problems of social control inspire artistic works, philosophical treatises and sociological studies, in addition to the widespread commercialisation of control mechanisms in the media and in the entertainment industry. In recent decades, theatre artists, theorists and researchers have also taken a great interest in this topic, especially in the question of how socially conditioned hierarchies and power relations are inscribed in performing arts practices. Important contributions in this field have arisen from feminist and postcolonial perspectives. The long history of theatre censorship, institutionalisation, standardisation of aesthetic practices, public manifestations of power, and subversive artistic strategies shows that the problem of control in theatre culture also possesses a complex historical purview. In the past, theatre was constantly exposed to social scrutiny, while the expression of power itself often acted as a theatricalised public ritual or ceremony. For theatre historiography, these findings have important consequences. The Historiography Working Group, which operates within the International Federation for Theatre Research (IFTR-FIRT),

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debated mechanisms of control and power at its meetings in Ljubljana and Seoul in March and July 2008, respectively. Eight articles have been selected for the thematic block of this issue,

Barbara Sušec Michieli Introductory Notes

articles in which the authors discuss the wide spectre of themes and problems which range from an analysis of the constructions of the word “America” between 1507 and 1893 to a study of explosion events and theatrical fireworks in the 17th century; from a treatment of the methodological perspectives for the research of theatre audiences to the analysis of the dynamic relations between the spheres of theatre, (nation) state and economy. Thus the selected contributions create a net, which not only gathers together lesser known chapters of theatre and cultural history and enables their closer examination but also creates a space for an engaging debate about methodological and epistemological questions such as the production of evidence, analytical strategies and significance in historical writing. Despite their diverse academic environments and generations, the authors are connected by a thorough interest in the question of how to study and to write theatre history. These contributions obviously cannot exhaust the theme, yet they do call attention to its complexity and to the contradictory, conflictual relationship between the productive and repressive characteristics of control and power. The papers gain particular relevance in light of the fact that the contemporary “society of control” – if I borrow from Foucault and Deleuze – today denotes an even deeper internal crisis. I wish to express my gratitude to the authors for their collaboration in preparing this issue of Amfiteater, and I especially wish to acknowledge the work of English language editor Jana Renée Wilcoxen. Special thanks go to the reviewers and the members of the journal’s editorial board for their cooperation and also to the University of Ljubljana, Academy for Theatre, Radio, Film and Television for its support in organising the meeting of the Historiography Working Group of the IFTR-FIRT in Ljubljana.

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PAPERS

Recurrence, Duration, and Ceremonies of Naming

Rosemarie Bank UDK 930.85(7)

[America] the dazzling, young, fair land, a new world, a golden continent, a place one longs to reach. Matthias Ringmann (1507)

Late in a project of considering how definitions of ‘America’ in the long 19th century were based upon performances of and by Indians, and the related historiographical project of what constitutes ‘the native’ in a culture, I began to research how the land masses of the ‘New World’ came to be called America, then North and South America (or, in an older taxonomy, America septentrionalis and America meridionalis). I was immediately embroiled not alone in what might be in a name, but in a ceremony of naming, a formal act or observance which, from a historiographic perspective, quickly took on the aspects of a rite or ritual of prescription, observation, and formality. At first, a seemingly simple matter of exploration encountering geography, the earliest use of the word “America” quickly became a history of inscription – of maps and of voyages. The crucial publication appeared 25 April 1507, a collective work called the Cosmographiæ Introductio. In English, the Latin title page reads:

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KEYWORDS

recurrent redistributions of the word ‘America’, cultural studies, cultural mapping, spatial naming 3/2/09 4:58 PM

Introduction to Cosmography With Certain Necessary Principles of Geometry and Astronomy To Which Are Added the Four Voyages of Amerigo Vespucci. A Representation of the Entire World, both in the Solid and Projected on the Plane, Including Also Lands which were Unknown to Ptolemy, and Have Been Recently Discovered.

Rosemarie Bank Recurrence, Duration, and Ceremonies of Naming

No name appears on the title page, but the dedicatory preface to the 40-page Cosmographiæ Introductio identifies it and its two maps as the work of Martin (“Ilacomilus”) Waldseemüller, a printer and student of geography and of the maps of Ptolemy. Waldseemüller’s two maps were a flat projection eight feet long and four-and-a-half feet high (printed in 32 sections) and a smaller map intended for paste-up and use as a globe. The larger map, decorated with a portrait of Ptolemy on one side and Vespucci on the other, were the reason for the Cosmographiæ Introductio, “whose purpose was to explain the world map and its various features, its bearings on geographical sides, and its record of new discoveries” (v). “The Four Voyages of Amerigo Vespucci” form a second section of the Cosmographiæ; a translation into Latin from a French ver-

1 Waldseemüller’s Latin version of The Cosmographiæ is provided and translated into English, as are both a Latin version and English translation of Vespucci's “Four Voyages” and Ringmann’s poems. (The earliest printed version of the Geographia of the second century mapmaker Claudius Ptolemy appeared in 1475.)

sion of the voyages, made from Vespucci’s Italian by Johannes (“Sendacurius”) Basinus, a member of the group of humanists known as the Gymnasium Vosagense, to which Waldseemüller also belonged. The group gathered around Canon Walter Ludd, Secretary to Duke René II of Lorraine, and included Mathias (“Philesius”) Ringmann, who had translated Vespucci into German in 1506 and contributed two poems to the Cosmographiæ.1 The prominent figures in the naming are Waldseemüller and Ringmann, but this was, indeed, a group ceremony and christening. Waldseemüller connects the New World to Vespucci three times in the text of the Cosmographiæ and a fourth in relation to a figure in it. The first text reference explains why Vespucci’s “Four Voyages” are printed with the Cosmographiæ Introductio: “a very large part of the earth which had always been unknown, but which has recently been discovered by Amerigo Vespucci” (Herbermann 54). The second and third references propose to name the new-found land in honour of its supposed discoverer:

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and the fourth part of the earth, which because Amerigo discovered it, we may call Amerige, the land of Amerigo, so to speak, or America; (Herbermann 63)

Now, these parts of the earth have been more extensively explored and a fourth part has been discovered by Amerigo Vespucci (as will be set forth in what follows [i.e., in the “Four Voyages”]). Inasmuch as both Europe and Asia received their names from women, I see no reason why any one should justly object to calling this part Amerige, i.e., the land of Amerigo, or America, after Amerigo, its discoverer, a man of great ability. Its position and the customs of its inhabitants may be clearly understood from the four voyages of Amerigo, which are subjoined. (Herbermann 70)

The maps that were part of the original Cosmographiæ publication reflect the text, the text the maps, which 2 Waldseemüller took the outline of the coasts of the New World from the Portuguese sea-chart made by Nocolas de Canerio and copied many of its decorations (21).

place the word “America” on South

3 I do not know what qualities of the rhinoceros Ringmann wants readers not to imitate. The long association of the rhinoceros horn with human sexual activity may provide a clue (see next paragraph in the text).

is labelled Terra Ulteri Incognita, and is

America as it narrows toward Tierra del Fuego (roughly in what is today Argentina). The land mass to the north shown – as is the land labelled “America” – as completely surrounded by water.2 Ringmann/“Philesius” enters the cere

mony of naming as (if ) a poet (Herbermann 32, 82). The sun is the metaphor for the Cosmographiæ Introductio’s dedicatory poem to the king, Maximilian Caesar Augustus, the “golden head” whose light makes the golden land. The dedicatory poem to the reader that sets up the “Four Voyages” of Vespucci evokes the rivers and lakes of the moon in the old world, the hot winds that blow across Asia to the lands unknown to Ptolemy under the sun, “inhabited by a race of naked men,” a poem full of suggestive sexual hints, concluding with the charge to the reader to peruse Vespucci’s “Four Voyages” “with all sincerity and do not imitate the Rhinoceros.”3 Harold Jantz argues from these poems that “America” (the word) was initially a pun of origin in which Americus (Latin) or Amerigo (Italian) as Vespucci’s first name and Amerige (masculine) or America (feminine) associates these word forms with the “dazzling land”, the “ever-young, ever-fair land”, “a place one longs to reach”, and, thence, by easy association, to “the ‘new world’” and “the ‘golden continent’” (98-99).

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It was not, then, merely that Waldseemüller and Ringmann named the continent after Vespucci, but that they enjoyed the triple word play of person, place, and association – and

Rosemarie Bank Recurrence, Duration, and Ceremonies of Naming

also, according to Jantz (98), something of a “dirty joke” in that “America” (feminine) recalls “the divine indecency that accompanied the naming of Europe/Europa,”4 the sort of snicker that appealed to male Renaissance humanists. Further, the joke is mindful that the sound “America” occurs in many indigenous place names in both America meridionalis and America septentrionalis, names that were given in Waldseemüller’s and Ringmann’s sources. Though Waldseemüller later withdrew his support of Vespucci as the discoverer of the New World lands, the Cosmographiæ was a run-away success and the name at once adopted, thus, by 1538, when Gerhardt Mercator published his map of the world, the doubled continent was fixed as “America” (29-30). I have detailed aspects of the ceremony of naming America to set up the recurrent redistribution of the word-idea “America” in five constructions (“America” will morph into “Americanize” in one instance and “American” in another) in the course of the history of America (chiefly U.S.). Recurrent redistribution is a measure of accretion in Foucault’s

4 Jantz’s “free translation” can be compared to the translation in the Hebermann edition at p. 70, and in the Latin at p. xxx. For Mercator and the promulgation of ‘America’ on maps, see Cosmographiæ, pp. 29-30. 5 The “multiple sites” idea reflects Michel Foucault’s discussion of heterotopias in “Of Other Spaces”. For the phenomena of discontinuity, see Foucault’s The Archaeology of Knowledge.

elucidation of the phenomena of discontinuity (the other phenomena are epistemological acts and thresholds, displacement and transformation, microscopic and macroscopic scales, and architectonic unities) (Archaeology of Knowledge 4-5). Each (or each pair) of Foucault’s phenomena allows a historian to measure a different aspect of an historical site (in the order the phenomena are named above, those aspects are: shifts, utilisation, ordering, and cohesion). In this practice of historiography, multiple, often contesting, historical sites can be described as juxtaposed “in a single real place” (Foucault “Of Other Spaces” 25). I would like to examine these five constructions of “America” (Waldseemüller’s/Ringmann’s is the first of them) with an eye to the legacy of those namings. Historiographically, I am interested in how material and analytical strategies adopted from fields other than theatre change as they enter a branch of cultural studies and what light this may shed on the idea that significance in (theatre) historical writing accrues in duration.5

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The first construction, not inappropriately for a map, looks to

the four points of the compass: east to west, it’s old world and new; north to south, it’s the unknown (or barely known) and unclaimed America septentrionalis and the known and claimed America meridionalis. What followed from the locating of these lands in space was a locating of them in time, signalled on the title page of the Cosmographiæ Introductio by the comparison of “the world known to Ptolemy” to “the lands recently discovered.” Locating the lands in time as well as space was characterised by such cultural encounters as those signalled by the exhibition at Seville, Vallodolid, and at Brussels (where Dürer saw it in 1520) as part of the Montezuma treasure Cortés sent to Emperor Charles V of Spain, the publication of Cortés’s map of the capital city of Mexico in 1524, the first American city map to be published anywhere, and by the many maps and engravings that developments in printing, in astronomical/horological/navigational instruments and in cartography 6 A leading consideration of the engravings of the de Bry family is Bernadette Bucher’s Icon and Conquest: A Structural Analysis of the Illustrations of de Bry's Great Voyages.

made possible (for example, the de Bry family’s 6 engravings of the paintings of Amerindians in Florida by Jacques Le Moyne du Morgues and of John White’s 1584 drawings of Amerindians in what

was by then Virginia) (Jantz 91, 96; Bank, Meditations 30-69; Thrower 659-674; Quinn 635-658). The mapping of lands and their contents produces (views of ) a history, a form of comparative geography that expresses itself as an iconography, then as a scenario – first as space, then as space plus time. This ‘space-time’ is quickly embodied and becomes performative, as in the trouping of Amerindians, captive or free, to European courts and cities (beginning with Columbus’s captives and the two hundred Amerindians transported to Spain and sold there by Vespucci). These anthropological displays involve cultural performances, the markers of which are quickly absorbed into indigenous European forms, such as: the spectacles marking royal progresses (for example, the Brazilian village that was constructed and the battle among Amerindians staged at Rouen in 1550, as part of the imperial tour of Henri II and Catherine de Medici); or the show costumes, derived from the life or from depictions of Amerindians on maps and in engravings, designed for ballets and court spectacles assimilating Amerindian icons (for example, the Duc de Guise parading in 1662 dressed as an Amerindian king or a Filippo d’Aglié drawing of “Amerindians” for the ballet Tobacco). In a comparatively short time – a bit more than a hundred years from

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Waldseemüller’s 1507 Cosmographiæ to Shakespeare’s Tempest (1611) and less than 150 years to Heinrich Heinrich’s dramatised America Ferdinandina (1652) – indigenous forms play back the

Rosemarie Bank Recurrence, Duration, and Ceremonies of Naming

cultural performances of a now assimilated iconography of New World lands and peoples, the “America” constructed from the mis-naming of a space (see Bank, Meditations and Hirsch). The second construction is signed by the plangent (and oft repeated) phrase, In the beginning, all the world was America. John Locke (1690)

While Locke’s Edenic America retains the sense of wonder of Waldseemüller’s and Ringmann’s dazzling, new, and golden land, it offers another construction, the longed-for place reached, the America of empire. The construction of political science rather than geography, the “America” John Locke depicts in his 1690 Treatises of Government looks backward to justify the English revolt of 1688. Locke writes to confute the doctrine of absolute monarchy and anticipate a government by contract, a doctrine that has a long and deeply ironic history in an America then already fractured by colonial investiture. These divisions were intensified by the Protestant revolutions that tore Europe apart in the 16th century and tinted accounts of Spanish colonial rule, while giving U.S. colonial history, in the end, its characteristic Anglophone slant (Carpenter, v, x-xv).7 The colonial investiture of the Americas by Europeans reflected their civil and

7 This is especially apparent in the second essay or treatise. 8 Conquest and settlement reflected old habits of disposition (e.g., by the papacy, in assigning territories to Spain and Portugal), yet there was also a fluidity in European governments, which farmed-out tax collection, military recruitment, navies, and the management of colonies to private enterprises or entrepreneurs prior to the 18th century because it was not until then that the Atlantic trade was important enough to the other countries of Europe to recommend the state control Spain had exercised from the first. For discussions of some of the political divisions of the New World by the Old and attempts to take or hold claimed lands, see Weckmann-Muñoz, Batllori, Carter, Symcox. 9 For Las Casas, see his own The Devastation of the Indies: A Brief Account. For works about him, see (among very many) Wagner and Parish, Friede and Keen, Hanke.

religious politics.8 Travel-derived images had, by Locke’s day, exerted influence in these spheres for almost two hundred years. The de Bry family of engravers, for example, had published and illustrated versions of Bartolomé de las Casas 1552 Brief Relations – in Latin in 1598 and German in 1599 – two of many versions of Las Casas cri de coeur regarding atrocities against Indians he had witnessed as a priest in Spain’s new world colonies.9 The travel narratives of English, French, and Dutch explor-

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ers added to the accounts of Spanish and Portuguese explorers,

priests, and conquistadors, and to those of the Italians who had sailed for Spain. John Locke’s “America” echoes Las Casas’s notion of human rights at the same time that it looks to an idea of “unsettled land as open land” which simultaneously empties populated lands of their indigenous inhabitants (Carter 252).10 For historian José Rabasa, the exchange was productive of Eurocentrism – the east/west, old/new divide – at the same time America defined itself differently – the meridionalis/septentrionalis divide, but also paradise redefined as a site of material exchange – if you like, as a city rather than a garden (191). This was Locke’s view which, like a map, reorganises various semiotic systems, “geography as description constituted by writing and history.”11 By 1690, almost two hundred years on from the early encounters of Columbus and other Europeans, how America was thought had 10 Europeans recognised “no peace beyond the line,” that is, that treaties between European powers did not apply outside Europe and European waters. 11 Concerning geography constituted by writing also see Rabasa. 12 For Las Casas’s contemporaries, see the introduction to his The Devastation of the Indies.

changed – not only in Las Casas’s view, but in the views of his contemporaries Thomas More, Machiavelli, Rabelais, Giovanni Botero, and Montaigne, their kings, priests, and ambitions.12 Not surprisingly, the contract construction of America foregrounds the word

and takes in many performances of language – Lope de Vega’s and Cervantes’s constructions of the “indiano” and “indiana” and of immigration to “the Indies”, Dryden and Howard’s The Indian Queen (1663/4), and Behn’s novel Oronooko (1688) name a few constructions on the colonisers’ parts. The empire also writes back in the works of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (c. 1687) and Garcilaso de la Vega, or performs back, as when Juan de Oñate’s party stages Los moros y los cristianos in 1598 in present day New Mexico, or when autos sacramentales and pastorales are performed along the mission trail or in Florida in 1567, or when French explorer Marc Lescarbot produces a masque in what is now Nova Scotia in 1606, or Corneille is performed in Quebec (1640-1652), or when William Darby and his pals write and perform Ye Beare and ye Cubbe in Virginia in 1665. Above all, the empire writes back in the performances of indigenous peoples, which have revised Barnard Hewitt’s 1959 assertion that “early examples of theatre in Spanish and French had no more to do with the development of American theatre than did the ceremonies and dances of the Algonquins or the Iroquois” (1). That ‘writ-

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ing back’ gives wonderful poignancy (and added irony) to Stephen Greenblatt’s construction of the language contract as “learning to curse” (561-580).13

Rosemarie Bank Recurrence, Duration, and Ceremonies of Naming

John Locke’s second of the Treatises of Government posits that humans have, by nature, both reason and rights. Civil society is instituted to remedy what the natural state cannot and to enforce “the law of reason,” antecedent to any government that might be formed, which guarantees life, liberty, and the ownership of what a man “hath mixed his labour with.” In Locke’s scheme, people divest themselves of rights in setting up a government and transfer those rights to a legislature. As one Locke scholar has observed, Locke’s “theory proved admirably suited to the politics of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,” providing America (U.S.) not only with “the basic ideas put forward in justification of the Revolution,” but also with “a formula by which written constitutions could be worked out.” (Carpenter xv) In that working out, the U.S. Constitution cemented that “the people” of whom Locke speaks are white men, whom Locke contrasts in civil standing to women, slaves, and “Americans”. Not without irony, then, does one see that the phrase of Locke’s that casts America in Edenic terms occurs in the context of a discussion of property which contrasts the natural state (having what one needs) to the creation of government to regulate wealth (having more than one

13 For literary uses of Americans, see Marichal, Borah. For performances in what is now the United States, see Hewitt (as recently as a meeting of the Mid-America Theatre Conference in 2004, a fellow panelist reminded me, in no uncertain terms, of the truth of Hewitt’s assertion), Greenblatt. 14 See the introduction to Two Treatises, (v and xv), and Book II, where the Edenic phrase occurs (141). On Indians and the Revolutionary era, see Deloria (10-37). For the “savage/sauvage” distinction (and a rich discussion of travel narratives), see Sayre. For the impact of Locke’s ideas in social theory, see Patterson (14).

needs). It is, moreover, in the climate of British governmental power leading up to and following from Blackstone’s 1765 declaration of the omnipotence of Parliament, that the word “American” comes to be applied to Locke’s white men, to suggest that they are “savage” (barbarous) or “sauvage” (wild) for protesting “the rule of law,” a trope happily assumed by those “Americans” who, in 1773, dressed as Indians and dumped tea into Boston Harbor.14 The third construction I want to consider in this paper is: I wish to see our people more Americanized, if I may use that expression, until we feel and act as an independent nation. John Jay (1797)

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John Jay (1745-1829) was an American statesman, President of the

Continental Congress, an author of the Federalist papers and of the U.S. Constitution, the first President of the New York Society for Promoting the Manumission of Slaves (1785), governor of New York, U.S. Secretary of Foreign Affairs, and the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court (1789-1795). Jay, a bona fide “founding father” of the American Republic, takes “America” as a given of language, naming a constituted nation independent of European nations. In coining (as far as the OED knows) the word “Americanized”, Jay looks neither to geography nor political science for his sense of America, but to a view of physiology, which allows Jay to assign distinct characteristics to the feelings and actions of “our people.” Who were “our people” and what did it mean to feel and act “Americanized”? In moving through feeling to deed, Jay’s construction foregrounds the America of which he was a part, the mapped, contracted America – unfinished, to be sure – writing an internal scenario as independent 15 For the details of Jay’s life and times, see Monaghan.

as possible from entangling foreign alliances. Even before he died in 1829, Jay’s ordered, rational nation was changing

the interpretation of an “Americanized” people and expanding the reach of “our” – the Louisiana Purchase, the treaties with and removals of Indian peoples, Hispanic peoples, French peoples, British peoples, in hand with the open immigration and in-migration that marks the first half of the 19th century.15 John Jay’s call for an “Americanized” people relies upon a view of nature before (the invention of the concept of ) biology. The 18th-century physiology Jay inherited privileges the senses as a way of understanding the world, and action as characteristic of the way the universe worked and manifested itself. At the “people” scale, human imagination moves the spirits and muscles to conform to an image or idea in a way that is of particular interest to 18th-century theories of acting in the theatre and to theories of picturisation in art. In this context, to “feel” Americanized meant to understand what it meant to be American, both as an individual and as a collective member of the modèle idéal, a model both ideal (in the sense of being an improvement upon nature) and a model for an action taken in time and space (following from the 18th-century view that the physiological machine has vital properties of motion and consciousness) (Roach 125, 127). Jay’s is a call to the discourse of civilisation, to the establishment of an advanced state of human society, in which a high level of art, science, religion, and government has

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been reached. To be “Americanized”, then, is to be, distinctly, civilised. It is not surprising, therefore, that the first half of the 19th century in the United States is marked as the period

Rosemarie Bank Recurrence, Duration, and Ceremonies of Naming

of national cultural formation, manifested in the creation of the American “type” plays (for example, the staged Yankee, the staged frontiersman, the staged Indian, and the Bowery “b’hoy” and “ghal”). These decades also saw the creation of Tammany (Indian) societies, national festivals (Independence Day, Removal Day), museums and ethnographic performances, and a host of other ‘national’ entertainments. “Americanized” speaks to the diversity of “our”, as it does to racialism and racism – the map, the contract, the independent, the garden, the city, the nation, all in play together.16 The fourth construct works on all this with a wilful amnesia. America is the country of the future. […]It has no past. Ralph Waldo Emerson (1844)

Ways of knowing America septentrionalis had developed from comparisons – Ptolemy’s world and Vespucci’s, known and unknown, old and new, north and south worlds, east and west worlds, claimed and unclaimed lands,

16 Joseph Roach makes a particular study of these matters in The Player’s Passion. The writings of Aaron Hill, Lessing, and Diderot are particularly integral to this discourse, and see also both the excerpts from 18th-century writings about acting in Actors on Acting, Cole and Chinoy, and Shearer West’s The Image of the Actor, which opens the discourse into picturisation in art. I discuss national cultural formation in Theatre Culture in America.

the garden and the city, absolute monarchs and government by contract, “Americanized” and “otherized”. Emerson’s construct suggests a way of knowing America that beggars comparison – self-referential, self-contained, a-historical, and unknown – an idea which got a second wind in the notion of a created history, a history now written (in America’s wars, institutions, material achievements, and cultural expressions) and writing itself into an uncharted future. This history marks a shift from a physiological to a biological discourse, from constructs of civilisation to constructs of culture, signalled by the debate over a single human origin versus multiple ones, which flourished in the United States during the American Civil War (1861-1865); indeed, 1864 was the year anthropologist Frederic Ward Putnam (later director of the Peabody and Harvard museums and of the Anthropology Department at the Columbian Exposition) and his post-doctoral fellows left Harvard over Louis Agassiz’s opposition to evolution by natural selection. Putnam and his peers charted the course of sci-

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ence away from “different race” views, not as biologists, but as anthropologists.17

The study of Indians was key to their estab-

lishment of an “American” anthropology, indeed, the Civil War made the equation of race with civilisation harder to maintain because Union and Confederate each had the “arts of civilization” and Christianity, yet were capable of “savage” behaviour.18 If Indians and whites shared a common origin and, thus, a common capacity for civilisation, the differences between them could be attributed to differences in culture. Though the Civil War offered a moment for the United States government to rethink its race policies, the “Indian system” makes clear why that did not then occur, and why land remained central to the way U.S. administrations dealt with indigenous peoples. That system reflects the four constructs we have discussed and offers a defining case as to how the colonising discourse of culture would ultimately displace the colonising discourse of civilisation. 17 For Putnam and Agassiz, see Mark (8, 12-13 (note 19), 16).

As “the country of the future,” the practi-

18 Linda Frost takes up southerners as savages (99).

from “civilisation” to “culture” moved

19 For the “Indian system,” see, among others, Nichols. I have written about the shift from discourses of civilisation to discourses of culture in the book and article cited above and in “Representing History”.

ethnocide. The cultural performances

cal consequences of the discursive shift “the Indian problem” from genocide to of national history in the United States that resulted from this were, however, past oriented – backward-looking and nostalgic, varying in subject matter (as

in Davy Crockett (1872-73), My Partner (1879), and Forty-Nine (1881), to name a few frontier plays with a backward glance), but in the notion of a culture forged in the past (The Great Divide (1906) is an example of this, as are wild west shows), thus the most modern of long 19th-century plays (The Great Divide) could relate its up-to-date present to a (cultural) past.19 Some costs of that history can be considered through the last construct of “America” considered here: Movement has been [the] dominant fact [of American life], and [...] American energy will continually demand a wider field for its exercize. Frederick Jackson Turner (1893)

The American historian/historian of America Frederick Jackson Turner picks up Emerson’s future-directed theme and gives

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it the spin of history, a construction fully displayed in the 1890s in the archiving of culture in museums, at world fairs, and in the wild west show, no less than in books or scholarly papers

Rosemarie Bank Recurrence, Duration, and Ceremonies of Naming

assessing the significance of the frontier in American history. I have discussed Turner at some length elsewhere, but it will be useful to repeat a few points here, to make clear what kind of historical construction was at work in his view of history, with respect to “America” and the ideas about it that Turner is redistributing.20 The context for Turner’s paper was a “Congress” of the American Historical Association, one of many “congresses” (of folklorists, linguists, etc.) attached to the Columbian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago, designed to highlight the roles scholars, scientists, professional societies, officials, and U.S. government agencies had played in the progress of America. These groups were often indistinguishable from each other in those days, when scholarly organisations exerted strong influence upon government policy, and perform-

20 For Turner, see “The Significance of the Frontier in American History.”

ers were, in turn, a part of scholarly presentations, as when Captain H.L. Scott (of the Seventh U.S. Cavalry) illustrated his paper about Indian sign language for the World Congress of Folklore with the help of William F. Cody and four show Indians from Buffalo Bill’s Wild West. Turner’s paper, lacking the support of show Indians, used language dependent upon accessible images about them, their land, and the impact of both upon the Old World immigrant: The wilderness masters the colonist. It finds him a European in dress, industries, tools, modes of travel, and thought. It takes him from the railroad car and puts him in the birch canoe. It strips off the garments of civilization and arrays him in the hunting shirt and moccasin. It puts him in the log cabin of the Cherokee and Iroquois and runs an Indian palisade around him. Before long he has gone to planting Indian corn and plowing with a sharp stick; he shouts the war cry and takes the scalp in orthodox Indian fashion. In short, at the frontier the environment is at first too strong for the man. (201)

Turner envisioned this frontier as a grid of lines marching from east to west, from primitive to civilised, undeveloped to developed. “It begins,” he writes, “with the Indian and the hunter; it goes on to tell of the disintegration of savagery by the entrance of the trader, the pathfinder of civilization.” (207) From there

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to ranches, farms, manufacturing, and cities, Turner’s frontier marches in file to fill in an imagined empty

space.21

Turner’s trope of American history as the march of civilisation and his view concerning the impact the presence of a (just vanished) frontier had had upon the formation of the United States was widely accepted by Americans after 1893. In foregrounding the relentless “demand [for] a wider field” for American movement, Turner’s frontier thesis offered to write a last act for the play of the word “America” in which progress was king and the evolution from savagery to civilisation through trade, from wilderness to city through development, had been accomplished. In this view, the land itself was the determiner of American history, the “closing” of the frontier the marker of a journey completed, the fulfillment of what Perry Miller, following on from Turner, called “the errand into the wilderness.” Though Turner was a thorough determinist in thinking the frontier an environment 21 For the Indian signers, see Wheeler Bassett and Starr (14), and see Scott (206-220). See also White (7-65).

destined to give way to development and a thoroughgoing progressive in thinking the movement away from the primitive toward the industrialised an improve-

ment (and the capitalist the new Vespucci), there is an inescapable longing for the dazzling, young, fair, golden new world he perceived as, in that moment, gone beyond recall. Leslie Marmon Silko speaks poignantly of namings in her 1977 novel Ceremony, saying, At one time, the ceremonies as they had been performed were enough for the way the world was then. But after the white people came, [...] it became necessary to create new ceremonies [...] only this growth keeps the ceremonies strong. (126)

Recurrent redistribution is a way to measure how the ceremony of naming America has changed. In charting geographical, political science, physiological, bio-anthropological, and historical distributions, I don’t intend to suggest an order, but to register occurrences. There are geographical aspects to Turner’s thesis, anthropological readings in Waldseemüller’s Cosmographiæ, political science in Jay, physiology in Locke – indeed, I chose a measure of accretion because it seemed to me to get to the rituals of prescription, observation, and formality that characterise namings in history. What does what we call something mean? Why do we call it that? In terms of what do we name it? – these and other ques-

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tions follow on from uncovering recurrent redistributions (they are some of the questions the other phenomena of discontinuity ask and the functions they measure at historic sites).

Rosemarie Bank Recurrence, Duration, and Ceremonies of Naming

The constructions I’ve chosen allow me to speak to analytical strategies adopted from fields other than theatre, here geographical naming, political science naming, physiology naming, bio-anthropological naming, and history naming. I write these “fields” as “namings” because I do not think, at the level of theatre historiography that we do adopt analytical strategies from other fields. Currently, some American theatre scholars are exploring cognitive science (chiefly psychology) as a way to talk about what audiences perceive. In another time, I looked at quantum relativity as a way of naming the operations of historical spaces. The historiography – the arrangement of the historical record – is what results from the naming, wherever the names themselves originate. I do not think we become cognitive scientists or physicists when we explore their namings, nor do I think we think we do. Rather than judging theatre scholars (and their scholarship) on the ground of how good scientists or physiologists or anthropologists or geographers or historical theorists they are, we need to address whether significance in historical writing accrues in the duration of their ceremonies of naming. Rather than flogging causal explanations or encompassing narratives as the goal of all history writing worthy of the name, ceremonies of namings focus us toward such questions as why causal explanations are sought at all, why historical narratives appeal in certain eras, or to what they appeal. Science once held many things since discarded, as did geography, political science, physiology, bio-anthropology, and history writing. Duration is a measure of the ideas that have abided in each field over time. What I propose in this is the recollection of the history of historiography in historical writing, to expose the ways of thinking that emerge from our historical projects and expose the ways of and the tensions among arrangements of the record. This, I think, is what we have to talk about.

Bibliography Bank, Rosemarie K. Theatre Culture in America, 1825-1860. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997. –––. “Meditations upon Opening and Crossing Over.” Of Borders and Thresholds: Theatre History, Practice, and Theory. Ed. Michal Kobialka. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999. 30-69.

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Bank, Rosemarie K. “Representing History: Performing the Columbian Exposition.” Theatre Journal 54.4 (December 2002): 589-606. Batllori, Miguel. “The Papel Division of the World and Its Consequences.” First Images of America: The Impact of the New World on the Old, Vol. I. Ed. Fredi Chiappelli. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976. 211-220. Borah, Woodrow. “The Mixing of Populations.” First Images of America: The Impact of the New World on the Old, Vol. II. Ed. Fredi Chiappelli. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976. 707-722. Bucher, Bernadette. Icon and Conquest: A Structural Analysis of the Illustrations of de Bry’s ‘Great Voyages’. Trans. B. Miller Gulati. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981. Carpenter, William S. “Introduction.” Two Treatises of Government. John Locke. (rpt. 1924) London: J.M. Dent and Sons, 1988. Carter, Charles H. “The New World As A Factor in International Relations, 1492-1739.” First Images of America: The Impact of the New World on the Old, Vol. I. Ed. Fredi Chiappelli. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976. 231-263. Casas, Bartolomé de las. The Devastation of the Indies: A Brief Account. Trans. Herma Briffault. New York: Seabury Press, 1974. Cole, Toby, and Helen Krich Chinoy, eds. Actors on Acting. New York: Crown, 1965. Deloria, Philip J. Playing Indian. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998. Foucault, Michel. “Of Other Spaces.” Diacritics 16.1 (Spring 1986): 22-27 –––. The Archaeology of Knowledge and The Discourse on Language. New York: Pantheon Books, 1972. Friede, Juan, and Benjamin Keen, eds. Bartolomé de Las Casas on History: Toward an Understanding of the Man and His Work. DeKalb, IL.: Northern Illinois University Press, 1971. Frost, Linda. “‘Living Curiosities’ and ‘The Wonder of America’: the Primitive, the Freakish, and the Construction of National Identities in Civil War America.” Journal X 1.1 (Autumn 1996): 85-111. Greenblatt, Stephen. “Learning to Curse: Aspects of Linguistic Colonialism in the Sixteenth Century.” First Images of America: The Impact of the New World on the Old, Vol. II. Ed. Fredi Chiappelli. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976. 561-580. Hanke, Lewis. Aristotle and the American Indians. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1959. Herbermann, Charles G., et al., eds. Cosmographiæ Introductio of Martin Waldseemüller in Facsimile, Followed by the Four Voyages of Amerigo Vespucci, with their translation into English, to which are added Waldseemüller’s Two World Maps of 1507. New York: U.S. Catholic Historical Society, 1907. Hewitt, Barnard. Theatre U.S.A., 1665 to 1957. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1959. Hirsch, Rudolf. “Printed Reports on the Early Discoveries and Their Reception.” First Images of America: The Impact of the New World on the Old, Vol. II. Ed. Fredi Chiappelli. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976. 537-562. Jantz, Harold. “Images of America in the German Renaissance.” First Images of America: The Impact of the New World on the Old, Vol. I. Ed. Fredi Chiappelli. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976. 91-106. Locke, John. Two Treatises of Government. (rpt. 1924) London: J.M. Dent and Sons, 1988. Marichal, Juan. “The New World from Within: The Inca Garcilaso.” First Images of America: The Impact of the New World on the Old, Vol. I. Ed. Fredi Chiappelli. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976. 57-61. Mark, Joan. Four Anthropologists: An American Science in Its Early Years. New York: Science History Publications, 1980. Miller, Perry. Errand into the Wilderness. Cambridge, MA.: Belknap Press of Harvard University, 1956. Monaghan, Frank. John Jay, Defender of Liberty Against Kings and Peoples. New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1935. Nichols, David A. Lincoln and the Indians: Civil War, Policy, and Politics. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1978. Patterson, Thomas C. A Social History of Anthropology in the United States. Oxford: Berg, 2001.

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Quinn, David B. “New Geographical Horizons: Literature.” First Images of America: The Impact of the New World on the Old, Vol. II. Ed. Fredi Chiappelli. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976. 635-658. Rabasa, José. Inventing America: Spanish Historiography and the Formation of Eurocentrism. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1993. Roach, Joseph. The Player’s Passion: Studies in the Science of Acting. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1985. Sayre, Goron M. Les Sauvages Américains: Representations of Native Americans in French and English Colonial Literature. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997. Scott, Hugh L. “The Sign Language of the Plains Indian.” The International Folk-Lore Congress of the World's Columbian Exhibition, Chicago, July, 1893, Vol. 1: Archives of the International Folk-Lore Association. Eds. Helen Wheeler Bassett and Frederick Starr. Chicago: Charles H. Sergel, Co., 1898. 206-220. Silko, Leslie Marmon. Ceremony. New York: Viking Penguin, 1977. Symcox, Geoffrey W. “The Battle of the Atlantic, 1500-1700.” First Images of America: The Impact of the New World on the Old, Vol. I. Ed. Fredi Chiappelli. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976. 265-284. Thrower, Norman J.W. “New Geographical Horizons: Maps.” First Images of America: The Impact of the New World on the Old, Vol. II. Ed. Fredi Chiappelli. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976. 659-674. Turner, Frederick J. “The Significance of the Frontier in American History,” facsimile of the Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1893 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1894), March of America Facsimile Series #100. Ann Arbor: University Microfilms, 1966. 199-227. Wagner, Henry R., and Helen R. Parish. The Life and Writings of Bartolomé de las Casas. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1967. Weckmann-Muñoz, Luis. “The Alexandrine Bulls of 1493: PseudoAsiatic Documents.” First Images of America: The Impact of the New World on the Old, Vol. I. Ed. Fredi Chiappelli. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976. 201-209. West, Shearer. The Image of the Actor: Verbal and Visual Representation in the Age of Garrick and Kemble. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1991. Wheeler Bassett, Helen, and Frederick Starr. The International Folk-Lore Congress of the World’s Columbian Exhibition, Chicago, July, 1893, Vol. 1: Archives of the International Folk-Lore Association. Chicago: Charles H. Sergel, Co., 1898. White, Richard. “Frederick Jackson Turner and Buffalo Bill.” The Frontier in American Culture: An Exhibition at the Newberry Library, August 26, 1994 — January 7, 1995. Ed. James R. Grossman. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994. 7-65.

Rosemarie Bank Recurrence, Duration, and Ceremonies of Naming

Rosemarie Bank is Professor of Theatre and Coordinator of Graduate Studies at Kent State University. She has published in Theatre Journal, Nineteenth-Century Theatre, Theatre History Studies, Theatre Research International, Modern Drama, Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, Women in American Theatre, Critical Theory and Performance, Interrogating America through Theatre and Performance, Of Borders and Thresholds and elsewhere. She is the author of Theatre Culture in America, 1825-1860 (Cambridge U. P., 1997) and is currently preparing Staging the Native, 1792-1892. From 2000 to 2003 she was Editor of Theatre Survey. rbank@kent.edu

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Recurrence, Duration, and Ceremonies of Naming

KEYWORDS: recurrent redistributions of the word “America”, cultural studies, cultural mapping, spatial naming This essay examines five constructs of the word “America” between 1507 and 1893 which allow me to speak to analytical strategies adopted from fields other than theatre, here geographical naming, political science naming, physiology naming, bioanthropological naming, and history naming. I do not think, at the level of theatre historiography, that we truly adopt analytical strategies from other fields (or think we are geographers, physical scientists, etc.), rather, I think that historiography – the arrangement of the historical record – is what results from the naming, wherever the names themselves originate. If we address whether significance in historical writing accrues in the duration of such ceremonies of naming, the duration of the ideas that have abided in each field over time, we recollect the history of historiography in historical writing; we expose the ways of thinking that emerge from our historical projects and expose the tensions among arrangements of the record.

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Ponovno pojavljanje, trajanje in obredi poimenovanja

Rosemarie Bank Recurrence, Duration, and Ceremonies of Naming

KLJUČNE BESEDE: konstrukt besede “Amerika”, kulturne študije, kulturni zemljevidi, prostorsko poimenovanje V članku obravnavam pet konstruktov besede “Amerika” med letoma 1507 in 1893, kar mi omogoča razpravo o rabi analitičnih strategij, ki prihajajo s področij, različnih od gledališkega, v tem primeru geografskega, politološkega, fiziološkega, bio-antropološkega in zgodovinskega poimenovanja. Menim, da si na ravni gledališkega zgodovinopisja v resnici ne prisvajamo analitičnih strategij z drugih področij (oziroma ne mislimo, da smo geografi, znanstveniki s področja naravoslovja itd.); zgodovinopisje – razvrščanje zgodovinskega zapisa – je predvsem posledica poimenovanja, ne glede na izvor samih imen. Če se vprašamo, ali pomen v zgodovinskem pisanju izhaja iz trajanja takšnih obredov poimenovanja, trajanja idej, ki so se na posameznem področju ohranile skozi čas, se zavemo zgodovine zgodovinopisja v zgodovinskih zapisih, izpostavljanja načinov razmišljanja, ki nastajajo iz naših zgodovinskih projektov in prikazujejo napetosti med načini razvrščanja zapisa.

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PAPERS

Out of Control? Theatre in the Grip of the Economic and Political Crisis

Barbara Sušec Michieli UDK 792(497.4)“1980/2005” 316.663:792

Dynamics of social crisis In general terms, a crisis can be defined as a period of watershed events and collective stress, when the usual patterns of everyday life are abolished, while the fundamental values and structures of the social system become jeopardised. During such crisis or transition periods, people’s actions become less governed by social institutions, and the “free will factor” prevails over the “structural determinism” on which rests the “normal” functioning of the system (Wallerstein 64, 82, 88). A social crisis may be triggered and governed by a variety of internal and external factors, but in most cases an intricate combination of both is involved. The consequence of the crisis is usually either a split within the system, or its transformation. The Yugoslav crisis of the 1980s came as a surprise to many, since until the end of the 1970s the country had been strongly convinced that “self-management socialism” and “non-alignment politics” secured a third way between real-socialism and capitalism. In 1948, Yugoslavia cut the “umbilical cord” that tied it to the Soviet Union and turned to the West politically, economically and culturally, a shift earning it a special liminal position between the Eastern and Western blocs;

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KEYWORDS

social crisis and art, Slovenian theatre, theatre and the state, cultural policy, the economics of the theatre, 20th century 3/2/09 4:58 PM

the repression exerted by the communist Yugoslav government and ideological control were much weaker than in other communist countries, while social bonuses were greater than in Western countries. The Yugoslav crisis, which in some regions is not yet

Barbara Sušec Michieli Out of Control? Theatre in the Grip of the Economic and Political Crisis

over, had two stages: first, the state and its economic-political system disintegrated, followed by the establishment of social structures in new countries. The boundary separating the two stages is not easy to establish, since the unfolding of the crisis varied from one part of Yugoslavia to another. In addition, the disintegration process coincided in part with the establishment of new social structures. Roughly speaking, the event that separated the two stages in Slovenia was the declaration of independence in 1991, an event that brought the Yugoslav political crisis to a head and sparked a short war, the first in the series of bloody wars that raged on the territory of former Yugoslavia. The first stage was characterised by the diminishing power of state institutions, on the one hand, and heightened activity on the part of individuals, youth and civil movements, on the other. The reasons for dissatisfaction among people were varied and ranged from everyday concerns, for example, the inconveniences caused by an insufficient supply of cooking oil or washing powder, to wider issues such as educational reform and constitutional restrictions on freedom of speech. In 1989, the inflation rate reached 2700 % (Fischer et al. 1297). Various issues – the inefficient economy offering no prospects for the younger generation, experiments in self-management, political tensions between the northern and southern parts of the country, constitutional crisis and Kosovo violence – spawned alternative forms of political and cultural activity. The weakening of state structures during the first crisis period was closely related to the inertia of the government and its desire to maintain the status quo. In the second half of the ’80s, the Communist League of Slovenia established links with alternative movements and became actively involved in the process of political democratisation. This reinforced the country’s stability during the period of gaining independence and ensured continuity during the transition period. The 1990s brought Slovenia intense transformations as social and political structures were remodelled after those in EU countries. Although it was economically the most developed Yugoslav republic, an economic crisis was unavoidable. The introduction of the market economy increased social differences and brought greater unemployment. The subjective feeling of uncertainty and the fear of losing one’s

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livelihood were also stronger than in the ’80s. During the early

’90s, earning a livelihood was a much more precarious task than it had been in the ’80s (Fischer et al. 1217). Piecemeal economic stabilisation followed only during the late ’90s, while the final resolution of the crisis came much later, in 2004, with Slovenia’s accession to the EU also a contributing factor. Inevitably culture was one area seriously affected by the crisis and changes. Although all post-communist countries were similarly affected by global transition processes, the case of Slovenia – which will be analysed in this article – is unique in several ways: 1) Ever since the 1950s, Yugoslavia had been politically and culturally open towards the Western countries; 2) The Soviet Union had no significant influence on Yugoslavia after the conflict with the Soviet Informbiro in 1948; 3) In Yugoslavia, culture was not federally regulated, and it developed autonomously within constituent republics, because of language 1 Attendance in 1947 was 450,000; attendance in 1991/92 was 322,000. The figures include professional drama, opera and ballet theatres, excluding youth, puppet and amateur theatres and performances produced by independent groups and cultural centres.

differences, among other factors; 4) In Slovenia, the political transition was carried out with the assistance of the communist party, which slowed down the transition process but maintained continuity; 5) The country’s small geographic size, two million population and

the traditional role of culture (that is, the nation-formative role) significantly influenced the shaping and operation of the cultural system in sovereign Slovenia.

The influence of economic recession on cultural institutions The Yugoslav crisis of the 1980s seriously affected the operation of cultural institutions. An overview of cultural indicators in Slovenia for the period 1985-2000 shows that during the years of the worst economic instability (1989-1992), attendance figures for professional theatres reached the lowest point since 1947 (Statistical Yearbook of RS 2007: Table 8.1). The number of performances, full-length movies and new books also decreased.1 What caused such changes in the operation of the cultural system? Longitudinal studies by American researchers showed that an economic crisis in itself has only a weak impact on theatre attendance (Baumol, Bowen 241-243, 291-302, 478-488; Frey,

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Pommerehne 24). However, it seems that such findings are typical of environments where theatres are primarily market-oriented. In countries where theatres are part of the “public sector”, the economic crisis manifests itself differently.

Barbara Sušec Michieli Out of Control? Theatre in the Grip of the Economic and Political Crisis

The major component of the Slovene theatrical system in the 1980s consisted of theatres with stable infrastructure and regular employees. The institutional theatre network comprised eight professional drama, opera and ballet theatres, a youth theatre, two puppet theatres and a production company.2 In addition, there were around 200 amateur theatre groups.3 While the oldest theatre institutions dated from the late 19th century, most professional theatres were founded after WWI and WWII. During the early years of the socialist regime, the professional and amateur (or semi-professional) theatrical systems were closely connected because the state pursued the ideal of “people’s culture”; towards the end of the 1950s the two separated. The official status of professional theatre was at that time accorded only to larger theatres with adequate infrastructure. After this reform, the institutional theatrical system changed relatively slowly. From the mid-1950s, a breath of fresh air was provided primarily by “independent” experimental groups. Since Slovenia was a socialist welfare state, most cultural institutions were dependent on public funds. However, during the economic crisis, the state rearranged the distribution of national income, targeting it to profit-oriented organisations in an attempt to revitalise the economy, inevitably reducing the funds set aside for social activities (see Kolarič). Public institutions endeavoured to adjust to the new circumstances by rationalising and commercialising their production (which resulted in smaller and lower quality productions), and by diversifying activities and introducing new programmes. During this period the theatrical system faced the same challenge.

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2 In the 1985/86 season, the institutional network of drama theatres, opera and ballet theatres consisted of SNG Drama Ljubljana, SNG Opera and Ballet Ljubljana, Mestno gledališče Ljubljansko, SNG Maribor, Slovensko ljudsko gledališče Celje in Primorsko dramsko gledališče Nova Gorica. The statistical figures for this season placed the Glej experimental theatre and Tespisov voz theatre in the group of professional theatres. The network of youth and puppet theatres comprised Lutkovno gledališče Ljubljana, Lutkovno gledališče Maribor and Slovensko mladinsko gledališče. Cankarjev dom was a production company. The theatres within the institutional network were national, regional or municipal, depending on the founder, while many noninstitutional, independent theatres outside this network had the status of cultural “association” during the socialist government. In statistical reports they were only partly categorised as professional theatres. Half the institutional theatres were located in Ljubljana, the Slovene capital, where the majority of non-institutional theatres also operated. 3 Data on operating amateur groups varied greatly from year to year. The late ’80s saw a conspicuous decline in this kind of activity, given that only 98 functioning amateur theatres were recorded in the 1992/93 season (Statistical Office of the RS. Rezultati : No. 655/1996).

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Cultural indicators show that the principal adjustment strategy

adopted by the Slovene theatre network during the economic crisis was rationalisation, meaning lower production. By reducing production, the institutional theatres counterbalanced the decline in public funding. When these funds began to increase after 1992, production increased, and so did theatre attendance.4 The commercialisation of theatre during the early stages of transition was not explicit, because guaranteed state funding kept the theatrical system “closed to and protected from” the market. Thanks to stable funding, the institutional theatres with regular ensembles, art directors and season-ticket audiences were not keen on making radical changes in programming, while on the other hand, those involved in theatre obviously assessed that the establishment of new (even commercial) permanent theatres would mean taking a risk that would be disproportionate to expected gains. Accordingly, no increase in popular or trivial theatre genres could be observed during the first half 4 During the 1991/92 season, professional theatres staged 85 plays and gave 1,300 performances; in the next season, the number of plays rose to 105, and the number of performances to 1,819, with theatre attendance increasing accordingly (Statistical Office of the RS. Rezultati).

of the ’90s, unlike the strategy adopted

5 Research shows that the second half of the 1980s marked an increase in the number of trivial literature genres such as love story, crime novel, science fiction, etc. An analysis of readership gave similar results. The changes were probably related to the rapid privatisation of the publishing sector (Gabrič, “Kulturna obzorja” 1224).

gradually attracted part of the audience,

6 The commercial theatre Špasteater was established in 1997, and BTC Komedija in 2002. 7 Compared to 2004 (100 %), in 1990 the index of real earning in Slovenia was only 86.6 %, down to 65.8 % in 1992, which points to the extreme instability of the economic and social systems (Statistical Yearbook 2006: Table 13.1) The analysis does not take into account the fluctuation in the price of theatre tickets because such a comparison would be difficult given the high inflation rate.

by the publishing field (by then already privatised), where popular genres were more exploited.5 Regular commercial theatres began to appear in Slovenia only towards the end of the ’90s. They but this had no significant effect on the institutional theatrical system.6 Thus the main reason for the decline in theatre attendance from 1989 to 1992 was the rationalisation of theatrical production, although the lower demand for cultural production was in part also a result of lower income, which fell 20.8 % between 1990 and 1992.7 Other factors that contributed to the decline in theatre attendance were the political shifts that accompanied the process of gaining independence and alternative forms of art production. The overview of cultural indicators also shows that in Slovenia

the transition period coincided with a general shift towards new forms of cultural content provision. Innovations such as commercial television, video, computers and the like began to change people’s cultural habits and reshape the area of entertainment

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culture. During the early 1990s, cinema attendance dramatically decreased, and has since remained at levels approx. 30 % lower than those in the 1980s.8 The impact on the theatrical system was smaller, so, despite new options, theatre production and

Barbara Sušec Michieli Out of Control? Theatre in the Grip of the Economic and Political Crisis

attendance increased. In 2005, there were 246 plays staged in Slovenia, and the audience totalled 928,629, meaning that on average one in two citizens attended a theatre performance during that year (SI-STAT Data Portal: Table “New Productions in Theatre”; Statistical Yearbook 2005: Table 8.11). 9

The paradox of transition: theatre and the state “The changes are big and the process is slow. The last big ideological project of this century collapsed, but we still remain on the scene, there is nowhere to go, nothing can be changed, everything is still here. Indeed, the past has not ended yet,” noted the Slovene writer Drago Jančar in 1990 in an essay entitled “Podaljšana preteklost” (“The Protracted Past”) (62). Expectations that a new system would automatically replace the old one had already proved false even during the years immediately following Slovenia’s independence. Everyday life during the transition period was marked by disorder, a crisis of values and conflict between the inherited

8 Cinema attendance was 8,651,000 in 1980; 7,787,000 in 1985; 2,846,000 in 1990; 2,926,000 in 1995; 2,218,000 in 2000; and 2,444,000 in 2005 (Statistical Yearbook of RS 2007: Table 8.1). 9 In 2005, the structure of theatre production by genres was as follows: of the 246 works staged in total, there were 95 drama plays, 9 operas, 4 ballets, 42 dance performances, 30 puppet shows, 13 experimental/research works and 53 non-categorised works (SISTAT Data Portal: Table New Productions in Theatre).

structure and demands for reform. During the reshaping of the cultural system, the key question was how to redefine the relationship between the state and culture, a relationship unique in Slovenia because of the small size of the cultural market and peculiar historical circumstances. Professional theatres in Slovenia were nationalised as early as the establishment of Yugoslavia after WWI – quite a long time before the introduction of communism; commercial theatres did not exist after 1918. The state’s intervention in theatre was both a productive and a repressive move. The state controlled the operation of the theatrical system through legislation, public funds and cultural policy, and by establishing state (national) theatres. It also played an important role in the legitimisation of artistic practices, values and organisational forms, the creation of cultural categories and establishment of discourses. It was the ideologi-

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cal discourse of the state that gave meaning and significance to categories such as Slovene, professional or national

theatre.10

The transformation of the relationship between the state and culture during the transition period was a complex process. The explicit de-politicisation of the cultural system was prompted by the wish to shift away from the socialist legacy, even as the newly established state encouraged unification of cultural space and concentration of cultural capital. The interactive influence of those two opposing developmental principles led to an inconsistent policy of slow change. In 1991, the state took over the funding of the entire institutional theatre network of theatres which had been founded by the state or local municipalities, ensuring the network’s stability. These professional theatres were granted the status of public institutions, their employees became civil servants. In 1994, new legislation made possible the founding of private 10 The relationship between the state, as a “holder of the monopoly of legitimate symbolic violence” and other social systems has been thoroughly analysed by Pierre Bourdieu.

institutions. However, since the legis-

11 Many non-institutional/independent theatres/theatre groups organised as cultural associations during the socialist government transformed into private institutions after these legislative changes.

model, the law had only a weak effect,

12 This innovation was introduced by the “Zakon o uresničevanju javnega interesa v kulturi” (Exercising of the Public Interest in Culture Act).

tenders to public institutions, while the

13 Among the 53 theatre organisations in Slovenia in 2005, there were 13 public institutions, 20 private institutions, 17 associations, 2 commercial companies and 1 uncategorised organisation. (SI-STAT Data Portal: Table “Organisational Forms and Predominant Ownership in Theatres, Slovenia”).

lative changes were not accompanied by a matching development strategy for culture, or a new public funding and these institutions met with many difficulties in obtaining public subsidies.11 In 2000, the Ministry of Culture of the RS dedicated 92.5 % of public group of private institutions received only 7.5 % (Pregled sofinanciranja kulturnih programov in projektov v letu 2000: Appendix). The situation somewhat improved only after 2002, when some private institutions qualified for the option of multi-year programme funding and coverage of (non)programming expenses.12 Today the pri-

vate institutions boast an extensive and diverse range of theatrical productions, but their small distribution network and modest public funding particularly obstruct the development of theatre genres that are not part of the institutional theatrical system, for example, contemporary dance.13 To sum up, the new legislation adopted after Slovenia’s independence encouraged the privatisation of culture and legitimised non-

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institutional theatre production. However, by pursuing a policy of public subsidies, the state maintained control over the theatrical system and radically slowed down the reorganisation process. As much as 90 % of all public funds dedicated to theatre are distributed

Barbara Sušec Michieli Out of Control? Theatre in the Grip of the Economic and Political Crisis

centrally; local communities have little influence on the system of public subsidies, and the proportion of foreign funds is even more negligible.14 However, it should be noted that, compared to the level of economic welfare, public funding of theatre remained on a relatively high level even in the transition period. In the socialist system, public funds amounted to approx. 85 % of Slovene theatres’ total revenues, while today this figure is approx. 75 % (see Moder; SI-STAT Data Portal: Table Revenues in theatrical activity). The state and local communities dedicate around 18€ per capita to theatrical activities, which is a figure comparable to that, for example, in Finland, where public funds amount to approx. 19.50€ per capita (Finnish Theatre in Figures 10; SI-STAT Data Portal: Table “Revenues in Theatrical Activity”).15 The conflicting development tendencies that characterised the transformation of the theatrical system during transition were also reflected in Slovenia’s cultural policy and in the state’s attitude towards national theatres. As in some other post-communist countries (for example, Croatia and Estonia), Slovenia’s cultural policy during the 1990s was non-transparent; and the reason was not solely the country’s focus on the economy, and on the health and education systems –

14 This state of affairs is quite different from that in, say, Finland, where state funds account for 25 % of theatre revenues, and funds provided by local communities for 45 % (Finnish Theatre in Figures 10). 15 The estimate is based on the data of the Statistical Office of the RS. In 2005, the public funds dedicated to theatres amounted to 8,825,483€, with state funds totalling 7,995,759€. 16 On cultural policy in Slove nia see Gabrič (“The Transfor mation”) and Čopič, on cultural policy in Croatia see Zlatar, Ramet and Matić; on theatre and cultural policy in other European countries see Berg et al.

an important factor was the value crisis and the historically determined uneasiness as regards political intervention in the sphere of culture.16 Many political actors held that a pro-active cultural policy created the risk of a renewed politicisation of culture. Accordingly, the first strategic document to define the long-term goals and orientation of cultural policy was the National Program for Culture, adopted in 2003, one year before Slovenia joined the EU. By establishing new national theatres, however, the state nevertheless actively interfered in the development of the theatrical system. Before Slovenia became a sovereign state, the state had been the founder of only two theatres – SNG Drama Ljubljana and SNG Opera and Ballet Ljubljana. After that, it took over the founder’s responsibilities

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for the theatres in Maribor and Nova Gorica (Sušec Michieli

198-202). The national theatres with representative buildings and unified names function as a metaphor for state property and its cultural capital. Through cultural unification the state attempted to offset the parallel process of cultural decentralisation characteristic of modern Europe. After Slovenia became a sovereign country, three new municipal theatres were established in Slovene regional centres (Ptuj, Koper, Novo Mesto). Therefore, during the period of transition, the transformation of the Slovene theatrical system was radically slowed down by the opposing tendencies that characterised the country’s cultural development. The impression that the theatre sector maintained continuity can be attributed to certain social and economic properties that were beyond the “reach” of quick political interventions, such as infrastructure, creative human potential, the education system, audience habits and general material welfare. These elements change only through slow historical processes and, at least in part, independently of political changes.

Identity conflicts and the openness of a cultural system In 1995, participants in the survey Slovenian Public Opinion were asked about the advantages of life in a small country. The majority quoted greater economic flexibility, better chances of resolving problems on the local and regional levels, and greater openness to other cultures (Toš et al., Vrednote II 610). At first glance, the history of Slovene theatre corroborates these views. In the past, Slovenia formed a point of intersection for German, Roman, and Slavic traditions. In socialist Yugoslavia, the Slovene cultural system was open to both the West and the East, which was an important advantage not enjoyed by other East European countries. However, has this openness of the cultural system survived the period of political crisis and national tension at the end of the 1980s? What does “openness to other cultures” actually mean in contemporary Europe, and how is it related to the notion of “national culture”? In the 20th century, Slovene culture had to make several adjustments to radical political changes. The collapse of AustriaHungary in 1918 swiftly severed its links with German culture.

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Within the newly formed Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, cultural ties between South Slavic people were reinforced. The post-WWII era brought greater autonomy to national cultures of individual Yugoslav republics, but also greater political control.

Barbara Sušec Michieli Out of Control? Theatre in the Grip of the Economic and Political Crisis

The socialist revolution caused a radical break with bourgeois values. Similar to other socialist countries, Yugoslavia established cultural links with the Soviet Union soon after WWII, but Tito’s conflict with Stalin in 1948 prompted it to also turn its attention to the West. That Slovene theatre was Westernoriented is confirmed by the fact that as many as 31 % of plays staged at the main national theatre (SNG Drama) in Ljubljana from the 1952/53 to the 1962/63 season were plays by authors writing in English, compared to only 6.7 % of Russian-language plays.17 The Western playwrights whose works found their way to the Slovene stages during this early period include Arthur Miller, Federico Garcia Lorca, Jean-Paul Sartre, Eugène Ionesco and Samuel Beckett. (Unlike Estonia, for example, where during the same period one-third of all performances were based on works originating in the

17 These figures pertain to SNG Drama Ljubljana. Source: Repertoar slovenskih gledališč.

Soviet Union.) The pro-Western character of Slovene culture was even more pronounced because of the country’s historical ties with Central Europe and its neighbours, Italy and Austria. This cultural exchange allowed better comparability with the wider environment and swift response to art trends, but also a more objective attitude towards and critical approach to domestic and international political developments. The stability of the cultural system was attained through self-censorship and internal control exerted by various “socio-political” bodies. Analysis of a customary repertoire in Slovene professional theatres during the post-war years showed that the annual programme included 25 % to 40 % of Slovene plays, 5 % to 10 % of Yugoslav plays, while slightly more than one half of the programme was composed of foreign plays. By contrast, theatre analysis in the 1980s and 1990s shows radical changes within the programming strategy and reveals an interesting analogy among the political, economic, and cultural systems. The proportion of Yugoslav plays conspicuously decreased during the second half of the ’80s (see Statistical Office of the RS. Rezultati). The political shift away from Yugoslavia led to the rejection of plays by authors from other Yugoslav republics. This shift was especially conspicuous within the SNG Drama Ljubljana, where during the decade leading up to Slovenia’s sovereignty, only one play by a

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Yugoslav author was staged. The Slovene institutional theatres

behaved in a manner similar to that adopted by the “national economies” of Yugoslavia, which in the second half of the 1980s closed their markets by banning products from other republics. The cultural system evidently responded to the political crisis faster than other social systems, given that as late as 1989/1990, the Slovene public was optimistic about the chances of Yugoslavia surviving as a multi-national state (Toš et al., Vrednote III 14-15). Culture was not an important connecting factor within Yugoslavia; the various cultural traditions, religions and languages established sharp demarcation lines among Yugoslav nations.18 It is interesting that the shift away from the Yugoslav cultural space occurred through the “systematic exclusion” of Yugoslav influences and links, rather than through problematising political relationships within Yugoslavia at 18 Citizens of the former Yugoslav republics and autonomous regions not only spoke different languages (Slovene, Serbian, Croatian, Macedonian, Albanian and Hungarian etc.) and used different scripts (Latin and Cyrillic), but many also tied their cultural identity to a religious affiliation: Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, or Muslim. Bosnia-Herzegovina was the most heterogeneous, both culturally and nationally. In contrast, Slovenia was the least heterogeneous, which facilitated the process of gaining independence.

the content level. In fact, cultural and national relationships were a taboo subject in theatres, so the shift away from South Slavic culture was not the same as that from German culture that occurred in Slovenia before WWI, when political and national conflicts were generally thematised, and openly so. In former Yugoslavia the conflicts were transferred (at least within theatre) to another, concealed, structural level. It

should be emphasised, however, that this radical break with the Yugoslav cultural space occurred only within the institutional theatrical system, and not also within alternative, independent theatre and popular culture. While the disruption of cultural ties with South Slavic nations was quite conspicuous, the turn to Western cultural trends was not, because of previously strong links to Western culture. Throughout the crisis the theatrical system maintained its openness to other cultures, while at the same time developing selective inclusion and exclusion mechanisms. During the late 1980s, these mechanisms were used to radically re-define the notions of domače (“domestic”) vs. tuje (“foreign”). The shift in the understanding of “openness to other cultures” meant that Slovenia moved closer to the European community.

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In contrast to the pattern that had prevailed in the time before Slovenia’s independence, when most international festivals were held in the Yugoslav capital of Belgrade, several new international festivals were now launched in Slovenia. Their significance lay not

Barbara Sušec Michieli Out of Control? Theatre in the Grip of the Economic and Political Crisis

only in the international promotion of the new, Europe-oriented state and its capital. As a matter of fact, after breaking ties with Yugoslavia, Slovene artists were acutely reminded of Slovenia’s small size and the various limitations that accompany cultural development when restricted to a narrow national framework. Independent theatres proved more successful at international networking, and the number of international co-productions sharply increased in the late 1990s. National theatres assumed a different role in this process of internalisation of culture, which was to systematically encourage “the writing and staging of new Slovenian and foreign texts with an emphasis on European dramatic texts” (“Ustanovitveni akt SNG Drama Ljubljana”). Understandably, the notion of “Europeanism” acquired many new definitions in the 1990s and became the subject of ideological and cultural conflicts. While Slovene culture of the 1980s encouraged critical scepticism, rejection of dogma, and individual freedom drawing on the

19 Taking cultural orientation as the starting point, many sociologists place Slovenia among the wider group of West European countries. By applying Hofstede’s model, it was established that it shares many traits with the Czech Republic, Belarus, Germany, Lithuania, Austria, Sweden, Denmark, Iceland and Croatia (Zver and Živko).

European traditions of the Enlightenment, the sentiment the ’90s was more in favour of traditional Christian values. However, compared to other countries in transition – for example, Poland or Croatia – Slovene society was more “rationalistic and secularised”; thus the impact of these general trends on the cultural system was not significant.19 In the first place, this turn to traditional values was closely related to the livelihood crisis and the uncertainty created by the transition to a capitalist economy; fear and anxiety had become the predominant sentiments among “ordinary Slovenes”, who began to believe that the modern world was destroying the old customs too hastily and that caution was in order when deciding about radical changes (Toš et al., Vrednote II 490).

Culture as a crisis generator and stabiliser How did the orientation and the role of Slovene theatre change during the period of crisis and transition?

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According to the anthropologist Victor Turner, every stage of a

conflict-ridden social process or a “social drama” is characterised by unique forms of public action, symbolisation, reflection, and rhetoric (37). During such periods, the expression and presentation of political positions, social values, goals, and identities take on an expressly theatrical character, so theatre is an important model for understanding the crisis process, from an early stage in which its norm-governed social relations are abolished, though the escalation of the crisis and a redressive action to the final stage of social reintegration. The case of Slovenia actually confirms Turner’s basic thesis. Although cultural institutions suffered certain drawbacks the crisis also stimulated individual creativity and the emergence of new, alternative cultural movements. It’s very likely that the important reason for such a development was the increased “openness” of the social system that 20 On punk culture in Slovenia see Lovšin, Mlakar, Vidmar.

enabled individuals and groups to raise many questions concerning social taboos and values. In the opinion of the

sociologist Norbert Elias, this amplified reflection is a typical feature of crisis and transition periods: [P]eriods of transition give a particular opportunity for reflection: the older standards have been called into question but solid new ones are not yet available. People become more uncertain in their conduct. [...] In such phases – and perhaps only in such phases – much is open to scrutiny in conduct that previous generations took for granted. The sons begin to think further where their fathers brought their reflection to a halt; [...] Conventions that have long gone untested from generation to generation, become problems. (Elias 517-518)

The flourishing of “crisis culture” in Slovenia was announced during the early 1980s by rebellious punk bands that sang “Lublana je bulana” (Ljubljana is sick), “Tovariši, jst vam ne vrjamem” (Comrades, I don’t believe you) or “Ne računajte na nas” (Don’t count on us).20 The song about the sick capital Ljubljana was a harbinger, signalling that the genie had escaped from the bottle containing the suppressed (psycho)pathology of socialist society. Soon after that, the establishment of the musical band that took as its name the taboo German name for Ljubljana, Laibach, proved a new source of anxiety for the ruling elite. Over the next two decades, numerous cultural phenomena unfolded which not only re-defined the values of Slovene soci-

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ety, but also captured the attention of the international public. The artistic mood of that period was set by alternative groups modelled on the 1960s movements, subversive art projects of the group Neue Slowenische Kunst (Laibach, Irwin, Gledališče

Barbara Sušec Michieli Out of Control? Theatre in the Grip of the Economic and Political Crisis

Sester Scipion Nasice), Drago Jančar’s deeply moving critical prose and dramas, political plays staged by the Slovene Mladinsko Theatre, and post-dramatic spectacles directed by Tomaž Pandur. At the same time, Slovene comedy reached its peak with the works of Tone Partljič. In a parallel development, the implications of the “theoretical revolution” triggered by the philosopher Slavoj Žižek and his colleagues were even more far-reaching. The crisis period saw the emergence of two distinct cultural trends. The first, a more traditional one, focused on critically evaluating the forgotten or concealed aspects of history, war and the revolution. This form of social critique also characterised other socialist environments – Moscow, Budapest or Prague. Through such cultural activity, artists created, as the philosophers Aleš Erjavec and Marina Gržinič put it, an asylum or a “national park” where it was possible to say things that were unacceptable in politics (12-13). Such was, for example, Drago Jančar’s widely acclaimed play Veliki briljantni valček (Grand Brilliant Waltz), staged in 1985. It described repression in an institution

21 Partljič’s comedy Moj ata, socialistični kulak scored the record audience (57,000) in SNG Drama Ljubljana in the 1983/84 and 1984/85 seasons. It was also staged by several other Slovene and Yugoslav theatres, and later made into a movie. The audience for Alenka Goljevšček’s Pod Prešernovo glavo totalled 41,000; it was staged in Mestno Gledališče Ljubljana (MGL) in the 1984/85 season. The third most successful play in this period was Brecht’s The Petit-Bourgeois Wedding with an audience of slightly more than 34,000 (SNG Drama Ljubljana, 1985/86). Source: Statistical Office of the RS. Rezultati: No. 381/1986, 420/1988, 462/1989, 477/1990.

with a meaningful name “Freedom makes you free.” Tone Partljič’s comedy Moj ata, socialistični kulak (My Father, The Big Socialist Landowner) attracted a record audience, so far unsurpassed. It dealt with the fate of ordinary people during the agrarian reform that followed WWII. A similar success was scored by the performance entitled Pod Prešernovo glavo (Under Prešeren’s Head), which dealt with the situation of the Slovene education system.21 This indicates that during the first half of the ’80s, the Slovene ticket-box successes were the shows that conspicuously concentrated on local problems and national taboos. The principal role of theatre during the early stages of the crisis was the creation of a “metacommentary” on the real social drama (Turner 37). Many theatre performances – frequently conceptualised as “documentary features” or “tranches de vie” – re-enacted and contextualised

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social conflicts of that time stimulating changes in everyday and

political life. Artistic reflection on historical traumas and collective memories reinforced social integration and the awareness of national affiliation, while at the same time it created room for the symbolic rectification of historical injustice that occurred during the communist revolution and thereafter. The other distinct trend during this period was subculture, which commenced as non-culture and survived through the support of political youth organisations and the student media (Erjavec and Gržinič 11-20). It stayed aloof not only from official politics and ideology, but also from national traditions and established cultural values, which was a stance that earned it the label of “cultural terrorism”.22 Its fundamental methods were provocation and scandal. Since its main interest lay with experiments in art, it focused on exploration of art forms and means of expression, while frequently 22 The expression used by the theatre critic Josip Vidmar in describing the performance Missa in A Minor directed by Dušan Ristić that premiered in the Slovene Mladinsko Theatre in 1981 (see Toporišič).

also problematising the political on the level of form. The radical theses of the renowned art group Neue Slowenische Kunst – “Totalitarianism and art do not exclude each other,” “Theatre is a

state,” or “All art is subject to political manipulation except art that speaks the language of that manipulation” – destroyed the established representations of what art is, while at the same time drawing attention to the performative aspects of violence and unconscious ideologisation of all areas of public life. During the 1980s, the alternative groups significantly contributed to the development of the forms and genres that were marginalised within the system of Slovene national culture. While the theatrical system supported primarily drama, opera, and ballet, the alternative groups pursued contemporary dance, street theatre, and experimental theatre, concentrating on the physical expression and theatrical abstraction of Robert Wilson, Jan Fabre and others. They also encouraged cultural production by marginalised social groups. The social crisis of the early 1980s therefore triggered a radical internal split within the theatrical system, dividing it into a structure and an anti-structure. This enabled artists to confront the fundamental aspects of society, while the audience gained the chance to become consolidated and interconnected despite the social hierarchy and the usual differences in worldview. By criticising repression and promoting democratic values – freedom of

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speech, human rights, national self-declaration, ideological and aesthetic plurality – it announced and also legitimised political changes that occurred after 1989. However, as early as 1985, the concept of political theatre in Slovenia became targeted by public

Barbara Sušec Michieli Out of Control? Theatre in the Grip of the Economic and Political Crisis

critique, which did not come from the political sphere but from the art system itself. It was not only the role of political theatre that was exhausted by then but also its non-aestheticised form. When the economic and political crises escalated, theatre artists became increasingly interested in different, fantasy worlds. In so doing they advocated the thesis “let art at least be rich during these impoverished times” (Šutej Adamič). The renowned Yugoslav theatre critic Jovan Ćirilov described this complex connection between theatre and social crisis as follows: First of all, during this crisis politicians have more urgent business and are less concerned with theatre, so in some curious way freedom within theatre, both formal and in the sense of content, has increased. [...] Apart from that, the crisis stimulates the audience, too. It can no longer spend money on grandiose things, like villas, trips to Hawaii and the like, so theatre provides a convenient excursion into another world. The theatres are packed [...] That is not real stagnation. There are seeds of something new sprouting amidst it. (35)

During the second half of the ’80s, reflection on social developments in Slovenia was transferred from the sphere of culture to that of politics and media. Between 1988 and 1991, the power of performance was more conspicuous in public protests and meetings than in art events. Intense social developments required an immediate response from the public, so the boundary between an event and the reflection thereon was practically eliminated. Theatre as an art form could not join this kind of public discourse, with the exception of genres such as demonstrations or happenings. Even the sociologists were surprised at the performative aspects of the 1988-1989 events that swept across Eastern Europe: “We were wrong. We thought that car and television would do away with street spectacle,” wrote Jean Duvignaud in 1990. When streets become inflamed as now, all are unmasked. It is an ephemeral event indeed but it’s from such public ecstasy that new incentives or stimuli spring, unknown still but capable of overthrowing even the strongest systems. It goes without saying that the word ecstasy here has nothing of the religious in it: it only designates, as in Greek, a sudden, unlimited burst of energy, opening ‘the field of the possible’. (54)

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In theatres, the newly gained autonomy and freedom led to

depoliticisation and aloofness from acute social problems, as well as from local and regional crises in the Balkans. The shift away from socialist culture and a switch to post-modernism were concurrent. Analysis of repertoires and theatre attendance in the 1990s reveals a picture that is radically different from that in the 1980s. Apart from several successful comedies, the Slovene theatrical system was most explicitly defined by works dealing with “universal” mythological and classical subjects, for example, Scheherazade by Ivo Svetina, Shakespeare’s King Lear, Hamlet, and Macbeth, Gogol’s The Inspector General and Molière’s Tartuffe.23 During the late stages of social stabilisation, culture became a kind of “filler” for cracks and gaps in the social fabric (Braudel 86). The modern rejection of radical political engagement also stemmed from the recognition that cultural values do not have a decisive influence on social processes. Capitalism is equally comfortable with Asian as well 23 The biggest audience among these plays was recorded by King Lear, which was seen by more than 31,000 people (SNG Drama Ljubljana, 1992/93). Gogol’s Inspector General was also widely performed in other Eastern European countries in the ’90s. Among other ticket box successes were comedies by Ray Cooney, Marc Camoletti and George Feydeau.

as Western values – says Slavoj Žižek in his new book Nasilje (Violence), adding that culture has assumed quite a different role in the 21st century than before:

In liberalism, culture survives, but as privatised: as way of life, a set of beliefs and practices, not the public network of norms and rules. Culture is thus literally transubstantiated: the same sets of beliefs and practices change from the binding power of a collective into an expression of personal and private idiosyncrasies. (127)

The exhausted idea of cultural pluralism, contemporary cultural decentralisation and fragmentation of art production and reception are the characteristic symptoms of the global developments described and analysed by Slavoj Žižek. At this point, the story of the social transition in Slovenia meets the beginning of some new, global social crisis, but its further elaboration would exceed the scope of this article. Translated by Olga Vuković

This research came about upon the initiative of Hans van Maanen and the group STEP – Project on European Theatre Systems.

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Bibliography Baumol, William J., and William G. Bowen. Performing Arts - The Economic Dilemma. New York: The Twentieth Century Fund, 1966. Berg, Hans O., Cas B. Smithuijsen, and Ineke Hamersveld, eds. State on Stage: the impact of public policies on the performing arts in Europe. Amsterdam: Boekmanstudies, 2008. Bourdieu, Pierre. “Rethinking the State: Genesis and Structure of the Bureaucratic Field.” State/Culture. State-Formation after the Cultural Turn. Ed. G. Steinmetz. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999. Braudel, Fernand. Civilization and Capitalism, 15th-18th Century. Vol. III. The Perspective of the World. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1992. Čirilov, Jovan. “Ako treba, mogu i da glumim” (If Necessary, I Can Be An Actor, too). Danas (Belgrade), 5 Aug. 1986: 34-36. Čopič, Vesna, and Gregor Tomc, eds. Kulturna politika v Sloveniji: simpozij (Cultural Policy in Slovenia: Symposium). Ljubljana: FDV, 1998. Duvignaud, Jean. “Dossier: Spectacular reality overshadows the Eastern European Theatre.” Euromaske 1.1 (1990): 51-54. Elias, Norbert. The Civilizing Process. Oxford UK & Cambridge USA: Blackwell, 1994. Erjavec, Aleš, and Marina Gržinić. Ljubljana, Ljubljana. Osemdeseta leta v umetnosti in kulturi (The Eighties in Slovene Art and Culture). Ljubljana: Mladinska knjiga, 1991. Finnish Theatre in Figures. Helsinki: Finnish Theatre Information Centre, 2006. Fischer, Jasna, Zdenko Čepič, Ervin Dolenc, et al., eds. Slovenska novejša zgodovina (Modern History of Slovenia). Ljubljana: Mladinska knjiga and Inštitut za novejšo zgodovino, 2005. Frey, Bruno. S., and Werner W. Pommerehne. Muze na trgu. Odkrivanje ekonomike umetnosti. Ljubljana: PAC Murska Sobota, Ustanova za podjetništvo Kranj, 2001 (Muses and Markets: Explorations in the Economics of Arts. Oxford and Cambridge MA: Basil Blackwell: 1989). Gabrič, Aleš. “Kulturna obzorja v osemdesetih.” Slovenska novejša zgodovina (Modern History of Slovenia). Eds. Jasna Fischer, Zdenko Čepič, Ervin Dolenc, et al. Ljubljana: Mladinska knjiga and Inštitut za novejšo zgodovino, 2005. –––. “The Transformation of values in the cultural sector.” Democratic Transition in Slovenia. Eds. Sabrina P. Ramet and Davorka Fink Hafner. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2006. 148-167. Jančar, Drago. “Podaljšana preteklost.” Konec tisočletja, račun stoletja (The End Of The Millennium, The Bill For The Century). Ljubljana: Mladinska knjiga, 1999. Kolarič, Zinka. “From socialist to post-socialist social policy.” Social policy in Slovenia: between tradition and innovation (Studies in the Social Policy of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union). Ed. Ivan Svetlik. Aldershot [etc.]: Avebury, 1992: 15-32. Lovšin, Peter, Peter Mlakar, and Igor Vidmar, eds. Punk je bil prej. 25 let punka pod Slovenci (Punk was earlier. 25 years of punk in Slovenia). Ljubljana: Cankarjeva založba and Ropot, 2003. Moder, Gregor. “Gledališka in koncertna dejavnost 1973/74” (Theatrical Activities and Concerts 1973/74). Prikazi in študije (Surveys and Studies, SURS). 21.2 (1975): 3-25. Pregled sofinanciranja kulturnih programov in projektov v letu 2000 (Co-Funding of Cultural Programs and Projects in 2000). Ljubljana: Ministrstvo za kulturo, 2000. Ramet, Sabina, and Davorka Matić, eds. Democratic Transition in Croatia: Value Transformation, Education & Media. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2007. Repertoar slovenskih gledališč (The Repertoires of Slovenian Theaters). Ljubljana: Slovenski gledališki muzej, 1967. Statistical Office of the RS, 2007. SI-STAT Data portal. 27 Sept. 2008. <http://www.sistat.si>. Statistical Yearbook 2007. Ljubljana: Statistical Office of the RS, 2007. Statistical Yearbook 2006. Ljubljana: Statistical Office of the RS, 2006.

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Statistical Yearbook 2005. Ljubljana: Statistical Office of the RS, 2005. Rezultati raziskovanj SURS (Research Findings - Statistical Office of the RS.) 283/1982, 320/1983, 353/1984, 381/1986, 420/1988, 462/1989, 562/1989, 477/1990, 486/1990, 495/1990, 552/1991, 594/1993, 615/1994, 672/1996. Statistične informacije SURS (Rapid Reports - Statistical Office of the RS.) No. 191/1996, 204/1997, 60/1999, 251/1999, 216/2000, 251/2003. Sušec Michieli, Barbara. “The Disappearing Balkans. National Theatres and (Geo)Politics.” National Theates in a Changing Europe. Ed. S. E. Wilmer. Houndmills, Palgrave Macmillan, 2008: 196-203. Šutej Adamič, Jelka. “V gledališču mora zaživeti fantazijski svet umetnosti” (The Fantasy World of Art Must Find Its Place in Theatre). Delo (Ljubljana), 27. Sept. 1988: 6. Toporišič, Tomaž. “Ali je čas predstave čas našega življenja? Intervju z Dušanom Jovanovićem.” Ali je prihodnost že prišla? Petdeset let Slovenskega mladinskega gledališča. Eds. Tomaž Toporišič, Barbara Skubic, Tina Malič, and Mateja Dermelj. Ljubljana: Slovensko mladinsko gledališče, 2007. 119-129. Toš, Niko, et al., eds. Vrednote v prehodu I. Slovensko javno mnenje 19681990 (Values in Transition. Slovenian Public Opinion 1968-1990). Ljubljana: FDV IDV – Center za RJM, 1997. Toš, Niko, et al., eds. Vrednote v prehodu II. Slovensko javno mnenje 19901998 (Values in Transition. Slovenian Public Opinion 1990-1998). Ljubljana: FDV IDV – CJMMK, 1999. Toš, Niko, et al., eds. Vrednote v prehodu III. Slovensko javno mnenje 1999-2004 (Values in Transition. Slovenian Public Opinion 19992004). Ljubljana: FDV IDV – CJMMK, 204. Turner, Victor. Dramas, Fields, and Metaphors: Symbolic Action in Human Society. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1975. “Ustanovitveni akt SNG Drama Ljubljana” (The Founding Document of Slovensko narodno gledališče Drama Ljubljana). Uradni list RS 56/2003 (Official Gazette of the RS, 56/2003). <http://www.drama.si/ustanovitveniakt.html>. Wallerstein, Imanuel. Utopistics or Historical Choices of the Twenty-First Century. New York, New Press, 1998. Zver, Milan, and Tjaša Živko. “Kulturna umestitev Slovencev v Evropi: aplikacija Hofstedejevega modela” (The Cultural Place of the Slovenes in Europe: the Application of Hofstede’s Model). Družboslovne razprave, XX.45 (2004): 59-77. “Zakon o uresničevanju javnega interesa v kulturi” (Exercising of the Public Interest in Culture Act). Uradni list RS 96/2002 (Official Gazette of the RS, 96/2002). Zlatar, Andrea. “Kultura v tranzicijskem obdobju na Hrvaškem” (Culture in the Transition Period in Croatia). Apokalipsa (Ljubljana) 51-52 (2002): 191-211. Žižek, Slavoj. Nasilje (Violence). Ljubljana: Analecta, 2007. (Quoted chapter republished as “Tolerance as an Ideological Category.” Critical Inquiry 34. 4 (2008): 660-682).

Barbara Sušec Michieli is Assistant Professor of Theatre History and the Head of the Centre for Theatre and Film Studies at the University of Ljubljana, Academy of Theatre, Radio, Film and Television. Recent publications include Maria Vera – Actress in a Dynamic Labyrinth of Cultures (2005), Theatre Terminological Dictionary (co-editor, 2007) as well as contributions to National Theatres in a Changing Europe (2008) and Writing and Rewriting National Theatre Histories (2004). From 2004 to 2008 she convened the IFTR – Historiography Working Group. barbara.susec-michieli@agrft.uni-lj.si

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Out of Control? Theatre in the Grip of the Economic and Political Crisis

Barbara Sušec Michieli Out of Control? Theatre in the Grip of the Economic and Political Crisis

KEYWORDS: social crisis and art, Slovenian theatre, theatre and the state, cultural policy, the economics of the theatre, 20th century During crises and times of transition, the stable mechanisms of social control lose their power and often lead to an uncommon swing of particular creativity. The links between economic, political, and artistic events in such times are exceptionally complex. The author of the article analyses the operations of Slovenian theatres in the time of economic, political and identity crisis before the disintegration of Yugoslavia and after the independence of Slovenia between 1980 and 2005. She discusses the impact of the economic recession on the institutional theatre system, the change of the relationships between theatres and the state, the intercultural connections to the Yugoslavian and European space as well as the societal role of theatre in the transition process. She also sheds light upon the specific forms of reflection, symbolisation, and theatricality which take shape in the particular developmental phases of “social drama”.

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Brez nadzora? Gledališče v primežu ekonomske in politične krize

KLJUČNE BESEDE: družbena kriza in umetnost, slovensko gledališče, gledališče in država, kulturna politika, ekonomika gledališča, 20. stoletje Ustaljeni mehanizmi družbenega nadzora v kriznih in tranzicijskih obdobjih izgubijo svojo moč, kar pogosto sproži nenavadni razmah kulturne ustvarjalnosti. Povezave med ekonomskimi, političnimi in umetnostnimi dogajanji so v takšnih obdobjih izjemno kompleksne. Avtorica v članku analizira delovanje slovenskega gledališča v času ekonomske, politične in identitetne krize pred razpadom Jugoslavije in po osamosvojitvi Slovenije med leti 1980 in 2005. Obravnava vpliv ekonomske recesije na institucionalni gledališki sistem, spreminjanje razmerij med gledališčem in državo, medkulturne povezave z jugoslovanskim in evropskim prostorom ter družbeno vlogo gledališča v tranzicijskem procesu. Ob tem osvetljuje tudi specifične oblike refleksije, simbolizacije in teatralnosti, ki se oblikujejo v posameznih razvojnih fazah “socialne drame”.

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Performing Statelessness

PAPERS

S. E. Wilmer UDK 792.03 314.151.3-054.78

The asylum-seeker occupies both a local

NOTES

1 Ronald Bogue explains, “For Deleuze the chaos of the Outside is not a mere threat to coherence, but the generative source of new possibilities.” (6)

and an international position, straddling the borders of the nation-state, an exile of one country and not yet a citizen of another. By definition s/he is, as Gilles

Deleuze and Pierre Félix Guattari might optimistically put it, in a state of “becoming”1 (passim) or, as Hannah Arendt said of refugees, in “vanguard of their people” (274). In the present day, because of the practices of modern governments, s/he is in a liminal state or in a kind of no man’s land, a non-citizen and thus virtually a non-person contained by the nation-state in a specially controlled space, unable to work or function normally in society, effectively deprived of human rights, and subject to deportation at any time. According to Giorgio Agamben, “the status of the refugee is always considered a temporary condition that should lead either to naturalization or to repatriation. A permanent status of man in himself is inconceivable KEYWORDS

for the law of the nation-state”

asylum-seeker, refugee, stateless, exclusion, detention, container, Giorgio Agamben, Donal O’Kelly, Christoph Schlingensief, Janusz Głowacki, Janez Janša

(“We Refugees” n. p.).

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Given his/her supposedly temporary status, it is perhaps appropriate that the refugee should be presented as a topic in theatrical performance, an art form that is characterised by its own ephemeral nature.

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The asylum-seeker has been a recurrent character in the his-

tory of drama from as far back as ancient Greece. Characters that are exiled or imprisoned abound in Greek tragedy, such as Prometheus, Orestes, Philoctetes, Antigone, Helen, and the “Trojan women”. In Oedipus at Colonus, Oedipus is a stateless person, having been exiled from Thebes. Guided by his daughters Antigone and Ismene, he asks King Theseus for sanctuary in the outskirts of Athens, and succeeds in finding a final resting place. In The Suppliants, the fifty daughters of Danaos arrive in Argos from overseas, fleeing from the sons of Aigyptos, and ask King Pelasgos for protection. Likewise, The Children of Heracles seek safety in Athens from Eurystheus who is determined to kill them. In Medea, after Creon tells her that she must leave Corinth immediately, Medea, who refers to herself as “apolis” (stateless, line 255), persuades Aegeus to provide her with sanctuary in Athens before wreaking vengeance on Jason. 2 According to Peter O’Mahoney, CEO of the Irish Refugee Council, Ireland and Denmark are the only two countries in the EU “with a complete ban on the right to work for all asylum seekers.”

In each of these plays, we see uprooted

3 For example, a proposed change in European Union policy towards foreign immigrants, which would allow them to be detained for up to eighteen months before deportation, provoked an open letter from Evo Morales, President of Bolivia on 10 June 2008.

be updated to comment on current social

and homeless persons trying to find some solution to their enormous difficulties (and many of these plays continue to and political conditions). Thus the problem of asylum is an ancient one, both in the theatre and in real life, and perhaps it is an ironic reflection on the “golden age of democracy” in ancient Greece that the

playwrights commented on the position of the disenfranchised in society – slaves, women, non-citizens, prisoners, exiles, and asylum-seekers, amongst others (see for example Balogh). The plight of the asylum-seeker remains an important issue today, being denied the right to work2 and the right to vote, dependent on the state for handouts and in many cases incarcerated. The recent controversies over the treatment of suspected terrorists in Guantanamo Bay and in special prisons around the world, and over the increasing legal provisions for the detention of suspected terrorists as well as the more stringent restrictions on immigration in the USA and the EU,3 have helped focus more attention on the plight of the asylum-seeker. In this paper I want to theorise this issue of the stateless person within the discourse of biopolitics and relate it to several recent plays and performances concerning refugees and homelessness: specifically, Donal O’Kelly’s Asylum! Asylum! about a Ugandan asylum-seeker who

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fails to gain asylum in Ireland; Christoph Schlingensief’s Bitte liebt Österreich, which deployed an industrial container inhabited

S. E. Wilmer Performing Statelessness

by refugees in a central square in Vienna and encouraged local citizens to vote on which refugees should be deported; Janusz Głowacki’s Antigone in New York, which depicts Antigone as a homeless exiled figure who tries to bury her lover in a Manhattan public park; and Janez Janša’s The National Theatre of Slovenia, which reconstructs a national scandal concerning the governmental eviction of a Romany family. In these four pieces we can see the “temporary emergency accommodation”, the industrial container, and the homeless people’s park as analogous to a detention centre for refugees, a kind of living death, a place of temporary and indefinite existence that calls attention to the “bare life” of the asylum-seeker and the policies of exclusion in the nation-state (Agamben, Homo Sacer 8). Arendt has argued that the human rights of the exile or stateless person are not protected by the nation-state (“We Refugees”). Taking this idea further, Agamben comments: “In the nation-state system, the so-called sacred and inalienable rights of man prove to be completely unprotected at the very moment it is no longer possible to characterize them as rights of the citizens of a state.” (“We Refugees”) Cecilia Sjöholm clarifies, “While the nation-state has proven to be a powerful organization when it comes to protecting its own citizens, those that have not enjoyed the protection of the nation-state have come to be doubly exposed. The human being who is exiled by force and who is not recognized as a citizen in any state has proven not only to lack nationality, but has also not been able to enjoy any rights.” (11) As Judith Butler explains: The category of the stateless is reproduced not simply by the nation-state but by a certain operation of power that seeks to forcibly align nation with state […]. These spectral humans, deprived of ontological weight and failing the tests of social intelligibility required for minimal recognition include those whose age, gender, race, nationality and labor status not only disqualify them for citizenship but actively ‘qualify’ them for statelessness […]. In different ways, they are, significantly, contained within the polis as its interiorized outside. (Butler and Spivak 12-15)

The EU is planning to adopt a Common Asylum System by 2010, but in the meantime individual states conduct their own policies, often resorting to detention as a means of preventing asylum-seekers from participating in the society until their case has been thoroughly investigated and their status determined.

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According to the European Council on Refugees and Exiles, the

use of detention as a “tool to regulate unwanted migration is on the increase in Europe. Detention is used at all stages of the asylum procedure and has become a key component in attempts to enforce return. The period for which people can be detained prior to removal is lengthening in many European states and in some states people can be detained for indefinite periods of time” (European Council on Refugees and Exiles, “Detention”). Many countries operate detention centres for asylum-seekers. The Liberal government of Australian Prime Minister John Howard (1996-2007) was criticised for imposing a severe policy of incarcerating asylum-seekers, and, according to Helen Gilbert and Jacqueline Lo, demonising them “at best, as economic migrants and, at worst, as terrorists” (188).4 Gilbert and Lo explain that such actions, “by troping asylum seekers as physical or moral threats, empty the state’s responsibilities to the 4 The policy of mandatory detention was introduced in 1992 under the previous Labor government of Paul Keating but “greatly expanded by Mr. Howard, and proved very controversial in recent years, with several cases making international headlines” (Collins 10).

stranger/outsider of their humanitar-

5 For a discussion of Australian performances about asylum-seekers, see Gilbert and Lo (186-206).

“hunger strikes, throwing themselves

ian underpinnings so that rejecting the request for refuge becomes ethically acceptable” (189). However, after years of controversy during which asylumseekers engaged in such protests as on razor-wire fences, or sewing their lips together to draw attention to their

corporeal experiences of state power” (189), the recently elected government of Kevin Rudd agreed to end the policy of mandatory detention in July 2008 (see Tedmanson).5 Meanwhile, the United Kingdom continues a policy of detaining a portion of asylum-seekers on a somewhat arbitrary basis, sometimes locking them up in detention centres along with those who have been refused asylum, such as in the Campsfield House, operated by the Group 4 security firm. Since this particular detention centre opened in the 1990s, it has experienced riots, fires, hunger strikes, and suicides, as methods for protesting the conditions (BBC, “Asylum seekers flee detention centre”). Amnesty International estimated that approximately 25,000 asylum seekers were being held in detention in the UK in 2004 (BBC, “Asylum detentions ‘breaking law’”). In that same year there were over two hundred detention centres for asylum-seekers in Europe (National Coalition of Anti-Deportation Campaigns, “Detention in Europe”). According to the Jesuit Refugee Service, European

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practices are quite arbitrary, with detainees often being unaware of why they are being incarcerated, with members of the same family

S. E. Wilmer Performing Statelessness

frequently detained separately, and with detainees denied visitors and access to legal assistance, and even being imprisoned “when there is little, even no risk of absconding.” The length of detention also varies enormously: “for example, from six days in Spain, 60 days in Italy, three months in Greece, five months in Belgium and 18 months in Germany to an unlimited time period in Great Britain” (“Detention in Europe” 4). In addition there appears to be plans by the European Union to create externally located internment camps to detain refugees seeking to gain admittance from outside the EU, for example, in North Africa (Heuer 6). While each asylum-seeker has an individual set of problems, the state often operates a generalised procedure. In Ireland, according to Treasa Galvin, “the indiscriminate use of the terms refugee, asylum-seeker and illegal immigrant categorises those seeking refuge as a homogeneous group”

6 According to George Seremba, the latter was an example of “posttraumatic testimonial theatre”. Personal communication, 14 September 2008.

(206). Although not normally detained, those who enter Ireland looking for sanctuary are restricted in their activities. Defined as homeless, they are assigned “temporary emergency accommodation in designated hostels or guesthouses” where, prohibited from accepting paid employment, they often feel isolated and are forced to wait for months or even years to discover their fate. Their inability to work also renders them vulnerable to accusations of laziness: “Asylum-seekers note that their legally imposed status undermines their willingness to contribute to their host society as workers and tax-payers while confining them to the position of social welfare recipients, a position with which many are deeply uncomfortable.” (208) Unaccompanied minors are normally deported from Ireland when they reach the age of 18, a government policy that created a sensation when a Nigerian student was deported wearing his school uniform in 2005 while preparing to take his state exams (see, for example, O’Mahoney). The Calypso theatre company in Dublin has staged several plays about refugees, asylum-seekers and those in exile, such as Donal O’Kelly’s Farawayan (1998), Roddy Doyle’s Guess Who’s Coming for the Dinner (2001), and Sonja Linden’s I Have Before Me a Remarkable Document Given to me by a Young Lady from Rwanda (2005).6 Calypso also runs a youth group for unaccompanied minors (amongst others) called the Tower of Babel project, organising theatre workshops to engage them in creative

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activity and in some cases to encourage them to tell their own

stories through performance. The refugees occasionally participate in festivities such as the St. Patrick’s Day parade, but, while those in authority seem to promote this as a means of celebrating the cultural diversity of Ireland, it is ironic that these representatives of the so-called “new face of Ireland” will most probably be deported when they turn 18. One of the more interesting activities of the Tower of Babel project has been their involvement in a play by Maeve Ingolsby called Mixing it on the Mountain, which was staged by the Calypso theatre company for St. Patrick’s Day in 2003. In using young performers from a variety of countries including Kosovo, Angola, and Vietnam, Bairbre Ni Chaoimh, the director, took the unusual tack of casting a young Nigerian refugee as St. Patrick, being brought to Ireland as a slave. The National Theatre of Ireland also produced a play by Calypso theatre’s founder, Donal O’Kelly, called Asylum! Asylum! in 1994. This was a hard-hitting piece about an asylum-seeker from Uganda, who had been tortured by the government in his own country and tries to gain refuge in Ireland, but spends months in prison and longer in a state of uncertainty before being suddenly bound, gagged and deported. The play, which was written to call attention at the time to the “repressive and inhumane Irish Asylum regulations and the coming European Union (EU) cooperative controls of borders that will deny the human rights of asylum-seekers throughout the Continent” (Fitz-Simon and Sternlicht xviii), underlined the arbitrary nature of the legal (and appeals) procedures to which asylum-seekers have been subject. Through the character of an ambitious and selfish immigration officer, it demonstrates the seamy reality of power politics behind official policy, and the determination to prevent the state being contaminated by foreigners. It also shows the difficulty for an asylum-seeker in trying to convince the authorities that s/he is in danger if s/he returns home. Treasa Galvin explains, “The process of seeking refuge devalues and transforms the status of refugee from a respected and dignified position to one that is questioned and requires proof. While to recount the past is frequently traumatic for individuals, providing evidence of that past is especially problematic. By its very nature, forced migration precludes the individual from having in their possession those very documents required as proof of the need for refuge.” (207) The play also reveals the brutality of the procedure of forcible deportation that awaits someone who, like the central character of the play, does not succeed in their application, resulting in an

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immigration official “bursting into [the] house with five officers, a bodybelt, mouth tape and binding, pinning the Ugandan to the

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floor, parcelling him up, taking him to the airport and strapping him to a seat on a plane back home” (O’Kelly 154). When Asylum! Asylum! was restaged by Vic Merriman in Cork in 1997, the role of the asylum-seeker was assumed by George Seremba, who had fled Uganda after being shot by a government firing squad and left for dead.7 Seremba managed to escape to Kenya before seeking asylum in Canada.8 Subsequently he wrote a oneman show called Come Good Rain about his experiences, revealing during the performance the many bullet wounds in his body. This play, which displays his “ferocious resilience, qualities which many an asylum seeker has to have in abundance,” has been staged several times in Ireland and abroad to call attention to the plight of asylum-seekers.9 Austria is one of the many countries in Europe that regularly detains asylumseekers.10 In 2000 Christoph Schlingensief created an event in a main square outside the opera house called Bitte liebt Österreich (Please Love Austria) for the Vienna Festival to focus attention on Austrian attitudes. Staged shortly after the election of a coalition government that included the rightwing party of Jörg Haider (and caused the EU to impose diplomatic sanctions against a member country for the first time), Schlingensief placed twelve asylum-seekers in an industrial container and asked the public to decide which of them should be deported and who should be allowed to win prize money, marry an Austrian and gain the right to remain in the country. Slogans associated with Haider's party were affixed to the outside of the container such as Ausländer raus (“foreigners out”) and the Nazi motto Unsere Ehre heißt Treue (“Our pride is loyalty”), while the activities inside the container were transmitted via the Internet, which participants

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7 According to Seremba, he was shot by members of the “G” branch of Ugandan military intelligence. Personal communication, 14 September 2008. 8 Seremba explains that he was “offered asylum in Kenya, before applying for resettlement in Canada. I did this, in part because fellow bona fide refugees were being abducted and returned to Obote’s Uganda; none of the cases I was familiar with, survived the repatriation.” Personal communication, 14 September 2008. 9 When it was performed in Sligo and Drogheda, for example, asylum-seekers were invited to the performance. It was recently performed at Dartmouth College on 12 July 2008 in the context of a performance programme entitled “Eti! East Africa Speaks”, coupled with a work in progress by Laura Edmondson and Okello Kelo Sam called Forged in Fire about the civil war in northern Uganda. Interview with George Seremba, 19 August 2008. 10 According to Amnesty International, “The 2005 Aliens Police Act [of Austria], which is not in line with international standards, allowed authorities to persist in routinely detaining asylumseekers following their arrival, without taking into account their age, physical condition or family ties – thus violating their right to a private and family life. In many cases, the detention was protracted, disproportionate and unlawful. The poor conditions of detention also amounted to illtreatment, and asylum-seekers had no prompt or regular access to legal representation.”

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could watch live via video streaming. The event was modelled

on the popular Big Brother reality TV show, during which contestants lived with each other in a confined environment called “the container”; the TV show emphasised that the public could interact with the programme by voting whether the contestants should leave or remain in the container (and the news programmes announced every night who was allowed to remain in the show). In the case of the Vienna performance event, Schlingensief raised the stakes by using contestants who were (or claimed to be) highly qualified political exiles from various parts of the world (such as China, Iraq, Iran, Kosovo, Sri Lanka, Kurdistan, and Nigeria) and who (supposedly) faced danger if they returned to their home country. Of course the audience could not be sure if the contestants were real or fictional, that is to say if they were real exiles or simply actors playing such characters, especially because contact between the refugees within the container and the public outside appears to have been controlled by the mediatisation of the event. Schlingensief claimed that the programme was extremely popular and that over 70,000 people contacted the website, which kept crashing because of the level of popular interest both in Vienna and elsewhere. The event caused a heated discussion in the press, as it raised uncomfortable associations with the Austrian support for Hitler during the Third Reich as well as with the recent success of Haider's far-right party. Schlingensief himself stood on top of the container with a megaphone claiming to represent Haider’s party and spouting his party slogans. After several days, the container was assailed by a crowd of left-wing protestors, who objected to Schlingensief ’s performance event and tried to liberate the refugees and dismantle the offensive signs. Schlingensief was using a subversive strategy of over-identification with the opposition in order to render them powerless and exposed (see Arns and Sasse). The Austrian government seemed uncertain of whether to shut down the event and risk accusations of censorship or to allow it to continue despite all the attendant bad publicity for its coalition partners. In the end it ran for the week of the festival, attracting considerable newspaper and television coverage. Schlingensief’s use of an industrial container as a symbol of detainment was an inspired choice, calling to mind not only the inhumane detention centres for asylum-seekers but also the numerous tragedies that have occurred as immigrants have tried to cross borders illegally, in some cases suffocating, as in the case of the eight Turkish people (including three children)

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who died in 2001 aboard a ship from Belgium to Ireland, or the 54 Burmese migrant workers who suffocated inside a seafood

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container van in 2008 because of a broken ventilation system as they drove into Thailand (AFP, “54 Myanmar Migrants”), or the 58 Chinese citizens who died in a container of tomatoes travelling between Calais and Dover in 2000, “after the lorry driver, Perry Wacker, closed the air vent to prevent them being heard by the crew of the Channel ferry” (Booth). As mentioned earlier, Greek tragedy often portrayed asylumseekers, and so such plays have been exploited recently in order to call attention to problems surrounding this issue in the present day. Peter Sellars, for example, staged the rarely performed Children of Herakles at the American Repertory Theatre in Boston in 2003, to promote “a discussion of the global refugee crisis.” In his review, Kermit Dunkelberg wrote that Sellars employed “a multicultural cast of refugee and immigrant youth from the Greater Boston area” to portray “the uprooted children of Herakles” who equally served as “stand-ins for today’s thirty-five million refugees” (538-539). Likewise, the plight of Antigone has also served as a useful means for calling attention to the position of the state-

11 Judith Butler asks, “Whether the limit for which [Antigone] stands, a limit for which no standing, no translatable representation is possible, is not precisely the trace of an alternate legality that haunts the conscious, public sphere as its scandalous future.” (Antigone’s Claim 40). Žižek defines Butler's understanding of Antigone as “a ‘living dead’ in the sense of publicly assuming an uninhabitable position, a position for which there is no place in the public space” (Welcome 99).

less person. According to Slavoj Žižek, “Antigone formulates her claim on behalf of all those who, like the sans-papiers in today's France, are without a full and definite socio-ontological status; […] in our era of self-proclaimed globalization, they – the non-identified – stand for true universality.” (Žižek and Dolar 186) Antigone has been characterised by Jacques Lacan as occupying a liminal state “between two deaths” (270). He explains, “Her punishment will consist in her being shut up or suspended in the zone between life and death. Although she is not yet dead, she is eliminated from the world of the living.” 11 (280) Moreover, Hegel regarded Antigone as an “internal enemy”, opposing the legitimate role of the state, and in that sense, a stateless person. From her example, he generalised the position of women, who placed the interests of the family before the needs of the state, as “the everlasting irony [in the life] of the community” (288). As a figure who registers in psychoanalytic and philosophical discourse as being “between two deaths” and stateless, Antigone was transformed by Głowacki’s version

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of Antigone in New York into Anita, a homeless person from

Puerto Rico living rough in a New York public park. She wants to retrieve her former lover, Paulie, from a public morgue and bury him in the park to save him from the indignity of an unmarked pauper’s grave. She says, “Everyone has a right to his own grave,” (Głowacki 38) and when she gives her fellow homeless friends all the money that she possesses for them to find him and bring him back to the public park, she predicts (in a statement filled with irony), “Don’t worry, Paulie. You’re coming home.” (44) Although the friends are not able to identify Paulie in the morgue, and select the wrong body to bury, Anita does not seem perturbed and buries the corpse of an unknown person, treating it as if it were Paulie. The actions of her burial ritual and her respect for the deceased seem more important than burying the right body. What Głowacki’s script omits is the confinement of the Antigone character in a cave with no food, a place of living death, as in the original play. Instead, in Głowacki’s play, Anita is finally excluded from the public park. The police evict all the homeless people and erect a high metal fence around it to prevent them from returning. Exiled from the only space that she can call home, Anita tries in vain to climb the fence to get back to Paulie’s grave. Rather than being imprisoned, she is excluded and eventually hangs herself from the fence in despair, only to be buried in an unmarked grave as a non-person, another victim of arbitrary state actions. Głowacki’s script makes clear how homeless refugees in New York live outside the political system and forgo the normal rights of citizenship. Sasha, one of Anita’s friends suggests, “We have to get indoors. When you live outdoors no one thinks you are a person.” (Głowacki 72) This sentiment evokes the position of the Travelling Community in Ireland and the Romany in other parts of Europe, whose lifestyles do not coincide with the private property obligations of the capitalist system. In order to maintain the rights of a citizen in the nation-state, one must provide an address, “a fixed abode”. Having no “fixed abode” reduces one virtually to the status of the refugee. Thus, those who choose a nomadic lifestyle are frequently deprived of human rights by the exclusionary policies of the nation-state. Focusing on a specific instance of this issue, the theatre director Emil Hrvatin (who, in a subversive move, changed his name in 2007 to that of the right-wing politician Janez Janša, the

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Prime Minister of Slovenia at the time) directed a theatrical performance entitled The National Theatre of Slovenia that

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recalled the government decision to evict a Romany family from the village of Ambrus. The incident had been sparked when a neighbour was severely injured by a Slovene who was living amongst the Strojan family. The neighbourhood overreacted, assuming wrongly that the Slovene was Romany, and 300 armed residents surrounded the Strojan family and threatened to kill them if they did not leave. Rather than simply arresting the wrong-doer, the government complied with the community’s wishes and removed the family from their legallyowned homes and placed them in emergency accommodation for asylum-seekers, while attempting to relocate them in other areas. After a year they still had not succeeded in providing them with a home. The actors, using headphones, repeated verbatim television and radio footage of Slovenes shouting abuse at the Strojan family whilst erecting barricades to prevent them from living in their midst. The actors reproduced the “extremely vulgar and aggressive language, used by the angry mob” (Lukan, “Janša in Ambrus”) as well as statements by politicians for the theatre audience, with the director Janša (Hrvatin) himself pacing back and forth across the stage for an hour and a half muttering “Gypsies, gypsies.” The piece reaches a high point when the family tried to come back to their home for Christmas and the government brought in bulldozers to destroy their home, leaving them out in the cold. The President of Slovenia, who disagreed with the Prime Minister’s policies, attempted to intervene by delivering two mobile homes for the family but he encountered the same mob reaction. According to Blaž Lukan, This scene is reconstructed on stage with shivering precision and intensity. However, when one adds the content of what is actually being said by people who are the real (live) protagonists among us, the hate-speech of the mob and the fact that this kind of language – legitimized by the Ambrus case – became the language of the political ‘elite’, [it] represents a complete break down of state institutions, which are supposed to guarantee and protect the very fundamental law of ‘all being equal under the law’. […] This sad story without a doubt stands for one of the most shameful and tainted moments in Slovenian history since Slovenia became independent. (“Janša in Ambrus”)

As Wolfgang Heuer argues, within the nation-state, there is always “the danger of the nation overtaking the state as volonte general,

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as democratic populism or as a folkish, current ethnic movement”

(3), and in this case the government followed the general will. There is clearly an analogy that can be drawn between the “container” for confining refugees, the placelessness of exclusion, and Antigone’s cave. All are examples of what Agamben describes as “bare life,” a condition in which a person with no rights, a homo sacer, can be killed with impunity. We can see that there are various ways in which statelessness occurs: by compulsion (for example, by being forced to escape a country, or by deportation or exclusion); by choice (in the case of nomadic people who opt for this style of life); by accident (by those who are, in an extreme example, detained and who, in some cases, end up disappearing via rendition flights), etc. Statelessness is a key problem in today’s society. On the one hand, one never knows in what circumstances one might become stateless or rendered to a state of bare life. Wars, border disputes, ethnic uprisings, governmental oppression, economic deprivation, famine, etc., continue to foment refugee crises. Moreover, as Judith Butler and also Agamben have shown, after 9/11 the state of exception has become the norm and anyone can become a suspect (Butler, Precarious Life 97; Agamben, State of Exception 3-4, 22). Butler argues: In the name of a security alert and national emergency, the law is effectively suspended in both its national and international forms. And with the suspension of law comes a new exercise of state sovereignty, one that takes place outside the law, but through an elaboration of administrative bureaucracies in which officials now not only decide who will be tried, and who will be detained, but also have ultimate say over whether someone may be detained indefinitely or not. (Precarious Life 51)

Agamben explains: The immediately biopolitical significance of the state of exception as the original structure in which law encompasses living beings by means of its own suspension emerges clearly in the ‘military order’ issued by the president of the United States on November 13, 2001, which authorized the ‘indefinite detention’ and trial by ‘military commissions’ (not to be confused with the military tribunals provided for by the law of war) of noncitizens suspected of involvement in terrorist activities. […] What is new about President Bush’s order is that it radically erases any legal status of the individual, thus producing a legally unnamable and unclassifiable being. (State of Exception 4)

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On the other hand, as Agamben has pointed out, illegal immigration into the European Community during the end of the 20

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century led to huge numbers of people living in countries of which they are not citizens, “a permanently resident mass of noncitizens, who neither can be nor want to be naturalized or repatriated” (“We Refugees”). Agamben, who does not distinguish between the stateless person and the refugee because so many refugees do not wish to return home or have been rendered stateless, suggests, “the refugee is the sole category in which it is possible today to perceive the forms and limits of a political community to come. […] The refugee should be considered for what he is, that is, nothing less than a border concept that radically calls into question the principles of the nation-state” 12

(“We Refugees”).

Performances such as Asylum! Asylum!, Bitte liebt Österreich, Antigone in New York and The National Theatre of Slovenia remind us about the underlying principles of the nation-state, that their laws were framed to favour those who were designated as citizens. They also reveal that national governmental policies towards asylum-seekers function within an atmosphere of paranoia and xenophobia, protecting the privileges of citizens. While the European Union was anticipated by Hannah Arendt to alleviate the problems of the stateless person, its federal structure seems to be providing a basis for it acting more and more like a nation-state, in seeking ways to strengthen the borders and control the flow of migration. Politicians can make enormous capital out of claims about national security, national identity, and the need for tightening the borders, especially during the current “war on terror”, which shows no signs of ever ending, and the coming economic recession. Meanwhile, because asylum-seekers are beyond the law, arbitrary actions by the police, immigration officers and the government continue to treat them on an ad

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12 Agamben writes: We are accustomed to distinguishing between stateless persons and refugees, but this distinction, now as then, is not as simple as it might at first glance appear. From the beginning, many refugees who technically were not stateless preferred to become so rather than to return to their homeland (this is the case of Polish and Romanian Jews who were in France or Germany at the end of the war, or today of victims of political persecution as well as of those for whom returning to their homeland would mean the impossibility of survival). On the other hand, the Russian, Armenian and Hungarian refugees were promptly denationalized by the new Soviet or Turkish governments, etc. It is important to note that starting with the period of World War I, many European states began to introduce laws which permitted their own citizens to be denaturalized and denationalized. The first was France, in 1915, with regard to naturalized citizens of ‘enemy’ origins; in 1922 the example was followed by Belgium, which revoked the naturalization of citizens who had committed ‘anti-national’ acts during the war; in 1926 the Fascist regime in Italy passed a similar law concerning citizens who had shown themselves to be ‘unworthy of Italian citizenship’; in 1933 it was Austria’s turn, and so forth, until in 1935 the Nuremberg Laws divided German citizens into full citizens and citizens without political rights. These laws – and the mass statelessness that resulted – mark a decisive turning point in the life of the modern nation-state and its definitive emancipation from the naïve notions of ‘people’ and citizen. (“We Refugees”)

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hoc basis, subject to individual whim and communal emotion.

National citizenship (and even European citizenship) is a doubleedged sword: a means to benefit some and deprive others.

Bibliography AFP. “54 Myanmar Migrants Die in Seafood Container: Thai Police.” 9 Apr. 2008. 7 Sept. 2008 <http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5is334 VG__3Wkx5Ztz9SnouZvEg5A>. Agamben, Giorgio. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Trans. Daniel Heller-Roazen. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998. –––. State of Exception. Trans. Kevin Attell. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005. –––. “We Refugees.” Trans. Michael Rocke. 28 Aug. 2008 <http://www. egs.edu/faculy/agamben-we-refugees.html>. Amnesty International. “Amnesty International Report 2008.” 30 Aug. 2008 <http://thereport.amnesty.org/eng/regions/europe-and-centralasia/austria>. Arendt, Hannah. “We Refugees.” The Menorah Journal 1-2 (1943). Reprinted in Arendt, The Jewish Writings. Schocken Books, 2008. Arns, Inke, and Sylvia Sasse. “Subversive Affirmation: On Mimesis as a Strategy of Resistance.” Maska 21.3-4 (2006): 5-21. Balogh, Elemeir. Political Refugees in Ancient Greece: From the Period of the Tyrants to Alexander the Great. Johannesburg: Witswatersrand University Press, 1943. BBC. “Asylum Detentions ‘Breaking Law’.” 28 Aug. 2008 <http://news.bbc. co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/4109406.stm>. BBC. “Asylum Seekers Flee Detention Centre.” 28 Aug. 2008 <http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/june/6/ newsid_2499000/2499099.stm>. Bogue, Ronald. Deleuze’s Wake: Tributes and Tributaries. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2004. Booth, Jenny. “Eight Die in Container at Irish Port.” The Daily Telegraph 9 Dec. 2001. 28 Aug. 2008 <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ worldnews/europe/ireland/1364814/Eight-die-in-container-at-Irishport.html?mobile=true>. Butler, Judith, Antigone’s Claim: Kinship Between Life and Death. New York: Columbia University Press, 2000. –––. Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence. New York: Verso, 2004. Butler, Judith, and Gayatri Spivak. Who Sings the Nation State?. Oxford: Seagull, 2007. Collins, Pádraig. “Australia’s Detention of Asylum Seekers Relaxed.” Irish Times 30 July 2008: 10. Deleuze, Gilles, and Pierre Félix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Trans. Brian Massumi. London: Athlone Press, 1988. “Detention in Europe – JRS-Europe. Observation and Position Paper 2004.” 28 Aug. 2008 <http://www.ncadc.org.uk/resources/jrs.pdf>. Dunkelberg, Kermit. “Children of Herakles.” Theatre Journal 55.3 (2003): 538-539. European Council on Refugees and Exiles. “Detention.” 28 Aug. 2008 <http://www.ecre.org/topics/detention>. Fitz-Simon, Christopher, and Sanfford Sternlicht, eds. New Plays from the Abbey Theatre: 1993-1995. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1996. Galvin, Treasa. “Refugee Status in Exile: The Case of African Asylumseekers in Ireland.” Cultivating Pluralism: Psychological, Social and Cultural Perspectives on a Changing Ireland. Eds. Malcolm MacLachlan and Michael O’Connell. Dublin: Oak Tree Press, 2000, 199-218. Gilbert, Helen, and Jacqueline Lo. Performance and Cosmopolitics. Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.

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Głowacki, Janusz. Antigone in New York. Trans. Janusz Głowacki and Joan Torres. New York: Samuel French, 1997. Hegel, G. W. F. Phenomenology of the Spirit. Trans. A.V. Miller. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977. Heuer, Wolfgang. “Europe and its Refugees: Arendt on the Politicization of Minorities.” New School for Social Research, 2007 <http:// findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2267/is_4_74/ai_n24377475/ print?tag=artBody;col1>. Lacan, Jacques. The Ethics of Psychoanalysis 1959-1960. The Seminar of Jacques Lacan. Ed. Jacques-Alain Miller, Book VII. Trans. Dennis Porter. London: Routledge, 1992. Lukan, Blaž. “Janša in Ambrus (Slovene National Theatre by Janez Janša, 2007).” 15 Oct. 2008 <http://www.maska.si/en/productions/ performing_arts/slovene_national_theatre/381/reviews.html>. (Original article published in Delo 2 Nov. 2007: 23.) National Coalition of Anti-Deportation Campaigns. “Detention Centres in Europe.” 28 Aug. 2008 <http://www.ncadc.org.uk/resources/ detentioneurope.html>. O’Kelly, Donal. “Asylum! Asylum!” New Plays from the Abbey Theatre: 1993-1995. Eds. Christopher Fitz-Simon and Sanford Sternlicht. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1996. O’Mahoney, Peter. “Post-Afghan Hunger Strike Reflections on Ireland’s Asylum System.” 24 May 2006. 18 Sept. 2008 <www. irishrefugeecouncil.ie/press06/afghan.html>. Seremba, George. Personal Communication. Sjöholm, Cecilia. “Refugees of Thebes: Arendt’s Antigone.” Interrogating Antigone: From Philosophy to Performance. Eds. S. E. Wilmer and Audrone Žukauskaitė. Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming. Tedmanson, Sophie. “Australia Ends Detention Regime for Asylum Seekers.” Times Online 29 July 2008. 28 Aug. 2008 <http://www. timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article4420802.ece>. Žižek, Slavoj. Welcome to the Desert of the Real. London: Verso, 2002. Žižek, Slavoj, and Mladen Dolar. Opera's Second Death. London: Routledge, 2002.

S. E. Wilmer Performing Statelessness

S. E. Wilmer is Associate Professor of Drama and a Fellow of Trinity College Dublin. He has also been a Visiting Professor at Stanford University and University of California Berkeley. He is the author of Theatre, Society and the Nation: Staging American Identities (Cambridge University Press, 2002). More recently he edited National Theatres in a Changing Europe (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), (with John Dillon) Rebel Women: Staging Ancient Greek Today (Methuen, 2005), and Writing and Rewriting National Theatre Histories (Iowa University Press, 2004). He is also a playwright and his plays have been produced in many theatres including New York’s Lincoln Center. swilmer@tcd.ie

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Performing Statelessness

KEYWORDS: asylum-seeker, refugee, stateless, exclusion, detention, container, Giorgio Agamben, Donal O’Kelly, Christoph Schlingensief, Janusz Głowacki, Janez Janša The asylum-seeker occupies both a local and an international position, straddling the borders of the nation-state. By definition s/he is in a state of becoming (as Gilles Deleuze or Hannah Arendt might put it), an exile of one country and not yet a citizen of another. S/he is in a liminal state or in a kind of no man’s land, a non-person contained by the nation-state in a specially contrived holding centre, unable to work or function properly in society, effectively deprived of human rights, and subject to deportation at any time. This essay uses the writings of Hannah Arendt, Giorgio Agamben and Judith Butler to theorise the issue of the stateless person within the discourse of biopolitics and relate it to several recent plays and performances concerning refugees and homelessness. Drama since the Greeks has often dealt with the asylum-seeker, from Aeschylus’s The Suppliants, Sophocles’s Oedipus at Colonus and Euripides’s Medea, to Shakespeare’s King Lear. This article focuses on four pieces: Donal O’Kelly’s Asylum! Asylum! about the status of asylum-seekers in Ireland; Christoph Schlingensief ’s Bitte Liebt Österreich, which deployed an industrial container inhabited by refugees in a central square in Vienna and encouraged local citizens to vote (in a kind of big brother knock out competition) on who should be allowed to remain in the country; Janusz Głowacki’s Antigone in New York, which depicts Antigone as a homeless exile figure who tries to bury her lover in a Manhattan public park; and Janez Janša’s The National Theatre of Slovenia, which reconstructs a national scandal concerning the governmental eviction of a Romany family. Each piece calls attention to the bare life of the refugee and the policies of exclusion in the nation-state.

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Uprizarjanje oseb brez državljanstva

S. E. Wilmer Performing Statelessness

KLJUČNE BESEDE: begunec, iskalec azila, oseba brez državljanstva, družbeno izključevanje, Giorgio Agamben, Christoph Schlingensief, Donal O'Kelly, Janusz Głowacki, Janez Janša Iskalec azila je tako v lokalnem kot v mednarodnem položaju, saj se seli čez meje nacionalne države. Po definiciji je v “postajanju” (kot bi to morda opredelila Gilles Deleuze ali Hannah Arendt). V eni državi je begunec, v drugi še ni državljan. Je v nekakšnem liminalnem stanju ali na nekakšnem nikogaršnjem ozemlju, ne-oseba, ki jo nacionalna država zadržuje v posebnem zbirnem centru brez pravice do dela ali polnega delovanja v družbi, praktično oropana človekovih pravic in podvržena možnosti deportacije v vsakem trenutku. V tem eseju se naslanjam na spise Hannah Arendt, Giorgia Agambena in Judith Butler, da bi teoretično obdelal vprašanje osebe brez državljanstva v diskurzu biopolitike in ga povezal z nekaterimi sodobnimi dramami in predstavami na temo beguncev in brezdomstva. V dramatiki se je iskalec azila pogosto pojavljal že od starih Grkov naprej, od Ajshilovih Prošnjic, Sofoklejevega Ojdipa na Kolonu in Evripidove Medeje do Shakespearovega Kralja Leara. V tem članku so v središču štiri dela: Asylum! Asylum! Donala O’Kellyja o položaju iskalcev azila na Irskem; Bitte Liebt �� Österreich Christopha Schlingensiefa, v katerem je režiser postavil industrijski zabojnik na glavni dunajski trg, vanj naselil begunce in pozval domačine, naj (v slogu izločanja pri resničnostnih šovih) glasujejo, komu naj bo dovoljeno ostati v državi; Antigone in New York Janusza Głowackega, v katerem je Antigona brezdomna izgnanka, ki skuša pokopati svojega ljubimca v javnem parku na Manhattnu; in Slovensko narodno gledališče Janeza Janše, ki rekonstruira državni škandal ob vladni izselitvi romske družine. Vsako od del opozarja na golo življenje begunca in politiko izključevanja v nacionalni državi.

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Syphilis on Stage: The Production of Evidence and Theatre Censorship Around 1900

PAPERS

Jan Lazardzig UDK 792:616.972

As early as 1935 it was clear to the

NOTES

1 The present article is based partly on research results that have already been published elsewhere. See Lazardzig and Nowak (73-100). I thank William McCann (Gwynedd, Wales) for translating this paper.

microbiologist and scientific theorist Ludwig Fleck, as he demonstrates in his book Entstehung und Entwicklung einer wissenschaftlichen Tatsache (The Genesis and Development of a Scientific

Fact), that the production of evidence is not just the result of using laboratory apparatus; it is also the result of the establishment of collective modes of thought. It is not the possibilities provided by the instruments in the laboratory that are decisive in the production of evidence, but much more the social dynamic within a collective of thinkers. It is not purely by chance that Fleck develops his theory of modes of thinking against the background of the ‘bacteriological revolution’ in modern medicine (and here particularly the proof of the existence of the syphilis pathogen by means of the ‘Wassermann Test’), since making the invisible visible is, symptomatically, a central focus of modern science (Böhme 42-67).1 The bacteriological exposure of syphilis, the demonstration of the existence of the pathogen, functions – and this is precisely independent of the possibilities that had long been provided by the microscope – only against the background of a completely different mode of ‘engendering’, which can be described using

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KEYWORDS

syphilis, prostitution, theatre, evidence, censorship, Eugène Brieux, Les Avariés / Damaged Goods 3/2/09 4:58 PM

Fleck’s words as a specific “orchestration” or “harmonization” of the senses, “No half-hearted rationality, no statistics can help us here.”2 (102-103) Unlike Fleck, who derives his epistemology of the way scientific facts are determined by modes of thought solely from the internal logic of research groups and laboratory

Jan Lazardzig Syphilis on Stage: The Production of Evidence and Theatre Censorship Around 1900

situations – largely excluding the “social atmosphere” that he initially regards as responsible for the formation of scientific facts – I would like in this paper to direct my attention to the social ‘laboratory situation’ which is responsible for those conceptions of the disease which precede, overlay or interfere with the exemplary processes of bacteriology. Since its first appearance in late medieval Europe, many completely differing anxieties have been projected onto the Lustseuche (“carnal plague”) syphilis. There has been a regular policy of inspiring fear, and not just in terms of the sexual: Where syphilis is concerned it has always been possible to successfully mobilise xenophobia as

well.3

The unpredictable nature of

the disease’s course, and the fact that the mode of transmission is mostly sexual, as well as the moral dimension combined with this, imbued the illness with a dramatic nature which made it a popular artistic sujet (see Schonlau). In this paper I shall therefore be looking at the interfaces and interferences between scientific and artistic/theatrical ‘definitions’ of the pathogen. The phantasmal dimension of the illness which overlies the scientific evidentialisation of the path of infection is revealed precisely in the way the problem is publicly treated in the theatre. The narrow limits that police censorship and aesthetic conven-

2 On the interaction between the practical use of instruments and the use of imagination see the fundamental work of Hankins and Silverman. On material, performative and media-related aspects of the production of evidence see Schramm, Schwarte and Lazardzig. 3 See on this subject the cultural history of syphilis (with numerous examples): Bäumler. The syphilis discourse around 1900 became a hot spot for the female/feminist debates of this time. Actual research on female sexuality in 19th century still favours the aspect of surveillance and oppression. The emancipative role of female activism in this respect still appears to be underestimated. See Puenzieux and Ruckstuhl. To give just one example: the life and work of Anna Pappritz (1861-1939), one of the highly profiled activists for female issues of this time (especially on the betterment of prostitutes facing syphilis), still remains disregarded.

tion prescribed for the discussion of a morally precarious theme succeeded in inflaming the imagination and giving syphilis a far more effective ‘image’ than would have been possible merely with the photographic apparatus of the bacteriologists’ laboratories. We can also see an essential reason for this in the fundamentally theatrical appearance of the pathogen in the form of prostitution. Long before any bacteriological definition, the syphilis pathogen already existed in the figure of the seductress. When, in the train

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of rapid urbanisation in the second half of the industrial 19th

century, there was an equally rapid spread of both syphilis and prostitution, police regulation of the latter was the preferred means of combating syphilis. In contrast to Ludwik Fleck, who ultimately inscribes the (social) production of evidence in a process of revelation, proof and verification, I would like at this point to look at those ‘extra-scientific’ forces of definition which, contrary to the normal tendency, work with strategies of concealment, suppression, regulation and even obliteration.

Pathogen, incitement, security Long before the Berlin medical official Fritz Schaudinn (18711906) observed the pale silvery syphilis pathogen Spirochaeta pallida under his microscope in the spring of 1905, reporting it in the journal Arbeiten aus dem Kai4 See among others: Ryan, Potton, Behrend. The list could be continued at will. For the history of prostitution in the 19th century, see above all: Corbin (“Women”).

serlichen Gesundheitsamte (Schaudinn and Hoffmann 527-534), the appearance of the ‘carnal plague’ aroused fear of infection. The linking of prostitution

and sexually transmitted diseases can already be found in medical educational writings at the end of the 18th century. The Parisian doctor Parent-Duchâtelet had already created the social and physiological ‘type’ of the fallen woman (Les repentantes) in his epoch-making book De la prostitution dans la ville de Paris (Paris 1836), and had seen in this type a phenomenon which was – by reason of her profession – particularly susceptible to disease. Subsequently, a large number of publications regarded prostitution as an entirely urban problem.4 Increasingly, they ceased trying to explain the origins of prostitution using the social environment, preferring to ascribe it to the pathological individual nature of the prostitutes themselves. In this way the Hamburg doctor H. Lippert, in a chapter entitled “Physiological and pathological description of the Hamburg prostitute” cites “laziness, imprudence and above all vanity” as the main motivation for prostitution (qtd. in Bloch 352). As a model to counter the dangerous seductress, the ideal of the pure woman remaining chaste until marriage was promoted. The educational dialectic of this idealisation becomes clear in, for example, the work of Josef Schrank when he calls the “institution of forced marriage” the ultimate cause of prostitution (Schrank, vol. 1, introduction).

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The deterioration in the social situation in the expanding cities had favoured the spread of infectious diseases in the second half of the 19th century. More than anything else, the ‘venereal contamination’ of society was seen everywhere as a sign of the physical and moral decline of society, and considered to be a

Jan Lazardzig Syphilis on Stage: The Production of Evidence and Theatre Censorship Around 1900

threat to the family, the population as a whole, and also the ‘race’: as a “plaie sociale”, “a festering abscess on the body of society” (Bloch 342), prostitution and sexually transmitted diseases became indistinguishable. Thus Iwan Bloch (1872-1922), a specialist in dermatology and venereology in Berlin, described “prostitution and the sexually transmitted diseases which are most intimately connected with it” in his standard work Das Sexualleben unserer Zeit (The sexual life of our times), as “actually the core, the central problem of the sexual question. Solving the former is almost identical with solving the latter. Imagine the magnitude and the content of this idea: no prostitution, no more sexually transmitted diseases!”5 (342) So before the syphilis pathogen had been found, it had adopted the appearance of the prostitute. Both were imagined to be omnipresent, irresistible, treacherous and extremely unforgiving. As a result, all the preventive measures taken were directed against prostitutes (Puenzieux and Ruckstuhl 33-56). The prostitute was no longer simply the object of moral outrage; she embodied the pathogen and could therefore much more easily be pathologised.6 The convergence between early immunology and the prevention of sexually transmitted diseases is striking in this context. Behind both there is the idea of a healthy organism (cell, body, state) as a closed unit and a hostile, invasive pathogen. The organism reacts to the evil effects of the pathogen, to its attacks, by defending itself. The resulting battle can be seen as the essence of the disease (Fleck 79).7 The numerous Societies for the prevention of venereal disease which were formed in Europe at the beginning of the 20th century were so tightly organised largely

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5 See also Lesser: “Every single prostitute suffers from sexually transmitted disease […]. This further results in the idea that we could achieve major progress in restricting the spread of sexually transmitted diseases if we succeeded in improving the general state of health of prostitutes, in sanitising prostitution by removing infected prostitutes from circulation and healing them as quickly as possible.” (61-62) 6 Thus under point II of the resolution of the International Conference for the Prophylaxy of Syphilis and Venereal Maladies in Brussels in 1899 we find: “Prostitutes with sexually transmitted infections should not be regarded as delinquents, but as sick people suffering from infectious diseases” (qtd. in Mitteilungen 43). The interpretation of the prostitute in terms of biological theories of degeneration, based on the ideas of the influential Italian criminal anthropologist Cesare Lombroso (1835-1909), went even further than this pathologisation. Lombroso believed that female prostitution was the counterpart of male criminality. The “born whore” is, in his theory, the female equivalent of the “born criminal” and both are identical with the degenerate “moral idiot” (Weindling 82-83). 7 Fleck follows Julius Citron (Die Methoden von Immundi agnostik und Immunotherapie, Leipzig 1910) in relating the concept of infectious disease to an attack and defense model.

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because they saw not just the individual body as under threat,

but also the body of the state, and therefore made it their duty to defend it.8 From a historical perspective, these philanthropic societies – in the German Empire it was the Deutsche Gesellschaft zur Bekämpfung von Geschlechtskrankheiten (DGBG) – were taking over an area of public welfare which had originally been the responsibility of the police. Admittedly there had been a tendency since the middle of the 18th century, with the development of a narrowly material conception of the role of the police, for public welfare to be displaced in favour of the maintenance of security. Nevertheless it is almost impossible to distinguish between welfare and security functions within the practice of the (Prussian) police authorities in the 19th century.9 This becomes clear when we look at what was called ‘preventive censorship’ as exercised by the police authority 8 The founding of the Société internationale de prophylaxie sanitaire et morale de la syphilis et des maladies vénériennes in Brussels in 1900 was followed by similar societies all over Europe. Among others the Deutsche Gesellschaft zur Bekämpfung der Geschlechtskrankheiten (DGBG) in 1902 and the Österreichische Gesellschaft zur Bekämpfung der Geschlechtskrankheiten (ÖGzBdG) in 1905.

between 1851 and 1918 in connection

9 In his History of Governmentality (vol. I, 449-519) Michel Foucault describes the contribution of the old style police to the genesis of modern bio-politics.

for the intellectual life of the people.”

10 With regard to the ephemeral nature of its material, theatrical censorship is fundamentally different from literary censorship. (Walach 259-274)

with the theatre in Prussia. For example, one of the apologists for theatre censorship, the lawyer Kurt Kleefeld, wrote in 1905: “The natural grounds for state supervision in respect of theatrical performances lie in the nature of the theatre itself and its importance (5-6) Using similar diction he comes to the conclusion: “It is only the examination which precedes performance that protects the state and the unsuspecting audience against the kind of assaults from the stage which might be present in any play.” (35)

Police, theatre, censorship The questions of sexuality which were thrust more and more strongly into the police’s field of view at the turn of the 20th century proved per se to be ambiguous, slippery and difficult to deal with.10 This was partly because the plays that were submitted for censorship – as in the case of Frank Wedekind’s Frühlings Erwachen (Spring Awakening, 1891, first performance 1906) – had already had any directness that might be regarded as too

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daring removed by the theatres. Moreover, the dominant Victorian sexual discourse in the area of tension between public and private, male and female sexuality, art and science was itself distinguished by an ambiguity (and a double standard) that was taken to extremes. It is difficult for us today to decipher the

Jan Lazardzig Syphilis on Stage: The Production of Evidence and Theatre Censorship Around 1900

numerous signal words of this masked sexual discourse. At the same time one can discern two censorship strategies which are paradoxically opposed to one another: on the one hand, a biological and scientific objectification, and on the other, the avoidance of any concrete physical sexuality. For example, the word Beischlaf (“intercourse”) was consistently replaced by Fortpflanzung (“reproduction”); it was not pleasure but rather biological necessity that was foregrounded in questions of sexuality. At the same time, however, this reduction of the sexual to the biological act remained a provocatively incorporeal work of recitation which further fired the imagination. The case concerning the censorship of a play that is today largely forgotten, Eugène Brieux’s (1858-1932) didactic play Les Avariés (1901, Engl.: Damaged Goods, German: Die Schiffbrüchigen),

11 For Brieux’s biography see Santa Vicca (1-3, 13-54) with comprehensive bibliography. On the performances of Les Avariés in France, see Corbin, “Women” (268-271). On the performances of Damaged Goods in the United States, see Johnson (165-182).

demonstrates how far the theatrical censors, as an authority empowered to ensure the preservation of norms in both public and private sexuality, represented the locus of definitional power.11 Mobilised as an instrument of education about sexually transmitted disease, the play was seen by more than a million people in over a hundred German cities and towns right through to the 1920s. The promoter, the Deutsche Gesellschaft zur Bekämpfung von Geschlechtskrankheiten (DGBG), a society founded in 1902 in Berlin by doctors, lawyers and philanthropists was seen, against the background of a seemingly omnipresent threat, as the hub of all efforts to combat sexually transmitted disease (Sauerteig 114). This drama is, briefly, about the intrusion of syphilis into a middle-class family. The husband is infected shortly before his marriage as a result of visiting a prostitute. His innocent wife then bears a child which shows all the signs of congenital syphilis – a path of infection which, according to what they believed about the laws of heredity around 1900, was possible and, of course, guaranteed that the mother was ‘immaculate’. The play ends with a dramatic appeal by the doctor who has dealt with the case, the shining light of the play, who denounces the prevailing lack of sexual and moral awareness.

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The Berlin censorship authority’s attitude to the play was one of

suspicion. In Department VIII of the Royal Police headquarters, the office responsible for theatre censorship, they had earlier said “that the play presents things which until now have not been said – that is with such purposefulness, exclusivity and detail – on the stage” (BLHA, Th 318, 22 verso). The supposed openness with which, in the contemporary view, sexuality and disease were felt to be dealt with here was something new. The Deutsche Gesellschaft zur Bekämpfung der Geschlechtskrankheiten supported their submission with numerous supporting statements from doctors which were intended to guarantee the scientific nature of the play. However, the police – paradoxically – could not bring themselves to accept the demands for controlled prostitution made in this didactic play. As a result, not only was the doctor’s appeal for medical supervision of prostitutes “toned down”, but the term “prostitute” was consistently altered to Mädchen (“girl”) in order to prevent the audience being mor12 The entire course of the censorship of the play has been discussed elsewhere (Lazardzig, “Inszenierung” 268-276).

ally ‘infected’.12 Ultimately, however, the fact that the text of the play was guaranteed to be medically sound, as well as the avoidance of any “sensationalism” in the

presentation of ‘medical facts’ meant that the censors did pass Die Schiffbrüchigen. Yet it was precisely the insistence on the scientific nature of the play’s text, which allowed people to speak in a supposedly open way about a theme linked with matters sexual, which helped to conceal what was supposed to be being talked about. Erwin Blumenfeld (1897-1969), who later became a fashion photographer, remembers in his autobiography the scientistic atmosphere that surrounded the performances of Die Schiffbrüchigen, “Since the unmentionable disease was only hinted at in a symbolic way, I didn’t understand a thing.” (137-138) The photographs of the Berlin performance of Die Schiffbrüchigen which appeared in the theatrical periodical Das Theater give some idea of the bigoted character of this syphilis play. Admittedly, “the ravages of syphilis” were supposed to be dramatically presented (Archive of Deutsche Theater Berlin, programme of Die Schiffbrüchigen 2), but it was dialogised facts which threw light on the ‘medically accurate’ depiction of the disease. Thus Emil Faktor ends his article in the liberal daily newspaper Börsencourier (26 June 1913) with an account of an incident that he met with in connection with the production, “As I left the theater, I met a Chinese man on Friedrichsstraße whose nose had been eaten away by syphilis. The sight of him disturbed me more than

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all the discussions in the play.” The representation of the disease on stage retained the most important quality of a secret disease: it was not visible. The sensual perception of syphilis took second place to the linguistic description. The audience saw the social consequences, but no visible signs of the disease on human bod-

Jan Lazardzig Syphilis on Stage: The Production of Evidence and Theatre Censorship Around 1900

ies. The concealment of the disease under the mask of factual medical knowledge also found its way into the linguistic and poetic masking of some critics: the “specialist” in the “so-called secret diseases” was, according to the Berliner Tageblatt (26 June 1913) in reference to Ibsen’s Ghosts (Gengangere), examining a “child that Oswald Alving’s Paris doctor would call vermoulu [Fr. worm-eaten, decaying].” In actual fact, the paper reported that soon after the Berlin performance the promoters expressed their regret that “the play was not capable of giving full expression to the serious importance of sexually transmitted disease.”

Theatre, prostitution, fear

13 On the Fournier era, see Quétel (165-169); Wayk (232-236).

Eugène Brieux had based the unnamed doctor who was the main character in his 1901 three-acter on the French syphilis specialist Alfred Fournier (1832-1914). Fournier, who was for a long time the doyen of European syphilis research, had initiated the move towards public prophylaxis and the internationalisation of the movement for venereal education by founding the Société française de prophylaxie sanitaire et morale (Corbin, “Syphilis” 136). Under Fournier’s influence the paradigm of congenital syphilis had become established in European medical schools (Corbin, “Syphilis” 135-138).13 Defects of the body and its organs were increasingly ascribed to syphilitic infections. Since only extremely unclear symptoms could be attributed to congenital syphilis, it seemed necessary to establish social and biological marking systems within which the disease could be found and combated: Fear of physical and social degeneration gave rise to the question of targets for combating the evil that was threatening the nation. The carriers of the disease were the classes dangereuses, whose services certain middle-class gentlemen could or would not do without, especially prostitutes and servants. (Ulrich 230)

The bourgeois milieu seemed to be particularly threatened by the disease-carriers mentioned above because of its two-fold sexual morality, which demanded female chastity while ignoring male

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visits to prostitutes.14 In his work L'hérédité syphilitique, which

Fournier had written “especially for the general practitioner and family doctor” he characterises “the hereditability of syphilis [as] an undeniable, proven and unassailable fact.” Nevertheless, congenital syphilis appears as a “general illness,” which “very often” makes it difficult to recognise the disease “as a result of numerous symptoms which, although they in no way appear as syphilis, are nonetheless indubitably the result of syphilis” (Die Vererbung V, 7). As a “complicated pathological individuality” it is responsible for “a whole series of occurrences […] that are no longer syphilis, but can be seen as its derivatives” (Die Vererbung V, 7). To the extent that Fournier removes from the disease the possibility of being seen or diagnosed, his medical experience in dealing with syphilitic patients grows in importance. Idealised case examples and short sequences of dialogue between doctor and patient form the empirical basis of his argumentation. 14 See Nipperdey (95-112): “Victorian morality” expressed itself by overcoming “instinctual physical urges” though self-control, and the accepted norm of sexual behaviour was above all self-denial and “confining sexuality within the moral bounds of marriage.” Nipperdey sees “bourgeois double moral standards” above all as being understood as a “distinction between a morality for men and a morality for women.” Peter Gay undertakes a critical revision of this bourgeois Victorian ideas about sex.

Brieux, who includes in Les Avariés the

15 Quétel (186-189) summarises the French debate about syphilis and marriage. A further source of inspiration for Les Avariés could be Science et le mariage (1900) by the French doctor and writer Henri Cazalis (1840-1909), see Corbin “Women” (269).

tions for cases where syphilis occurred

constellations of characters described here, together with the motivations and modes of behaviour suggested for them, falls back on a repertoire of characters which had been described by Fournier in innumerable constellations in a casuistic way. In Syphilis et mariage (1880, German ed. 1881) Fournier had also given extremely exact instrucbefore and during marriage (Syphilis 103, 161).15 The similarity of Fournier’s exemplary cases with the fate of the Dupont family as depicted by Brieux is not to be ascribed solely to the drama-

turgic transposition of a material model. It is, rather, based on a functional agreement: both Brieux and Fournier wished to give perceptible form to this disease – perceived as a threat – and to make it possible to speak about the “secret disease.” The more closely, however, the medical gaze was directed at prostitutes, in order to discover in them the carriers and breeders of infection, the more difficult it became to try and delimit and describe the phenomenon of ‘prostitution’. Now it was no longer merely the prostitutes themselves who were in the foreground: their social environment, the ‘milieu’, also ended up

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under the hygienist’s microscope. Although Parent-Duchâtelet had still restricted prostitution to cases of public offence, only a few years later a completely new cosmos opened up with the discovery of “clandestine prostitution” which became a topic of many books.16 This shady milieu of “love for sale”, which until

Jan Lazardzig Syphilis on Stage: The Production of Evidence and Theatre Censorship Around 1900

then had remained “hidden” from the social hygienists and syphilis specialists, was imagined as a negative counterpart of the bourgeois world. Branded as “false” or “dirty”, clandestine prostitution threatened the “true” and “pure” love of “cultured people”. Using continually new typologies, hygienists therefore attempted to map the panorama of depravity and to make it visible and therefore controllable. Next to the regulated, that is, officially registered, public prostitution of the brothels, it was above all the proliferation of hostess bars and public houses with female serving staff, dance halls and ballrooms, smoking and variety theatres, girls’ boarding schools and maisons de passe, massage parlours, women’s cafes and night cafes that caught the medical eye.17 Accordingly, every form of female promiscuity was likely to be suspected of depravity, entire professional groups could be stigmatised wholesale. The Viennese Chief Inspector of Police Baumgarten, in a report for the Österreichische Gesellschaft zur Bekämpfung der Geschlechtskrankheiten, included mainly “those women, who work as waitresses, cashiers, buffet waitresses, flower sellers, club hostesses, choristers, dancers and singers in places of low entertainment, and finally in a certain sense masseuses as well” (136), who for reasons of “van-

16 See Martineau; Commenge gives the following definition: “La prostitution est lácte par lequel une femme, faisant commerce de son corps, se livre au premier venu, moyennant rémunération et ná dáutres moyens déxistence que ceux que lui procurent les relations passagères quélles entretient avec un plus ou moins grand nombre díndividus” (4). 17 On typology see Bloch (381391) and Baumgarten (136-141). 18 See as a prominent representative of the economic theory, for example, Anna Pappritz. The anthropological theory, which started from the premise of an inborn disposition to depravity, was diametrically opposed to the economic theory.

ity” or inadequate wages were thronging into the repugnant trade. They were involved in prostitution “under the camouflage of a profession, or as well as in a profession in which they were actually working” (136). The attributes of the “secret disease” were transferred seamlessly to its supposed protagonists. Even though the causes of clandestine prostitution were repeatedly explained as being economic,18 its spread did not obey the law of the market, that is, the relationship between supply and demand. Social-hygienists in the medical profession repeatedly pointed out that the spread of prostitution did not keep step with growth in the male population:

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Thus in Berlin, for example, prostitution has increased at a rate that is almost double that of the increase in the male population […]. Supply everywhere exceeds demand, and this plentiful supply is quite definitely partly responsible for arousing the demand. Street prostitutes and brothels tempt many men to indulge in sexual intercourse who would otherwise never have felt the need for it. (Bloch 360-361)

Removing prostitution from the logic of capitalist exchange encouraged the demonisation of a menacing depravity that flourished underground (Schiller 311-313).19 The appearance of the prostitute as the innocent fallen woman had turned into that of the evil seductress. It was not only their omnipresence – to a degree which it was impossible to keep track of and which was only perceptible to the trained eye – but above all their underhand behaviour that found its way into the arsenal of fear-inspiring medical diatribes. For example, at the turn of the century Alfred Fournier wrote a pamphlet with the title For our 19 See also Wolff: “The fact that the number of brothels is decreasing merely proves that prostitution has taken on another form. Tea salons, night cafés, hostess bars etc. did not previously exist, they are nothing more than a worse class of brothel, because they are not regulated” (74).

sons when they reach eighteen years of age, in which he castigated the menacing characteristics of the disease in an avuncular and suggestive way:

You are now grown up young people. Because of this, be prepared for women’s wiles to pounce on you like an easily captured prey. You should know that this temptation is everywhere and shows itself in many forms. You will not meet it only in the evening or at night on street corners, you will also come across it during the daytime, be it in the form of elegant ladies promenading on the streets, or in the form of ‘apparent working women’, who are seemingly going about their business with parcels under their arms – or above all in hostess bars, in the theater or in its corridors, at public balls, in cafes, café-concerts, certain milliners’, perfumery or curiosity shops, in the back rooms of shops that are equipped for the most unlikely ‘industry’, and also most of all in brothels which advertise themselves under the many and varied signs in our capital. They could also follow you into your home in the form of letters, billets doux, as happened to one of my very young clients, a schoolboy from Condorcet, who received such a letter one day, in which a fair unknown lady told him that he had ‘caught her attention’ and invited him to a rendezvous. Unfortunately, he accepted her invitation and had to pay dearly for his naïveté. (Für unsere Söhne 37-38)

In 1913 Alfred Adler coined the neologism syphilidophobia for the hypertrophic fear of infection: a symptom, as it were, of infection

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anxiety. According to Adler, he very seldom came across a case of neurosis “which did not markedly betray the thought processes of syphilidophobia” (66). Adler sums up: “Where a patient shows signs of syphilis anxiety, one can be sure that behind it lies fear of woman, or of man, and mostly of both” (75). The symptomatic

Jan Lazardzig Syphilis on Stage: The Production of Evidence and Theatre Censorship Around 1900

behaviour of a compulsive neurotic reported by Theodor Reik, a follower of Freud’s, was also syphilidophobic: I wash my hands because I have previously put them in a pocket in which there was a handkerchief which I had touched with my hand the previous day, a hand which had brushed against my winter coat, which I had touched with a glove which I had worn when I shook hands with a young man who had just returned from maneuvers in Czernowitz where he might have been in contact with syphilitic officers. (49, my italics)

While the symptoms of syphilis became ever more non-specific under the gaze of the doctors, fear of the pathogen had itself become a symptom. With this pathologisation of the fear of the pathogen we have come full circle. Syphilis is once more – this time as a phantasm – within the definitional power of the medical profession. By this point at the very latest it should have become clear that in the ‘pathogenic complex’ sketched here it is not possible simply to separate imaginative and evidential processes, in as much as what is revealed is mostly less exciting than what is concealed. This is particularly true of the places where people watch very carefully, namely the theatre and the laboratory. Translated by William McCann

Bibliography Adler, Alfred. “Syphilidophobie.” Geschlecht und Gesellschaft 8 (1913): 66-75. Bäumler, Ernst. Amors vergifteter Pfeil. Kulturgeschichte einer verschwiegenen Krankheit. Frankfurt a. M.: Piper, 1997. Baumgarten. “Bericht bei der Enquête der Österreichischen Gesellschaft zur Bekämpfung der Geschlechtskrankheiten.” Die Enquête der Österreichischen Gesellschaft zur Bekämpfung der Geschlechtskrankheiten. Ed. S. Ehrmann. Wien: Barth, 1908. 136-141. Behrend, Friedrich Jacob. Die Prostitution in Berlin und die gegen sie und die Syphilis zu nehmenden Maßregeln. Erlangen: Palm und Enke, 1850. Bloch, Iwan. Das Sexualleben unserer Zeit in seinen Beziehungen zur modernen Kultur. Berlin: Marcus, 1909. Blumenfeld, Erwin. Durch tausendjährige Zeit. Erinnerungen. Mit einem Vorwort von Alfred Andersch. Berlin: Argon, 1988. Böhme, Hartmut. “Das Volle und das Leere. Zur Geschichte des Vakuums.” Luft. Ed. Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik. Köln: Wienand, 2003. 42-67.

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Brieux, Eugène. Die Schiffbrüchigen (Les Avariés). Ein Theaterstück in drei Akten. Mit einer Vorrede von Prof. Dr. Max Flesch. Berlin, Leipzig, Köln: Ahn, 1914. Commenge, O. La Prostitution clandestine à Paris. Paris: Schleicher frères, 1897. Corbin, Alain. Women for Hire. Prostitution and Sexuality in France after 1850. Cambridge/Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990. –––. “Die erbliche Syphilis oder die unmögliche Erlösung. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Erbkrankheiten.” Wunde Sinne. Über die Begierde, den Schrecken und die Ordnung der Zeit im 19. Jahrhundert. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1993. 125-150. “Deutsches Theater.” Berliner Tageblatt 26 June 1913. Faktor, Emil. “Die Schaubühne als Aufklärungsanstalt. Zur Premiere des Brieuxschen Dreiakters ‘Die Schiffbrüchigen’.” Berliner Börsencourier 26 June 1913. Fleck, Ludwik. Entstehung und Entwicklung einer wissenschaftlichen Tatsache. Einführung in die Lehre vom Denkstil und Denkkollektiv. Ed. Lothar Schäfer and Thomas Schnelle. Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1999. Foucault, Michel. Geschichte der Gouvernementalität. Vol. I: Sicherheit, Territorium, Bevölkerung. Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 2004. Fournier, Jean Alfred. Syphilis und Ehe. Vorlesungen gehalten im Hospital Saint-Louis. Berlin: Hirschwald, 1881. –––. Die Vererbung der Syphilis. Im Einvernehmen mit dem Verfasser bearbeitet von Dr. Ernest Finger. Leipzig and Wien: Deuticke, 1892. –––. Für unsere Söhne wenn sie achtzehn Jahre alt werden. Einige ärztliche Ratschläge von Professor Alfred Fournier (Paris). Ed. Ludwig Falk. Berlin: O. Coblentz, 1903. Gay, Peter. Schnitzler's Century. The Making of Middle-Class Culture, 1815-1914. New York and London: Norton, 2002. Hankins, Thomas L., and Robert J. Silverman. Instruments and the Imagination. Princeton (NJ): Princeton University Press: 1995. Johnson, Katie N. Sisters in Sin. Brothel Drama in America, 1900-1920. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 2006. Kleefeld, Kurt. Die Theaterzensur in Preußen. Berlin: Struppe & Winckler, 1905. Lazardzig, Jan. “Inszenierung wissenschaftlicher Tatsachen. ‘Die Schiffbrüchigen’ im Deutschen Theater zu Berlin (1913).” Der Hautarzt 52 (2002): 268-276. Lazardzig, Jan, and Silke Nowak. “Theatrum syphilidis. Irritation und Infektion bei Arthur Schnitzler.” Ansteckung. Zur Körperlichkeit eines ästhetischen Prinzips. Ed. Mirjam Schaub, Nicola Suthor, Erika Fischer-Lichte. München: Fink, 2005. 73-100. Lesser, Edmund. “Die gesundheitlichen Gefahren der Prostitution und deren Bekämpfung.” Mitteilungen der Deutschen Gesellschaft zur Bekämpfung der Geschlechtskrankheiten 1 (1902/03): 58-67. Martineau, Louis. La prostitution clandestine. Paris: Delahaye, 1885. Mitteilungen der Deutschen Gesellschaft zur Bekämpfung der Geschlechtskrankheiten 1 (1902/03). Nipperdey, Thomas. Deutsche Geschichte 1866-1918. 1. Vol.: Arbeitswelt und Bürgergeist. München: Beck, 1990. Pappritz, Anna. Die wirtschaftlichen Ursachen der Prostitution. Berlin: Walter, 1903. Parent-Duchâtelet, Alexandre-Jean-Baptiste. La prostitution dans la ville de Paris. Brussels: Baillière, 1836. Potton, Ariste. De la prostitution et de la syphilis dans les grandes villes, dans la ville de Lyon en particulier. Lyon, Paris, 1842. Puenzieux, Dominique, and Brigitte Ruckstuhl. Medizin, Moral und Sexualität. Die Bekämpfung der Syphilis und Gonorrhöe in Zürich 1870-1920. Zürich: Chronos, 1994. Quétel, Claude. Le Mal de Naples. Histoire de la syphilis. Paris: Seghers, 1986. Reik, Theodor. Arthur Schnitzler als Psycholog [1913]. Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer, 1993. Ryan, Michael. Prostitution in London with a Comparative View of that of Paris and New York. London, 1839.

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Santa Vicca, Edmund F. Four French Dramatists. A Bibliography of Criticism of the Works of Eugéne Brieux, François de Curel, Emil Fabre, Paul Hervieu. Metuchen: Scarecrow Press, 1974. Sauerteig, Lutz. Krankheit, Sexualität, Gesellschaft. Geschlechtskrankheiten und Gesundheitspolitik in Deutschland im 19. und frühen 20. Jahrhundert. Stuttgart: Steiner, 1999. Schaudinn, Fritz, and Erich Hoffmann. “Vorläufiger Bericht über das Vorkommen von Spirochaeten in syphilitischen Krankheitsprodukten und bei Papillonen.” Arbeiten aus dem Kaiserlichen Gesundheitsamte 22 (1905): 527-534. Schiller, F. “Fürsorgeerziehung und Prostitutionsbekämpfung.” Zeitschrift für Bekämpfung der Geschlechtskrankheiten 2 (1903/04): 297-313, 341-376. Schonlau, Anja. Syphilis in der Literatur. Über Ästhetik, Moral, Genie und Medizin (1880 - 2000). Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann, 2005. Schramm, Helmar, Ludger Schwarte, and Jan Lazardzig, eds. Spektakuläre Experimente. Praktiken der Evidenzproduktion im 17. Jahrhundert. Berlin, New York: de Gruyter, 2006. Schrank, Josef: Die Prostitution in Wien in historischer, administrativer und hygienischer Beziehung. Vol. I: Die Geschichte der Prostitution in Wien, Vol. II: Die Administration und Hygiene der Prostitution in Wien. Wien: Safár, 1886. Ulrich, Anita. “Ärzte und Sexualität – Am Beispiel der Prostitution.” Medizinische Deutungsmacht im sozialen Wandel des 19. und frühen 20. Jahrhunderts. Eds. Alfons Labisch, Reinhard Spree. Bonn: Psychatrie Verlag, 1989. 223-235. Walach, Dagmar. “Das doppelte Drama oder Die Polizei als Lektor. Über die Entstehung der preußischen Theaterzensurbibliothek.” Die besondere Bibliothek. Oder: Die Faszination von Büchersammlungen. Eds. Antonius Jammers, Dietger Pforte, Winfried Sühlo. München: Verein der Freunde der Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, 2002. 259-274. Wayk, M.A. “Alfred Fournier 1832-1914. His Influence on Venereolegy.” British Journal for Veneral Diseases 50 (1974): 232-236. Weindling, Paul. Health, Race and German Politics between National Unification and Nazism. 1870-1945. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. Wolff, A. “Zur Kasernierungsfrage.” Zeitschrift für Bekämpfung der Geschlechtskrankheiten 4 (1905): 73-76.

Jan Lazardzig Syphilis on Stage: The Production of Evidence and Theatre Censorship Around 1900

Archival sources Berliner Landeshauptarchiv (= BLHA), Rep. 30 Berlin C Polizeipräsidium Berlin, Tit. 74 Nr. Th 318. Archive of Deutsches Theater Berlin, programme of Die Schiffbrüchigen.

Jan Lazardzig, Ph.D. Studied History and Theatre Studies in Berlin. Lecturer at the Institute for Theatre Studies of the Freie Universität Berlin and member of the Special Research Program Cultures of Performativity. Main area of study: Theatricality in the history of culture and science. Topic of habilitation project: Theatre censorship as prescriptive force. Co-editor of the book series Theatrum scientiarum (W. de Gruyter). Publications include: Theatermaschine und Festungsbau. Paradoxien der Wissensproduktion im 17. Jahrhundert (Berlin 2007). jan.lazardzig@fu-berlin.de

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Syphilis on Stage: The Production of Evidence and Theatre Censorship Around 1900

KEYWORDS: syphilis, prostitution, theatre, evidence, censorship, Eugène Brieux, Les Avariés / Damaged Goods In this paper I will look at the interfaces and interferences between scientific and artistic/theatrical “definitions” of the syphilis pathogen around 1900 in Germany. My hypothesis is that the phantasmal dimension of syphilis which overlies the scientific evidentialisation of the path of infection is revealed precisely in the way the problem is publicly treated in the theatre. The narrow limits that police censorship and aesthetic convention prescribed for the discussion of a morally precarious theme succeeded in inflaming the imagination and giving syphilis a far more effective “image” than would have been possible merely with the photographic apparatus of the bacteriologists’ laboratories.

Sifilis na odru: Produkcija dokazil in gledališka cenzura okrog leta 1900 KLJUČNE BESEDE: sifilis, prostitucija, gledališče, dokazilo, cenzura, Eugène Brieux, Les Avariés Okrog leta 1900 so se v Nemčiji pojavile različne znanstvene in umetniške/gledališke “definicije” povzročitelja sifilisa. Članek obravnava njihova stičišča in prepletanja ter uveljavlja hipotezo, da se fantazmatska razsežnost, ki prekriva znanstveno dokazovanje poti okužbe pri sifilisu, razkriva prav v načinu, kako je problem javno obravnavan v gledališču. Ozke meje, ki sta jih za razpravo o tej moralno občutljivi temi predpisali policijska cenzura in estetska konvencija, so uspele zanetiti domišljijo in dati sifilisu veliko učinkovitejšo “podobo”, kot bi mu jo lahko dal zgolj fotografski aparat bakterioloških laboratorijev.

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Between Reviewers and Dramatists: The “Playwright Construct”

PAPERS

Yael Zarhy-Levo UDK 792.072.3

Scholars dealing with canonisation

NOTES

1 See, for example, Rees’s articles: “How a Literary Work Becomes a Masterpiece: On the Threefold Selection Practiced by Literary Criticism” and “How Reviewers Reach Consensus on the Value of Literary work.” Both articles are distinct representations of the institutional approach.

processes of literary or theatrical works

2 I refer in particular to studies by Pierre Bourdieu such as the following: Questions de Sociologie (161-173, 207-221), “The Production of Belief,” “The Market of Symbolic Goods” and “The Social Space and the Genesis of Groups.”

In considering processes of canonisation

can be roughly divided into those who attribute the canonisation to the works’ intrinsic properties, and those who perceive institutional factors as the ones accounting for the works’ canonisation.1 in the theatrical domain, my approach corresponds largely with the institutional one.2 As I have shown elsewhere, the developmental course of various

prominent British dramatists demonstrates that a range of figures, such as reviewers, journalists, academics, producers and artistic directors, who act as mediators, are the primary makers of theatrical reputations, contributing, both separately and collectively, to the reception and perception of the playwrights and their work (Zarhy-Levo, The Making 10-12). KEYWORDS

theatre reviewers, mediating function, “playwright construct”, admission into the theatrical canon, canonisation, John Arden, Harold Pinter 9_A2.indb 84

I focus here on the mediating function of theatre reviewers in the case of individual playwrights. In particular, I explore some major issues relating to what I term the playwright construct, devised and employed by the reviewers as an essential

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means in each process of admitting a dramatist into the theatri-

cal canon. The playwright construct is a key concept in understanding these processes. Despite its central role in processes of canonisation, however, the playwright construct has not as yet been given an in-depth examination in studies endorsing an institutional approach. Indeed, although the concept might seem to relate to the intrinsic properties of a work, it distinctly differs from concepts such as “a writer’s poetics”, or “thematic structure of a writer’s work” (see, for example, Perry, Bremond et al., Louwerse & Van Peer). These latter concepts typically refer to a scholarly analysis or interpretation of a writer’s works that provides an overall perception of the oeuvre. The playwright construct, however, is a highly reductive characterisation of a dramatist’s work that serves in the reviewers’ discourse as this writer’s trademark. Elsewhere I have shown that theatre 3 On the role and strategies of theatre reviewers in the reception of new playwrights, see Zarhy-Levo (The Theatrical Critic 1-9; 95-107).

reviewers play a dominant role in the admission of a new playwright into the theatrical canon. By employing particular strategies and tactics to introduce

the play of a new dramatist, the reviewers can provide an initial legitimacy for playwrights whose acceptance into the theatrical canon has not yet been determined.3 In presenting the first critical judgment on a new play, the reviewers lay the groundwork for the assessments that follow, shaping the initial perception of the playwright’s work. In the process of reception of new playwrights, reviewers initially locate them in light of their affiliation to or divergence from already recognised and established theatrical trends or schools, and assess the newcomer’s particular means of theatrical expression in terms of one’s potential contribution to the theatre. While such affiliation serves the reviewers to provide a familiar context from within which to view a new playwright’s work, their assessment of the particular means of theatrical expression also enables them to differentiate the newcomer’s contribution from that of other, already established, playwrights. It should be stressed, however, that the reviewers’ attempts to draw an affinity between a new work and previously established theatrical model(s) can result in either their endorsement of the new play or its rejection. That is, they can present the new offering as continuing an already recognised theatrical trend,

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thereby extending the legitimacy attributed to the established works to the play in question; or, in contrast, they can present the new work as failing to correspond to previously established theatrical models and, at times, they might even reject the play

Yael Zarhy-Levo Between Reviewers and Dramatists: The “Playwright Construct”

when unable to point out a specific affiliation. In cases of endorsing a new play, once the reviewers have pointed to a specific affiliation, they then embark on a strategy of promotion designed to “market” the new playwright’s particular means of theatrical expression. The process of a new playwright’s acceptance thus entails two oppositional, though complementary, critical tendencies: the highlighting of the familiar and the introduction of the original.4 Consequently, the new playwright is presented as continuing, while simultaneously enriching and expanding, the constitutive repertoire of a given theatre tradition. When introducing a newcomer, the reviewers devise a “package of attributes” that they consider characteristic of the dramatist’s work. During the process of the playwright’s admission into the canon this package becomes formulated into the “playwright construct”, compris-

4 Rees claims that the attempts to endorse a judgment of a literary work “always implies a number of implicit comparisons: any work to which high quality is attributed is supposed to conform to as well as to differ significantly from the unchallenged masterpieces to which reference is made.” (“How a Literary Work Becomes a Masterpiece” 411)

ing an aggregation of traits recurring in the works that is seen to typify the dramatist in terms of influences and innovation. The formulation of the playwright construct and the dramatist’s critical acceptance are interdependent. The emergence of the construct indicates that the dramatist has now acquired a “critical existence”, even though other mediators, and not only critics, may have had their effect on the emergent construct. The reviewers’ formulation of the playwright construct is essential in facilitating their mediatory function: to make the newcomer’s work accessible and to locate the dramatist within the perceived overall theatrical tradition. This construct becomes the dramatist’s trademark, serving the reviewers to further market the plays and the dramatist. Two examples, pertaining to the careers of the British dramatists Harold Pinter and John Arden, serve here to illustrate the central role of the playwright construct in the admission of a dramatist into the theatrical canon. These two individual careers exemplify two different options – each at another pole (though not precisely an opposite one). Pinter’s case demonstrates a reception

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process through which a clearly-defined construct is formed. Its

emergence marks the completion of the process of the dramatist’s admittance into the canon. The case of Arden exemplifies an option at the other pole – a troublesome reception process through which the reviewers encounter difficulty in devising the playwright construct, subsequently leading to a critical indeterminacy as to the dramatist’s canonical standing.

The formulation of the “Pinter” construct Harold Pinter’s early plays, unlike those of many other dramatists such as John Osborne or John Arden, were not associated with a particular theatre company or director. Although several directors and producers clearly contributed towards promoting Pinter during the early phases of his career (notably Michael Codron, who produced Pinter’s first play in London as well as a number of his early sketches), it is the theatre reviewers who constituted the most significant force in the mediation of the dramatist’s early plays. A brief summary of the process of Pinter’s admission into the canon serves here to highlight its major phases. Pinter’s first performed play in London, The Birthday Party (19 May 1958), was dismissed by the majority of the reviewers as a theatrical failure, subsequently taken off after only a week’s run. The initial critical rejection of The Birthday Party reflected the reviewers’ difficulty in identifying its dramatic style or in associating this with any established dramatic model. Although they pointed out various possible influences (Ibsen’s plays on the one hand, and Osborne, Beckett and Ionesco on the other), the reviewers could not locate the play specifically, in terms of affiliation, within the framework of British or European theatrical traditions. In their reviews of The Caretaker (27 April 1960), however, the critics already pointed to certain influences (especially Beckett’s), and posited a particular affiliation. Pinter’s drama, once affiliated with established theatrical models, became part of a historical sequence. Nonetheless, this drama was presented as unique precisely by virtue of its enigmatic nature. While seen as a chapter in the theatrical tradition, at the same time Pinter’s enigmatic image seems to have been preserved by the reviewers in order to secure their presentation of his innovation. Thus, the inexplicable quality of Pinter’s drama, previously perceived by reviewers as a major flaw, served subsequently as an enhancement of the playwright’s original contribution.

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The favourable reception of the revival of The Birthday Party (18 June 1964), directed by the playwright, demonstrated the reviewers’ diminished need for comparison with accepted theatrical models in their appraisal of the play. His work, recognised at this

Yael Zarhy-Levo Between Reviewers and Dramatists: The “Playwright Construct”

point as an original contribution to British drama, was presented under the label “Pinteresque”, which can be perceived as the final transformation of the epithet “puzzling” that had previously been attached to Pinter’s dramatic work. Pinter was well enough established by that time for the promotion of his subsequent plays under a “Pinter” label. This label, in itself, was to function as sufficient clarification for the supposedly incoherent elements, thereby familiarising the uninitiated public with this playwright’s unique theatrical expression, whose very unfamiliarity had led to its initial rejection. The reviews of The Homecoming (3 June 1965), directed by Peter Hall, appeared to draw upon the critical repertoire established in earlier reviews of Pinter’s plays. The reviewers employed the repertoire either in choosing to treat the different “Pinteresque” aspects of the play, or in their explicit references to the familiarity of those aspects or attributes that had been commented upon in reviews of earlier plays. Although the reviews of The Homecoming were not wholly favourable, the recurrent references to earlier, critical perceptions of Pinter’s plays indicate that he had by then acquired a “critical existence”. At this stage, a clearly-defined “Pinter” construct had come into being. Its emergence marked the completion of the process of the dramatist’s admission into the theatrical canon. The “Pinter” construct was based on the augmented critical repertoire associated with the playwright’s work, and was stored for potential future use. This construct evolved from the “initial package of attributes” that had emanated from the early, critical perceptions of Pinter’s plays in the phase leading up to his acceptance. The construct comprised attributes that were either stamped explicitly, or were associated implicitly, with the label “Pinteresque”. The reviewers’ frequent use of the “Pinteresque” reflected an implicit critical agreement as to the distinctive attributes of Pinter’s dramatic work. Moreover, the formed construct implied the reviewers’ recognition of new dramatic norms that had come to be associated with Pinter’s work. The term “Pinteresque” thus functioned not only as shorthand for the agreed dramatic attributes, but also as a signifier of new dramatic norms, which both drew on and expanded the existing repertoire of theatrical

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modes. Pinter’s particular means of theatrical expression, now

at the critics’ disposal, would subsequently be presented as one more dramatic paradigm facilitating the reviewers’ acceptance of new playwrights.

Pinter’s Betrayal Although the reception processes of various prominent dramatists inevitably differ in many respects, the playwright construct that eventuates is nonetheless largely consistent with the critics’ characterisations of the dramatist’s early works (though not always of the first play) in terms of influences and distinctive traits. This consistency facilitates the communicative function that underlies the reviewers’ discourse, contributing to the accessibility of the dramatist’s work. Once the playwright has been admitted into the theatrical canon and 5 On the emergency modes employed by the critics when faced with a dramatist’s “deviant” work, see Zarhy-Levo (The Making 176-177).

eventually becomes established, this consistency is further revealed in the critics’ attempts to maintain the construct as previously devised. Typically,

this involves a continuous, critical affirmation of the devised construct through the later stages of a playwright’s career. The critical tendency to hold on to the construct as devised is put to the test, however, when an established playwright writes a play apparently incompatible with his/her previous works. Whether or not the play is “objectively” incompatible with the playwright’s previous work is irrelevant here. What is significant is that, according to their own responses, many of the critics consider it to be so. Forced to react promptly, theatre reviewers tend to respond cautiously to what appears to be the “deviant” play of an established playwright. They employ different “emergency” modes, rather than legitimise, from the start, the playwright’s unpredictable move, apparently seeking to re-affirm and preserve the existing critical repertoire associated with the playwright in question.5 The responses to Pinter’s play Betrayal exemplify the reviewers’ conduct when first faced with a play that they perceived as a “deviant” work of an established playwright. These responses illustrate two emergency modes that are often employed by reviewers in such a case: the first, Denouncing the deviant play; and the second, Maintaining the existing construct.

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The first London production of Betrayal was directed by Peter Hall and performed at the National Theatre (15 November 1978). Malcolm Page’s description of Betrayal, in his compilation on Pinter (1993), suggests the “deviant” nature of the play

Yael Zarhy-Levo Between Reviewers and Dramatists: The “Playwright Construct”

in pointing out the “missing” attributes associated with the “Pinter” construct. Page describes the play in the following terms:6 [I]n Betrayal Pinter has gone straight. He tells the story of a wife’s affair with her husband’s best friend. We are given all the facts we need to comprehend the plot and the behaviour of the three characters; nothing gratuitous, mysterious, or menacing occurs offstage […] moreover, the speech, middle-class for once, has become more stylised and elegant although just as actually heard. […] The story of their threesome begins at the end […] and ends at the beginning (54).

The reviewers reacting to the first production of Betrayal also implicitly acknowledged that the play did not accord with the critical repertoire that

6 The reviews cited here are located at the V&A Theatre Collections, London.

had come to be associated with Pinter’s drama. Most notices reflected either disappointment, or frustration that Betrayal was incompatible with the previously agreed “Pinter” construct. Apparently reluctant to give up this construct, the majority of critics denounced the play, tending to present it as lacking the quality of the playwright’s previous dramatic works. Several critics primarily complained of the clichéd nature of the play, a complaint that stands out in view of their original puzzlement when reacting to Pinter’s early plays. Michael Billington’s unfavourable review offers a striking example. He stated: “What distresses me is the pitifully thin strip of human experience it explores and its obsession with the tiny ripples on the stagnant pond of bourgeois-affluent life. […] Pinter has betrayed his immense talent by serving up this kind of highclass soap-opera (laced with suitable cultural brand-names, like Venice, Torcello, and Yeats) instead of a real play.” (Review of Betrayal) Billington’s response at the time is especially instructive, because this critic, an earlier proponent of Pinter’s plays and later his biographer, would defend the dramatist in other critical attacks to follow. In fact, in his review of the 1991 production, directed by David Leveaux, Billington expressed his “second thoughts on Pinter’s Betrayal,” finding it “a much better play” (“Friends vs. Lovers”).

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Other reviews of Betrayal also demonstrated the critics’ disap-

pointment in the face of Pinter’s “deviant” play and disclosed their reluctance to give up the “Pinter” construct. In his review, entitled “Pinter, master of ambiguity, offers a blank statement of the obvious,” Irving Wardle began with a description of the Pinteresque ambience of the first scene, “A man and a woman meet in a bar and start exchanging loaded small-talk about mutual acquaintances […]. Perhaps they were once lovers, or were once married,” and he goes on to comment, “at which point, Pinter halts the game and explains everything.” Wardle implicitly revealed his disappointment in claiming, “In other words, Pinter, the master of ambiguity, has laid out the facts as explicitly as a police witness: and the stark contrast with all his previous work does not end here.” The drama critic of the Sunday Times was more explicit.7 He started by mourning “our expectation,” described Betrayal as “altogether free of those elements we have come to call ‘Pinter7 See the Sunday Times 19 Nov. 1978. The critic writing this notice, like several other critics (such as J. C. Trewin in Punch and Paul Johnson in the Evening Standard), linked Pinter’s Betrayal with Tom Stoppard’s then new play Night and Day, which was first performed a week earlier at the Phoenix theatre. Neither play apparently complied with the playwrights’ devised constructs.

esque’,” pronounced his dislike of the play and declared bluntly, “Betrayal, the work of a man who has lost an empire and not yet found a role, is in its content empty, and on its surface dull.” Yet another reviewer, Sheridan Morley, found the play a “not very strong one” (too predictable), and asserted that

“anyone expecting any of the ambiguity or menace of the earlier Pinters is in for a sharp disappointment.” Unlike these reviews, which illustrate the emergency mode of “denouncing the deviant play”, the following two reviews exemplify, albeit in different ways, another emergency mode – an attempt to maintain the previously devised construct. In his review, Robert Cushman perceived Betrayal as compatible with the “Pinter” construct to the extent that it manifested the playwright’s own attempt to challenge critics and audience alike. Cushman admitted that he suspected the playwright, and commented, “Betrayal might fittingly be re-titled Pinter’s Revenge. I have been accused, he seems to be saying, of withholding the details of my characters’ past lives. This time I will give them to you. Much good may it do you.” Cushman went on to suggest that the play “tricks” its audience and critics alike on various levels: the playwright does not reveal as much as it may seem, and also that “the structure of the play is literally a betrayal, and figuratively as well since it is treasonous to what have been assumed,

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perhaps too glibly, to be Mr. Pinter’s dramatic principles.” J.C. Trewin’s review, written a few months later (1979), reflected an attempt to calm the anxiety evoked by the playwright’s “deviant” play, insisting too that it bears the “Pinter” signature. Trewin

Yael Zarhy-Levo Between Reviewers and Dramatists: The “Playwright Construct”

claimed: “We can be creatures of habit: if a writer has succeeded in one style we want him to go on repeating himself […]. Pinter has been labeled as the dramatist of ambiguity and we ought not to come from the theatre knowing, without argument, what he means […]. Really there is no cause to be troubled: Pinter in the past has been perfectly lucid […]. All will agree that the new Pinter […] could hardly be by anyone else.” (56)

Troublesome reception: John Arden The first production of Arden’s play, The Waters of Babylon, performed at the Royal Court (20 October 1957), had received mostly unfavourable reviews. The press notices primarily reflected the reviewers’ puzzlement. The reviewer for The Times, for example, found that “Mr. Arden’s theme, indeed his purpose in writing the play, remained obscure” (“Review of The Waters of Babylon”), and the notice in the Daily Telegraph concluded, “dialogue full of metaphors and similes echoing Dylan Thomas, songs à la Brecht and the appearance, but not the substance, of Shavian extravaganza were poor substitutes for order and style” (“Play without style”). Kenneth Tynan, in the Observer, asserted that “Mr. Arden’s piece […] is on the fringe of fantasy throughout; and when an author takes us into no-man’s-land we are entitled to ask for signposts.” These reviews suggest that the critics not only had difficulty in pointing to a specific affiliation for Arden’s work, but were also unable to characterise his play. Furthermore, several of the reviewers, although expressing their disapproval of the play, related to the playwright’s dramatic talent, or presented him as a new promise. For instance, Tynan, in his review, commented that “although it ended in confusion, the bumpy trip was full of memorable landmarks.” The reviewers’ puzzlement, often also manifested in their ambivalence towards Arden’s dramatic work, was even more apparent following his next play, Live Like Pigs, written in collaboration with his wife, the actress and playwright Margaretta D’Arcy, and directed by George Devine and Anthony Page (Royal Court, 30 September 1958). Wilson, for example, wrote a favourable review, nonetheless pointing out the difficulty, “The play, written in the fashionable mixture of earthy prose and lofty poetry – far too lofty for

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these slobbering, illiterate mouths – is a specific sore in three

acts; a dramatised cesspool. But it reveals a tremendous new talent.” (see also “Half an Hour Too Long”) Arden’s next two plays, Serjeant Musgrave’s Dance, directed by Lindsay Anderson (22 October 1959) and The Happy Haven, directed by William Gaskill (14 September 1960), were both performed at the Royal Court, and both, in particular Serjeant Musgrave’s Dance, elicited critical controversy. The initial critical responses to Serjeant Musgrave’s Dance reflected a sharp division among the reviewers. Harold Hobson (in the Sunday Times) described the play as, “another frightful ordeal,” and the notice in The Times presented it, “an inordinately long-winded and rather foolish play” (“Serjeant Musgrave’s Punitive Expedition”). In contrast, the title of Felix Barker’s review proclaimed, “A Slow Fuse, But What An Explosion!”, and W.A. Darlington began his review by asserting, “John Arden is a dramatist of considerable ability, and his new play at the Royal Court, Serjeant Musgrave’s Dance, has atmosphere and intermittent power.” The reviews of Happy Haven, Arden’s fourth play, once again reflected the critics’ lack of agreement. The play was described by one reviewer as “disastrous” and “hideous” and by another as “brilliant” and “haunting.” Moreover, in the critical responses to Happy Haven Arden was nonetheless presented in one unfavourable review as “one of our most interesting new dramatists” (Muller) and in another reserved notice as “more-than-promising” (Lewis). Overall it appears that critics reacting to Arden’s plays were baffled and bewildered. In their studies on Arden, both Albert Hunt (22) and Frances Gray (3-4) discussed the critical reception of the dramatist’s early plays, pointing out the reviewers’ confusion. Elaborating upon this, Gray remarks that “the notices are not only, on the whole, disparaging, they are also very uncertain about the nature of the plays.” Strangely enough, as Gray notes, “critics acknowledged his power but aloofly rejected the actual plays” (4, 11). In line with Hunt and Gray, it can be further argued that, given that already from the outset Arden’s plays had offered a unique range of subjects and styles, the singular nature of his reception lay not only in the division among critical responses or in the critics’ ambivalence, but also and primarily in the reviewers’ uncertainty over how to relate to Arden’s status as a dramatist and the appropriate construct to assign to his work. In the face of Arden’s dramatic work,

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whose range of subjects and styles differed from play to play, the reviewers encountered an immense difficulty. Their attitude towards his work was ambiguous from the start. Although they recognised his dramatic powers, they were unable to devise

Yael Zarhy-Levo Between Reviewers and Dramatists: The “Playwright Construct”

an attribute package for his work. The consequent lack of a typifying construct to be associated with his work led to their indeterminacy as to his “placement” as a dramatist. When considering the role of the construct in a playwright’s admission into the canon, the reception of Arden’s early plays is especially instructive precisely because the reviewers had acknowledged from the start his powers as a dramatist. Their inability to devise a construct to be associated with his work, however, can be seen as the primary delay in his admission into the canon. This ambiguity regarding Arden’s early plays remained unresolved at this early stage of his career, and his drama was consequently tagged as controversial. The reviewers’ difficulty in devising for Arden’s work an “appropriate” construct, which underlay and affected his oscillating dramatic career, is most

8 On Arden's Serjeant Musgrave's Dance and the various mediating factors and processes that led to its acquired stature, see Zarhy-Levo (The Making 126-132).

apparent in light of the eventual acquired stature of his play, Serjeant Musgrave’s Dance.8 In the early 1960s even those who acknowledged the merits of this play were uncertain as to the playwright’s future work, suspecting that Arden would surprise them again with an utterly different kind of play. Laurence Kitchin’s cautious judgment of Serjeant Musgrave’s Dance in his Mid-Century Drama is a distinct example. Kitchin claims: “[C] learly this work is not to be defined as picaresque in a limiting way. It has a complexity of organization which cannot be fully described outside itself and I see it as a permanent addition to the national repertory. Nor is there any certainty that Arden will go on using the form.” (119) Subsequently, however, as the result of various factors (such as Arden’s own explanations of his objectives as a dramatist, and the promotion policy employed by the playwright’s champions), an “Arden” construct was gradually formulated. This comprised adjectives such as “unconventional”, “experimental” and “controversial.” In other words, the reviewers, opting to fulfil their mediating function, yet, due to the heterogeneous nature of Arden’s plays unable to devise a construct conjoining characterising dramatic traits, had resolved this difficulty by employing an aggregation of higher level abstractions. They

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formulated an applicable “Arden” construct that circumvented

the widely varying components comprising his plays. The emergence of this “quasi” construct associated with Arden’s dramatic work can be seen as one of the major factors contributing to his growing prominence towards the mid-1960s. The quasi “Arden” construct, however, proved unstable and hence ineffective, with respect to the dramatist’s prominence, in the later turns of his dramatic career and following his break from the London theatre in 1972 and, eventually, his withdrawal from theatre altogether at the end of the 1970s. In this regard, the case of Arden exemplifies that the reviewers’ difficulty in devising a construct for a playwright’s work cannot only lead to a critical indeterminacy as to a particular dramatist’s canonical standing, but can also be seen as a contributing factor in the oscillations that potentially follow in that dramatist’s theatrical reputation. To some extent though, where the particular case of Arden is concerned, it can also be suggested that 9 On the continuous critical controversy associated with Arden’s work, see Zarhy-Levo (The Making 157-160).

in the last three decades the recognition of both his unique contribution to theatre and his reputation as a dramatist have been maintained by the con-

tinuous critical controversy associated with his dramatic work.9

Some other issues regarding the reviewers’ function In considering the role of the playwright construct a number of additional issues can be raised. One such issue regards the reviewers’ “acquired” authority as the initial judges of a new dramatist. The forming of a playwright construct not only serves an indispensable role in the process of admitting a new dramatist into the theatrical canon, but also reinforces the reviewers’ function and authority in the theatrical field. The reviewers’ tendency to maintain a consistency with respect to a critical repertoire that they associate with an individual dramatist can be attributed in part to their attempts to preserve their authority. The reviewers’ frustration or even anxiety, revealed in their responses to Pinter’s Betrayal, may suggest that what is at stake for them in such a case is the questioning of their authority and function. But if Betrayal, seen as incompatible with the “Pinter” construct as previously devised, caught the critics by surprise, it could have been assumed that this play would, to an extent, have prepared the grounds for Pinter’s “deviant” plays to follow. The critical

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responses to Pinter’s overtly political plays in the later stage of his career illustrate, however, that although a playwright construct may undergo modification over time, theatre reviewers maintain their own circumventing tactics, reluctant in general to devise

Yael Zarhy-Levo Between Reviewers and Dramatists: The “Playwright Construct”

the construct anew. The reviewers’ use of the construct, as it developed in Pinter’s career, indicates that they do not respond independently to each new play by the playwright in question, but rather react in accordance with their already-held overall perception of that playwright’s distinctive theatrical expression. The established playwright thus appears to acquire a “critical existence” that “belongs” to the critics who “created” him as a critical construct. A possible consequence of this critical tendency to “appropriate” a playwright’s work (by means of a construct) is that of an eventual “rebellion” on the dramatist’s part. This can manifest itself for instance in the playwright seeming not only to challenge the construct as devised, but also to exert his/her own authority in effecting a change – a modification of the construct – which in turn might result in the reviewers’ attempts to re-evaluate the dramatist’s work and, at times, to question his/her canonical standing. To this extent, the construct may prove to be a key factor in understanding the interaction established between playwright and critics. Yet another issue that concerns the devising of the construct relates to the reviewers’ particular function within the overall context of canonisation processes. C. J. van Rees, discussing “the attribution of quality to literary texts,” in his 1983 article suggests that “[I]n a purely temporal sense, the work of the journalist, the essayist and the academic critic can be designated as ‘primary’, ‘secondary’ and ‘tertiary’ criticism” He claims, “With the transition from primary to tertiary criticism, the filters involved become increasingly fine. Passing through these filters requires a long period of time; a work which does not pass through all filters fades into obscurity.” (“How Literary Work Becomes a Masterpiece” 403) In dealing with the interdependency among the three forms of criticism, Rees points out that “[S]ince the nineteenth century, when journalistic and academic criticism began to develop, it may be taken as a general rule that academic criticism does not concern itself with a (relatively recent) author whose work did not receive the undivided attention of journalistic criticism (“How Literary Work Becomes a Masterpiece” 406, note 12). In line with Rees’s claims it can be further argued that,

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where theatre criticism is concerned, the playwright construct

manifests the reviewers’ “primary”, filtering function – a necessary condition for the canonisation of a dramatist. Moreover, the construct will be of definitive importance in the later stages of a dramatist’s career. It will be deployed and modified, to varying extents, by scholars engaging with the playwright’s oeuvre. If the construct facilitates the reviewers in the prompt mediation of a dramatist’s new plays, it will be a given as a point of departure in the studies that follow. Academics will employ it, in one form or another, as a means to locate the playwright within the broader context of historical or cultural memory. In discussing the literary canon, Rees points out that “[C] riticism embodies an endless series of attempts to specify the analogies and differences which are supposed to exist between masterpieces.” (“How Literary Work Becomes a Masterpiece” 411) The reviewers’ “comparative” judgment of a new work (that is, the comparison or affiliation strategy when introducing a newcomer) endows their mediating function in the individual cases with a wider significance. Since a new playwright’s work is usually compared by the reviewers with theatrical models that have already been accepted, the acceptance of each newcomer potentially bears a determining role in canon formation and in delineating the borders of the canon, as well as in defining theatrical schools and in organising historical sequences. While the emergence of the construct is an integral part of a playwright’s admission into the theatrical canon, once the dramatist has been admitted into that canon the playwright construct associated with his/her work will become in itself a potential reference point in the reception processes of newcomers to follow.

Bibliography Barker, Felix. “A Slow Fuse, But What An Explosion!” Evening News 23 Oct. 1959. Billington, Michael. [Review of Betrayal.] Guardian 16 Nov. 1978. –––. “Friends vs. lovers.” Guardian 23 Jan. 1991. Bourdieu, Pierre. Questions de Sociologie. Paris: Edition de Minuit, 1980. –––. “The Production of Belief: Contribution to an Economy of Symbolic Goods.” Media, Culture and Society 2 (1980): 261-293. –––. “The Market of Symbolic Goods.” Poetics 14.1-2 (1985): 13-44. –––. “The Social Space and the Genesis of Groups.” Theory and Society 14.6 (1985): 723-744.

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Bremond, Claude, Joshua Landy, and Pavel Thomas (eds.). Thematics: New Approaches. New York: New York State University Press, 1994. Cushman, Robert. “Thanks for the Memory.” Observer 19 Nov. 1978. Darlington, William A. “Recruiting All Awry.” Daily Telegraph 23 Oct. 1959. Gray, Frances. John Arden. London: Macmillan. 1982. “Half an Hour too Long.” The Times 1 Oct. 1958. 10 Dec. 2008 <http:// archive.timesonline.co.uk/>. Hunt, Albert. Arden: A Study of his Plays. London: Eyre Methuen, 1974. Hobson, Harold. [Review of Serjeant Musgrave’s Dance.] Sunday Times 25 Oct. 1959. Kitchin, Laurence. Mid-Century Drama. London: Faber and Faber, 1962. Lewis, Frank. [Review of The Happy Haven.] Sunday Despatch 18 Sept. 1960. Louwerse, Max and Willie van Peer, eds. Thematics: Interdisciplinary Studies. Amsterdam: Benjamin, 2002. Muller, Robert. “Pointless and Macabre.” Daily Mail 15 Sept. 1960. Morley, Sheridan. “Death in Venice.” Punch 29 Nov. 1978. Page, Malcolm. File on Pinter. London: Methuen Drama, 1993. Perry, Menakhem. “The Balanced Season: On the Deep Structure of Preil’s Poems.” Siman Kri’a 9 (1979): 369-388; 453-461. “Play Without Style.” Daily Telegraph. 21 Oct. 1957. Rees, C. J. van. “How a Literary Work Becomes a Masterpiece: On the Threefold Selection Practiced by Literary Criticism.” Poetics 12.4-5 (1983): 397-417. –––. “How Reviewers Reach Consensus on the Value of Literary work.” Poetics 16.3-4 (1987): 275-294. [Review of Betrayal]. The Sunday Times 19 Nov. 1978. “Review of The Waters of Babylon.” The Times 21 Oct. 1957. 10 Dec. 2008 <http://archive.timesonline.co.uk/>. “Sergeant Musgrave’s Punitive Expedition.” The Times 23 Oct. 1959. 10 Dec. 2008 <http://archive.timesonline.co.uk/>. Trewin, John C. “Backwards and Forwards.” The Illustrated London News, Jan. 1979: 56. Tynan, Kenneth. “The Ego Triumphant.” Observer 27 Oct. 1957. Wardle, Irving. “Pinter, Master of Ambiguity, Offers a Blank Statement of the Obvious.” The Times 16 Nov. 1978. 10. Dec. 2008 <http://archive. timesonline.co.uk/> Wilson, Cecil. “It’s Hazy and Promising.” Daily Mail 21 Oct. 1957. Zarhy-Levo, Yael. The Making of Theatrical Reputations: Studies from the Modern London Theatre. Iowa: University of Iowa Press, 2008. –––. The Theatrical Critic as Cultural Agent: Constructing Pinter, Orton and Stoppard as Absurdist Playwrights. New York: Peter Lang, 2001.

Yael Zarhy-Levo Between Reviewers and Dramatists: The “Playwright Construct”

Yael Zarhy-Levo, a Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor), teaches theatre history and contemporary British theatre in the Department of Literature at Tel-Aviv University, Israel. Her publications include: The Theatrical Critic as Cultural Agent: Constructing Pinter, Orton and Stoppard as Absurdist Playwrights (Peter Lang, 2001); articles in Poetics, Theatre History Studies, Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism and Theatre Survey; chapters in The Cambridge Companion to Harold Pinter (Cambridge, 2001), and, with Freddie Rokem, in Writing & Rewriting National Theatre Histories (University of Iowa Press, 2004). Her recent book, The Making of Theatrical Reputations: Studies from the Modern London Theatre (University of Iowa Press), was published in 2008. lyaell@post.tau.ac.il

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Between Reviewers and Dramatists: The “Playwright Construct”

KEYWORDS: theatre reviewers, mediating function, “playwright construct”, admission into the theatrical canon, canonisation, John Arden, Harold Pinter The “playwright construct”, devised and employed by theatre reviewers, is an integral part of a dramatist’s admission into the theatrical canon. The playwright construct is a highly reductive characterisation of a dramatist’s work, which serves in the reviewers’ discourse as that dramatist’s trademark. The construct comprises core attributes that are seen by the critics as typifying the dramatist’s work in terms of influences and innovation. It consolidates over the process of the dramatist’s admission into the theatrical canon, providing the reviewers with the means to locate the newcomer within the canon, and serving in their enhancement of a playwright’s prestige or cultural capital. The individual careers of the British dramatists Harold Pinter and John Arden, which exemplify two different critical receptions, serve to illustrate the central role of the playwright construct in the admission of a dramatist into the theatrical canon.

Med kritiki in dramatiki: “Konstrukt dramatika” KLJUČNE BESEDE: gledališki kritiki, mediacija, “konstrukt dramatika”, gledališki kanon, Harold Pinter, John Arden Ob sprejemu dramatika v gledališki kanon ima pomembo vlogo “konstrukt dramatika”, ki ga ustvarijo in uporabljajo gledališki kritiki.�� Pojem označuje visoko reducirano opredelitev dramatikovega dela, ki v kritiškem diskurzu služi kot njegov zaščitni znak. Konstrukt zajema temeljne lastnosti, ki so po mnenju kritikov tipične za dramatikovo delo glede na vplive in inovacije. Utrjuje se v procesu dramatikovega vstopa v gledališki kanon, saj kritikom omogoča umeščanje novinca v kanon ter krepitev dramatikovega prestiža ali kulturnega kapitala. Osrednjo vlogo, ki jo ima “konstrukt dramatika” ob vstopanju v gledališki kanon, ilustrirata karieri britanskih dramatikov Harolda Pinterja in Johna Ardena, ki ponazarjata dve različni obliki kritiške recepcije.

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Redefining the Nineteenth Century London Theatre Public: Questions of Evidence and Interpretation

PAPERS

Jim Davis UDK 792.073(41)“17/18” 792(091)

In the mid-1990s I commenced work with my colleague Victor Emeljanow on a study of London theatre audiences in the mid-19th century, subsequently published as Reflecting the Audience: London Theatregoing 1840–1880 in 2001. In this paper I want to talk about the approaches we used in establishing the context and focus of our study, but also move beyond that discussion to consider other issues involved in the analysis of popular 19th-century British audiences. Although we based our study between the years 1840–1880 for specific reasons – the Theatre Regulation Act was passed in 1843 and the London Country Council took over the control of metropolitan theatres in the early 1880s – the study of necessity engaged with a more extended time span. It also focussed on specific neighbourhoods and theatres – the East End, particularly the Britannia and Pavilion theatres; south London with a focus on the Surrey and Coburg (later Victoria) theatres; north London, specifically considering Sadler’s Wells Theatre and the Prince of Wales’s (formerly the Queen’s) Theatre; and the West End, with a particular emphasis on Drury Lane Theatre. Our primary aim was very simple: we KEYWORDS

audiences, spectators, power, agency, 19th century 9_A2.indb 100

wanted to find out who might have attended these theatres and constituted their audiences. We also wanted to test out received wisdom communicated through

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both primary and secondary texts against a thorough examina-

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tion of available data. There are at least two objections that can be raised against what, in the first instance, might seem to be an over-simplistic methodology. Firstly, why focus on constituency rather than broader, more complex issues such as reception and the performance event itself? Secondly, why adopt such an empirical approach, rooted in the inevitably limited outreaches of what Robert Hume calls archaeo-historicism? In answer to the first objection, it seemed to us that the primary question to answer (in as far as it was at all possible), before even considering the nature of the spectatorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s engagement with performance, was who constituted audiences at different theatres? Who might the individuals have been who at any time collectively made up the audiences at specific theatres? Without some sense of the diversity and complexity of audiences it seemed foolhardy to begin even to speculate on their interaction with the plays and entertainments they saw. The second objection is also met in part by our answer to the first. We were fully aware that, however much evidence we accumulated, our choices and interpretations would still be open to question and that many of our deductions would be speculative. But speculation derived from intensive archival research seemed preferable to speculation dependent on arguably flawed secondary sources. Our approach to the topic entailed us breaking down into a series of categories the types of material we thought we should pursue. We started with maps of London that charted changes and developments in the neighbourhoods on which we focussed. We looked at the distance between theatres, their accessibility by major roadways, rivers and the developing rail system. We noted the names of roads and streets within the immediate vicinities of the theatres selected. And we examined copies of census returns, which were produced at decade intervals, for streets within a mileâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s radius of each theatre. We then charted the occupancy of selected streets by age, gender, employment and origin, also noting changes in the demographics over the period we covered. Indeed, a consideration of the wages earned by some workers and labourers made it unlikely that they could have afforded a visit to their local theatre, while others (shopkeepers and some tradesmen, for example) were precluded because they themselves worked during the evening. Through this selective but intensive survey we built up a picture

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of the social demographics impacting upon each theatre, at least within its immediate vicinity. It would be foolhardy to assume that this could give us more than a minimal sense of local audience composition; indeed,

Jim Davis Redefining the Nineteenth Century London Theatre Public: Questions of Evidence and Interpretation

it must be clear already that intensive archival research in this instance will still only lead to speculative conclusions. So, in addition to the demographic survey, we looked closely at communications, particularly means of transportation and habits of mobility. Maps again provided us with information, as did rail, omnibus and steam boat timetables, information about toll charges on bridges and plenty of evidence (in memoirs and journals) that spectators were prepared to walk long distances to the theatre. But even the existence of communications networks does not take us beyond speculation, so further avenues were also explored. A small but useful source of evidence was inquests after spectators were killed in crushes or fires within theatres. The coroner’s court usually provided information about age, gender and occupation, not only of the deceased, but also of those who gave evidence. This is also true of magistrate’s courts when those responsible for affrays, riotous behaviour, theft or even sexual assault in theatres were charged. Such evidence was helpful – it certainly confirmed the mobility of some spectators – but too limited to be useful as the basis for a composite picture. Of course such data was often reported in the national and local periodicals and newspapers, which were in their own right another major source of investigation. Reviews of plays, advertisements and sometimes the occasional article provided further information, as well as an indication of context in the case of suburban or local newspapers. Nevertheless, there is often a sense that the audience is being constructed, rather than described or represented, in some of these newspaper accounts, a problem to which I will return later. Playbills also provided a useful source of information – sometimes because of quite specific details, such as ticket prices or transport arrangements – sometimes because details of the plays to be performed helped in speculating about putative audiences. But one should be wary of this. On the grounds that nautical melodrama was popular at the Surrey Theatre, it has been suggested by several modern commentators that they must have been written for and appealed to the large number of sailors and

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watermen living in South London (Davis and Emeljanow, “New

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Views of Cheap Theatres” 54). Yet a search of the census returns quickly revealed that very few local inhabitants were engaged in maritime occupations; quite predictably most sailors, dock workers and watermen lived in East London close the docks. On the other hand playbills advertising Susan Hopley, a melodrama about the vicissitudes of a servant girl at the Victoria Theatre in the early 1840s, make it quite clear that part of their targeted audience were the many servant girls who, as the census data confirmed, lived close to the theatre. A considerable amount of information on theatre audiences in 19th-century London is contained in the Lord Chamberlain’s papers. The Lord Chamberlain’s Office, which ran the Queen’s household, also licensed plays and theatres. Whenever problems arose at specific theatres or complaints were received, police were dispatched by the Examiner of Plays to write a report. Just prior to the 1843 Act reports were commissioned on many neighbourhood establishments, about to be licensed as legitimate theatres for the first time. We learn that: [I]n east London the City of London Theatre drew a neighbourhood audience, including tradesmen and mechanics, while the Pavilion Theatre in Whitechapel attracted a local audience, ‘many from the docks many sailors’, The audience at the Effingham Saloon, not far from the Pavilion, were characterised as ‘tradesmen and their children from the neighbourhood of St George’s parish, Whitechapel, Stepney; sailors when the river is full of shipping. Families 2 or 3 times a week.’ A report on the Grecian Saloon describes its audiences as ‘respectable tradesmen, clerks from the city, neighbours’ Not far away ‘trades people in the neighbourhood, bookmakers, mechanics, watchmakers’ patronised Sadler’s Wells Theatre. (Lord Chamberlain’s Papers, Memoranda and Petitions, 1843, LC7/5, 1844 LC7/6, Public Record Office qtd. in Davis and Emeljanow, “Victorian and Edwardian Audiences” 96-97)

and so on. Sometimes reports could be contradictory, blaming East End theatres such as the Britannia and City of London Theatres for attracting rowdy audience and creating disturbances one day, while exonerating them from such charges on the next (Lord Chamberlain’s Papers, qtd. in Davis and Emeljanow, “Victorian” 98). Again, we need to question the reliability of such reports, which in some cases may have been prejudiced, in others merely set out what they expected the Lord Chamberlain’s Office wanted to hear. Successive Examiners of Plays, who both solicited such

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reports and decided on whether or not theatres could be licensed, certainly had their own views about the efficacy of theatre. The most significant figure to hold this office in the mid-19th century was William Bodham Donne, whose underlying agenda was to encourage a more intellectual and less populist drama and the

Jim Davis Redefining the Nineteenth Century London Theatre Public: Questions of Evidence and Interpretation

return to the theatres of a more respectable clientele.1 Obviously much additional data on 19th-century London audiences was also accumulated from biographies, autobiographies, memoirs, reminiscences, diaries of managers, performers, stage managers, playgoers. Generically, though, perhaps the accounts that were most influential in the reconstructions of 19th-century audiences by earlier generations of theatre historians were periodical articles on theatre audiences, such as those by Charles Dickens on the Victoria and Britannia audiences in Household Words and All the Year Round. Dickens established a certain tone and template for the discussion of theatre audiences that was to continue throughout the century. Dickens’s audiences are always rowdy and boisterous, if potentially good-humoured, invari-

1 Jacky S. Bratton (New Readings in Theatre History) usefully maps out the struggle between high and low culture for ascendancy in British theatre during the 19th century.

ably demonstrating the power of theatre to provide recreational enjoyment and moral instruction to the masses and, in so doing, its capacity to control and contain them. Dickens’s advocacy of popular amusements is enlightened, but it is also infantilising and ultimately presents working class audiences as lacking any sort of agency, collectively or individually. So, from all this evidence, what did we conclude? 1. There was no such thing as a generic audience – London audiences between the 1840s and 1880s were mixed and diverse even at specific theatres – and changed substantially within the time span we covered. 2. South London audiences reflected this tendency at both the Surrey and Victoria theatres. Moreover, while both theatres were rather contemptuously lumped together as homes of the “Surrey-side” or transpontine drama, the Victoria theatre clearly catered for popular local audiences with a programme of blood and thunder melodramas, while the Surrey’s aspirations, which included opera and Shakespeare, drew a much more socially and geographically diverse audience. 3. East End audiences were “orientalised” through the descriptions not only of Dickens but of many other commentators. The East End itself was itself depicted in orientalist terms as

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the West End’s “other”, a strangely exotic and barbaric place,

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and this in turn determined how its theatres and their audiences were represented. 4. The composition of audiences in theatres slightly to the north of the West End underwent considerable change, largely as a result of changing demographics and new transport networks, but such changes were “mythologised” in contemporary accounts, so that Samuel Phelps’s successful tenancy of Sadler’s Wells Theatre was portrayed as a mission to bring Shakespeare to the working classes rather than an astute response to the influx of a more variegated population within the immediate vicinity of the theatre. Similarly, Marie Wilton’s transformation of the Queen’s Theatre (a popular home of melodrama) into the Prince of Wales’s, one of the most socially respectable theatres in London was treated as miraculous, whereas it was an equally astute response to new circumstances and needs in the 1860s, especially demographic shifts and improved communications networks. 5. The West End theatres also developed in response to changing demographics, systems of transportation and commercial imperatives, encouraging a sort of cultural tourism from the suburbs and provinces, and defying any easy categorisation of the spectators that they attracted. 6. That official sources of evidence, such as the Lord Chamberlain’s Papers, and journalistic accounts, such as those of Dickens, must be treated warily, as they are, to a certain extent, agenda-driven. 7. We also found that many secondary accounts were inclined to argue the general from the particular, something of which we were wary, but could not entirely avoid ourselves. Although most responses to the study were largely positive, such a project could neither be exhaustive in its coverage of material nor in its choice of methodologies. Thus I want to go on to consider other approaches we might have used and how these might have been applied. In particular, I want to consider the iconography of the audience and how spectators were represented visually, while also touching on how visual representations of spectators, plays and performers might impact on audience behaviour and reception. Secondly, I want to consider the notion of spectatorship itself as something that is performed in the theatrical space. Lastly, I want to consider the notion of agency and some of the theoretical ways in which the agency of the spectator might be approached. To some extent this draws on research I have already undertaken for publications subsequent to Reflecting the Audience.

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No one writing about theatre history today would dispute that graphic material constitutes evidence that must be analysed as carefully as written documents (Balme 199). In a recent short study of spectatorship in the 18th-century English theatre I decided to focus specifically on the relationship of the visual

Jim Davis Redefining the Nineteenth Century London Theatre Public: Questions of Evidence and Interpretation

arts to theatrical spectatorship (Davis, “Spectatorship” 57-69). It is very easy to assume that portraits of actors in role or conversation pieces representing scenes from plays indicate what happened on stage. And to some extent this may be the case. Yet we know, for instance, that Hogarth’s depiction of David Garrick as Richard III aspires to the genre of history painting, just as Sir Thomas Lawrence’s portraits of John Phillip Kemble emphasise the ‘ideal’. It is almost as if artists are not so much replicating what spectators saw, but training them how to look. Portraits and caricatures of actors provide critique and encourage particular ways of seeing: they help to determine reception prior to performance as well as memorialising the theatrical event after it has taken place. The ways in which spectators are depicted are equally significant, possibly training spectators as to how to behave as well as representing their behaviour. Hogarth’s depiction of “The Laughing Audience” (1733), originally designed as a subscription ticket for a set of prints for The Rake’s Progress, arguably initiated the practice of delineating English audiences as comical and defined by social difference, characteristics that recur in the work of Thomas Rowlandson, Theodore Lane, Isaac and George Cruikshank throughout the 19th century. My argument here is again that such illustrations do not merely represent the audience – they also teach it how to behave, even how to perform, the art of spectating. Thus George Cruikshank’s satire – “Boxing Night – A Picture in the National Gallery” – in which he demonstrates the unruliness of Drury Lane pantomime audiences in what purports to be England’s “national” theatre, is both a reproach and, unintentionally perhaps, a form of instruction. If spectatorship is something we perform, if audiences are enacting a role, then we may be inclined to agree with Mark Baer’s account of early 19th-century audiences in his study of the Old Price Riots at Covent Garden Theatre in 1809. He suggests that the rioting spectators drew focus from the stage, becoming actors in their own right (166-188). The critic Leigh Hunt contributes one of many descriptions of the OP audience enacting their own spectacle of noisy disruption:

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On Mr Kemble’s appearance in the dress of Macbeth, the character he was about to play, he was received with a partial applause, which was instantly drowned in a torrent of execration, and after plaintively bowing, and looking as tenderly disconsolate as he could, for a minute or two, he was compelled to retire. The curtain then drew up, and the noise and outcry that followed were continued with an energy truly terrific the whole evening. It was impossible that more determined resistance could be displayed on any occasion, and as it consisted entirely of noise, it was gratifying to see how much the audience felt themselves in the right by abstaining from every other model of opposition. Every species of vocal power was exercised upon the occasion […] in one corner of the pit you had a heap of groans, in another a combination of hisses, in a third a choir of yells, in a fourth a doleful undulating moaning, which, mingling with other sounds, reminded you of infernal regions, when in an instant the whole house seemed about to be rent asunder with a yah! of execration, whenever Mr Kemble presented himself from the side-scenes. When Mrs Siddons appeared, and seemed to petition for a little compassion, there was a general groan of disgust; but the death of her brother in the last act was followed by triumphant shouts of exultation, as if the spectators congratulated themselves on this temporary demise. (Examiner, 24 September 1809)

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Later in the 19th century the antics of crossed-dressed males in theatre auditoriums in the West End also deflected attention from the performer on stage to the spectator as performer, at least until the arrest and trial of Ernest Boulton and Frederick William Park (1870-1871), who up until then had frequently attended plays and burlesques in ambivalently female attire (Davis, “Androgynous Cliques”). Even the more passive spectators of today are arguably performing a role. Recently I have published a short study in a new anthology edited by Peter Holland & Tracy Davis in which I look at the Boxing Day audiences who assembled for the first performances of the Christmas pantomimes that were so popular across England throughout the 19th century. Breaking with the methodology of Reflecting the Audience I sampled a range of theatres over a one hundred year period, noting how similar the construction of the audience was in press account after press account. Inevitably boisterous, partially inebriated, noisy and practically out of control, especially in the gallery (accommodating the poorer members of the public), the spectators were invariably silenced and subdued by the opening of the pantomime, a potentially unruly mob transformed into a compliant and well-behaved crowd. So frequent and formulaic are such accounts that one

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is led to question just what agency the spectators themselves possessed in the course of these events. As in Dickens’s accounts the power of theatre to control the audience is continuously evoked, but it seems reasonable to ask whether the power to allow the performance to proceed lay as much with the audi-

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ence as with the implied discipline embedded in the theatre as institution. Here is just one of many of the descriptions to which I have referred: Boxing Night at the Surrey can only be outrivaled in the enthusiasm it excites by Boxing Night at ‘Old Drury’, each being important items in the festivals of the pleasure-seekers of the North and South of the Thames respectively. The crowds which besieged the doors of the Surrey on Monday long before the time announced for opening rendered the Blackfriars-road almost impassable. […]. A transpontine audience is not at any time the most orderly; but a transpontine audience on Boxing Night almost defies description. For what purpose did the crowds in the gallery visit the Surrey on Monday? Professedly they paid their money to see the Christmas Pantomime and to see and to listen to the dialogue, to witness the absurdities and to laugh at the jokes. […] But is this all? Decidedly not. If the Fairies sing, why should not they? If the Fiends roar, why should the ‘gods’ not howl and scream and whistle? If Harlequin dances a clog hornpipe, why should they not stamp? And if Clown plays practical jokes on ‘butchers and bakers and candlestick-makers,’ why should they not pelt the occupants of the pit and boxes with orange-peel? Why not? We ask. It was Boxing Night, and these proceedings in the gallery formed as much a part of the evening’s performance as the doings upon the stage. Indeed at one time they formed the greater part (Era, 1 January 1871).

Clearly, English audiences enacted a traditional role on Boxing Night, but I would like to argue that as actor/spectators they were not merely the passive recipients of performance but, in subordinating their performance to that of the on-stage pantomime, possessed agency in their own right. Thus, for me, the composition and behaviour of audiences and individual spectators, the ways in which they are trained to perceive performance and their own function as audience members, their complicity as actors within the realm of the theatrical event, leads not so much to an analysis of reception, as to an investigation of agency. While there has been a tendency among some scholars to develop Foucauldian readings of 19thcentury audiences, invariably drawing on Foucault’s use of the Benthamite panopticon to explain strategies of surveillance and

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control within 19th-century institutions, this has always seemed

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to me to be far too limiting. Far more useful, from my perspective, is the methodology advocated by Angela C. Pao in her introduction to her study of 19th-century Orientalist melodrama in France, The Orient of the Boulevards. Firstly, she draws on Bourdieu to consider the practice of theatre as a primary carrier of ideology, but adds: Theories of practice are rendered even more receptive to interfacing with theories of theatrical communication in the revised versions of Bourdieu’s model developed by Michel de Certeau. De Certeau took exception to the primarily unconscious nature of social behaviour and relationships assumed by Bourdieu’s notion of habitus. [He objected to the fact that in Bourdieu’s scheme of things there is no choice among several possibilities, and thus ‘no strategic intention’]. (6-7)

Moreover: De Certeau’s critique of Bourdieu in L’Invention du Quotidien is paired with a critique of Foucault. Basing his comments primar ily on Surveiller et punir, de Certeau points out that Foucault’s models of institutions, discursive practices, and technologies inevitably privilege les appareils producteurs, the productive apparatuses that exercise power. (7)

De Certeau, according to Pao, attempts to shift the investigation away from this aspect of Foucault’s work and from Bourdieu: Instead of knowledge, habitus, rules, strategies, apparatuses or institutions, it is the uses actually made of these and other cultural representations by various social groups – and not only those that control their production and regulation – that are to be examined. (7)

She quotes de Certeau: The presence and circulation of a representation (taught by preachers, educators and popularizers as the key to socioeconomic advancement) tells us nothing about what it is for its users. We must first analyze its manipulation by users who are not its makers. Only then can we gauge the difference or similarity between the production of the image and the secondary production hidden in the processes of its utilisation. (qtd. on 7)

For Pao, de Certeau characterises this daily engagement as the opposite of “strategies” of production and “tactics” of consumption.

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I have to confess that I find this a very attractive approach to the study of audiences and one that allows for a consideration of agency and a more fluid distribution of power. In a study of the social demography of the Britannia Theatre which I undertook with Tracy Davis some years ago we established that the com-

Jim Davis Redefining the Nineteenth Century London Theatre Public: Questions of Evidence and Interpretation

munity who performed and the community who attended the theatre were identical: they lived in the same streets, probably frequented the same shops and earned the same sort of wages (Davis, “The People of the People’s Theatre”). The yearly Britannia Festival, an annual performance during which the spectators regaled the actors with gifts, also implies a strong sense of community, while the plays performed generally preached, as I have argued elsewhere, “the gospel of rags”, endorsing social and moral justice for the poor and oppressed (Davis, “The Gospel of Rags”). Arguably, any consensus that existed between performers and spectators was based on shared experience rather than on the mechanistic power of theatre as an institution to impose control and conformity, the perspective that is implicit in Dickens’s account of the same theatre. To Tracy Davis I also owe what, in my view, was one of the most helpful critiques of Reflecting the Audience. She returns to Bourdieu, whom she believes provides the most useful model for the approach we undertook. Citing the book’s engagement with “the social conditions of production and the agency of individuals to comprise an audience as well as to disband one,” she continues: Bourdieu […] is more compatible with their model, where cultural capital is part of the same economic field as symbolic capital, and social relations have real as well as symbolic power. Like Bourdieu, Reflecting the Audience insists that a field of forces and struggles can be located so that a genre, or a work, or a medium, differs when it changes locale or consumer group. (74)

A very simple instance of this can be demonstrated through reference to melodramatic adaptations of Mary Braddon’s Lady Audley’s Secret in the 1860s. It is incomprehensible that audience reaction to Lady Audley’s self-determination and economic self-protection – despite the trail of bigamy, attempted murder and arson which she leaves behind her – would have been the same at the fashionable St James’s Theatre in the West End (where a version of the novel was performed) as at the Britannia or Victoria Theatres (which both presented Colin Hazlewood’s adaptation), given that audiences at the latter were much more au fait with the problems of eco-

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nomic survival and perhaps less sympathetic than their St James’s

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counterparts towards the hierarchical structure of the English class system. Social and moral transgression may be punished, but such punishment may be read ironically by those who themselves are struggling to survive. For me, then, the agency of audiences as a factor in performance reception is more important than a more abstracted, semiotically-based approach to reception, which can so easily de-politicise and neutralise the impact of a performance and its particular significance in specific circumstances. It must be clear that my interest in the performance event lies more in its cultural, social and political significance than in its reconstruction. The event itself is inevitably intangible, ephemeral, but its context and its impact can still be evaluated. We can never be sure what audiences actually saw or heard, but we can certainly speculate on how they looked and how they listened, on how a performance impacted upon them, and on the power relations that were themselves enacted in the theatrical space. The question that intrigues me is not only the nature of the theatrical event itself but also how it acted as a catalyst for the spectators’ own performances and participation. It is important that we liberate the study of past audiences from the Foucauldian shackles of intimidation, compliance and control and investigate them equally through the dual lenses of agency and performance. I want to conclude with a brief reference to the critic William Hazlitt, whose nostalgic attempt to recover his childhood experience of theatre through a visit to the Coburg Theatre in 1820 was thwarted by the audience he encounters and their control of the performance. For Hazlitt minor theatres “lead the eye back, along the vista of the imagination, to the village barn, or travelling booth, or old-fashioned town-hall” in which one first saw a company of strolling players. “Happy are we who look on and admire; and happy, we think, must they be who are so admired.” But at the Coburg Theatre, the mature Hazlitt, “all attention, simplicity and enthusiasm,” is disappointed: The play was indifferent, but that was nothing. The acting was bad, but that was nothing. The audience were low, but that was nothing. It was the heartless indifference and hearty contempt shown by the performers for their parts, and by the audience for the players and the play, that disgusted us with all of them. Instead of the rude, naked, undisguised expression of curiosity

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and wonder, of overflowing vanity and unbridled egotism, there was nothing but an exhibition of the most vulgar cockneyism and petulant slang. All our former notions and theories were turned topsy-turvy. The genius of St George’s Fields prevailed, and you felt yourself in a bridewell, or a brothel, amidst Jewboys, pickpockets, prostitutes and mountebanks, instead of being in the precincts of Mount Parnassus, or in the company of the Muses. The object was not to admire or to excel, but to vilify and degrade everything. The audience did not hiss the actors [...] but they laughed, hooted at, nick-named, pelted them with oranges and witticisms, to show their unruly contempt for them and their art; while the performers, to be even with the audience evidently slurred their parts [...] laughed in one another’s faces [and turned] the whole thing into a most unprincipled burlesque. (London Magazine, March 1820)

Jim Davis Redefining the Nineteenth Century London Theatre Public: Questions of Evidence and Interpretation

The failure of spectators to comply with preconceptions about how they should behave and the control they can exert over a performance, however heightened or indeed constructed they are in Hazlitt’s account, indicate a continuing need for pluralistic approaches to our analysis of popular audiences and the dynamic that they encompass.

Bibliography Baer, Mark. Theatre and Disorder in Late Georgian London. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992. Balme, Christopher. “Interpreting the Pictorial Record: Theatre Iconography and the Referential Dilemma.” Theatre Research International 22.3 (Autumn, 1997): 190-201. Bratton, Jacky S. New Readings in Theatre History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Davis, Jim. “Androgynous Cliques and Epicene Colleges: Gender Transgression On and Off the Victorian Stage.” Nineteenth Century Theatre 26.1 (Summer, 1998): 50-69 –––. “Boxing Day.” The Performing Century: Nineteenth-Century Theatre’s History. Eds. Tracy C. Davis and Peter Holland. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008, 13-31. –––. Reflecting the Audience: London Theatregoing 1840–1880. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2001. –––. “Spectatorship.” The Cambridge Companion to British Theatre 17301830. Eds. Jane Moody and Daniel O’Quinn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007, 57-69. –––. “The Gospel of Rags: Melodrama at the Britannia 1863–74.” New Theatre Quarterly VII.28 (1991): 369-89. –––. “The People of the People’s Theatre: The Social Demography of the Britannia Theatre (Hoxton).” Theatre Survey 32.2 (Nov. 1991): 137165. Davis, Tracy. “Reflecting the Audience.” (Book review). Nineteenth Century Theatre and Film 29.2 (Winter 2002): 74. Davis, Jim, and Victor Emeljanow. “New Views of Cheap Theatres: Reconstructing the Nineteenth Century Theatre Audience.” Theatre Survey 39.2 (Nov. 1998): 53-72. –––. “Victorian and Edwardian Audiences.” The Cambridge Companion to Victorian and Edwardian Audiences. Ed. Kerry Powell. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004, 93-109.

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Hazlitt, William. “Minor Actors-Strolling Players.” London Magazine, Mar. 1820. Hume, Robert D. Reconstructing Contexts: The Aims and Principles of Archeo-Historicism. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999. Hunt, Leigh. “The Reopening of Covent Garden and the Commencement of the OP Riots.” Examiner, 24 Sept. 1809: 608-610. (Reprinted in L. H. Houtcheons, ed. Leight Hunt’s Dramatic criticism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 950. 26-27.) Pao, Angela C. The Orient of the Boulevards. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998.

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Archival Sources Public Record Office, Lord Chamberlain’s Papers, Memoranda and Petitions, 1843, LC7/5, 1844 LC7/6.

Jim Davis is Professor and Chair of Theatre Studies at the University of Warwick. Formerly he was Head of the School of Theatre, Film and Dance at the University of New South Wales in Australia. He has written extensively on 19th-century British theatre, is the author of books on the actor John Liston and on the Britannia theatre, and is the co-author (with Victor Emeljanow) of Reflecting the Audience: London Theatregoing 1840–1880, which was awarded the 2001 Theatre Book Prize for the best book on theatre. Jim.Davis@warwick.ac.uk

Redefining the Nineteenth Century London Theatre Public: Questions of Evidence and Interpretation KEYWORDS: audiences, spectators, power, agency, 19th century In her introduction to The Orient of the Boulevards, Angela C. Pao provides a very useful discussion of the relative merits of such theorists as Bourdieu, Foucault and de Certeau, among others, as a basis for the analysis of popular theatrical culture and its public. In our initial research on 19th-century London theatre audiences, Victor Emeljanow and I developed a methodology based around mapping, social demography, transportation, public records, journal and newspaper accounts to redefine the nature and composition of neighbourhood audiences. My own more recent research on 19 th-century audiences (as in my recent essay in The Performing Century) inclines me to believe that agency and visual representation were important aspects

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of spectatorship in this period. This paper offers some perspectives on researching audiences historically, through evidencebased documentation and theoretical positions, implying that we should not assume audiences lacked either power or agency.

Jim Davis Redefining the Nineteenth Century London Theatre Public: Questions of Evidence and Interpretation

Redefiniranje londonskega gledališkega občinstva v devetnajstem stoletju: vprašanja dokazil in interpretacije KLJUČNE BESEDE: gledališko občinstvo, gledalci, moč, zmožnost delovanja in presoje, 19. stoletje Angela C. Pao v uvodu knjige The Orient of the Boulevards (1998) kot osnovo za analizo popularne gledališke kulture in njenega občinstva ponuja zelo koristno razpravo o primerjalnih prednostih teoretikov, kot so na primer Bourdieu, Foucault in de Certeau. V prvotni raziskavi londonskega gledališkega občinstva v 19. stoletju, ki sva jo opravila z Victorjem Emeljanowom (Reflecting The Audience: London Theatregoing, 1840-1880, 2001), sva uveljavila metodologijo, ki je temeljila na mapiranju, socialni demografiji, preučevanju transporta, javnih registrov, revijalnih in časopisnih poročil. Z njo sva na novo opredelila značaj in sestavo gledališkega občinstva po londonskih soseskah. Moje novejše raziskave o občinstvu v 19. stoletju (npr. nedavno objavljeni esej “The Performing Century”) pa me usmerjajo k prepričanju, da sta bila pomembna vidika gledalstva v tem obdobju tudi delovanje in vizualna reprezentacija. Ta članek ponuja nekaj perspektiv zgodovinskega raziskovanja občinstva na osnovi dokazil v dokumentaciji in teoretskih stališč, iz katerih izhaja, da ne smemo domnevati, da gledalstvo ni imelo bodisi moči bodisi zmožnosti delovanja in presoje.

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Control vs. Subversion: Popular Theatre on the Move

PAPERS

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Pirkko Koski UDK 7.011.26 792(480)

The meaning of the concept of popular

NOTES

1 Carlson writes about performance as “an essentially contested concept” and how a fuller understanding of the concept can be attained through dialogue between opposing positions. I will survey the concept of popular theatre accordingly (1). 2 As Joseph Roach writes, separating the aesthetic from ideology is already an ideological strategy (157).

theatre seems clear at first sight, but a closer look proves it to illustrate what Marvin Carlson calls “contested”:�� “Certain concepts, such as art and democracy, had disagreement about their essence built into the concepts themselves”1 (1). A significant reason for this is the struggle between control and

subversion typical of popular theatre and popular expression. Although appreciated among the people, this form of theatre does not necessarily enjoy widespread acceptance. This constant state of tension and change has manifested itself in institutional structures and artistic expression, affecting popular theatre’s aesthetic and ideology, which are often inseparable.2 Popular theatre challenges the power of cultural hegemony and in doing so, I claim, strongly influences the development of theatre. At different times mainstream theatre has used different strategies to absorb popular theatre into it or to reject it, but through unsettling the canon the popular theatre has invited us to read its cultural role in a new way, which has revitalised the canon (cf. Alter 19-20). The phenomenon cannot be defined

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KEYWORDS

popular theatre, national theatre, theatre history, Finnish theatre, high and low culture 3/2/09 4:58 PM

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separately from the concept of national theatre, because the legitimacy of a national theatre has been supported by the people. The borderline between the national and the popular is flexible.

Pirkko Koski Control vs. Subversion: Popular Theatre on the Move

I will examine the concept of popular theatre and its manifestations in different theatrical contexts at different times in order to discuss its role in the formation of theatre. I will use Finnish theatre as an example and assume that these phenomena extend beyond the national borders. In the end of this paper, I will analyse a recent production and survey the function and possibility of popular subversion in today’s mainstream theatre.

Definitions of popular theatre The rethinking of popular culture studies has made problematic earlier views of mass culture as degraded and elite culture as elevating. Instead, the new studies recognize the power of the ordinary, accept the commonplace as a legitimate object of inquiry, hammer away at the often arbitrary and ideological distinctions between popular, mass, and elite culture, and ask serious questions about the role of popular culture in social and political life. (Mukerji & Schudson 2)

Chandra Mukerji and Michael Schudson introduce a new way of examining cultural formations in their edited work Rethinking Popular Culture. They approach the topic from historical, anthropological and sociological perspectives, and extend their proposal to rethink not only popular culture as such but also the category of popular culture and “the cultural institutions and interpretive communities that have created and preserved that category” (53). They include the consumers in the development of culture. Various authors, ranging from Raymond Williams and Pierre Bourdieu to Stanley Fish, have included theatre in their surveys of popular culture and popular art in the same spirit, and these ideas have also been developed in theatre research. The complexity of defining the phenomenon of popular theatre becomes apparent already in the Greek and Latin etymology of the term, where populus, “(the) people”, and popularis, “popular” or “concerning people,” have the same roots. The concept has changed as it has travelled across countries, languages and time. Now it has connotations to aesthetic expression, institutional structures, and genre.

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In the English edition of Patrice Pavis’s theatre encyclopaedia,

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Dictionary of the Theatre. Terms, Concepts, and Analysis, the author defines “popular theatre” and refers to German Volkstheater, French théâtre populaire and Spanish teatro popular (278-279). Pavis does not mention the Latin-based alternative “people’s theatre” which, according to my understanding, would best describe the institutional significance of the German term, and its most generally used Finnish equivalent, kansanteatteri. The term popular, populaari, is used in Finnish when a perfor mance has popularity or strong commercial appeal, or it can be characterised as light entertainment. In English-language academic literature, the term “popular theatre” is loosely defined. “Popular theatre” has been used as an overall term, and other English versions such as “people’s theatre” have seldom been used and when they have, there has been an emphasis on special characteristics. However, David Bradby and John McCormick entitled their monograph People’s Theatre, similarly to the German term Volkstheater. In the book they define people’s theatre as a counter movement: “When grouping together those who have worked for a people’s theatre, it is easier to identify their common enemy than their aims.” (11) Consequently, there is no generally established term or definition for the concept. The terms popular drama, popular theatre, theatre for the people and people’s theatre are all being used. The book chooses to exclude folk plays and Victorian entertainment from its discussion, concentrating on art forms that the authors consider to be renewing audience base, acting, or performance as an artistic entity (12-13). Despite these definitions, the discussion under the heading people’s theatre focuses mostly on the same art forms as the discussion of scholars using the term popular theatre. Pavis introduces attempts to institutionalise popular theatre, listing examples which are included in many other historical surveys on the phenomenon. For example, according to van Erven, popular forms have roots in ancient Greece and Rome, and the historical continuum begins with the French Revolution and involves influential people (Jean-Jaqcues Rousseau, Louis-Sebastien Mercier, Denis Diderot, Romain Rolland, Jules Michelet, Bertolt Brecht, Erwin Piscator, Jean Vilar, etc.) as well as institutions such as the Freie Volksbühne, the working model of which is found in many countries (5-6). Over the recent decades, according to Pavis, the concept has disintegrated into

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new formations such as interculturalism, foregrounded by Peter Brook, community theatre in the form practised by the South American director Augusto Boal, and the return to traditional

Pirkko Koski Control vs. Subversion: Popular Theatre on the Move

theatre forms like Noh theatre (Pavis 279; also Schechter 3-4.) The spectrum of popular theatre is seen as being wide, ranging from the ideal of national romantic sophistication to class conscious political street theatre. In Pavis’s view, and despite his choice of the term, the debate surrounding popular theatre is less about aesthetics than the social category in the sense of theatre originating in or aimed at a certain class of people. Pavis settles on claiming popular theatre to be the opposite of art forms such as literary theatre, bourgeois theatre, court theatre, or single-minded political theatre. David Mayer broadens this sphere. According to him, “Popular drama is that drama produced by and offered for the enjoyment or edification of the largest combination of groupings possible within that society. Often it happens that for these groupings the adjective ‘lower’ is significantly appropriate.” (263) In the introduction to his work Popular Theatre. A Sourcebook, Joel Schechter presents popular theatre’s historical tradition similarly to Pavis and van Erven, but he also adds another way of defining this concept, popular content, and aesthetics. Generally speaking, these performances of popular theatre are visual, physical, and easily transferable, they are mediated in a colloquial language instead of a literary one, they are easily comprehensible to the masses, and they do not flatter money or tyranny. For these reasons – and also because of cheap or free admission – the performances become popular (Schechter 4; cf. also Mayer, Goodlad). Shakespeare and Dario Fo are good modern examples of how popular tradition has overlapped “high” art. Schechter also points to the difference between theatre and media – and generally the repetition-based forms that make mass audiences possible – by stressing the locality of popular theatre: “When one plays in Verona, one does not worry about reactions of the Romans.” (6-7) Popular drama and popular theatre are not clearly distinguished when these concepts are discussed, partly because most historical sources concern drama. In many cases, however, the factual object is the performance, of a play or another kind of performance. David Mayer concludes that drama has also influenced the way in which scholars survey performance spaces, forget-

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ting various forms of popular entertainment provided in the

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venues. On the other hand, popular drama is often performed in non-theatrical sites, such as boulevards, market places, and sport arenas (260, 263). When discussing the satisfaction of social needs through public rites and the way in which popular plays reinforce social and moral conclusions, Mayer writes that “drama may be amusement, performed for the spectators’ pleasure, simplifying the issues and conflicts in values with which a society must deal, presenting these issues in such a way as to make them appear harmless and of minor consequence” (265). In this way, among other qualities, popular drama has a healing power. Mayer speaks mostly about drama but emphasises the role of the spectator and consequently the act of performing. The definitions of popular theatre map the field but do not yet clarify the status or power of the phenomenon in society. Popular theatre is closely related to the process of constructing an image of the people. Thus we can raise interesting questions about the recognisability, acceptance of the imagery, and about the audience’s role in the performance event. Is the image of the people then imposed on them from above, or is the image constructed with the consent of the people? This question concerns both popular and national theatre.

Popular vs. national theatre Pavis and the researchers of popular theatre make no mention of the relationship between popular and national theatre, which would be especially relevant in small nation states such as Finland, where strong populist national movements developed in the 19th century. The interaction and interdependence between the people and the national movements are at their strongest in this emerging period of nationalism when the elite, small in numbers, needed the people not only as the ideological content of their actions but also as a political power. The first National Theatres in Europe were established by the aristocracy to entertain the elite. The second phase followed the concept of the Hamburg National Theatre, which was (1767) “developed of a municipal theatre to educate the bourgeoisie.” Finally, the National Theatres in the 19th century “emerged in nations under the control of large empires as a means to foster

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national consciousness in conjunction with wider cultural and nationalist concerns” (Wilmer, “Introduction” 1). Many of them were established following the French and American Revolu-

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tions and were encouraged by Gottfried von Herder’s Romantic philosophy and his concept of “the spirit of the people.” In the countries where the elite did not use the language of the people and consequently no history of indigenous drama existed, the National Theatre supported and was supported by populist national movements (cf. Wilmer, “The Development” 13-17). For example, in Finland, radical political movements with class conscious theatres emerged only later. Loren Kruger’s work The National Stage. Theatre and Cultural Legitimation in England, France, and America theorises these processes and puts a particular emphasis on the relationship between national, popular, and the people. Kruger juxtaposes national theatre which defines its audience, the people, from above and highlights unity, with popular national theatre that functions in the geographical and cultural periphery and where the

3 According to Anderson, certain cultural images become so recog nisable that they are “capable of being transplanted” into a wholly new context, modulated (4).

audience defines their own self-image. Comparable social practices would be state-funded basic education on the one hand, and First of May parties and workers’ strikes, on the other (3). According to another comparison by Kruger, there exists a permanent tension between the passive spectator, that is, the target, and the active subject (4). The tension between the theatre which defines its audience from above and the one presenting the recognised self-image of the people reflects the struggle between control and subversion. This becomes apparent in the canonisation of the realistic folk imagery, of which the production history of Aleksis Kivi’s classic Finnish comedy Nummisuutarit (The Heath Cobblers) is a good example. Folk-inspired stage imagery, which was fairly realistic when the play was written in the early 1860s and premiered in the 1875, was gradually turned into national symbols. It was taken from the people to be used for national purposes, “transplanted” or “modulated”3 (Wilmer and Koski 82-92). It was appreciated as national art but was no more a self-image, recognised by the people as such. This kind of process was seen also elsewhere, as Synge’s Playboy of the Western World in Ireland or the forth act of Ibsen’s Peer Gynt in Norway testify (Wilmer, “The Development” 18).

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These processes have certain historical contexts, and we could

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explain them by adapting what David Mayer writes about popular drama and its relationship to current literary values: “Although discussion to this point has suggested that the literary is antithetical to the popular, this antithesis holds only when the terms for literary drama have been established” (264). The popular image decreased parallel to establishing the status of the National Theatres. Similarly, little by little the so-called folk – those speaking the language of the people – took an active part in defining national art. On par with growing basic education, they formulated a new “elite.” A section of the people, “commons,” turned away from National Theatres towards new and more class conscious activities, such as founding workers’ theatres. From the perspective of popular, an interesting contribution in Kruger’s text concerns the work of art: the borderline activity between high culture and popular culture, the question of hegemony and legitimation. Somewhat simplified, it could be said that the centralised national art, as defined by the state and the elite, and the popular art of the masses, are examined on an equal level. Popular art consists of a complex combination of residual, authentic, and borrowed traits, and it is no more homogeneous than its social context is. In Kruger’s Parisian examples, the political theatre of the 1930s derived its form from the cinema and other popular arts, but also from the commonly appreciated theatre, and a performance acted as political theatre for as long as the message had an effect on the audience – meaning at a certain time and in a certain situation. Indeed, Kruger settles on the conclusion that the borderline between popular entertainment and “high art” does not reside in genre difference but in the ways to apply theatrical methods (22-25). Finally, it is always a question of an encounter between the theatre and the society. Being defined as national seems to control theatrical expression, and especially physicality, which is common in the field of popular theatre. This can be seen in a Finnish example where the need to create national symbols gradually set aside female corporeality. A study of the career of the Finnish Theatre’s (later: Finland’s National Theatre) biggest star, actress Ida Aalberg, shows that at the end of the 19th century there was tension between national ideology on the one hand, and public image and artistic movements on the other. Hanna Suutela analyses this female actor through a sensualistic photograph of her as part of the general art imagery of the time, the concept of the

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“dangerous woman”/femme fatale and the discussion on hys teria. This meaning that the photograph carried to the contemporaries was soon lost and covered over by the nationalisation

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process, as were Aalberg’s other features incompliant with it. The national target reshaped the artist’s portrait to fit the dominant ideology, “capable of being transplanted” (Anderson 4). Aalberg is then seen as a glorious actress and a mythical character that advanced the national theatre expression. Aalberg, born among the common people, became the daughter of the people, who stepped in to the service of national art (Suutela 53-108). A female actress of flesh and blood was modulated (as The Heath Cobblers) into a national symbol. In Kruger’s analysis, the “popular” is explained from two perspectives: that of a national project based on the people’s own initiative and legitimation, and that of a performance mode or tradition popular and recognised among the people. In the countries with prominent cultural nationalism in their history and with permanent state-funding for theatres (like in Finland), the processes in using popular phenomena to create national images have been quite efficient. On the other hand, after having been modulated and controlled, these images can be transplanted again, used everywhere, also in ironic or in carnivalistic performances – as the last example in this paper will show.

The people take over the initiative At the beginning of the 20th century, popular theatres were established in order to make the so-called voice of the people heard. They formed a part of a larger practice of union activity, such as workers’, women’s and sobriety associations, which through their actions demanded social amendments. They were representative of “the people” on local grounds, as parts of their own communities and as alternatives to national and commercial theatres, although theatrical models were often taken from the common repository of art forms. Performers shared the same interests with their core audience, which helped foster community spirit. During this early period the greatest numbers of theatres were founded in workers’ theatre circles, and the community spirit was at its highest. Although ideologically based, these theatres were open to all kinds of audiences, which invites us to discuss the question of

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power and legitimation. The background for the theatres can

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be seen in the tradition of Romain Rolland and his idea for people’s theatre: it ought to entertain and energise the spectators and nurture the intellect. Joy, strength, and intelligence were the main slogans (Rolland 119-121). Another analogy can be drawn to the German Freie Volksbühne, an association founded in 1890. It produced or reserved seats for performances with social themes for a large number of members, mostly representing the working class (Sprengel 13-14). In Sweden, this kind of movement aiming at bringing theatre art available to “ordinary people” began among socially engaged theatre people and especially the workers’ movement, but grew later into a general audience system (Sauter 124-126). Historically, institutional workers’ theatres were founded as an alternative to the mainstream companies, but in many cases and in many countries they were slowly integrated into it and lost their radicalism. The popular theatres of the mainstream saw the National Theatre as an alternative to them. These theatres often had an educational role; they were theatre for and not by the people. In many cases, as in Germany and Finland, their name – if translated into English – would be the “people’s” theatre instead of “popular” theatre. A Finnish example shows the difficulties in balancing ideological programming, popularity, and economy. At the time of its foundation in 1907, the aim of the People’s Stage in Helsinki was to “improve the spiritual lives of the poor and other progressively minded citizens.” It wanted to support artists emerging from the ranks of ordinary people, cherish the language and imagery of the people, work for educational purposes and keep ticket prices so low that as many people as possible could afford to buy them. In the early days, the People’s Stage followed these principles, but the years after that turned into a struggle between left-wing ideology and audience-chasing, sped up by economic difficulties. The struggle ended with the victory of a compromise between art, entertainment and financial profits, and assimilation into the framework of official cultural policy (Koski, Kansan 17-27). This theatre did not try to create a special theatre aesthetic in order to make its ideology visible. A more successful realisation of this model in Finland was made by Eino Salmelainen, the director of this theatre’s follower named the Helsinki Folk Theatre. His enterprise was based on ordinary content and hyperbolic

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realistic aesthetics. It was ideological popular theatre without distinct political messages, taking a stand in opposition to the cultural hegemony (and the National Theatre) but still remaining

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a mainstream phenomenon. Its success was based on the healing power of popular drama and the easily identifiable self-image of the people. Joel Schechter explains the success of this kind of theatre: “Popular theatre performers who depend on the audience for support also usually speak for the audience by voicing its social concerns.” (7) Salmelainen saw the necessity of establishing a strong contact with his audience, and of staying in touch with the currents of his time. He wrote that “Theatre must bring forth problems to be resolved, problems which are important even for the daily life we lead.” (108-109) The people that Salmelainen related are people following a peasant’s sensibleness, ranging from metal workers to professors – in other words his understanding of the “people” was liberal, following the tradition of the French Revolution that encompassed all social classes. In many ways, Salmelainen’s success as a director follows the model visible in research on successful plays. Seen at a distance on the theatre stage, the topics to be dealt with were the audience’s daily problems, normally rejected or denied, such as questions of sexuality or the distinction between life in the city and the country, which explains their popularity. Salmelainen’s work often raised resistance among those in cultural power positions. Instead of merely entertaining and helping spectators to forget their daily problems in a business-like project (Schmitz 67), Salmelainen follows David Mayer’s model, where people come to the theatre when it discusses crucial problems but alienates them through performance. As Mayer writes, popular dramas strengthen social attitudes and by entertaining makes it easier to face conflicts (265-267). Similarly, according to J. R. S. Goodlad, popular drama typically informs about social structures and moral codes, and brings feelings and conflicts which are hidden in the society to the forefront (Sociology 178, 189-192). The case of Helsinki Folk Theatre proves the power of popular theatre in society. As Mayer writes, “the very fact that the popular drama is appreciated by the largest number of citizens makes it of considerable interest to heads of government” and it interests censors, “placing limits upon what may be performed” (263-264). Popularity among the people helped the Helsinki Folk

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Theatre in resisting authorities. In the democratic Finnish atmos-

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phere of the 1930s, Salmelainen’s policy concretely shows how the power of the hegemony was possible to break from below with the people’s support. In this case it happened in a people’s theatre but it could have happened also somewhere else.

Ideology and aesthetics Popular theatre has also benefited from the initiative of theatre professionals. In the context of political popular theatre, Bertolt Brecht’s name inevitably comes up. Based on his writings and especially the performances following his canonised directing style, popular theatre can be seen as an arena for class struggle (Kruger 24). Brecht wrote his well-known essay “Notes on the Folk Play” (“Anmerkungen zum Volksstück”) in 1940 when he was in Finland revising the play Mr. Puntila and His Hired Man Matti, co-written with Hella Wuolijoki (Brecht 1991, 293299). According to the essay, popular theatre ought to be simple, poetic and reality-based, but not romantic or politically up-todate (293). Brecht tried to attain “natural art”, a form of art which controls the nature and artistically perceived reality. He saw the attempts to make things appear beautiful as being implicitly low, whereas the love of truth was implicitly noble. To control ugliness, theatre has style, humour and imagination (and wisdom) available at its disposal (293-294). In an interesting way Brecht’s essay also relates to the question of who has the right to define what people need. Popular theatre presupposes, at least to some extent, the approval of the socalled masses. In this regard, Brecht’s popular theatre appears as dictated from above and, I argue, this has happened twice. To him, the people, in the sense of a united body of persons, existed as an object, not a subject, and the canonisation of his methods diminished his subversive power. Baz Kershaw writes about the categorical trap of the modernist avant-garde of the early twentieth century, incorporated in time into master narratives of modernism. He sees a parallel trend in the aestheticisation of Brecht; “mainstream culture will always catch up with particular avant-gardes and incorporate them into dominant ideologies” and celebration “replaces the political relevance of his plays” (Kershaw, The Radical 61). With Brecht, the popular – which was mostly defined as an aesthetic form – was also aesthetised. In relation to Brecht, van Erven mentions the “wrong

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sort” of audience composition as a problem in political message delivery, in cultural centres built for the people in France. The targeted audience for the class conscious theatre had been the

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“proletariat”, but in reality 95 % of the audience were people of a different class (13). Brecht has been a model for recent radical popular theatre, but with reservations. “The playful acting style of the popular theatre is derived from epic acting, although the atmosphere surrounding a popular play is usually much more jovial and festive than the rather sterile and serious Brechtian creations,” writes van Erven (175). Recent British literature highlights the political or at least ideological or class conscious nature of popular theatre. Van Erven mentions the Theatre Workshop, founded in 1945 by the English director Joan Littlewood and followed by many ensemble theatres as the post-war trendsetter of the form (5-6, 12). These ensembles carry on the political commitment of pre-war popular theatres such as the Freie Volksbühne. The same group also comprises community theatres like the movement represented by Augusto Boal. A high standard of professionalism, however, sets them apart from the old radical movements. They work for the audience “in order to secure sufficient funding for professionally mounted shows and to attract the largest possible working-class audience” (van Erven 175). Many cooperate with left-wing political parties or unions. These can be seen as alternative theatres in a way that makes their subversive character generally acceptable, in any case compared to the national and the mainstream popular theatres. Politics in a political context does not raise problems. In his works The Radical in Performance (1999) and The Politics of Performance. Radical Theatre as Cultural Intervention (1992), Baz Kershaw also discusses the period after Littlewood. He refers to the long performance tradition of European popular theatre, and along with other points presents the example of the idea of carnival, which is based on the symbolic rejection of hierarchical order. (Kershaw, The Politics 55-56, 68.) John McGrath with his writings and his popular political theatre company entitled 7:84 Theatre Company represent the general line in Kershaw’s books. Here, ideology and style are heavily intertwined. The question of legitimacy in representing the people, also posed by Kruger, becomes apparent also in this discussion (The Politics 153). The

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representation is best reached through focusing on locality and

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describing the socio-cultural environment of the performance (Kershaw, The Politics 154). This kind of mixture of popular performance tradition, political institutions, communal responsibility and professionalism is essentially an Anglo-American phenomenon, which has, however, influenced the others as well. Kershaw presents popular and people’s theatres side by side but does not concentrate on defining their differences (61).

Popular forms and subversion in today’s mainstream Historical institutional forms of popular theatre have had significance as an alternative to the mainstream and especially to the National Theatre. With time they have often been separated from their origins but nonetheless preserved their status as institutions for popular audiences. The Volkstheater-tradition has influenced the theatre systems in many countries, including in Finland. Based on the model of the early 20th century People’s Stage, the entire Finnish municipal theatre system could actually be referred to as popular or people’s theatre. For example the Helsinki City Theatre, a direct heir to the People’s Stage and the later Helsinki Folk Theatre, has defined itself as a people’s theatre in the spirit of today’s media-driven society. It uses the concept of “modern popular theatre” as its trademark, also for marketing purposes, as part of what Baz Kershaw calls performative society (The Radical 5). The system receives public funding on artistic grounds, but it still has to aim at large audience numbers in order to survive, often by using commercial approaches at the expense of ideologies. The subversive potential of these theatres is not dependent on their administrative structure. It is more linked with the contents and especially the aesthetic of their repertoire. Thus, popular theatre expression still seems to have subversive potential. In his work Empty Space Peter Brook considers the viability of theatre and finds popular theatre as a remedy for deadly theatre: Salt, sweat, noise, smell: the theatre that’s not in a theatre, the theatre on carts, on wagons, on trestles, audiences standing, drinking, sitting round tables, audiences joining in, answering

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back; theatre in back rooms, upstairs rooms, barns; the onenight stands, the torn sheet pinned up against across the hall, the battered screen to conceal the quick changes – that one generic term, theatre, covers all this and the sparkling chandeliers too. (73)

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Brook observes that “every attempt at revitalizing the theatre has gone back to the popular source” (7). His book came out in the 1960s, when people generally still believed in grand narratives. In today’s versatile theatre, popular subversion has no uniform object, but it still can use these traditional means, although in new terms. Subversion needs a counterforce, and still today national theatres represent special hegemony and status. Even at those theatres, however, revolutionary popular interpretations seem to lead to critical discussion without shaking the status of the performing theatre. A radical new production of the Finnish National Theatre, which includes most elements mentioned by Brook, testifies to this unshakeability. Directed by Kristian Smeds4, The Unknown Soldier, adapted from Väinö Linna’s iconic novel and premiered in November 2007, provides an example of how popular and national theatre, ideology and artistic innovations, distinctiveness and

4 Playwright and director Kristian Smeds (1970-) founded Takomo Theatre Company and worked there as a director from 1996 to 2001. From 2001 to 2004 he was the director of Kajaani Theatre. In 2007 he set up an international company entitled Smeds Ensemble. He has written several plays and creates strong stage adaptations of the plays he directs.

boundary-crossing can all be simultaneously present and lead to a heated public media debate. Published in 1954, Linna’s novel The Unknown Soldier is a realistic, folk-inspired and community-focused war description that transgressed the traditional idealised narrative pattern. Thanks to its identifiable characters, however, the novel was immediately accepted, and its success grew even more after the release of a feature film based on it. Multiple theatre productions and new screen adaptations strengthened the position of The Unknown Soldier as a national work of art with a solid canonised status. Thus the National Theatre included in its programme a production of a national work of art. As the performances on the main stage sold out weeks in advance, the demand for big audience was met. The Unknown Soldier became a popular production for large audiences. The subversive power consists of the post-modern way of performing a story. We can say that the method used throughout

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the production was carnivalism, which belongs to the strong

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tradition of popular theatre: things are turned upside down and hegemony is challenged. The production showed the Finnish popular class division, differing from the bipolar general pattern: officers and soldiers, and in between them a socially upgraded officer who identifies himself with the people. Carnivalism also appeared as objectification, changing and modulation of roles, and as the mixing of period styles. Russian soldiers appeared on stage in the form of washing machine shells which were destroyed and as a souvenir matryoshka comprised of multiple dolls, one inside the other. The national is present in the Finnish soldiers’ distinction from the washing machines – but also as a counter image where a matryoshka is symbolically raped. Carnivalism has a serious undertone. The powerful use of video projections highlights the concreteness and physicality of the performance. The boundary between the audience and perfor mance was also transgressed, following the model of folk art, but the audience received its share of parody and mockery as well. According to my interpretation, in many ways we can see the performance as a model of the new kind of popular theatre, which follows the spirit of popular performance tradition and is further empowered when located in traditional mainstream institutions. The practice is grounded on performance, physical and visual presence. The example of The Unknown Soldier proves that today the typical feature of popular culture, the roughness named as the theatre’s renewing power by Peter Brook, cannot shake the institutions, it rather serves to restore their strength. At different times the popular forms of performance and the highlighting of the physical have had opponents such as “high” art and the national educational ideology. The popular theatre now targets its challenges to individual spectators. The mechanisms aiming to control the perception of these individuals are much harder to conceive than before, because both the structure of the field of theatre and the spectrum of performance conventions have lost their earlier predictability. Paradoxically, however, popular theatre seems to remain alive as long as it is not too popular; it needs a counterforce. The Finnish example proposes that for the mainstream and the national theatres it is a challenge but also a great opportunity.

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Conclusion As Giorgio Agamben writes, the term “people” names “the con-

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stitutive political subject.” It also “indicates the poor, the disinherited, and the excluded,” but still in another context also “ordinary people” vs. nobility and the rich (176). This resembles the concept of popular theatre and its target audience, and its overlapping of national theatre as a national representation. “It is as if what we call ‘people’ were in reality not a unitary subject but a dialectical oscillation between two opposite poles; on the one hand, the set of the people as a whole political body, and on the other, the subject of people as a fragmentary multiplicity of needy and excluded bodies” (Agamben 177). The roots of the words for the people and popular, populus and popularis, show how the concept bears two connotations: the people and approval and favour of the people. This reveals “the disagreement about the essence built into the concept itself ” (Carlson 1), and the examples surveyed in this paper confirm that this also concerns popular theatre. The definition embraces different kinds of theatres, which results in inconsistency in the practical use of the term. As institutions, we may call them “people’s theatres”, but that is not the norm. We seem to read the meaning of popular theatre according to its cultural context, which does not, however, diminish the importance of the phenomenon. Popular theatre has been and still is aiming at breaking away from social control, and popular forms continue to challenge mainstream conventions. In this way they contribute to keeping theatre alive. English translation edited by Sari Hantula

Bibliography Agamben, Giorgio. Homo Sacer. Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Trans. Daniel Heller-Roazen. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998. Alter, Robert. Canon and Creativity. Modern Writing and the Authority of Scripture. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2000. Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities. Rev. ed. London: Verso, 1995. Bradby, David, and John McCormick. People’s Theatre. London & Totowa: Groom Helm & Rowman and Littlefeld, 1978.

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Brecht, Bertolt. “Anmerkungen zum Volksstück.” Bertolt Brecht. Schriften 4. Texts zu Stücken. (Bertolt Brecht. Werke, Band 24.) Eds. Werner Hecht, et al. Berlin and Weimer & Frankfurt am Main: Aufbau-Verlag & Suhrkamp Verlag, 1991. 293-299. Brook, Peter. The Empty Space. London: MacGibbon & Kee, 1971 (First published in 1968). Carlson, Marvin. Performance: A Critical Introduction. London and New York: Routledge, 1996. Goodlad, Sinclair. “Approaches to Popular Drama Through the Social Sciences.” Western Popular Theatre. Eds. David Mayer and Kenneth Richards. London & New York: Methuen 1977. 239-256. Goodlad, J. S. R. A Sociology of Popular Drama. London: Heinemann, 1971. Kershaw, Baz. The Politics of Performance. Radical Theatre as Cultural Intervention. London and New York: Routledge, 1992. –––. The Radical in Performance. Between Brecht and Baudrilland. London and New York: Routledge, 1999. Koski, Pirkko. Kansan teatteri. 1. Helsinki: Helsingin teatterisäätiö, 1986. Kruger, Loren. The National Stage. Theatre and Cultural Legitimation in England, France, and America. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1992. Mayer, David. “Towards the Definition of Popular Theatre.” Western Popular Theatre. Eds. David Mayer and Kenneth Richards. London & New York: Methuen, 1977. 257-277. Mukerji, Chandra, and Michael Schudson. ”Introduction: Rethinking Popular Drama.” Rethinking Popular Drama. Contemporary Perspectives in Cultural Studies. Eds. Chandra Mukerji and Michael Schudson. Berkeley & Los Angeles & Oxford: UCP, 1-62. Pavis, Patrice. Dictionary of the Theatre. Terms, Concepts, and Analysis. Translated by Christine Shantz. Toronto & Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 1998. Roach, Joseph R. “Theatre History and the Ideology of the Aesthetic.” Theatre Journal 41.2 (1989): 155-168. Rolland, Romain. “Förutsättningarna för en folkteater.” Teater. Polemik, teorier, manifest. En antologi. Ed. Invar Holm. Lund: Studentlitteratur 1974. 119-121. Salmelainen, Eino. Hurma ja surma. Muistelmia tavallaan. Helsinki: Tammi, 1957. Sauter, Willmar. “Teater och politik. – Klass, kamp och motstånd.” Teater i Sverige. Ed. Lena Hammergren, et al. Hedemora: Gidlunds förlag, 2004. 123-136. Schechter, Joel. “Back to the Popular Source. Introduction to Part I.” Popular Theatre. A Sourcebook. London and New York: Routledge, 2003. 3-11. Schmitz, Thomas. Das Volksstück. Stuttgart: J. B. Metzlersche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1990. Sprengel, Peter. “Erinnerungen um eine Utopie. Aus der Frühzeit der Berliner Volksbühne.” Freie Volksbühne Berlin 1890-1990. Herausgegeben von Dietger Pforte. Berlin: Argon, 1990. 11-31. Suutela, Hanna. Impyet. Näyttelijättäret Suomalaisen Teatterin palveluksessa. Helsinki: Like, 2005. Van Erven, Eugène. Radical People’s Theatre. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1988. Wilmer, S. E. “Introduction.” National Theatres in a Changing Europe. Ed. S. E. Wilmer. Houndmills & New York: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2008. 1-5. –––. “The Development of National Theatres in Europe in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries.” National Theatres in a Changing Europe. Ed. S. E. Wilmer. Houndmills & New York: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2008. 9-20. Wilmer, S. E., and Pirkko Koski. The Dynamic World of Finnish Theatre. An Introduction to Its History, Structures and Aesthetics. Helsinki: Like, 2006.

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Pirkko Koski was Professor and Head of the Department of Theatre Research in the Institute of Art Research at the University of Helsinki, as well as the director of the Institute until the

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end of 2007. She has published several books, including, Teatterinjohtaja ja aika (1992), Kaikessa mukana. Hella Wuolijoki ja hänen näytelmänsä (2000), Strindberg ja suomalainen teatteri (2005) and The Dynamic World of Finnish Theatre (with S. E. Wilmer, 2006). She has also edited two volumes of scholarly articles translated into Finnish, and Stages of Chaos: The Drama of Post-war Finland and Humour and Humanity. Contemporary Plays from Finland (both with S. E. Wilmer, 2005, 2006). pirkko.koski@helsinki.fi

Control vs. Subversion: Popular Theatre on the Move KEYWORDS: popular theatre, national theatre, theatre history, Finnish theatre, high and low culture The meaning of the concept of popular theatre seems clear at first sight, but a closer look proves it ambiguous. A significant reason for this ambiguity is the struggle between control and subversion typical of popular theatre and popular expression. This state of constant tension and change has manifested itself in institutional structures and artistic creativity, affecting popular theatre’s – often inseparable – aesthetic and ideology. Further ambiguity lies in the fact that the borderline between the popular and the national is flexible. The legitimacy of a national theatre is dependent on the support of the people; popular theatre cannot be defined separately from the concept of national theatre. The roots of the words “for the people” and “popular”, populus and popularis, show how the concept of popular theatre bears two connotations: the people and approval and favour of the people, thus revealing through the examples presented “the disagreement about the essence built into the concept itself.” Using Finnish theatre as an example, the paper examines this concept and its manifestations, and assumes that these phenomena also extend beyond the national borders. Popular theatre has been and still is aiming at breaking away from social control, and popular forms continue to challenge mainstream conventions. In this way they contribute to keeping

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theatre alive. On the other side, mainstream theatre has used

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different strategies to absorb popular theatre into it or to reject it. Paradoxically, popular theatre seems to remain alive as long as it is not too popular. Popular theatre needs a counterforce.

Nadzor proti subverziji: popularno gledališče na pohodu KLJUČNE BESEDE: popularno gledališče, nacionalno gledališče, zgodovina gledališča, finsko gledališče, visoka in nizka kultura Koncept popularnega gledališča se zdi na prvi pogled jasen, če pa ga natančneje pogledamo, se izkaže za dvoumnega. Pomemben razlog za to je boj med nadzorom in subverzijo, značilen za popularno gledališče in ljudsko izražanje. To stanje nenehne napetosti in spremembe se manifestira v institucionalnih strukturah in na področju umetniške ustvarjalnosti ter vpliva na estetiko in ideologijo popularnega gledališča, ki sta med seboj tesno prepleteni. Posebno težavo pri opredelitvi koncepta predstavlja tudi spremenljiva ločnica med popularnim in nacionalnim. Popularnega gledališča ne moremo opredeliti ločeno od koncepta nacionalnega gledališča, saj je legitimnost nacionalnega gledališča v veliki meri odvisna od podpore ljudstva. Koren besede “ljudstvo” in “ljudski” oziroma “popularen”, populus in popularis, kaže na to, da koncept vsebuje dve konotaciji: ljudstvo ter odobravanje in naklonjenost ljudstva. Obravnavani primeri v tem članku potrjujejo neskladnost bistva, vgrajenega v sam koncept. Čeprav večina zgledov izhaja iz finskega gledališča, članek predpostavlja, da lahko vidike pojava razširimo čez državne meje kljub dejstvu, da je opredelitev popularnega gledališča močno odvisna tudi od kulturnega konteksta. Cilj popularnega gledališča je bil, in je še vedno, osvobajanje izpod družbenega nadzora. Čeprav je mainstreamovsko gledališče v preteklosti uporabljalo različne strategije, da bi ga vsrkalo ali zavrglo, popularno gledališče še danes izziva ustaljene konvencije in s tem prispeva, da gledališče ostaja živo. Paradoksalno pa je, da popularno gledališče ohranja svojo živost le dotlej, dokler ni preveč popularno. Za svoj obstoj potrebuje nasprotno silo.

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Explosion Events: On the Theatricality of Fireworks in the Seventeenth Century

PAPERS

Helmar Schramm UDK 792:662.11“16”

I. Fireworks played an important role in the theatrical culture of the 17 century. As th

memory theatre and imaging techniques, they were connected in numerous ways with a search for adequate concepts of the image and with the constitution of world-images or world-views.1

NOTES

1 If, for his part, Heiner Müller has already condensed, with intuitive precision, the “Explosion of a Memory” and the “Description of a Picture” (Bildbeschreibung) metaphorically to a critical mass, then the following should deal quite literally with the relationship between explosion events and pictorial dynamics.

Before dealing with the relationship between explosion events and pictorial dynamics in the 17th century, however, and to keep in mind the current context of my reflections, I would like to consider the explosion event Black Rainbow that the Chinese artist Cai Guo-Qiang presented in Valencia in 2005. This event lasted exactly fifteen seconds and cost $200,000 and, in conceptual terms, this economic aspect played an important role in the work (Miwon Kwon 63). In today’s context, in view of the unimaginable dimension of the daily implosion of value, Black Rainbow with KEYWORDS

its obstinate fifteen-second

cultural readymade event, experiment, firework, image, representation, theatricality, 17th century, Cai Guo-Qiang

rhythm could serve for days,

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weeks and months as a dark omen of an all-encompassing crisis, a crisis of the world-picture (Weltbild in a philosophical sense). I mention Cai at this point also because his recent works (installations, gunpow-

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der paintings, gunpowder drawings and explosion events) force

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us to consider the urgent problem of today’s flood of images. I will come back to this at the end of this article in order to make clear where the current relevance of a historical perspective might lie.

II. In the 17th century, the firework occupied a prominent position in a theatrical event space that was in the process of a radical upheaval. This upheaval wasn’t simply a matter of new ways of creating increasingly dynamic stage spaces, mobile forms of festival architecture, and stage-based instrumentalisations of the human body and voice. It was also a case of an all-encompassing theatricalisation of the public realm under the growing influence of printing technologies. This 2 The term theatrum europaeum primarily refers here to the cultural, political and geographic space of Europe, though also with allusions to the twenty-onevolume work that had traits of a magazine-like periodical and was therefore, in its own way, highly symptomatic of the newly emerging form of public space. Cf. Theatrum Europaeum Oder /Ausführliche und Warhafftige Beschreibung aller und jeder denckwürdiger Geschichten.

medium was what made it possible

3 Cf. Gerd Bergfleth: Theorie der Verschwendung. Einführung in Georges Batailles Antiökonomie. The term “art of expenditure“ should be examined further in relation to the firework in the 17th century and should help to shed light on the complex economic implications. Bergfleth’s considerations of Bataille’s work in this area offer, in my view, important points of reference.

beyond the actual event, spectacular

for something like a Theatrum Europaeum2 to emerge as a representative echo of local public spheres, which brings to light in a quite specific way the practical meaning of fireworks. As a form of demonstrative expenditure, whose economic symbolism, in the form of printed images, extended far Lust-Feuerwerke or recreational fireworks emerged as refined instruments for maintaining the cartographic status quo. At the same time, however, they functioned as a precautionary reminder of the border-shifting violence of the so-called Ernst-Feuerwerke

– fireworks of war. Not only the symbolic violence of recreational displays, but also the physical violence of the newest weapon technologies became the focus of a spectacular “art of expenditure.”3 Only under the sign of this emerging relationship between recreational firework displays and pyrotechnic theatres of war is it possible to properly understand the immense importance of fireworks in the 17th century. The firework as a lavish memory theatre should be positioned directly at the centre of a cultural

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system based on the interplay between theatricality and representation that, in striking repetition, varies one single flashing image, combining birth and death in a single beat.

Helmar Schramm Explosion Events: On the Theatricality of Fireworks in the Seventeenth Century

Countless attempts at capturing the fleeting essence of the firework in the eternalised moment of artful illustrations reflect, despite the excessive form, only a pale gleam of pure appearance. However, this problem of apprehension indirectly sheds light on the mechanisms of a pyrotechnic theatre, which, in the very moment of perception, leaves a deeper impression on the memory the more it exceeds the powers of apprehension of those present. However, because this effect is the direct result of excessive fleetingness, any attempt at artfully capturing the moment will inevitably appear as a paradoxical attempt at inventing something like an image-machine of accumulated time – one no less significant than the technical utopia suggested by the dream of a perpetuum mobile. Hence, in the engravings, prints, drawings and descriptions that have come down to us, it is important to acknowledge the materiality of the depictions as such. It is not only their role as stylised artworks of pyrotechnic fleetingness that deserve attention, but primarily their role as concrete elements of a media-

4 Here, I see an interesting link to the classical memory theatre of the Renaissance, which has been examined very convincingly by Peter Matussek in his essay “Die Memoria erschüttern. Zur Aktualität der Gedächtnistheater.” 5 Worth highlighting from a bibliographic point of view are Lotz (Das Feuerwerk) and Philip (A Bibliography of Firework Books).

historical recording system. There are three reasons why the firework display needs to be understood and more accurately defined as a pyrotechnic memory theatre. Firstly, the use of fireworks in notable events is generally intended to ritually establish and secure cultural memory. Secondly, the firework’s mode of operation, as well as its reproduction as sensual representations of the intangible, makes a strong impression on the memory. Thirdly, in the firework books, it is gradually stylised into a well-ordered model and archive of the key areas of knowledge of the period.4 Typical occasions for recreational fireworks, such as births, marriages, military victories, peace settlements, coronations and the signing of contracts, can be added to local calendars of notable events. Many descriptions and illustrations have been handed down to us, and have, for their part, produced a broad spectrum of secondary literature.5 A brief glance at a few illustrations suggests that the always short-lived attempt to inscribe symbolic

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signs and dates in the sky, were often simply used as a welcome

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opportunity to immortalise “light-images” in representative engravings for posterity. Indeed, there are many correspondences between the sign systems of pyrotechnic and print culture. Both provide a basis for historiography in the age of representation. But unlike the multiplication of images in the printing process, the firework requires permanent confirmation through endless repetition. This requirement is another reason why fireworks tend so strongly towards ritual. In terms of the maintenance of power, the principle of ritual representation is basically meant, in one way or another, to evoke the following image: on the horizon, lit up by exploding shells, swooping rockets and flickering pillars of fire, accompanied by thunder rolls, crackers and the acoustic presence of the public, the imaginary motif of a giant ruler appears, equipped with a bishop’s 6 Already the first report of a recreational firework display that has come to us from Vicenza (northern Italy) bears witness to the effective and strategic force of this moment of surprise. In 1379, a mystery play was performed here, which culminated in the staging of the prophecy of the Ascent of the Holy Spirit in both a drastic and, for the public, surprising way. From the tower of the bishop’s palace, a rocket-driven flaming dove suddenly ran along a wire over the heads of the dumbstruck spectators towards the actors playing Mary and the Apostles on the specially built stage. The effect of this sparkling firework was heightened further by crackers and hissing serpents. Cf. on this point Lotz (3).

staff, sword and crown, whose body is made up of numerous tiny figures. The firework is almost able to evoke the monstrous figure of the Leviathan, the figure of power sketched by Thomas Hobbes in 1651 as an entirely theatrical personification of modern government (7, see also Bredekamp). The excessive expenditure of pyrotechnics can be instrumentalised as a public memory theatre of symbolic violence. It is precisely at this point that it potentially overlaps with the theatricality of a notion of state that attributes the high-

est significance to the technical, linguistic and visual foundations of public communication. Among the instruments and technologies constituting the public sphere in the age of representation, the firework stands out as being the theatrical machine for the production of attention. Its special impact largely depends on two factors that come into their own in all pyrotechnic spectacles. These are the factors of suddenness and wonder.6 And the decisive pyrotechnic instruments for the guaranteed production of mass surprise and wonder, whose construction was vigorously perfected in the 17th century, were clearly the rockets. “Without rockets / no firework display can be complete,” observes a beautiful firework book

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from 1627, which also sets out to do justice in text and image to the whole spectrum of rocket technologies known to the period (Furttenbach, Halinitro-Pyrobolia 19).

Helmar Schramm Explosion Events: On the Theatricality of Fireworks in the Seventeenth Century

The pyrotechnic game of wonder culminates in associations with spectacular natural phenomena. A broad spectrum of rockets recalls spectacles of the night sky, its shooting stars, meteors and comets. Books such as the Theatrum Cometicum by Stanislaus Lubienietski appearing in 1667, or the Cometographia published by Johann Hevelius in 1668 contain fascinating images that might also come from one of the numerous firework books appearing at the time. Thus, the sensual impact of practical pyrotechnical experiments overlaps with aesthetic aspects of astronomical observation. From today’s point of view, it is easy to forget the extent to which the vision of the night sky must have once been a vast natural theatre. It was not only the immeasurable wealth of secrets contained in the heavenly spheres that made “Star-gazing,” to adopt a term from Kepler, like entering a fantastical theatre. In this type of encounter with the theatrum mundi, the astronomer is right to see himself as a pure spectator, since, in practical terms, the moving scenery is just as inaccessible as the stage of a classical theatre during a performance.7 However, in the 17 th century, new possibilities were opened up to bring

7 Correspondingly, Johannes Kepler writes, “since man, because of his constant observation, was furnished with eyes, he cannot remain stationary, but is forced to travel around to observe in this vehicle through the yearly movement of the earth, just as the surveyors change positions, when they survey inaccessible places, to adjust the base of the triangle according to the distance between the points” (352). 8 In his dialogues, Galileo writes, “By virtue of the telescope, the sky is now thirty to forty times nearer than it was for Aristotle, so we can distinguish a hundred things that he was not aware of.” (59f)

the observer, in the truest sense of the word, closer to the immense optical effects of flying luminaries in the night sky; on this point, rocket and telescope bear interesting resemblances.8 In the 17th century, the impact of fireworks also corresponded to natural spectacles. Striking images of natural phenomena were widely disseminated as prints. When, for instance, in 1669, a luminous form over Tübingen looks “handsomely smooth / and shaped like an egg,” which subsequently passed for hours through the strangest light forms (THEATRI EUROPAEI, Das ist: Historischer Chronick / Oder Warhaffter Beschreibung aller fürnehmen und denckwuerdigen Geschichten 111), or when, in 1661, over Meissen “three suns / and, between these, three rainbows” were observed (IRENICO-POLEMOGRAPHIAE CONTINUATIO 309), the

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accounts of these phenomena sound like literary utopian fanta-

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sies borrowing heavily on imagery from pyrotechnic displays. The mass hunger for such images and the addiction to fireworks were mutually heightened under the sign of wonder. Among these ornamentally embellished reports, the ones that stand out as being particularly memorable are those in which the violence of nature is suddenly condensed into terrifying images of catastrophe. In 1631, when the eruption of Vesuvius gradually found a fixed place in the thematic repertoire of firework displays, this seems to have been in order to sublimate the real violence of nature in the artificiality of the fireworks. This corresponds entirely to a strategic intention that puts emphasis on a game with pyrotechnic elements, “which inevitably both amazes and appals” (Simienowicz, Artis magnae Artilleriae Preface n. p.). The effects of wonder and suddenness 9 This phenomenon can be observed in the context of special aesthetics which becomes important in the 18th century (Cf. Carsten). 10 This applies all the more to the whole 17th century, because fundamental innovations concerning fire fighting were only introduced in the 1690s (Cf. Magirus).

culminate in a pleasure heightened to fright.9 However, this is precisely what the striking force of a pyrotechnic memory theatre ultimately touches on – in the moment of its greatest effectiveness, it knows how to draw attention to itself as a dangerous game with fire.10 Nevertheless, in this aesthetic of pleas-

urable horror, there isn’t only a reference to untamed nature. The nature of the firework itself is also revealed, which, in the 17th century, developed out of the combination of entertainment and war, of recreational and military fireworks. Therefore it can hardly surprise us that recreational firework displays are often thematically designed to resemble a theatre of war. And again it is the wide-ranging images of strange light signals in the sky that occasionally seem as if they could be seamlessly carried over into the storyboard of a pyrotechnic spectacle; indeed, one often has the impression that the fantasy of the commentators has been inspired by war-related aspects of the art of fireworks. For example, in 1630, there were reports of strange light forms in the night sky over Stuttgart, clearly recognisable as a struggle “between many flashing spears and flames of fire passing among each other” (THEATRUM EUROPAEUM, Vol. 2. 113). A notable paradox here is that the accomplishments of pyrotechnics are often publicly displayed merely as an illumination of antiquated weapon systems such as the shield, sword and lance. In secret, however, new techniques of destruction were constantly being

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developed in the pyrotechnic laboratories – and indeed with unlimited fantasy. Already in 1669, the spectrum of rocket technology included signal rockets, weapons with timed detonation devices, projectiles spiked with nails as well as “contaminated

Helmar Schramm Explosion Events: On the Theatricality of Fireworks in the Seventeenth Century

and malodorous fire” (Ammon 69). What is suggested here is a gap between public demonstrations of symbolic violence and the secret work on ever new methods of physical violence in pyrotechnic laboratories. Related to this are also the fundamentally different practices and concepts of the image. Outside of the public realm, all useful and available knowledge was systematically compiled, modelled and archived, until finally, in 1676, it could even be observed that pyrotechnics were “a summary of all arts and mechanical sciences” (Simienowicz, Artis magnae Artilleriae n. p.). What kind of knowledge are we dealing with here? Put briefly, it could be described as knowledge under the sign of the new experimental sciences, accompanied by fascinating encounters between instrumentality and experience, judging by eye and mathematical calculation. In the early firework books with their beautiful engravings, the gestures of the artwork and the technical drawing are condensed into a strange aura of innovation. The network of publications became increasingly complex: increasingly large connections, increasingly complex world-pictures were incorporated into the pyrotechnic idea. Arithmetica, geometria, planimetria, geographia, astronomia, navigation, prospectiva, mechanica, architectura militaris, architectura civilis, architectura navalis – this is the context in which Joseph Furttenbach, in 1663, sees the theoretical and practical positioning of the firework (Mannhafter Kunstspiegel Preface). Thus it became increasingly important for the experimenting pyrotechnician to be able to read and write, “since otherwise he is not able be keep track of the necessary procedures” (de Bry 3). But pyrotechnic knowledge is not only complex, it is also extremely dynamic. In the 17th century, the enigma of movement – whether as powder explosion, rocket flight, machine drive, clockwork, planet orbit, pendulum swing, free fall or blood circulation – became the focus of research. A new concept of movement appears in the cosmos of knowledge like a sun whose luminosity is also reflected in pyrotechnic experiments. In order to appreciate the firework in the context of the new experimental sciences, it is necessary to shed some light on the

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material basis of pyrotechnic experimenting as it is encountered

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in the form of concrete instruments (Hankins and Silverman 10). A glance at a firework book from 1603, in which a list of all war and firework instruments is introduced, is very revealing; the book includes a hierarchical plan that puts the human eye in the highest position, followed by the ear, then the mouth, and finally the hand. Only after this anthropocentric introduction does this book go on to name and describe a wealth of concrete instruments, tools and weapons (Boillot and Brantz 18). This approach corresponds to the founding of experimenting on the basis of a long tradition of sensual-corporeal knowledge. Here, a centurieslong tradition, as is characteristic for the poetical-empirical praxis of alchemy, for instance, encounters such attempts at founding a new form of experiment, which can be found in Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis, published in 1626, where a developed understanding of the human senses is instrumentalised as a model of experimental techniques and spaces of observation (Bacon 72ff.). However, this empirically grounded anthropomorphic starting point changes considerably in the course of the century. The emerging trend can be understood as an increasing rationalisation. After 1650, new measures of the quality of work were increasingly oriented towards the mathematical precision of instruments; euphoric praise for the “noble mathematics” is not infrequent (Nimrod 5). Thus, pyrotechnics responded to a trend that was widely typical, and also corresponded to a mechanisation of world-pictures. The relationship between instrument and notation, however, remained central – and, in the course of time, the various forms of recording data increasingly revealed the outline of a total recording system. The core of this system is made up by firework books, in which the trace of the instrumental advancement of rocket technology also reveals the changing concept of the instrument. Added to this is the alchemical literature in which the pyrotechnicians found inspiration for their fireworks until far into the second half of the 17th century. Wasn’t it alchemy, which in the course of many centuries had gathered together a fund of valuable knowledge about fire, its temperatures, its colours, its rhythm, and its symbolic and allegorical meanings? Finally, gunpowder, the raw material for all later fireworks, also arose from these experiments. Another sort of recording system was created by the organisation of laboratories, in which unwritten laws of experimental work such as questions of secrecy, order and security, the banning of alcohol, and fire protection were established and enforced with the

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threat of punishment. Finally, the various administrative documents should be mentioned as part of this laboratory recording system, which are dedicated with meticulous precision to accounting, inventorying and indexing. No doubt, it was the

Helmar Schramm Explosion Events: On the Theatricality of Fireworks in the Seventeenth Century

special danger of materials, objects and activities in the firework laboratory that led to this side being run extremely efficiently. Seen in a clear light, records and images also function increasingly as indispensable instruments. The way in which this occurs concretely becomes clear when Joseph Furttenbach, describing the preparation of pyrotechnic tests, writes that it is absolutely necessary that the firework is first brought to paper in “a properly planimetric manner” as a “well-assembled teatrum” (Furttenbach, Mannhaffter Kunst-Spiegel 101). The sketch brought to paper becomes, to all intents and purposes, a decisive logistic instrument to ultimately construct a successful experiment. How this then functions as public recreational firework, casts an interesting light on the relationship between pyrotechnics and theatricality. Like a drama, the whole event is divided into eight acts with theatrical elements such as the sound of trumpets, singing, slogans, costumes and a storyline. But Furttenbach is not at all concerned with the performative aspect of the event. “Theatre” is simply divided up into its elements and thus instrumentalised as a mere logistic sign and memory system, as memory aid for the pyrotechnicians involved who should guarantee the ordered sequence. For the “onlookers” (Furttenbach 201), this remains hidden; they perceive the pyrotechnic theatre as a spectacular event, whose pseudo-action intentionally masks the experimental-technical background. In Furttenbach’s accentuation of “a properly planimetric manner” of the firework system, one can also see the tendency towards an increasing geometrisation and mathematisation. However, the principle of rationalisation, doesn’t only inspire the concrete schemes of pyrotechnic praxis, it also goes to the foundations of this praxis, and finally leads to changes that pertain to and question the established nature of the firework itself. The period around 1700 can be seen as the vanishing point of such a development, in the wake of which, the representative unity of the whole complex of pyrotechnic knowledge begins to dissolve. Gradually, the position of the firework in the military as well as the spectrum of theatrical entertainment changes lastingly and loses its position as the memory

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theatre of knowledge at the intersection between theatricality

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and representation. Around 1700, the dynamic of change in politics, religion, science and culture clearly strengthened the need to set down all useful knowledge in large-scale overviews, records and systems. At the same time, however, opposed to such attempts at establishing knowledge, fundamental shifts in the architectonics of knowledge can be discerned. Exemplary here is the development of such demarcation and separation lines in the alchemical laboratories and corresponding documents that were so important for the history of pyrotechnics. Towards the end of the 17 th century, the alchemical praxis of separation, purification and sublimation of substances with its already long-standing tradition was increasingly applied to the alchemical document, that is, in the context of publishing controversies, alchemy underwent a 11 For a detailed analysis of the changes in the field of aesthetics, see Schramm, “Theatralität.” For further discussion on the art of experimentation, see Schramm, “Pyrophonie.”

radical process of “self-purification.”

12 In this sense fireworks can be considered also as precursors of modern popular culture.

serve a radical re-structuring of the

Thus the alchemical fire in a treatise from 1702 was converted into a “purgatory of chemistry,” which should labyrinths of the texts ([Soeldner], Keren Happuch 23). Similar develop-

ments were also carried out in many other representative areas of knowledge and, not least, also in the field of theatre. Of course, for the spectacular magic of recreational pyrotechnics, it was not without consequence that all secretive, paradoxical, spontaneously corporeal aspects of theatrical culture were systematically excluded in the light of the emerging enlightenment, in order to institutionalise the standard of a “purified stage.”11 Therefore, it was systematically expelled from the aesthetic realm of the arts established after 1750 into the marginal areas of cheap amusement and anodyne representation.12 However, fireworks experienced an enormous revaluation – as explosion events – in another context. In the period around 1700 pyrotechnic developments of the 17th century led to a situation in which first France and soon the whole of Europe acquired permanent artillery troops. As a result, military strategies and weapon systems were lastingly and radically made more dynamic. In the course of the 18th century, the firepower of the artillery gradually developed alongside a rigorously specialised military praxis of

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pyrotechnic experiment, up to the real violence that led Goethe, in 1793, to view the Siege of Mainz from a distance as a night firework display.13

Helmar Schramm Explosion Events: On the Theatricality of Fireworks in the Seventeenth Century

III. After what has been said so far, the following points can be remarked: 1) In the 17th century, the interplay between fireworks and visual dynamics developed, on the one hand, in the risky openness of the new public spheres, and on the other hand, in the hermetically closed institutions of secret experiments. 2) Public and secret spheres are equally characterised by exchange and the reciprocal penetration of pyrotechnic and print-based sign systems. 3) Fireworks play a role in the transformation of knowledge and world-views both as ritual memory theatre under the sign of wonder and as experimental praxis in the age of systematic demystification. 4) In the context of the theatrical culture of representation, pyrotechnic events and the related picture cycles are institutionalised and administered as instruments of power. Therefore, special mechanisms of control play an extremely important role in the systematic advancement of fireworks and the corresponding pictorial representations. In this respect, notable analogies to the history of theatre censorship can also be observed. 5) As symbolic and physical violence, as excessive expenditure and warfare, fireworks and their pictorial representations are integrated in the risky dynamics of courtly and municipal economies, marked in equal measure by tendencies

13 Cf. Goethe: â&#x20AC;&#x153;The night of June 28. Continued bombardment towards the cathedral; tower and roof are burning and many surrounding houses. After midnight the Jesuitenkirche. On the entrenchment in front of Marienborn, we watched this terrible theatre; the stars were out in full, the bombs seemed to be in competition with the heavenly lights, and there were really moments when one couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t distinguish between the two. New for us was the rising and falling of the fireballs, since just as they threatened to reach the firmament in a low curve, at a certain height, they buckled together in a parabola, and the ascending blaze soon announced that it knew how to reach its goal. Herr Gore und Rat Krause treated the incident artistically and made so many fire studies that they later managed to produce a translucent night piece, which still exists, and probably sheds more light on this infernal scene than any written account might convey.â&#x20AC;? (374f )

of rationalisation, as well as unpredictability, dissonance, suddenness, discontinuity. 6) In the 17th century, the firework was profoundly linked to research that was directed towards the enigma of (mechanical) movement, whether as machine drive, planet orbit, rocket flight or blood circulation. The above remarks all require, in one way or another, considerable attention in any attempt to shed light on new historical traces of the relationship between explosion events and visual

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dynamics since the 17th century. Particularly important is, with-

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out doubt, the serious upheavals affecting the concept of movement that emerged for instance around 1800 with Immanuel Kant’s “Copernican turn” (Kant 20), or around 1900 with Henri Bergson’s concept of duration in the context of a new physics and a new media system. In both cases, it is not only a matter of synthesising dimensions of movement and event in previously unthinkable notions of the “movement-image.” It is largely a matter of attributing a central position to the viewer, to the moment of perception, the “perception of change” as Bergson puts it (“Wahrnehmung der Veränderung” 148). This is not only related to epistemological, perceptual-psychological or aesthetic problems. In as much as explosion events are also constantly a matter of public events, and occasionally even culture-destroying ones, political, economic and social aspects also come into play. While Bergson links his critique of the “cinematographic illusion” (Denken und schöpferisches Werden 27) as critique of all previous philosophically developed movement concepts with a search for flexible, supple concepts, finally even involving the attempt to replace the conceptual instrumentarium with images, Georg Simmel highlights the explosiveness of the movement problem around 1900 in a totally different way when he writes: “For the absolute movement character of the world, there is no clearer symbol than money.” (583) Locating the intersections, interferences or trading zones between such approaches of thought is, in my opinion, a special challenge. If one considers Bergson’s fondness for pictures of grenades, rockets and explosions, then fireworks and their related picture cycles appear once again in a totally new epistemological light – and henceforth as heuristic model. At the beginning of this article, I mentioned that I would conclude with a look at the work of the Chinese artist Cai GuoQiang. I would like to start with the just-sketched proposal of a “heuristic model.” Cai’s theatrical installations, his gunpowder paintings and explosion events can be conceived as just such heuristic models, in which aesthetic, cultural-historical, political and sociological problems encounter one another in an economy of energetic exchange in the sense of Pierre Bataille (21). His reference to the idea of Social Sculpture in the work of Joseph Beuys is also symptomatic here.

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The markedly experimental approach of his work, which frequently operates in series, should also be emphasised. Growing from this approach are diverse references to corresponding projects in the historical avant-garde. The degree to which he

Helmar Schramm Explosion Events: On the Theatricality of Fireworks in the Seventeenth Century

knows how to combine critical distance and innovation is revealed in his relationship to Marcel Duchamp’s Readymades. While he states that the provocative energy in the historical concept of the Readymade has now been exhausted, he nevertheless coins the new term “Cultural Readymade” (Joselit 50). The forcefulness of this notion is already clear in the reference to a chain of historical events extending from the invention of gunpowder via the history of military fireworks, the dropping of the American atom bombs in the 20th century and the vivid images of the imploding Twin Towers, up to today’s suicide bombers. Projects such as The Century with Mushroom Clouds or Clear Sky Black Cloud are placed explicitly in this context. They use events to provocatively combine artistic and historical energies. For Cai, it is not a matter of the objectification of aesthetic inspiration, already as a result of the nature of the thing, but processes of mediation, transformation, exchange, and the translation of cultural energies (Hasegawa 8). For him, there is no doubt that the next decades will be largely concerned with a totally new quality of energetic exchange between Western and (Far) Eastern cultures. Against this background, however, his concept and his praxis of Cultural Readymades is revealed as being extremely multi-facetted and as an adequate point of focus for questions concerning an economy of the future whose range and complexity have already been set out in the work of Bataille. Their risky character is vividly demonstrated in art projects such as Cai’s explosion events. Translated by Benjamin Carter

Bibliography Ammon, Clemens, and G. A. Böckler. Laboratorium Militare = Kriegsbuch Darinnen beschriben Wie nicht Allein alle Materialie[n] so Zue einem Zeueghaus gehoerig solle[n] unterhalten werten, Sondern auech Von zuebereitueng vielerley Ernst-Feuern : Sampt unterschiedlichen Machinen von Brech- uend Hebzeugen, auech Wie Eine Wagenbuerg uemb ein Lager Huefschlagen ; Item So man von dem Feind mitt Feueerwerck angefochten wird wie man sich derer erwehren sollen. Heidelberg: Ammon, 1669. Bacon, Francis. Neu-Atlantis. (Nova Atlantis. London 1627.) Ed. G. Bugge. Leipzig: Reclam, 1926. Bataille, Georges. The Accursed Share: An Essay on General Economy, vol. 1, Consumption (La Part maudite) Trans. R. Hurley. New York: Zone Books, 1988.

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Bergfleth, Gerd. Theorie der Verschwendung. Einführung in Georges Batailles Antiökonomie. München: Matthes & Seitz, 1985. Bergson, Henri. “Einleitung”. Denken und schöpferisches Werden. Transl. Leonore Kottje. Frankfurt a.M.: Syndikat, 1985. 21-41. –––. “Die Wahrnehmung der Veränderung”. Denken und schöpferisches Werden. Transl. Leonore Kottje. Frankfurt a.M.: Syndikat, 1985.148-179. Boillot, Joseph, and Johannes Brantz. Artifices Defeu, & diuers instruments de guerre. Das ist / Kuenstlich Feurwerck und Kriegs Instrumenta / allerhandt voeste Orth zu defendirn und expugnirn. Strasbourg: Bertram, 1603. Bredekamp, Horst. Thomas Hobbes. Visuelle Strategien. Der Leviathan: Urbild des modernen Staates. Werkillustrationen und Portraits. Acta humaniora Schriften zur Kunstwissenschaft und Philosophie. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1999. Bry, Iohann Theodorus de. Kunstbüchlein von Geschütz unnd Fewerwerck, auch von gründlicher Zubereitung allerley Gezeug, und rechtem Brauch der Fewerwerck, wie die im Schimpf und Ernst von der Handt… können geworffen werden … erkläret und beschrieben, auch jedes Stück auffs Kupffer gebracht. Frankfurt am Main: Paulum Jacobi, 1619. Carsten, Zelle. Angenehmes Grauen. Literaturhistorische Beiträge zur Ästhetik des Schrecklichen im achtzehnten Jahrhundert. Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1987. Furttenbach, Joseph. Halinitro-Pyrobolia: Beschreibung einer newen Büchsenmeisterey. Ulm: Saur, 1627. –––. Mannhaffter Kunst-Spiegel. Augsburg: Hans Schultes, 1663. Galilei, Galileo. Dialog über die beiden hauptsächlichen Weltsysteme, das ptolemäische und das kopernikanische. (Dialogo sopra i due massimi sistemi del mondo, tolemaico, e copernicano. Florenz, 1632.) Ed. E. Strauss. Leipzig: Teubner, 1891. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. “Belagerung von Mainz”. Werke. Hamburger Ausgabe in 14 Bänden. München: Beck, 1998, vol. 10. 363-400. Hankins, Thomas L., and Robert J. Silverman. Instruments and the Imagination. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995. Hasegawa, Yuko. “Circulating Qi (Energy) of Mind and Intellect”. CAI GUO-QIANG: I AM THE Y2K BUG. Ed. Gerald Matt. Köln: König, 1999. 8-18. Hevelius, Johannes. Cometographia, totam naturam cometarum; ...exhibens...Cumprimis verò, cometae anno 1652, 1661, 1664 & 1665 ad ipso auctore, summo studio observati, aliquantò prolixiùs,...exponuntur, expenduntur, atq; rigidissimo calculo subjiciuntur. Accessit, omnium cometarum, à mundo conditio hucusquè ab historicis, philosophis, &astronomis annotatorum, historia. Danzig: Simon Reiniger, 1668. Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan oder Materie, Form und Gewalt eines kirchlichen und staatlichen Gemeinwesens. (Leviathan or the Matter, Form and Power of a Commonwealth, Ecclesiastical and Civil. London 1651.) Ed. H. Klenner. Leipzig: Reclam, 1978. IRENICO-POLEMOGRAPHIAE CONTINUATIO Das ist: Der Historisch=fortgeführten Friedens= und Kriegs= Beschreibung Oder deß THEATRI EUROPAEI Neundter Theil ....von dem 1660. Jahre anzufangen / biß in das 1665. Jahr denck= und schreibwürdig vorgegangen. Welches alles / auß vielen treulich mitgetheilten Schrifften / nachrichtlichen Berichten und brieflichen Urkunden / also zusammen getragen Und beschrieben Martin Meyer / vom Hayn in Schlesien... Durch Matthäi Merians Seel. Erben Gedruckt zu Franckfurt am Mayn / bey Johann Görlin. Anno Christi M DC XCIX. Joselit, David. “Image Explosion: Global Readymades”. CAI GUO-QIANG: I WANT TO BELIEVE. Ed. Thomas Krens and Alexandra Munroe. New York: Guggenheim, 2008. 50-60. Kant, Immanuel. Kritik der reinen Vernunft. Ed. Raymund Schmidt. Leipzig: Reclam, 1930. Kepler, Johannes. Die Zusammenklänge der Welten. (Harmonices mundi. Linz, 1619) Ed. O. J. Bryk. Jena: Diederichs, 1918. Lotz, Arthur. Das Feuerwerk. Seine Geschichte und Bibliographie. Beiträge zur Kunst- und Kulturgeschichte der Feste und des Theaterwesens in sieben Jahrhunderten. Leipzig: Hiersemann, 1941. Lubienietz, Stanislaus de. Theatrum Cometicum. Amsterdam: Cuperus, 1666-68.

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Magirus, C. D. Das Feuerlöschwesen in allen seinen Theilen nach seiner geschichtlichen Entwicklung von den frühesten Zeiten bis zur Gegenwart. Ulm: Selbst-Verlag des Verfassers, 1877. Matussek, Peter. “Die Memoria erschüttern. Zur Aktualität der Gedächtnistheater”. Bühnen des Wissens. Interferenzen zwischen Kunst und Wissenschaft. Ed. Helmar Schramm, et al. Berlin: Dahlem University Press, 2003. 214-225. Miwon Kwon. “The Art of Expenditure.” CAI GUO-QIANG: I WANT TO BELIEVE. Ed. Thomas Krens and Alexandra Munroe. New York: Guggenheim, 2008. 62-74. Müller, Heiner. “Bildbeschreibung.” Shakespeare-Factory 1. Texte in 11 Bänden,Vol. 8. Berlin: Rotbuch, 1985. 7-14. Nimrod, Sylvius (Herzog von Württemberg-Oels). Vollenkommene Vnterweisung / wie Raketen / Feuer- Wasser- Sturm-Kugeln / Granaten / Pech-Sturm-Kraentze / und allerhand Lust nnd Ernsthaffte Feuerwercke zubereiten : Sampt gruendlicher Anleitung zur Artillerie. Osnabrück: J. Seyffert, 1660. Philip, Chris. A Bibliography of Firework Books. Works on recreative fireworks from the sixteenth to the twentieth century. Winchester: St. Paul’s Bibliographies, 1985. Schramm, Helmar. “Theatralität.” Historisches Wörterbuch in sieben Bänden. Ästhetische Grundbegriffe. Bd. 6. Eds. K. Barck, et al. Stuttgart, Weimar: Metzler Verlag, 2005. 48-73. –––. “Pyrophonie.” Spektakuläre Experimente. Praktiken der Evidenzproduktion im 17. Jahrhundert. Eds. H. Schramm, L. Schwarte, J. Lazardzig. Berlin and New York: De Gruyter Verlag, 2006. 398-413. Simienowicz, Casimir. Artis magnae Artilleriae. Vollkommene GeschützFeuerwerck- und Büchsenmeisterey-Kunst. Frankfurt am Main: Zunner, 1676. Simmel, Georg. Philosophie des Geldes. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1900. [Soeldner], Keren Happuch. Posaunen Eliae des Kuenstlers / oder Teutsches Fegefeuer der Scheide=Kunst / Worinnen Nebst den Neu=gierigsten und groessten Geheimnuessen vor Augen gestellet Die wahren Besitzer der Kunst; wie auch die Ketzer, Betrieger / Pfuscher / Stuemper / und Herren Gern=Grosse. Hamburg: Libernickel, 1702. THEATRI EUROPAEI, Das ist: Historischer Chronick/ Oder Warhaffter Beschreibung aller fürnehmen und denckwuerdigen Geschichten/ so sich hin und wider in der Welt/ meistentheils aber in Europa/ von Anno Christi 1629, biß auff das Jahr 1633 zugetragen: Insonderheit/ was auff das im Reich publicierte Keyserliche/ die Restitution der Geistlichen von den Protestierenden eingezogenen Güter / betreffende Edict / so wol in Kriegs= als Politischen und andern Sachen/ zwischen den Catholischen / eines: So dann den Evangelischen / mit Assistenz deß Königs in Schweden / andern Theils / erfolget: Und zum dritten mal in Druck gegeben: Durch Matthaeum Merianum, Buchhändlern und Kupfferstechern zu Franckfurt am Mayn. Getruckt im Jahr nach Christi Geburt / M DC XXXVI. THEATRUM EUROPAEUM Oder /Ausführliche und Warhafftige Beschreibung aller und jeder denckwürdiger Geschichten, so sich hin und wieder in der Welt, fürnemblich aber in Europa, und Teutschlanden, so wol im Religion= als Prophan=Wesen, vom Jahr Christi 1617 biß auff das Jahr 1629, exclus. Bey Regierung deren beyden Glorwürdigsten, Allerdurchleuchtigsten / und unüberwindlichsten Römischen Keysern / Matthiae und Ferdinandi Deß Andern, allerhöchstseeligster Gedächtnuß, sich zugetragen haben. Beschrieben durch M. Johannem Philippum Abelinum, Argentoratensem. 3.Auflage. Franckfurt am Mayn M DC LXII.

Helmar Schramm Explosion Events: On the Theatricality of Fireworks in the Seventeenth Century

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Helmar Schramm is Professor of Theatre Studies at the Freie

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Universit채t Berlin. His main research interests are: Interrelation between the history of the arts and sciences, avant-garde theatre and performative turns under the influence of modern media systems. His publications include: Karneval des Denkens (1996), Collection-Laboratory-Theater (Ed. together with J. Lazardzig and L. Schwarte, Berlin & New York, 2005); Instruments in Art and Science (Ed. together with J. Lazardzig and L. Schwarte, Berlin & New York, 2008), Spuren der Avantgarde: Theatre machinarum (Ed. together with J. Lazardzig and L. Schwarte, Berlin & New York, 2008). In 2007 he was a guest researcher at the University of Ljubljana, Academy of Theatre, Radio, Film and Television. helmar.schramm@fu-berlin.de

Explosion Events: On the Theatricality of Fireworks in the Seventeenth Century KEYWORDS: cultural readymade event, experiment, firework, image, representation, theatricality, 17th century, Cai Guo-Qiang Within the theatrical culture of the 17 th century, both pyrotechnic events and the related cycles of images are institutionalised and administered as effective instruments of power. Therefore, special mechanisms of control play an extremely important role in the systematic advancement of fireworks and the corresponding pictorial representations. Hence, in the engravings, prints, drawings and descriptions that have come down to us, it is important to acknowledge the materiality of the depiction as such. Not only their role as stylised artworks of pyrotechnic fleetingness deserves our attention, but primarily their role as concrete elements of a media-historical recording system. In the 17th century, the firework was profoundly linked to research that was largely directed towards the enigma of (mechanical) movement, whether as machine drive, planet orbit, rocket flight or blood circulation. In this context, the search for an adequate concept of the image is revealed as a condition for the establishment of new experimental arts and sciences. Taking such historical considerations as a starting point, the current relevance of the relationship between Explosion Events and image streaming should be made clear in a brief look at the work of the Chinese artist Cai Guo-Qiang.

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Eksplozivni dogodki: O teatralnosti ognjemetov v sedemnajstem stoletju KLJUČNE BESEDE: teatralnost, kulturni ready-made dogodek,

Helmar Schramm Explosion Events: On the Theatricality of Fireworks in the Seventeenth Century

eksperiment, ognjemet, podoba, reprezentacija, 17. stoletje, Cai Guo-Qiang V gledališki kulturi 17. stoletja so pirotehnične dogodke in z njimi povezane cikle podob institucionalizirali in uporabljali kot učinkovite instrumente moči. Posebni mehanizmi nadzora so imeli zato izjemno pomembno vlogo pri sistematičnem izpopolnjevanju ognjemeta in iskanju njegove adekvatne slikovne reprezentacije. Glede na to je pomembno upoštevati pri gravurah, grafikah, risbah in opisih, ki so se ohranili do današnjih dni, tudi materialnost predstavitve kot take. Podobe ognjemetov niso zanimive le kot stilizirane umetnine pirotehnične mimobežnosti, temveč predvsem zaradi svoje vloge v medijskozgodovinskem sistemu beleženja. V 17. stoletju je bil ognjemet globoko povezan z raziskovanjem, večinoma usmerjenim k enigmi (mehaničnega) gibanja, pa naj je šlo za strojni pogon, planetarno orbito, let rakete ali krvni obtok. Iskanje adekvatnega koncepta podobe se v tem kontekstu razodeva kot pogoj za uvajanje novih eksperimentalnih umetnosti in znanosti. Na podlagi takšnih zgodovinskih razmišljanj avtor pokaže sodobno relevantnost odnosa med eksplozivnimi dogodki in tokom podob s kratkim pogledom na delo kitajskega umetnika Cai Guo-Qianga.

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RECENZIJE

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Tomaž Toporišič: Ranljivo telo teksta in odra. Kriza dramskega avtorja v gledališču osemdesetih in devetdesetih let dvajsetega stoletja. Ljubljana: Mestno gledališče ljubljansko, 2007. (Knjižnica MGL, 145).

Pred nami je predelana, v knjižno izdajo oblikovana disertacija Tomaža Toporišiča, ki velja v srednji generaciji slovenskih teatrologov za eno vodilnih imen. Prav to dejstvo in iz njega izhajajoča ugotovitev, da takšne in podobne znanstvene razprave, kot je obravnavana, na Slovenskem ne izhajajo pogosto, vodi naše pisanje, ki se ne bo ustavljalo samo ob knjigi, njenih spoznanjih, ugotovitvah, trditvah in zaključkih, ampak se bo, tudi zaradi narave tematike, ki se je loteva Toporišičeva knjiga, podalo v precej širši razpravljalni kontekst. Ta kontekst, ki se dotika temeljnih problemov moderne dramatike in gledališča, zna biti polemičen, spet zaradi narave predmeta, obravnavanega v pričujoči knjigi. Če je naslov Toporišičeve razprave poetičen, nemara kar “postmoderno” enigmatičen, pa je podnaslov razprave natančnejši in se v celoti približuje sami tematiki, ki jo avtor v Uvodu označi z besedami: “Naša raziskava bo sledila verigi desakralizacij umetniškega dela in destituiranj dramskega avtorja, kot se je pletla v drugi polovici dvajsetega stoletja ter doživela enega od vrhuncev, hkrati pa tudi že krizo kriz v njegovih zadnjih dveh desetletjih.” (14) Predmet Toporišičeve raziskave je na eni strani celovita kriza (dramske) umetnosti v 20. stoletju, na drugi strani njen “poganjek”, ki se kaže kot kriza mnogih dramskih besedil, pravzaprav še bolj kot besedil njihovih avtorjev, v njihovem razmerju do lastne eksistence in eksistence, ki jim jo podeljuje odrska (scenska) realizacija. Tako se pred nami odpira zapletena znanstvenoraziskovalna

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struktura, ki zajema vse 20. stoletje, a se hkrati osredinja samo na umetnost in posebej na dramsko umetnost v

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njenem zaostrenem kriznem “koncu” (?), “obratu”(?) ali samo stopnji v preoblikovanju (kar bi, če se izkaže za resnično, samo potrjevalo Heglove teze o nenehnem spreminjanju ontološkega statusa evropske umetnosti) razmerja med dramatiko, odrom in publiko, ki ji je namenjena ta dramatika, ko postane “scenski dogodek”. 20. stoletje razpada, po mnenju mnogih raziskovalcev ne samo umetnosti in kulture, ampak civilizacije kot krovne zgradbe, v kateri se dogajajo evropska in ameriška, v zadnjih desetletjih tudi svetovna zgodovina, na dve polovici: prvo, do konca druge svetovne vojne, ki krizo pripravlja, napoveduje, razvija, in drugo polovico, od konca druge svetovne vojne naprej, v kateri se kriza zaostri, prelevi v nekaj novega, kar terja jasne in odločne odgovore, najprej od umetnosti, a ker le-ta – tako je mnenje različnih filozofov (Badiou, Virilio, Baudrillard, Adorno, Jameson, Danto) – krize ne zmore preseči, se odgovor začne ponujati sam od sebe v okviru evropskega mišljenja, ki ga usmerja predvsem postmoderna filozofija. Na koncu stoletja pa se kriza nekako umiri in se skozi polifonijo ustvarjalnih načinov razprši, tako da je pogled na bistvo morda še bolj zamegljen, kot pa je bil v prejšnjih desetletjih, vendar sama kriza ni več edini prostor, v katerem se oblikujejo pogledi pro et contra “novi” performativnosti. Gledališče je, zaradi prisotnosti živih, delujočih ljudi, ki ga reprezentirajo v inscenacijskem prostoru, recepcijsko izpostavljena umetnost in gledališko besedilo je med odločilnimi generatorji te izpostavljenosti, totalne prisotnosti v javnosti (kar je funkcija gledališča od njegovega vznika v antični Grčiji). Zato so pojavi, ki ga opredeljujejo, vsem na očeh in hkrati primeren predmet za številne debate, polemike, (znanstvene) razprave, a tudi predmet publicistike in celo tistih oblik javnega komuniciranja, ki jih poznamo pod skupnim izrazom “rumeni tisk”. Kriza, o kateri govori tudi Toporišičeva razprava, se je pojavila v času, ki ga je filozofsko utemeljilo retorično vprašanje, ali je po Auschwitzu še mogoče pisati poezijo oz. ali je umetnost po Hirošimi še med najvišjimi smotri človeštva. To vprašanje je bilo dvoumno, ker drugačno niti ni moglo biti: pričelo se je razpravljati o krizi, ki je nenadoma postala kriza vsega umetniškega dogajanja in vsakega umetnika. Tako se je pojavila tudi sintagma o krizi

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(dramskega) avtorja, ki ustvarja dramska besedila za dramsko

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gledališče, torej za tako gledališče, ki v tradiciji grške antike in vseh dob, ki so ji sledile (in so gojile gledališko umetnost), utemeljuje svoj obstoj na posebej strukturiranih besedilih. Ta besedila in njihovi avtorji pa naj bi se v dvajsetem stoletju (sama kriza pa sega dlje nazaj, saj tudi Toporišič v nadaljevanju omenja avtorje od Büchnerja do Čehova in Strindberga) znašli v slepi ulici, pred steno, kjer ni več mogoče najti pravih in ustreznih odgovorov. Tako se je rodil pojem “postdramskega gledališča” in “post dramskih” besedil, katerih osnovna razsežnost ni več “služba odru”, ampak avtonomija, ki omogoča inscenatorjem, da se v gledališče podajo brez obvez do tradicije, njenih zapovedi in pravil. V drugi polovici 20. stoletja naj bi se tako zgodila kriza (kot priznanje, da smo v slepi ulici, pred polomom, katerega razsežnosti pa ni hotel tematizirati nihče, še najmanj sodobni filozofi različnih usmeritev); največ, kar zmore mišljenje, je favoriziranje praznega, opustošenega prostora, v katerem naj bi zavladala smrt: umetnosti in avtorja (tako nas prepričujejo teoretiki gledališča oz. literature od Steinerja do Barthesa); kriza pa je tudi povzročila obrat, ki zbuja nekaj upanja: tekst, ki ni več dramski tekst, se pojavlja v gledališču, ki ni več dramsko gledališče, toda vse skupaj je še vedno postavljeno v kronotop, ki se mu pravi zgodovina evropske umetnosti. Pozitivno bistvo krize umetnosti je mogoče prav v razgaljanju problemov, ki jih je umetnost od romantike do simbolizma še uspela prikriti, ob prelomu 19. v 20. stoletje pa so postali, tudi skozi angažiranje avantgard, nekaj, česar ni bilo več mogoče prikriti. Teza je vabljiva, zapeljiva, vendar ima nekaj temeljnih pomanjkljivosti. Ena od njih, nemara najbolj intrigantna, je dejstvo, da lahko vso evropsko umetnost, od antike naprej, razumemo kot permanentno krizo. Ni že konec klasične atiške tragedije in vznik komedije, v kateri je problematizirano, ironizirano in karikirano vse, kar je za tragedijo in tragediografe “sveto”, primer prav take krize? Ni ta prva kriza v vzročni zvezi z vsemi kasnejšimi? Prehod iz srednjeveških duhovnih in posvetnih dramskih oblik v renesančno tragedijo je zagotovo čas globoke “krize”, kakor tudi polom klasicistične tragedije in nastop meščanske drame v poznem razsvetljenstvu. In še bi lahko naštevali prelomne točke in obrate, govorimo samo

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v imenu dramatike in gledališča, ko se je zdelo, da se vse staro, tradicionalno, etablirano in kanonizirano, podira in spreminja

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v prah in pepel. A izkazalo se je, da je obrat nujnost in da je njegova logika skrita v obeh polarnih točkah, ki zamejujeta “krizo”: v starem in v novem. Zato vidim prvo kompleksno pomanjkljivost razprave prav v dejstvu, da se Toporišič ne sprašuje o tem, ali so teze avtorjev, ki jih navaja, od Szondija naprej, resnično znanstveni, objektivni in glede na predmet “nevtralni” pogled ali so del same “krize”, torej del procesov, v katerih se oblikujejo določena spoznanja, o katerih danes diskutirajo vsi, ki kaj pomenijo v svetu moderne teatrologije. Če so del same krize, potem lahko upravičeno dvomimo v njihovo znanstveno nepristranost; potem bi znanost o gledališču morala najprej izpostaviti krizo lastne eksistence, ne pa krizo predmeta, ki ga poskuša obravnavati. Vendar znanstveniki od Szondija do Lehmanna tega ne počnejo in se vedejo, kot da se jih stanje duha družbe, katere del so, pravzaprav ne dotika. Nekaj iztočnic za tako razmišljanje lahko najde bralec v kompendiju Marka Fortiera Theory/Theatre (London, New York 1997 in kasnejši ponatisi). Tako seveda ne gre samo za dejstvo, da se je v razpravah o krizi pojavil pojem “postdramskega gledališča” in “nedramskega dramskega avtorja”, ampak za vprašanje, kako se vidimo kot razpravljalci o nečem, kar je del nas samih in naše civilizacije zdaj in tukaj. Ko so teoretiki novega historicizma razgrnili svoje metode, se je zdelo, da so ponudili formulo, ki velja v univerzalnem zgodovinskem prostoru, a se je pokazalo, da je ta prostor reduciran na “preteklost”; šele v njej, v oddaljenosti, v distanci mislečega od predmeta in v njegovi sposobnosti, da z mišljenjem aktivira polivalenco tega predmeta, se je lahko oblikoval nov, kompleksen pogled na elizabetinske dramske avtorje, njihov čas in njihovo gledališče. Podobno bi smeli reči tudi za poststrukturalistične teorije o dramatiki (pravzaprav o ontološkem statusu vseh besedil). Ko se je v poststrukturalističnih in neosemioloških teorijah pojavila “smrt”, je bila to samo metafora za izraz, ki si ga niso upali (niso hoteli?) uporabiti, namreč: konec neke megastrukture. Humanistična znanost, ki si z najavo “konca” svojega predmeta napove tudi lasten konec, bi ravnala zelo nerazumno, saj smisel znanosti od Hegla in Kanta naprej ni več oblikovanje predmetov raziskave, ampak poglobljena avtorefleksija mišljenja samega, kar lahko opazimo tudi v sodobnih teorijah. Zato je “smrt” določenih temeljnih postavk v sistemu evropske umetnosti primernejši

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izraz, saj je v njem skrita, kot je opozoril Mircea Eliade, neka

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nadčloveška razsežnost, ki zbuja strahospoštovanje. Toporišič svojo raziskavo utemelji v potrebi po odgovoru na temeljna vprašanja, med katerimi je na prvem mestu kompleks krize dramskega avtorja, prikaz realnega poteka te krize skozi “zaris kriznega zemljevida dramskega avtorja” (17) in “detektirati poskuse” povratka k “drami po drami”, ki se oblikujejo skozi nova, eklektična besedila-za-oder brez dramske funkcije in dramske ambicije. Ta vprašanja avtor vpne v tri raziskovalne korake, ki predstavljajo ogrodje njegove raziskave: raziskava krize avtorja, ki pomeni prenos “avtoritete” z osebe (subjekta) na njegovo delo, za katero lahko trdimo, da se avtonomizira; drugi korak predstavlja prehod v Szondijev model krize dramskega besedila s pripadajočim konceptom absolutnosti drame ter sledmi vseh poskusov, da se Szondijev model poglobi, podaljša v naš čas in ustrezno prilagodi dejanskemu stanju, ki pa ni več linearni čas, ampak čas krize, torej ciklično razumljeni čas z izrazitimi depresijami, kakršno naj bi predstavljala druga polovica 20. stoletja in še posebej zadnji dve desetletji pred novim tisočletjem. Ta del raziskave je, po napovedi, najdaljši, v njem so diskutirane teorije, ki od Szondija vodijo k Eriki Fischer - Lichte, Robertu Abirachedu, Jeanu-Pierru Sarrazacu, Gerdi Poschmann, Hansu-Thiesu Lehmannu in Patriceu Pavisu, avtorjem, ki jih deloma lahko beremo v slovenskih prevodih ali pa jih poznamo prek obsežnejših prikazov slovenskih avtorjev, od Lada Kralja do Blaža Lukana, Emila Hrvatina in Diane Koloini, da navedem samo nekatere slovenske raziskovalce procesov, ki so postali del nadnacionalnega kulturnega prostora. Tretji del razprave pa napoveduje operacionalizacijo vseh problemov ali z avtorjevimi besedami: “V tretjem delu bomo teoretski aparat interpretacij krize drame in dramskega avtorja, kot so ga v drugi polovici prejšnjega stoletja razvili teoretiki drame in gledališča, v dveh naletih spravili v dialoški odnos z izbranimi nosilci dramskih in gledališko-konceptualnih opusov.” (21) Problem, ki se nam zastavlja kot ključno stičišče vseh prizadevanj, je skrit v dejstvu, da Toporišič krize dramskega avtorja/besedila/prenosa v scenski prostor ne problematizira, ampak jemlje kot dokončno in nespremenljivo dejstvo. Vprašati se smemo, ali je krizo dramskega avtorja, krizo dramskega besedila in krizo prenosa tega besedila v scenski prostor (v katerem naj to besedilo ne bi več

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funkcioniralo, kot je nekoč) res mogoče razumeti samo na način, kot so ga ponudili našteti avtorji, “teoretiki drame in

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gledališča”, in ali sploh gre za “krizo” v obsegu in s pomenom, kot nam jo ponujajo. Kje je tista točka, tisti ključni obrat, zaradi katerega sodobna besedila postanejo drugačna od dramskih besedil preteklih dob? Če si dovolimo ekskluzivizem in sodobna besedila postavimo v “krizno” razmerje do vseh prejšnjih besedil (ki naj ne bi bila del “krize”), potem moramo najprej storiti dvoje: dokazati, da sodobniki dramskih besedil iz prejšnjih dob teh besedil niso razumeli na podoben način, kot naši teoretiki razumejo dramska besedila našega časa, in drugič, da so se razmere za dramska besedila iz druge polovice 20. stoletja res tako radikalno spremenile, da zanje v prostoru klasične inscenacije ni več prostora. V reprezentativnih delih, ki jih navaja Toporišič, tega dokaza ni mogoče najti, vsekakor ne v razviti, eksplicitni obliki; kar ponujajo avtorji teh del za dokaze, so predvsem domneve in nedokazane (nedokazljive?) ad hoc trditve. Za prvi dokaz je težko najti oprijemljiva dejstva: dramatika in gledališče, pa četudi malce poenostavimo, nista bila nikdar v harmoničnem sozvočju, kakršnega bi radi našli sodobni teoretiki drame in gledališča; napetosti med dramskimi pisci in inscenatorji teh del so se pojavljale celo takrat, ko so bile to ene in iste osebe (tu bi veljalo citirati Goldonijeve spomine, pisma A. P. Čehova, eseje Bernarda Shawa in T. S. Eliota ...). O radikalni spremembi inscenacijskih pogojev je sicer mogoče govoriti, vendar spet le v primeru, če gledališče opazujemo v ozkem časovnem segmentu. Če pa se nam odpre panoramski pogled, potem moramo priznati, da je med dramskimi besedili in inscenacijskimi praksami res zazijala razpoka, vendar ni nepremostljiva in ob množici eksperimentov je mogoče zaslediti tudi oblikovanje konceptov povsem “klasičnega” gledališča z modernimi ali celo ultramodernimi (postmodernimi) sredstvi. V prvem delu svoje razprave, naslovljenem “Kriza avtorja”, je Toporišič prvo poglavje posvetil razpadu klasičnih eshatoloških pogledov, poglavje je naslovil “Od smrti umetnosti do smrti avtorja”. Od Heglovega premika, ki interes duha usmerja od umetnosti k znanosti in filozofiji, umetnosti pa v tej hierarhični delitvi (pre)pušča polje “čutnega svetenja resnice”, do Barthesove zahteve, da na mesto avtorja, kreatorja, stopi samo besedilo, smo priče reduciranju tradicionalnih

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razmerij, v katerih se je med avtorjem, besedilom in publiko

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spletalo nekaj trdnih vezi; zdaj so te vezi nadomeščene s “koncepti”, ki naj bi, po Barthesu in ostalih, spodbujali bralčev “užitek”. Barthes (in še mnogi) se je ujel v past, ki se ji reče “družba užitka”; ta družba oz. družbeno stanje naj bi bilo temeljna razsežnost, s katero se pojavlja postmoderna družba. Vendar pa je vprašanje užitka, kot stimulansa za kakršno koli komunikacijo s katerim koli artefaktom, samo del resnice moderne umetnosti, ki morda res ukinja avtorja (kot osebo, odgovorno za to, kar nastaja; nadomešča ga s konceptom, ki je lahko, v skrajni konsekvenci, tudi matematični algoritem, lahko ga, v še bolj radikalnih različicah, nadomešča celo s simulakrom, ki samo reproducira in naključno izbira citate iz že obstoječih del) in posredno tudi umetniško delo (le-to predvsem pomnožuje in zaradi tehničnih pripomočkov omogoča, da se pomnožena dela lahko pojavljajo sinhrono na različnih, medsebojno neodvisnih lokacijah), drugi del je skrit globlje. In ta “globina” je zajeta v Derridajevi “brezmejni intertekstualnosti”, za katero smemo reči, da je druga temeljna značilnost postmoderne dobe: v njej se nobeno besedilo ne pojavlja več samo zase, ampak je samo člen v nizu besedil; kjer koli vstopimo v niz, vedno smo v oblasti celote in ko skušamo obvladati celoto, se nam konvertira v “neki” člen niza; tako se lahko Derrida tudi sklicuje na Artauda in njegovo klicanje prekletstva nad “gledališče besed”, nad “literarno gledališče”, čeprav seveda spet ni jasno, ali je “beseda” (grški logos) “kriva” za nastop “krize”, v kateri se znajde evropsko gledališče na prelomu 19. v 20. stoletje; nemara je krivda v “utrujenosti” družbe, ki ne najde več, kot o tem poroča Nietzsche, zadovoljitve v razmerju med mitom in umetnostjo ter med posameznikom in družbo. Vsekakor se prava problematika, ki je tudi jedro Toporišičeve razprave, začne z drugim poglavjem, “Kriza dramskega avtorja”. Literarni in dramski avtor sta dve entiteti: to nam že mora biti jasno, saj drugače ne bi bilo treba govoriti o dramskem avtorju kot o posebnem avtorju. Ta avtor postaja predmet (eden od predmetov) teorije drame ali, kot ugotavlja Toporišič: “Teorija drame tako vedno očitneje postaja bodisi nadaljevanje (semiotične) analize predstav kot igre med dvema praksama: prakso teksta in prakso odra (Pavis) bodisi analiza literarnih tekstov, ki nikakor niso več brezpogojno središče in smoter gledališkega dejanja, ampak so govorni material neke avto nomne umetnosti.” (53) Prvo, kar se zastavlja ob tej trditvi,

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ki v osnovi res pokriva prakso (morda tudi teorijo) scenskih umetnosti, je dvom v smotrnost uporabe pridevka “literaren”

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za besedila, ki stopajo v sodobni scenski prostor. Literarno besedilo je namreč svoj smisel črpalo iz védenja, da je samo del, element zgodovinsko vzpostavljene mreže, ki se z Goethejevim izrazom imenuje “svetovna literatura” in ki oblikuje svojo notranjo sporočilnost v tesni zvezi z oblikovanjem “bele” civilizacije. Današnja besedila, posebej tista, ki stopajo v scenski prostor, v sebi nimajo nič ali komajda kaj literarnega, zato lahko govorijo avtorji kot Lehmann ali Poschmanova o postdramskem oz. postliterarnem besedilu/gledališki predstavi. Če je torej vzpostavljena praksa besedila, ki nima v sebi nobene apriorne tendence, da bi bilo narejeno za uprizoritev, to tendenco besedilu podeli ex nihilo inscenator, potem seveda ne moremo govoriti o nekem procesu, ki nadomešča klasično aristotelovsko gledališče (in zanj napisana dramska besedila), in ki naj bi začelo umirati okoli leta 1880, ampak kvečjemu o procesu. Ta proces je vzporeden s procesom, kakršnega pozna aristotelovsko gledališče; ne gre za spopad, ampak za koeksistenco principov. Aristotelovsko gledališče pa danes, na začetku 21. stoletja, še zdaleč ni mrtvo (napoved “odmiranja” takega gledališča je podobna tistim napovedim, ki so zaradi pojava računalnikov oznanjale zaton klasične gutenbergovske knjige), se verjetno samo prilagaja novim razmeram, kakor je to počelo tudi v preteklosti, o čemer sam Toporišič poroča v poglavju “Deliterarizacija in reteatralizacija gledališča”. V tem procesu, ki se oblikuje predvsem skozi tezo Erike Fischer Lichte, da je v 20. stoletju besedo v gledališču zamenjalo telo (torej dominacijo verbalnih znakov oz. znakovnega sistema nadomesti dominacija neverbalnih znakov oz. sistem “kolektivnega”, saj je jezik vedno individualen jezik (saussurovska la parole, individualni govorni akt), telo pa je, po definiciji, kolektivni (neverbalni) znak. Spet se lahko upravičeno vprašamo, ali je verbalni znak v evropski dramatiki res doživel tako regresijo samo zato, ker se je gledališka praksa bolj posvetila telesu, pravzaprav tisti psihofizični pojavnosti, ki je bila prej, recimo v gledališču 18. ali 19. stoletja podrejena sistemu pravil, v 20. pa so se, če govorimo malce metaforično, pravila podredila psihofizični pojavnosti. Če je bil igralec v 18. ali 19. stoletju samo “volumen”, v katerem so se lahko izrekale resnice skozi besede, ki so oblikovale določeno zgodbo (antični mitos ali srednjeveško legendo), v 20. postane s svojo prisotnostjo izrekljivost sama, verbalna enako kot neverbalna (o tem nas prepričujejo določene igralske prakse, recimo tiste,

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ki jih uveljavita Barba ali Grotowski). Ta proces je, po

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Toporišičevem prepričanju, povezan s krizo dramske osebe (tak je tudi naslov naslednjega poglavja). Dramska oseba je mogoča le, če je vitalni del zgodbe (mitosa); to je vedel že Aristotel; njeno izginjanje se seveda zgodi z izginjanjem zgodbe oz. z inscenacijskimi postopki, ki zgodbo nadomeščajo ali v celoti zamenjajo. Od tod tudi tematika, ki je predmet naslednjega poglavja, “Permanentna kriza drame”. Izraz je Sarazzacov in se napaja v štirih kriznih segmentih, od katerih je Toporišič nekatere prikazal bolj, druge manj nazorno: kriza zgodbe, kriza osebe; kriza dialoga; kriza odnosa oder-avditorij. Tudi na tem mestu bi pričakovali avtorjev razmislek situacije, a ga pogrešamo, saj prestopamo v prostor, ki sta ga zamejila Poschmannova s svojim “ne več dramskim gledališkim besedilom” in Lehmann s “postdramskim gledališčem”. Smiselno bi se bilo namreč vprašati, kaj sploh je dramsko besedilo in kaj v tej zvezi pomeni sama opredelitev dramskega. Očitno ne Poschmannova ne Lehmann izraza “dramski” ne uporabljata v Aristotelovem pomenu, torej drama kot dejanje, ki se odvija na določenem, za to namenjenem prostoru pred publiko, ki je “prostor odboja” tistega, kar se dogaja v tem prostoru kot “dramsko” dogajanje. Drugi pomen “dramskega” je lahko samo oblikovanje takih gledaliških predstav, ki se utemeljujejo v besedilu, katerega osnovna razsežnost je že oblikovana kot “inscenacijski vzgib” (Ingarden), kar se je v evropski in kasneje ameriški zgodovini dogajalo od antike do konca 19. stoletja. Poschmannova in Lehmann tako merita na prelom, na obrat in diskontinuiteto, ki je nujno potrebna, da lahko uporabimo prefikse, kot je “po” (post). Ko Poschmannova uporablja pojem “besedila, ki uporabljajo dramsko formo”, se ujame v lastno past: dramska forma, kakor jo poznamo danes (analitično opisana v teorijah drame od Freytaga do Ingardna), je samo ena od oblik, v katerih se lahko pojavljajo besedila z “inscenacijskim vzgibom”. Vemo, kako so bila zapisana besedila antičnih tragedij in komedij; vemo tudi, koliko izjem poznamo v različnih dobah evropske dramske zgodovine; sodobna besedila pri tem niso nikakršna novost ali posebnost; tudi mešanje “dramskih in nedramskih prvin”, ki jih Poschmannova vidi v sodobnih “postdramskih besedilih”, je staro kot sama drama (recimo samo potujitveni elementi v Aristofanovih komedijah, od smešenj bogov do razkrivanj gledališke mašinerije). Tudi z Lehmannovimi delitvami na preddramsko, dramsko in postdramsko gledališče (verjetno delitvi ustrezajo tudi sočasna besedila) je kar nekaj resnih problemov; bilo bi

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zanimivo videti, kako jih je mogoče izpostaviti na način, ki bi pokazal vsaj na njihovo nedorečenost, če ne celo na njihovo

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poljubnost. Ta poljubnost izvira iz dveh medsebojno povezanih paradigem. Prva je tista, ki zaznamuje skupni (kulturni) čas zadnjega pol stoletja: namesto oblikovanja celovitih sistemov, ki zagotavljajo določeno stabilnost družbe, smo priče hitrim zamenjavam njihovih podsistemov, kar zahteva prilagajanje in spreminjanje tudi drugih podsistemov. Zato je nujno, da kar naprej tudi znanost odkriva nove metodološke načine in jim prireja predmete. Tako ni več mogoče govoriti o dramatiki in gledališču ter razvijati sistema, ki se oblikuje, recimo od poznega razsvetljenstva naprej, ampak ga je treba radikalno nadomestiti z nečim novim: namesto dramskega pač dobimo postdramsko gledališče, namesto “dramsko dramskega” besedila smo nenadoma postavljeni pred nedramsko dramsko besedilo. Samo tak znanstvenik, ki ustvarja vedno nove “predmete” raziskav, daje vtis kredibilnosti; kdor se upira takemu načinu preskokov, je pač nazadnjak, ki ne razume – česa? Očitno principa razvoja, heglovske zgodovinske linearnosti, ki pa je, če tudi sami malce stopimo v prostor “postdramskega dogajanja”, hudo singularna in komajda lahko sledi resničnim pojavom. Druga paradigma je povezana z nujnostjo oblikovanja kategorij, ki naj bi bile eden od temeljnih znanstvenih postulatov: prav umetnost pa se kategorizaciji izmika in tako rekoč vedno se zgodi, da ostane vrsta artefaktov “pred vrati” take ali drugačne kategorizacije. V primeru tako zapletenih dramskih besedil, kot so sodobna (njihova zapletenost ni samo jezikovna, ampak tudi pomenska, “strukturalna”, izvira iz prepletanja znakovnih sistemov v sodobnem jezikovnem sporočanju), je treba biti zelo previden, saj so izjeme včasih pomembnejše od pojavov, ki jih ni mogoče uvrstiti v kategorije. Zato si mora, recimo, Pavis pomagati z nekoliko nenavadno kategorijo “netipičnih avtorjev”, nenavadno zato, ker se “netipično”, torej samosvoje, unikatno, le stežka uvrsti v kategorijo, saj so za kategorialnost potrebne podobnosti in sorodnosti, ne pa različnosti in posebnosti. Tretji problem, o katerem je nekaj več povedanega v poglavju “Institucija avtorja in performativni obrat”, pa zadeva razmerje med besedilom in inscenacijo. To razmerje je marsikdaj povsem spregledano oz. je razumljeno samo po sebi. Verjetno pa ni tako; zagotovo se inscenacijske teorije in prakse v zadnjih sto letih spreminjajo hitreje kot pa dramska besedila: med Craigom ali Stanislavskim na eni in Wilsonom ali Pandurjem

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na drugi strani je bistveno večja razlika kot pa med

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Strindbergom ali Maeterlinckom in Pinterjem ali Koltèsom. Inscenacijske prakse postajajo tudi vedno bolj agresivne, saj dramskega besedila (pa naj bo “tradicionalno” ali “postmoderno”) ne sprejemajo v njegovi celovitosti, ampak ga vedno fragmentarizirajo (in tako potrjujejo eno od temeljnih razsežnosti postmoderne dobe, njeno necelovitost, fraktalnost in nagnjenost k simuliranju), kar teoretiki imenujejo “prehod iz tekstualne v performativno kulturo”. Ta prehod ni vedno razviden, a tudi ni vedno utemeljen v logičnem, konsistentnem “branju” dramskega besedila; zadreg, ko je iz inscenacije povsem jasno, da inscenator besedila preprosto ni razumel (ali mu celo mentalno ni bil dorasel), je kar nekaj in verjetno bi bilo zanimivo narediti prerez skozi ta segment “pomot in napačnih branj” dramskih besedil, tako v domači kot tuji gledališki produkciji. Premiki v dramskih besedilih so opazni, pomembni in napovedujejo marsikateri obrat, vendar je problem inscenatorjev prav v tem, da večkrat niso sposobni razumeti, za kakšne obrate gre, kdaj je izpostavljen jezik, kdaj imaginativno, kdaj fragment(arnost), če se lahko strinjamo, da sodobni dramski teksti niso več “posode” določenih idej (od filozofskih do zgodovinskih, ideoloških ali preprosto idej o “družbi užitka”, družbi “postinformacijske virtualnosti” ali družbi “vzporednih svetov”). Zato je utemeljen Toporišičev sklep, ki zaokroža drugi del njegove razprave (“Kriza dramskega avtorja”) in ki ga lahko povzamemo z njegovimi besedami: “Toda zdi se, da sta prav zadnji dve desetletji kljub mediatizaciji, družbi prevlade vizualnega, simulakrom medijske kulture ipd. označili nekakšno vrnitev odpisanih: dramskega avtorja oz. avtorjarapsoda in (post)dramskega in ne več dramskega gledališkega teksta.” (113) Ta sklep – ki odpira poleg vprašanj, ki smo jih poskušali vsaj detektirati, če jih že nismo mogli do kraja razviti, še celo vrsto drugih, že samo njihovo omenjanje pa bi pričujoče poročilo razširilo preko razumnih meja – uvaja tretji del razprave z naslovom “Permanentna kriza dramske forme”. Toporišič (skladno z Badioujem) razume gledališče 20. stoletja kot prostor “singularnega dogodka”, ki je tudi prostor “proizvajanja idej gledališča”, kar pomeni, da je po eni strani to gledališče vpeto v niz, ki sega vse do antike, po drugi pa se začne intenzivno ukvarjati samo s seboj, z lastno ontologijo, ki je bila prej izven razmisleka tako avtorjev dramskih besedil

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(če seveda zanemarimo redke izjeme) kot tudi inscenatorjev teh besedil. Samozadostnost evropskega gledališča je

Denis Poniž Vprašanje krize

verjetno temeljila tako v teleološki (antika, srednji vek) kot antropocentrični (od renesanse do 19. stoletja) podlagi “igre”, “scenskega dogodka”; obe podlagi sta izhajali iz principa mimezisa, enkrat je bilo to posnemanje “božjega”, drugič posnemanje “človeškega”. Ko sta se obe podlagi izrabili, princip pa ni bil več samozadosten, je bilo treba iskati nadomestne sisteme (v izvornem pomenu besede substituire), ki jih Toporišič pregleduje skozi teorijo in prakso avtorjev od Artauda naprej (sledijo Brecht, Ionesco, Beckett, Handke, t. i. poetična drama – verjetno je mišljena lirska drama, vendar se ta Szondijeva oznaka pri nas noče in noče prijeti!). S poetično dramo Toporišič prestopa k slovenskim dramskim avtorjem, Zajcu, Jesihu, Svetini, nadaljuje pa z Jovanovićem (poglavje “Jovanovič in performativni obrat”), znova preide na evropsko sceno h Koltèsu, Heinerju Müllerju, Elfriede Jelinek in sklene s Sarah Kane. Bralcu, ki bo sledil analizam naštetih avtorjev, bo sicer jasen “scenosled”, po katerem Toporišič oblikuje svojo zgodbo o samosesutju in ponovnem vstajenju dramskega avtorja, ko prikazuje zgodbo, vedno bolj fragmentarno, alogično, izven eshatoloških sistemov in idejnih struktur antropocentričnega sveta stoječih dramskih besedil, ki se, bolj ali manj intenzivno, dosledno in upoštevajoč lastno distanco do “subjektivitete drugega”, dogaja skozi 20. stoletje. V niz bi sicer lahko dodali še marsikaterega avtorja, recimo Luigija Pirandella, Jeana Cocteauja, Harolda Pinterja, manjkajo pa, če smemo tako zapisati, vsi avtorji iz vzhodne Evrope, od Witkiewicza in Mrožka do Harmsa, vendar bi ti avtorji predstavljali dopolnitve in razširitve, nikakor pa ne bistvenih sprememb. Brezpredmetno je razpravljanje o tem, ali gre za najbolj “reprezentativne” dramatike, saj je težko primerjati že njihova izhodišča, kaj šele izpeljave, ki se kažejo ne le v njihovih opusih, ampak tudi v strukturi njihovih dramskih poetik. Vsekakor je Toporišičev poskus eden od mogočih in hkrati legitimnih vpogledov v premike, ki jih je doživela dramatika v 20. stoletju, še posebej, če ta vpogled dopolnjujejo z védenjem, ki ga ponuja v prvem in drugem delu svoje razprave. V “Zaključku” tako predstavi štiri faze, skozi katere je prešla v 20. stoletju evropska in ameriška dramatika: obdobje zavzemanja za avtonomijo in reteatralizacijo gledališke umetnosti (v razponu od Craiga do Brechta); sredina

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stoletja naj bi bila zaznamovana s primatom francoskih

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avtorjev dramatike eksistencializma in absurda; šestdeseta in sedemdeseta leta se pojavljajo z novim procesom deliterarizacije in reteatralizacije. Zadnjo fazo predstavljajo osemdeseta in devetdeseta, v kateri lahko opazujemo “atomizacijo avtorskih taktik sodobnega gledališča” (259) in neštevilne poskuse preboja na drugo stran, v post- in nedramsko dramsko besedilo oz. gledališče, ki se ne utemeljuje na moči in izpostavljenosti besede, ampak na drugih sredstvih, ki jih ima na voljo ali pa si jih je prisvojila sodobna scenska (performativna) praksa. Zdi se, da se šele tu, na koncu razprave, odpira njeno pravo raziskovalno polje: iz množice teorij, teoretičnih sistemov, avtorskih poetik in zgodovinsko zaznamovanih premikov, povezanih z drugimi, vedno bolj planetarnimi dogodki (kakršno je bilo, recimo, leto 1968), iz dokumentiranih pojavov in hipotetičnih prikazov, bi bilo treba sestaviti nov pogled, ki ne bi zajemal celote (za katero se je tudi v tej razpravi pokazalo, da je praktično neulovljiva), ampak bi skozi bistvo konstruiral dialog med preteklostjo in prihodnostjo, čeprav se taka zahteva zdi nemara utopična in neizvedljiva. Vendar pa vidim prav v “Zaključku” (258-269) Toporišičevega besedila tak latenten izziv, ki bi “krizo aristotelovskega gledališča”, pravzaprav njegovo zasičenost z vedno bolj nazornimi mimetičnimi strukturami, od katerih je zadnja, naturalistična, proizvedla dejansko “krizo” ne samo dramatike, ampak celotne umetnosti, krizo, ki je s svojimi tresljaji zaznamovala 20. stoletje, prenašajo pa se tudi v 21., pravzaprav poziv na debato. Sama razprava namreč predvsem povzema in razvršča posamezne poglede, estetske in umetnostne sisteme ter teatrske doktrine, jih morda tudi preširoko navaja, lastnemu razmisleku pa pušča relativno malo manevrskega prostora, če pa ga odpira, potem dopušča izjemno veliko možnosti za polemični odziv, kar se zdi, da je najbolj produktivni del oblikovanja tematike, katere temelj je in ostaja razmerje med (dramskim) besedilom in njegovo inscenacijo.

Denis Poniž, doktor literarnih ved, je profesor za zgodovino evropske in slovenske dramatike na AGRFT UL. Kot gostujoči profesor je predaval na univerzah v Celovcu, Bielefeldu, Giessnu, Trstu, Göttingenu, Zagrebu in Novem Sadu. Doma in v tujini je objavil več kot dvajset knjig, tako pesniških zbirk, dramskih

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besedil kot tudi znanstvenih monografij, med njimi Tragedija (1994), Kratka zgodovina evropske in ameriške dramatike (1994),

Denis Poniž Vprašanje krize

Komedija in mešane dramske zvrsti (1996), Ivan Cankar: Lepa Vida – poskus interpretacije (2006), Uvod v teorijo dramskih zvrsti (2008). denis.poniz@guest.arnes.si

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RECENZIJE

Performativnost in iterabilnost v scenskih umetnostih

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Aldo Milohnić James Loxley: Performativity. London, New York: Routledge, 2007.

OPOMBE

1 Loxley navaja članek B. Smitha “Towards a History of Speech Act Theory” (1990) ter knjigo B. Nerlicha in D. Clarka Language, Action and Context: The Early History of Pragmatics in Europe and America (1996), v katerih je govor o predaustinovskih teorijah performativa. Sam bi k seznamu teh virov dodal še knjigo Matejke Grgič in Igorja Ž. Žagarja Čas in dejanje v jeziku: oblikovanje performativne teorije na Slovenskem (2004), v kateri sta avtorja opozorila na jezikoslovno delo Luka Pintarja in Stanislava Škrabca, ki sta približno pol stoletja pred Austinom že dognala, da “če reče sodnik: ‘dovolim’, noče ‘govoriti o veršitvi’ dovoljevanja, temuč dovoljenje v resnici dati, s to besedo dejanje zveršiti” (Škrabec v: Grgič in Žagar 81). Avtorja Grgič in Žagar za Austinovo, Searlovo in Benvenistovo teorijo performativa uporabljata oznako “klasična”, za Pintarjevo in Škrabčevo pa “prateorija”, pri čemer med eno in drugo teorijo performativa ni neposredne razvojne povezave: “Slovenska prateorija performativa je v primerjavi s klasično avtohtona, tako kronološko (saj je vendar nastala kakšnega pol stoletja prej) kot epistemološko (opira se na povsem drugačne predpostavke). Ker je med obema potema do performativa cezura, ne moremo imeti prve za predhodnico druge, a tudi ne druge za razvoj prve; zato smo se odločili za termin prateorija, ki opozarja na kronološko prednost, ne pa na evolucijski kontinuum.” (Grgič in Žagar 59)

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Knjiga Performativity (Performativnost) – kot zapiše James Loxley v prvem stavku uvodnega poglavja – “pripoveduje zgodbo o nekem konceptu” (1). Koncept performativa je razvil John L. Austin sredi petdesetih let prejšnjega stoletja v seriji predavanj, ki so jih po njegovi prezgodnji smrti (1960) zbrali in priredili za tisk njegovi učenci. Knjiga Kako napravimo kaj z besedami je bila v izvirniku (How to Do Things with Words) prvič objavljena leta 1962 in od takrat se redno pojavlja kot ključna referenca na bralnih seznamih filozofov “vsakdanjega jezika” (ordinary language). A mimo njegove teorije performativa in govornih dejanj (speech act theory) ne morejo niti avtorji s področij literarne teorije, teorije drame, gledališča in performansa, filozofije prava itn. Loxley sicer že uvodoma opozori na dejstvo, da Austin ni bil prvi, ki se mu je utrnila ideja o govoru kot dejanju – to so vedeli že mnogi pred njim1 – je

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pa prav on zares odprl Pandorino skrinjico performativnosti. Na začetku so ga malodane prezrli. Kot poroča Stanley Cavell, je Austinova harvardska predavanja sprva poslušalo nekaj

Aldo Milohnić Performativnost in iterabilnost v scenskih umetnostih

sto ljudi, a se je to število po dvanajstih predavanjih skrčilo na ducat najbolj zvestih poslušalcev; vrh vsega pa tudi v tem maloštevilnem občinstvu “prav vsi niso bili ravno navdušeni” nad tem, kar so slišali (cit. po Loxley 6). V prvem poglavju knjige Loxley predstavi ključne ugotovitve, do katerih se je Austin prebil na poti od teorije performativa do teorije govornih dejanj. Če nekoliko poenostavim, Austin izhaja iz podmene, da so v slehernem jeziku izreki (utterances, izjave), s katerimi ne opisujemo dejanja, temveč že s tem, da jih izrečemo, opravimo dejanje, in sicer govorno dejanje. Če, denimo, rečem: “Obljubim, da ...”, sem s tem izrekom opravil dejanje obljubljanja. V tem primeru, torej, govoriti pomeni delovati, tovrstne izreke pa Austin imenuje “performativi”. Da bi lahko govorili o “uspešnem” oziroma “posrečenem” performativu, morajo biti zadovoljeni nekateri osnovni pogoji: (A.1) Obstajati mora priznan konvencionalni postopek z določenim konvencionalnim učinkom, sam postopek pa vključuje, da v določenih okoliščinah določene osebe izrečejo določene besede, in naprej, (A.2) za sprožitev postopka, ki naj bi bil sprožen, morajo biti osebe in okoliščine v danem primeru ustrezne. (B.1) Vsi udeleženci morajo izpeljati postopek pravilno in (B.2) v celoti. (Γ.1) Kadar je, kar je pogosto, postopek namenjen v rabo osebam, ki imajo določene misli ali občutke, ali kadar posvetí [inaugurates] določeno posledično ravnanje katerega koli udeleženca, takrat mora oseba, ki se udeleži postopka in ga tako sproži, zares imeti te misli ali občutke, udeleženci pa morajo nameravati, da bodo tako ravnali, in nadalje, (Γ.2) pozneje morajo res tako ravnati. (Austin 25-26)

Če katero koli izmed teh pravil ni zadovoljeno, govorimo o “ponesrečenem” (unhappy oz. infelicitous) performativu. Za različne zvrsti ponesrečenih performativov je Austin predlagal tudi določene nazive. Tako ponesrečeni performativi, ki so se pregrešili zoper pravili A.1 in A.2, sodijo v skupino “krive sprožitve” (misinvocations), tiste, ki ne izpolnjujejo pravila iz skupin B.1 in B.2, imenuje “krive izvršitve” (misexecutions), oboje skupaj pa uvršča v skupino “zastrelkov” (misfires) in tako naprej. Nekje na polovici

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knjige Kako napravimo kaj z besedami pa Austin radikalno

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spremeni svojo teorijo in prejšnjo binarno opozicijo konstativ – performativ transformira v novi pojmovni register, ki ga sestavljajo trije pojmi: lokucijsko, ilokucijsko in perlokucijsko dejanje. Lokucijsko dejanje bi bilo, enostavno povedano, dejanje “nekaj reči” v splošnem smislu. Ilokucijsko dejanje je izvršitev dejanja, ko nekaj izrečem, v nasprotju z dejanjem, da nekaj rečem. Z drugimi besedami, ilokucijsko dejanje je dejanje, ki ga opravim v obliki govornega dejanja. In končno, perlokucijsko dejanje so učinki ilokucijskega dejanja, je torej “posledična razsežnost” govornega dejanja. V naslednjih poglavjih se Loxley ukvarja z razmerjem med Austinom in drugimi teoretiki, ki so tako ali drugače vstopali v dialog z njegovo teorijo performativa in govornih dejanj. Med temi avtorji je Loxley izbral šest imen (Stanley Cavell, John Searle, Stanley Fish, Jacques Derrida, Paul De Man in Judith Butler), ki jim je posvetil veliko prostora v knjigi, druge (npr. Soshana Felman, Jonathan Culler, Werner Hamacher) omeni le mimogrede, nekaterih pomembnih avtorjev pa celo sploh ne omeni (npr. Émile Benveniste). Za področje sodobnega gledališča in performansa je gotovo najbolj zanimivo zadnje poglavje (“Performativity and Performance Theory”), v katerem avtor predstavi teorijo performativne konstrukcije identitet Judith Butler, ki je pritegnila pozornost gledaliških ustvarjalcev in teoretikov s knjigami Bodies That Matter, Gender Trouble in Excitable Speech. Sledijo deli, ki se nanašajo na performativnost hepeningov (happenings), zlasti Allana Kaprowa, potem ritualnih in antropoloških prijemov Victorja Turnerja in Richarda Schechnerja, poglavje pa sklene predstavitev skupnega dela dveh performerjev (Guillermo Gómez-Peña in Coco Fusco), ki sta zaslovela s provokativnim performansom Two Undiscovered Amerindians Visit ..., prvič izvedenim leta 1992, ob petstoti obletnici Kolumbovega “odkritja” Amerike. Teorija performativnosti je sicer bolj redko prehajala iz analize dramskega besedila v teorijo gledališča in performansa. Ross Chambers je eden redkih, ki je to vprašanje eksplicitno postavil na dnevni red gledališkoteoretske debate v prispevku “La masque et le miroir. Vers une théorie relationelle du théâtre” (1980), v katerem je opozoril, da Austinovo formulo izreči = storiti, vsaj ko govorimo o (oziroma v) gledališču, lahko tudi

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obrnemo: storiti = izreči.2 “Chambersov poskus, da bi uporabil teorijo govornih dejanj na obeh ravneh, na ravni gledališča in na ravni diskurza, je dokaj nenavaden,” pravi Marvin Carlson,

Aldo Milohnić Performativnost in iterabilnost v scenskih umetnostih

kajti “[t]eoretiki, ki so aplicirali analizo govornih dejanj na gledališče, so, splošno rečeno, večinoma (ali celo izključno) delali na ravni énoncé, se pravi na ravni ilokucijskih operacij znotraj fiktivnega sveta dramskega besedila” (71). Pozneje so nekateri avtorji in avtorice vendarle izstopili iz okvirja literarne fikcije in tako se je začelo novo obdobje v zgodovini pojma. Poleg performativa se je – zlasti v anglofonskih deželah – čedalje bolj pogosto govorilo tudi o performativnosti (performativity). Od začetka devetdesetih let do danes je izšlo veliko člankov in zbornikov, v katerih so avtorji in avtorice razpravljali o performativnosti in statusu performativa v gledališču, ki jih Loxley v svoji sintetični knjigi delno upošteva, delno pa tudi spregleda. Med tistimi avtorji in avtoricami s področja teorije sodobnega gledališča in performansa, ki jih Loxley priporoča v branje ali vsaj omeni, so, med drugimi, Sue-Ellen Case, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Richard Schechner, Philip Auslander, Jon McKenzie, Peggy Phelan in nekateri drugi, ki sem jih prej že omenil. Pri tem pa avtor v celoti spregleda tiste študije performativnosti in performativa v scenskih umetnostih, ki niso izšle pri anglofonskih založbah, denimo, Estetiko performativnosti Erike Fischer - Lichte, pomembne knjige in članke avtorjev in avtoric iz kroga beograjske gledališke revije TkH (Miško Šuvaković, Ana Vujanović, Bojana Cvejić in drugi), čeprav so nekateri njihovi prispevki

2 Do enakega sklepa, a povsem neodvisno od Chambersa, je prišla tudi Maja Ogrizek v razpravi “Poetic Function and Performative in Theatre” (226). 3 Austin iz svojega teoretičnega horizonta izključi področje govorne prakse, v katerem, po njegovem mnenju, sploh ni pogojev za posrečeni performativ in naj bi mu ga zato tudi ne bi bilo treba obravnavati. To je področje umetnosti, predvsem pa področje scenskih umetnosti (performing arts), kar je Austin zastavil v temle odstavku: “Hočem reči, na primer, to: performativni izrek je, na primer, na poseben način prazen ali ničen, če ga izreče igralec na odru ali če je predstavljen v pesmi ali izrečen v monologu. Podobno velja za kateri koli in vsakršen izrek – v posebnih okoliščinah lahko pride do velikih sprememb. Jezik je v takih okoliščinah rabljen – razločno – na posebne načine, ne resno, temveč nekako parazitsko glede na svojo normalno rabo – na načine, ki

(tako kot, mimogrede, tudi moj članek “Performativno gledališče”) dostopni tudi v angleškem jeziku. Knjiga Jamesa Loxleyja tako potrjuje že znano dejstvo, da je, kadar gre za teoretsko (ali katero koli drugo) produkcijo, razmerje med centrom in periferijo izrazito asimetrično. V osrednjem delu Loxleyjeve knjige sledimo njegovemu prikazu pomembne razprave o tako imenovanih resnih (“vsakdanjih”) in neresnih (“parazitskih”) rabah performativnih izrekov,3

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kar je problematika, ki sta jo odprla Searle in Derrida v njuni

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znameniti polemiki v časopisu Glyph. Dolga leta je namreč veljalo, da je produktivna raba teorije govornih dejanj v umetnosti mogoča samo na način “fikcijskega performativa”, ki je podrejen logiki fikcijskega besedila. Ta pristop je zagovarjal John R. Searle v znani razpravi “Logični status fikcijskega diskurza” (1975). Njemu nasprotna stališča, ki so izhajala iz dekonstrukcije mita o jezikovnih “etiolacijah”, pa je zagovarjal Jacques Derrida. Napačno je domnevati, pravi Derrida, da bi bil performativ mogoč, četudi “vsakdanja realnost” ne bi temeljila na modelu ponovljivosti oziroma citatnosti, saj je prav ta ponovljivost (“iterabilnost”) ireduktibilni pogoj možnosti slehernega performativa. Domnevna mimetičnost fikcijskega diskurza tako ne more biti zadosten argument za njegovo (prav tako domnevno) “ne-performativnost”. Derrida je razvil kritiko Austinove sodijo v doktrino etiolacij (‘zbledelosti’) jezika. Vse to iz obravnave izključujemo. Naše performativne izreke, ponesrečene ali ne, je treba razumeti tako, kakor da so formulirani v vsakdanjih okoliščinah.” (Austin 31)

teorije performativa in govornih dejanj v predavanju iz leta 1971, ki je leto pozneje izšlo pod naslovom “Signatura dogodek kontekst” v njegovi knjigi Marges de la philosophie. Leta 1977, po

objavi angleškega prevoda v časopisu Glyph, se je na to razpravo odzval John Searle, ki je trdil, da Derrida ni razumel Austinove teorije performativa, zato naj bi bila njegova kritika Austina povsem zgrešena. Derrida je odgovoril v daljšem polemičnem sestavku z ironičnim naslovom “Limited Inc a b c …”, ki je bil po mnenju nekaterih komentatorjev nespoštljiv in celo žaljiv do njegovega oponenta, sicer uglednega profesorja in Austinovega učenca. V izhodiščnem prispevku “Signatura dogodek kontekst” Derrida razpravlja o pisavi kot sredstvu komunikacije in opozori na nekatere njene poteze, ki naj bi veljale za vse govorice. “Bistveni predikati znotraj minimalne opredelitve klasičnega pojma pisave” izhajajo iz narave pisnega znaka, njegove značilnosti pa so, pravi Derrida, prvič, da ta znak kot znamek (la marque) “lahko povzroči iteracijo v odsotnosti in onstran prisotnosti empirično določenega subjekta, ki ga je v danem kontekstu odposlal ali proizvedel”, drugič, da “dopušča moč preloma s svojim kontekstom, torej celoto prisotnosti, ki organizirajo moment njegovega vpisa”, in tretjič, da se ta moč preloma “navezuje na uprostoritev, ki konstituira pisni znak”. (Derrida 127-128) V drugem delu besedila Derrida

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preide na analizo problematike performativa in zastavi tezo, da Austinove zagate s tem konceptom izhajajo iz predhodne opredelitve s shemo treh značilnosti pisnega znaka, ki naj

Aldo Milohnić Performativnost in iterabilnost v scenskih umetnostih

ne bi imele svoje veljave le pri pisni komunikaciji, ampak tudi pri drugih govoricah. Derrida razvije kritiko Austinove obsesivne opozicije med uspešnostjo in ponesrečenostjo performativa skozi teorijo iterabilnosti (ponovljivosti oziroma navedljivosti) kot ključne razsežnosti slehernega diskurza. V nasprotju z Austinom, ki je trdil, da o performativu lahko govorimo le v pogojih “resnega” diskurza, se Derrida sprašuje, “ali ni tisto, kar Austin izključi kot anomalijo, izjemo, ‘neresno’, naposled citat (na sceni, v pesmi ali samogovoru), determinirana modifikacija splošne navedljivosti – bolj splošne iterabilnosti –, brez katere tudi ne bi bilo ‘uspešnega’ performativa” (136). Njegova ugotovitev, da je izjava vselej iterabilna, je pogubna za totalnost oziroma saturacijo (zapolnitev) konteksta, ki jo predpostavlja Austin. Če naj bo kontekst izčrpno določljiv, bi morala biti, pravi Derrida, “zavestna intenca povsem prisotna in aktualno transparentna sami sebi in drugim” (138), a to se v resnici nikoli ne zgodi. Derrida meni, da performativna izjava nikoli ne bi uspela, če “njena formulacija ne bi ponavljala ‘kodirane’ ali iterabilne izjave”. Ta prelom s totalnim, saturiranim, se pravi statičnim in stabilnim kontekstom performativne izjave, je za Judith Butler (Excitable Speech 127-163) politično-emancipatorična razsežnost Derridajevega modela iterabilnosti. V primerjavi z nekaterimi drugimi zastavitvami, ki prisegajo na trajno delovanje konteksta pod vplivom institucionalizirane avtoritete – zagovornik te usmeritve v lingvistiki je Émile Benveniste, v sociologiji pa Pierre Bourdieu –, ponuja Derridajev model nekoliko več upanja, da so spremembe okostenelih kontekstov vendarle možne (če ne drugače, pa s pomočjo raznih diskurzivno-apropriacijskih performativnih strategij). A to je možnost, ki ni povsem tuja niti Austinu: zgodovina prava je, kot opozori v tretjem poglavju Kako napravimo kaj z besedami, polna raznih precedenčnih primerov, ki, ko so enkrat sprejeti, delujejo na celoten kontekst pravne prakse in postanejo zavezujoči pri presojanju podobnih primerov, ki se bodo v prihodnosti šele zgodili (Austin 38). Judith Butler meni, da Derridajeva ločitev govornega dejanja od konteksta, v katerem to dejanje nastane,

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ni in ne more biti absolutna. Po drugi strani pa zavrača tudi

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nekoliko mehanicistično oziroma kavzalistično Bourdieujevo razumevanje jezikovnih sprememb, ki naj bi bile neposreden rezultat družbenih (institucionalnih) sprememb. Njegov koncept habitusa pa bi lahko bil okvir, znotraj katerega bi bilo mogoče misliti “neverbalne oblike performativnosti” (a tacit form of performativity) (Butler 155), zlasti njegove “korporealne”, telesne razsežnosti, a ta možnost ostane zunaj Bourdieujevega teoretskega obzorja. Poleg splošne iterabilnosti in relativne dekontekstualiziranosti je uprostoritev tretja pomembna značilnost Derridajevega koncepta grafematičnega znaka. Nazoren primer bi bila instanca podpisa, ki jo vpelje že Austin, ko obravnava vprašanje referencialnosti pri izrekanju in pri pisanju: pri verbalnih oblikah izrekanja je to oseba, ki izreka (je neposredni, čutnonazorni “vir” izreka), pri pisnih izrekih, ki “niso pripeti na svoj vir enako kot govorni”, pa je nujno, da se oseba podpiše (Austin 60). Derrida s tega stališča analizira odnos podpisa (ali signature) do prisotnega in do vira: Pisna signatura po definiciji implicira aktualno ali empirično neprisotnost podpisnika. Vendar, bomo rekli, prav tako zaznamuje in ohranja njegovo prisotno-preteklo-bit v minulem zdaj, ki bo ostal prihodnji zdaj, torej v zdaju na splošno, v transcendentalni formi ohranjanja. To splošno ohranjanje je nekako vpisano, vpeto v vselej razvidno in vselej singularno prisotno punktualnost forme signature. V tem je enigmatska izvirnost vseh parafov. Da bi se proizvedla priključitev k viru, mora biti zadržana absolutna singularnost dogodka signature in forme signature: čista ponovljivost čistega dogodka. (Derrida 139)

Položaj je paradoksalen, a hkrati – tako kot pri performativu – ne le možen, pač pa tudi strukturno nujen: pogoj možnosti podpisa (in performativa nasploh) je nemožnost njegove stroge čistosti. Da bi signatura sploh lahko delovala, pravi Derrida, mora imeti “ponovljivo, iterabilno, posnemljivo formo”, ali z drugimi besedami, “biti mora zmožna odtrgati se od prisotne in singularne intence svoje produkcije” (140). Skratka, Derridajeva teorija iterabilnosti spodnaša trdna tla Austinovi (in Searlovi) hipotezi o “parazitskem” diskurzu umetnosti. Kajti če so performativni izreki zares performativni le takrat, ko so “formulirani v vsakdanjih okoliščinah” (Austin 31), bi že sama možnost posrečenega performativa v gledališču

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razkrila in spodnesla tavtološke temelje gledališke konvencije. Toda velja tudi narobe, kar je vedel že Austin in se zato tako radikalno odpovedal raziskovanju statusa performativa

Aldo Milohnić Performativnost in iterabilnost v scenskih umetnostih

v gledališču. Če naj velja v vseh situacijah izrekanja, bi se performativ kot institucija izničil, v nevarnosti bi bila njegova konvencionalnost – zato naj bi bile nekatere uporabe, denimo v scenskih umetnostih, prepovedane. Kljub nekaterim pomanjkljivostim, na katere sem opozoril v tem prispevku, je knjiga Jamesa Loxleyja pregledna in koristna uvajalna študija v kompleksno, interdisciplinarno teoretsko polje performativa in performativnosti. Avtor je precej prostora v knjigi namenil razpravam o statusu performativa v diskurzu umetnosti; že zaradi tega bi morala njegova študija vzbuditi zanimanje pri bralkah in bralcih, ki se ukvarjajo s konceptom performativnosti v gledališču, performansu in drugih področjih sodobne umetnostne produkcije.

Literatura Austin, John L. Kako napravimo kaj z besedami. Ljubljana: ŠKUC – Filozofska fakulteta, 1990 [1955 – predavanja, 1962 – prva objava]. Butler, Judith. Excitable Speech. A Politics of the Performative. New York, London: Routledge, 1997. Carlson, Marvin. Performance: a critical introduction. London and New York: Routledge, 1996. Derrida, Jacques. “Signatura dogodek kontekst”. Prev. Simona Perpar in Uroš Grilc. Sodobna literarna teorija. Ur. Aleš Pogačnik. Ljubljana: Krtina, 1995 [1971]. 119–141. Grgič, Matejka in Igor Ž. Žagar. Čas in dejanje v jeziku: oblikovanje performativne teorije na Slovenskem. Ljubljana: Založba /*cf, 2004. Ogrizek, Maja. “Poetic Function and Performative in Theatre”. Along the Margins of Humanities. Eds. Aldo Milohnić and Rastko Močnik. Ljubljana: ISH, 1996. 219–235.

Aldo Milohnić je magister sociologije kulture in raziskovalec na Mirovnem inštitutu – Inštitutu za sodobne družbene in politične študije, kjer vodi projekte s področja sociologije kulture in kulturnih politik. Je urednik knjižne zbirke Politike, (so)urednik številnih tematskih številk kulturnih časopisov in zbornikov ter soavtor knjig, med njimi Kultura d.o.o. – materialni pogoji kulturne produkcije (2005). aldo.milohnic@mirovni-institut.si

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RECENZIJE

Estetika performativnih umetniπkih praks

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Tomaž Toporišič Erika Fischer - Lichte: Estetika performativnega. Prevedel Jaša Drnovšek. Ljubljana: Študentska založba, 2008. (Knjižna zbirka Koda).

Od semiotike do estetike performativnega Na premici različnih faz raziskav gledališča, dramatike in uprizoritvenih praks, ki jih je izvedla Erika Fischer - Lichte (od semiotike, njene krize in poskusov njene razrešitve do odpiranja drugim in drugačnim metodološkim izhodiščem, npr. novemu historizmu, fenomenologiji, hermenevtiki, poststrukturalizmu) in v katerih vztrajno sledi napetosti med eksistenco in označenim, se zdita eni bistvenih postavk, ki odzvanjata oziroma najdeta nove osvetlitve tudi v njeni knjigi Estetika performativnega, predvsem dve dvojici: • tekst in uprizoritev, • reprezentacija in prezenca. Fischer - Lichtejeva se v svoji najnovejši fazi raziskav gledališča in scenskih umetnosti, ki jo ob knjigi Estetika performativnega utelešata vsaj še študija Theatre, Sacrifice, Ritual. Exploring Forms Of Political Theatre (2005) in zbornik Theater seit den 60er Jahren (v souredništvu s Friedemannom Kreuderjem in Isabel Pflug, 1998), osredotoča na sledi performativnega obrata in vzpostavitev specifične estetike performativnega. V raziskavah performativnega, ki so nekakšno postsemiotično nadaljevanje njene misli o evropskem gledališču in scenskih praksah, izhaja iz teze, ki je zelo uporabna tudi za analizo nekaterih bistvenih fenomenov sodobnih uprizoritvenih praks na Slovenskem. Teza se, povzeta v zgoščeno in nujno nekoliko poenostavljeno obliko, glasi takole:

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Po letu 1960 se je zgodil preobrat, za katerega je značilna sprememba poudarka od gledališča kot umetniškega artefakta h gledališču kot izvajanju, performativnosti. Umetniki po tem

Tomaž Toporišič Estetika performativnih umetniških praks

obratu ne delujejo več kot avtorji v tradicionalnem pomenu, v delu sodobnega gledališča in performansa zato ne moremo več govoriti o institucijah avtorja in umetniškega dela. Koncept gledališča, ki temelji na besedni umetnosti oziroma tekstualnem modelu, je zamenjal performativni model, znotraj katerega sta tako tekst kot referencialna funkcija izgubila svojo prevlado. Pravkar skicirane teze so logično nadaljevanje misli, ki jo Fischer - Lichtejeva izpostavlja v knjigi History of European Drama and Theatre (2002), namreč, da se je v 20. stoletju izvršila deliteralizacija gledališča, ki so jo izvedle zgodovinske avantgarde. In pa, da je bila zahteva po reteatralizaciji gledališča v tem obdobju v veliki meri zasnovana na krizi jezika, da pa je enako pomemben impulz deliterarizacije gledališča ideja, da gledališče predstavlja umetnost sui generis in ne služi mediaciji del znotraj drugih umetnosti, se pravi dramskih besedil. Fischer - Lichtejeva v svojih raziskavah kultur performativnega izhaja iz do danes tudi v slovenskem prostoru dodobra utaborjenega pojma performativ, kot ga je definiral britanski jezikoslovec in filozof John L. Austin v razpravi in knjigi Kako napravimo kaj z besedami (v njej so objavljena njegova predavanja na Univerzi Harvard iz leta 1955). Austinovo definicijo performativa, njegovo delitev izjav na konstative in performative, razlikovanje med konstativi kot izjavami, ki so lahko resnične ali neresnične, ter performativi kot izjavami, ki so lahko kvečjemu posrečene oziroma ponesrečene in za katere velja: reči je enako nekaj storiti, Erika Fischer - Lichte z naslonitvijo na raziskave in temeljne teze ustanovitelja teatrologije v nemškem govornem prostoru Maxa Herrmanna, predvsem na njegovo teorijo o potrebi po reformiranju tradicionalnega pojma uprizoritve ter po njegovi zamenjavi s performativnim pojmom dogodka (Ereignis), razvije v teorijo oziroma estetiko performativnega. V sodobnem gledališču in performansu smo po Fischer Lichtejevi torej priča dejstvu, da bo vsakokrat proizvedena neka druga uprizoritev, da je tako vsaka uprizoritev enkratna in neponovljiva. S tem se izgubi tradicionalna delitev na estetiko produkcije, dela samega in estetiko recepcije, se pravi prvo, drugo in tretjo paradigmo. Estetika performativnega

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stremi k umetnosti prehajanja meja, k ukinjanju dihotomije

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med semiotičnim telesom (Körper) in fenomenalnim telesom (Leib) igralca, k telesni soprisotnosti igralcev in občinstva, k performativnemu medsebojnemu delovanju med odrom in občinstvom, med subjektom in objektom, opazovalcem in opazovanim, fizično prezenco elementov, ki so predstavljeni, in njihovim semiotičnim karakterjem, materialnostjo in referencialnostjo, označevalcem in označencem, učinkom in pomenom. Tudi v tem smislu Fischer - Lichtejeva izhaja iz Austina, točneje iz njegovih naslednjih izjav o značilnostih performativa, ki jih z lahkoto izstrelimo tudi izven polja jezika: A. prav ničesar ne “opisujejo” ali “poročajo” ali konstatirajo, niso “resnični ali neresnični”, in B. izreči stavek je opraviti neko delo ali del nekega dela, ki ga normalno ne bi opisali kot (ali kot “zgolj”) nekaj rêči. (Austin 17)

Tako kot izjave, ki jih interpretiramo kot performative, tudi performativna akcija na odru in interakcija med odrom in občinstvom poteka v znamenju nečesa, kar ni opisovanje nekega dejanja, hkrati tudi ni izrekanje, da bomo nekaj napravili, ampak je dejanje samo.

Kopernikovski obrat Kot instrument kritike pa je pojem zvestobe tekstu popolnoma neuporaben, če ne celo škodljiv. (Fischer – Lichte, nav. po Kralj 342)

Ko Erika Fischer - Lichte v času prve izdaje slovite Semiotik des Theaters: eine Einführung (1983), s katero se je vzpostavila kot vodilna avtoriteta semiotičnih raziskav gledališča sedem desetih let prejšnjega stoletja, zapiše zgornji stavek, z na videz zgolj drobno pripombo sproži plaz sprememb pogledov na sodobno umetnost. Ta plaz se v njenem nadaljnjem opusu sestavi v predpostavko, da je znotraj polja semiotike gledališča nastopil nekakšen za evrocentrično civilizacijo kopernikovski obrat, katerega posledica je dejstvo, da je uprizoritev primarna, tekst pa zgolj njen vidik. V temelju spodnese samoumevnost dramskega gledališča in dramskocentrične gledališke kritike. Opozori tudi na dejstvo, da se nahajamo v času, v katerem je potrebno povezati krizo dramskega avtorja in individualnosti. Nahajamo se v času po reteatralizaciji gledališča kot hkratni negaciji individua. Njen stavek, ki smo ga povzeli, govori tudi o 20. stoletju kot prizorišču prekinitve

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tradicije zahodnoevropskega gledališča, določene z dramskim besedilom. Govori o stoletju sprožitve procesa deliterarizacije in avtonomizacije gledališča, krize dramskega avtorja, ki je

Tomaž Toporišič Estetika performativnih umetniških praks

hkrati tudi kriza jezika. Fischer - Lichtejeva torej gledališče razume izven vzročnoposledične odvisnosti od literature, kot dejavnost, ki ne samo interpretira znake, ki jih proizvaja kultura, ampak kot svoje uporablja prav znake, ki jih je omogočila kultura, namreč tako, da jih uporablja kot znake znakov. Ali, ponazorjeno s citatom iz zgoraj izpostavljene študije o semiotiki gledališča: “To, kar je konstitutivno za gledališče, je napetost med eksistenco in označenim, med bitjem kot naravo ali objektom in naravo (značajem) znakov. Razlika med teatralnostjo in estetskostjo vzrašča prav v tej napetosti.” (Fischer - Lichte, The Semiotics 140) Fischer - Lichtejeva torej v Estetiki performativnega zariše zgodovino poskusov prehodov v performativnost, ki so časovno razpotegnjeni od prehoda iz 19. v 20. stoletje, od časa zgodovinskih avantgard (Friedrich Nietzsche, Max Reinhardt, Max Herrmann), preko neoavantgard (John Cage, Living Theatre, Marina Abramović, FLUXUS, Richard Schechner, Herman Nitsch, Jerzy Grotowski) do umetnosti po letu 1990 (Coco Fusco in GÓmez-Peña, Einar Schleef, Christoph Schlingensief, Frank Castorf, Gob Squad, Teatro Potlach). Že kar praviloma pa so ti poskusi značilni za t. i. mejne oblike gledališča oziroma performativne prakse, za katere je značilna vezljivost različnih umetniških medijev ter močna interakcija s sfero vizualne umetnosti. Njena knjiga je živa priča dejstva, da manifestacije perfor mativnosti in performativnega obrata lahko spremenijo naše pojmovanje umetnosti in kulture. Na eni strani opozarjajo na performativnost umetniške produkcije, na drugi pa na vezljivost in prehajanje različnih medijev, na katerega je ob govoru opozarjal že Austin, ko je izpostavil dejstvo, da govorec ni zgolj nekdo, ki izjavlja z jezikom, ampak mora za uspešno performativnost izjave ustvariti ustrezne okoliščine (Fischer - Lichtejeva jih poimenuje s pojmom avtopoetična feedback zanka), v katerih “mora bodisi sam govorec ali kdo drug izvesti še kakšno drugo delo, naj gre za ‘fizično’ ali ‘mentalno’ ali celo delo izrekanja nadaljnjih besed.” (Austin 20)

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Seveda pa si na koncu ne moremo pomagati, da ne bi

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posumili, kako se je tudi nova utopija performativnega obrata, nova kulturna revolucija – ki ji je posvečena Estetika performativnega Erike Fischer - Lichte in ki je delovala kot poskus prevrednotenja vseh vrednot ter ki je teatralizirala politiko in hkrati poskušala izvesti še en prehod iz tekstualne v performativno kulturo, v svojem utopičnem hotenju iz razkosanih koščkov tradicije ustvariti nov red – znašla pred novo serijo vprašajev oziroma vprašanjem, ki se glasi nekako takole: Mar nista performativni obrat in njegova avtopoetična feedback zanka samo še novi v seriji utopij 20. stoletja oziroma tega, kar Alain Badiou označi s sintagmo “nespravljivost med končati staro in začeti z novim”?

Literatura Austin, John L. Kako napravimo kaj z besedami. Prev. B. Lešnik. Ljubljana: ŠKUC, Znanstveni inštitut Filozofske fakultete, 1990. (Studia humanitatis). Badiou, Alain. 20. stoletje. Prev. A. Žerjav. Ljubljana: Društvo za teoretsko psihoanalizo, 2005. Fischer – Lichte, Erika. Semiotik des Theaters: eine Einführung. Tübingen: Gunter Narr, 1983. –––. The Semiotics of Theatre. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1992. –––. History of European Drama and Theatre. Prev. J. Riley. London. Routledge, 2002. –––. Ästhetik des Performativen, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2004. –––. Theatre, Sacrifice, Ritual. Exploring Forms Of Political Theatre. London, New York: Routledge, 2005. Kralj, Lado. “Performativni obrat.” Erika Fischer - Lichte. Estetika performativnega. Ljubljana: Študentska založba, 2008. 339-345. Theater seit den 60er Jahren. Grenzgänge der Neo-Avantgarde. Ur. Erika Fischer - Lichte, Friedemann Kreuder in Isabel Pflug. Tübingen, Basel: Francke, 1998.

Tomaž Toporišič je magistriral in doktoriral na ljubljanski Filozofski fakulteti. Je dramaturg Slovenskega mladinskega gledališča in docent za področje literarnih in uprizoritvenih ved na Fakulteti za humanistične študije Koper UP. V zadnjem desetletju se je intenzivno ukvarjal s teorijo in prakso sodobnega gledališča, bil med letoma 1997 in 2003 programski direktor SMG ter soustanovil in nekaj časa tudi vodil festival sodobnih odrskih umetnosti Exodos. Je avtor treh znanstvenih monografij o gledališču in drami 20. stoletja: Med zapeljeva njem in sumničavostjo (Maska, 2004), Ranljivo telo teksta in odra (Knjižnica MGL, 2007) in Levitve drame in gledališča (Založba Aristej, 2008). tomaz.toporisic@guest.arnes.si

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Uprizarjanje feminizmov

RECENZIJE

Katja Mihurko Poniž Staging International Feminisms. Ur. Elaine Aston in Sue-Ellen Case. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.

Staging International Feminisms je zbornik člankov dvain dvajsetih uglednih raziskovalk s področja uprizoritvenih umetnosti in je rezultat njihovega dvanajstletnega ukvarjanja s feminističnimi temami. Že naslov, v katerem je poudarjeno, da feminizem ni enotno gibanje, temveč se razlikuje ne le na ravni nacionalne pripadnosti njegovih akterk, temveč tudi glede njihovih raznolikih pogledov znotraj neke narodne skupine, napoveduje odprtost avtoric prispevkov za različne pristope k uprizarjanju tem, ki so povezane z vlogo žensk v sodobnem svetu, zaznamovanem z globalizacijskim procesom. S svojimi prispevki avtorice tako ne ustvarjajo le dialoga med realnostjo in feminističnim odzivom nanjo, ampak je zapise mogoče razumeti tudi v njihovi medsebojni dialoški povezanosti. Zbornik sta uredili Elaine Aston in Sue-Ellen Case. Slednjo smo pri nas srečali v okviru festivala Mesto žensk leta 1995, ko je sodelovala na okrogli mizi Ženske v gledališču, v reviji Maska je bil objavljen njen članek “Kapitalizem in feminizem”, v Časopisu za kritiko znanosti pa razmišljanje “Postpolitičen feminizem na odru”. Avtorice prispevkov so članice leta 1994 ustanovljene delovne skupine Feministične raziskave (Feminist Research Working Group), ki deluje pod okriljem Mednarodne zveze za gledališke raziskave (International Federation for Theatre Research). Že na ustanovitvenem srečanju v Moskvi so številne raziskovalke ugotovile, da prihajajo iz držav z neenakimi možnostmi za uveljavitev žensk, zato so v središče svojega

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zanimanja postavile različne nacionalne in ekonomske

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opredelitve do pojma spolne nepristranskosti ter poudarile svoje težnje, da destabilizirajo prevladujočo anglo-ameriško feministično kritiko skozi raziskave različnih performativnih praks, nacionalnih agend in kulturnih konstruktov. Njihov namen je bil v prakso priklicati preizpraševanja feminizmov iz “prvega” in “tretjega” sveta, študije o medetničnih sporih, kritike transnacionalnega globalizacijskega procesa, raziskave raznolikosti identifikacij, ki presegajo tradicionalne definicije spolov in manjšinskih spolnih praks ter vključitev pojma performativnosti kot načina za pogled onkraj tradicionalnih določitev performansa. Raziskovalne teme posameznih znanstvenic so bile vključene v skupinsko diskusijo, v kateri se je razpravljalo o danih kulturnih predpostavkah, ki tematiko uvrščajo v heterogeno polje feminističnih kulturnih praks. V uvodu v zbornik sta urednici poudarili, da so se avtorice zavedale pasti, ki jih prinaša teženje k mednarodnemu feminističnemu dialogu. Kot najbolj problematična se jim je razkrivala izbira angleščine kot jezika, v katerega so prevedeni sestavki avtoric iz drugih jezikov, saj so s tem ohranjale tradicionalne kolonialistične vzorce. Na vsebinski in metodološki ravni so se trudile, da bi se izognile poskusom na videz poenotenih misli o mednarodnem feminizmu, gledališču in performansu ter si želele povezati feminizme z različnih koncev sveta (npr. Indije, Koreje, Nigerije, Izraela itn.) v skupnem dialogu in ne v dialogu, v katerem bi bil eden prikrajšan na račun drugega. Knjiga je razdeljena na tri dele. V prvem delu, ki je naslovljen “Cartographies” (Kartografije), se razprave začenjajo s feministično kritičnim krmiljenjem po globalistični areni. Prispevki preverjajo identifikacijske strukture glede na njihove rasne in druge predpisane kode. Drugi del knjige “Interventions” (Intervencije) ponazarja nujnost povzemanja natančnih pogojev posameznih performansov. Vsak zase in vsi skupaj ti prispevki razkrivajo, kako igra feministični performans aktivistično vlogo pri upiranju nasilnim spolnim režimom. Zadnji, tretji del, “Manifestos” (Manifesti) usmerja pogled v feministične možnosti za ustvarjanje sprememb. Avtorice prispevkov izhajajo iz svojih nacionalnih kultur in razpravljajo o praktičnih, kreativnih strategijah ali performativnih primerih gledališkega ustvarjanja, s katerim bi si lažje razložili svet, v katerem si nekateri predstavljajo,

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da v njem zatiranja, nasilja in terorja (kot npr. v Nigeriji, Izraelu, Združenih državah, Pakistanu in v Mehiki) sploh ni. Tisto, kar vse tri dele združuje, je spoznanje o tem, kako nujno

Katja Mihurko Poniž Uprizarjanje feminizmov

je, da feminizem deluje na mednarodni ravni. Na ta način se razširjena misel o tem, da je feminizem (vsaj na Zahodu) svojo vlogo odigral do konca, izkaže za prenagljeno, saj je jasno, da imajo feminizmi, kakor so prikazani v tej knjigi, povedati še veliko nujnih zgodb. Branje posameznih prispevkov to misel vsekakor potrdi. V prvem sestavku “Bloody Aprons: Suzan-Lori Parks, Deborah Warner and Feminist Performance in the Age of Globalisation” Elin Diamond najprej pregledno povzame definicije pojma globalizem in vanj umesti problem migracij žensk, kasneje pa na to temo naveže uprizoritev Medeje Deborah Warner iz leta 2000, v kateri je umetnica dogajanje postavila v sodobnost in pokazala, da bi lahko bil protagonistkin maščevalni bes racionalni odgovor na nasilje in kulturno izolacijo, ki jima je Medeja podvržena. Tudi v Red Letter Plays Suzan-Lori Parks je osrednja tema ženska migracija in kakor Medeja tudi temnopolta Hester na koncu ubije svojega otroka. V obeh uprizoritvah je kot pomemben dejavnik v protagonistkinem življenju prikazana spolnost kot način plačevanja dolgov. Toda Hester je prikazana tudi kot ženska, ki s svojim uživanjem v spolnosti izziva položaj žrtve, ki bi jo morala ponotranjiti kot pripadnica socialne margine, za kar je kaznovana s prisilno sterilizacijo. Madeži krvi, ki jih pustijo operacijske rane, se na njenem telesu pomešajo s sinovo krvjo, ko ga ubije. Kri na Medejinem in Hesterinem telesu je kri, ki je, kot piše Elin Diamond, “znak, ki opozarja na nevidne mreže globalnega migracijskega dela, v katerem so ženske in njihovi potomci zgolj uporabni in prikladno anonimni. Ko je prelita kri, ko matere same ubijajo svoje otroke, se na sistem in na njihovo trpljenje vsaj bežno ozremo, ju prepoznamo in se jima vsaj za migljaj trenutka upremo.” (20) Karen Shimakawa je v svojem prispevku “Mind Yourself: On Soundwalking, Race and Gender” opozorila na prikrite spolne in rasne stereotipe v t. i. soundwalk-tours, nosilcih zvoka, na katerih so posneta besedila, ki vodijo sprehajalca/sprehajalko med odkrivanjem določenih predelov svetovnih prestolnic. Avtorica lucidno primerja opis židovskega predela New Yorka, ki je namenjen poslušalcem, in tistega, ki je namenjen poslušalkam. V prvem navodila za gibanje ne vsebujejo

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nobenih napotkov, ki bi se nanašali na spol, v drugem jih kar

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mrgoli. K. Shimakawa z analizo različnih zvočnih sprehodov potrdi, da ima ženski glas največkrat posebno, s spolno pripadnostjo in stereotipnimi atributi, ki so povezani z njo, določeno vlogo. Naslednji prispevek “Globalising Neoliberalism, Travelling Feminisms: Pollesch@Prater”, ki ga je napisala Katrin Sieg, jemlje pod drobnogled ustvarjalnost nemškega inscenatorja Renéja Pollescha, ki je v svoje uprizoritve vnesel pogled na spremembe v spolnem redu in dodal k procesu globalizacije evropski pogled nanjo. Pollesch je bil slovenski javnosti predstavljen leta 1999 v intervjuju, ki je bil objavljen v reviji Maska. K. Sieg analizira njegovo uprizoritev Wohnfront (2001/02), v kateri je avtor raziskoval obsežno rekonstrukcijo urbane pokrajine in spremljevalna razredna in spolna razmerja v središču glavnega mesta Nemčije. Sue-Ellen Case v svojem razmišljanju “The Queer Globe Itself” pokaže, da koncept globalizacije ni brezspolen koncept (tako v smislu kulturnega kot biološkega spola), v katerem bi bili procesi v nacionalnih državah in transnacionalni tokovi kapitala popolnoma samoreferenčne dinamike. Kot ugotavlja avtorica, je v diskurzih o globalizaciji globalno dejansko vselej prikazano kot moški koncept, v katerem ni razumevanja za lokalne zadeve, ki so v resnici konstitutivne za globalno in s katerimi so povezane tudi ženske. Sue-Ellen Case opozarja na queer študije, ki lahko pomagajo razumeti neposredne zveze med ekonomskimi in socialnimi silami ter postavijo v samoreferenčni diskurz posameznika, ki ni niti pripadnik lokalnega niti normativni državljan. Takega državljana lahko predstavlja gej ali lezbijka na potovanjih v dežele, v katerih se istospolni partnerji skrivajo javnosti. S prispevkom Sue-Ellen Case se konča prvi del knjige. Sestavki, ki tvorijo drugi del knjige, so krajši in manj teoretično poglobljeni, a po drugi strani še bolj razširijo obzorje, saj navajajo dejavnosti umetnic iz malo znanih kultur. Izredno zanimiv je že prvi prispevek v tem nizu “Actress Stories: Binodini and Amal Allana”, v katerem prikaže Bishnupriya Dutt izsek iz indijske gledališke zgodovine, saj predstavi življenjsko zgodbo igralke in dramatičarke Binodini Dasi (1863-1941), ki je postala tudi navdih za številne odrske inscenacije, v katerih je bila predstavljena kot grešnica-

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svetnica. Šele Amal Allan, ena izmed vodilnih indijskih režiserk, je v njeni zgodbi poudarila druge dimenzije, saj je vodilna tema njene inscenacije nasilje in zloraba, zaradi

Katja Mihurko Poniž Uprizarjanje feminizmov

katerih je Binodini Dasi trpela v kolonialni, moško dominantni družbi. Amal Allan se v svojih delavnicah vrača k igralskim tehnikam, ki jih je razvijala B. Dasi, in k njeni odločenosti, da bo uspela kot velika igralka. V njeni režiji je, kot ugotavlja B. Dutt, prvič mogoče slišati glas resnične Binodini, s čimer odpira možnosti za spremembe v kolonialističnem gledališču, saj ga preizprašuje s feminističnega in postkolonialističnega zornega kota. Naslednji prispevek je lokaliziran na sever Evrope. Tiina Rosenberg v članku “Stockholm Interventions: Feminist Activist Performance” predstavi tri duhovite performanse. Prvega je izvajala Catti Brandelius, slavna švedska feministična umetnica, ki je v humorno parodiranih vlogah mis univerzum in profesorice navduševala občinstvo. Še bolj uporniška je performerka Grynet, ki si satirično privošči predvsem odrasle moške na pomembnih družbenih položajih. Največ ljudi pa je dosegel projekt Queer Cab, v katerem je po Stockholmu vozil roza taksi, ki je svoje potnike/potnice brezplačno pripeljal na želeno mesto, če so si med vožnjo ogledali performans, ki sta ga izvajala Lina Kurttila in Jens Jonsson in ob katerem naj bi se zamislili o svojih predsodkih glede istospolno usmerjenih. Elaine Aston je v svojem prispevku “Women’s Writing for Performance Project: ‘Making’ a Feminist Intervention” predstavila projekt, ki ga je sama vodila in v katerem je bilo v središču pozornosti vprašanje, kako in na kakšne načine umetnice vključujejo pojem gender v svoje performanse. V okviru projekta so bile organizirane tudi delavnice, v katerih niso uveljavljene avtorice poučevale manj spretnih v dramskem pisanju, temveč je bil najpomembnejši med sebojni dialog. Naslednji članek z naslovom “Reconstructing a Diasporic Female Self in O Kyong-Sook’s Dictee – A Speaking Woman” nas seznani s korejsko umetnico O KyongSook in njenim performansom, narejenem po avtobiografskem delu Therese Hak Kyung Cha, ki govori o iskanju identitete ženske, predstavnice korejske diaspore v Ameriki. K feminističnim “materam” se vrača tudi italijanska performerka Laura Curino v svoji scenski predelavi eseja Lastna soba Virginie Woolf. Roberta Gandolfi v članku “Giving Back to Judith:

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Laura Curino’s Una stanza tutta per me/A Room of My own”

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režiserko najprej predstavi kot eno izmed vodilnih predstavnic narativnega gledališča, nato pa piše še o adaptaciji teksta in odzivih publike na zgodbo o Shakespearovi sestri. R. Gandolfi meni, da je performerka utelešala Judith na političen način in je delovala utopično performativno. Charlotte Canning poseže globlje v gledališko zgodovino, ko piše o Rosamond Gilder, ustanoviteljici Mednarodnega gledališkega inštituta (ITI), saj se skozi njene izkušnje pri vodenju kaže, da je v njenem mednarodnem delu spol igral pomembno vlogo. Julie Holledge v prispevku “Exile and the Elusive Qualities of Time” predstavi performerki starejše generacije Tomiko Takai in Mary Moore ter njun časovni eksperiment Exile, v katerem sta raziskovali življenja klošark in izobčenk na železniški postaji in postaji podzemne železnice v Tokiu ter v avstralski puščavi premišljevali o literarnih mitih iz različnih kultur. Vse to sta vključili v performans, ki se Julie Holledge razkriva kot feministična intervencija znotraj globalističnega umetnostnega trga. Noelia Hernando-Real v sestavku “Cultural Memory in El Séptimo Cielo: An Inter-cultural Staging of Caryl Churchill’s Cloud Nine” naniza razloge za neuspešno inscenacijo v naslovu omenjenega dela v Madridu. Zaradi postavitve dogajanja v špansko okolje in aluzije na boleče trenutke iz španske zgodovine občinstvo in kritika predstave nista mogla sprejeti. Dramatičarka C. Churchill je bila že večkrat predstavljena tudi slovenski gledališki publiki. O negativnem odzivu na uprizoritev Evripidove Medeje piše Elizabeth Sakellaridou, ki predstavi inscenacijo v režiji Stathisa Livathinosa na poletnem festivalu v Epidavru leta 2003. Livathinos v Medeji ni več videl tragedije o maščevanju prevarane ženske, temveč je poglobil moško/ žensko nasprotje, ki ga Evripidovo delo že vsebuje, razširil razpoko med domačo in tujo kulturo (Grki in barbari) in okrepil nasprotje v razredni razliki s tem, ko jo je povezal z močjo svetlikajočega se dobička sodobnega transnacionalnega kapitala in s tem izrazil kritiko hegemoničnih struktur na ravneh spola, kulture, razreda in etnične pripadnosti. Zadnja dva prispevka v drugem delu opozorita na inscenacije, ki prikazujejo izkoriščanje žensk in nasilje nad njimi v Jaipurju in v Mehiki. Asha Pande v prispevku “A Journey towards Sensitisation and Empowerment: Feminist Performance and

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Intervention Theatre in the City of Jaipur” predstavi inscenaciji igre The Mahabharata of Women, ki obravnava uboj iz časti, in igre Moi, l’Interdite, ki prav tako prikazuje zlorabo žensk

Katja Mihurko Poniž Uprizarjanje feminizmov

v družbi in družini. Obe uprizoritvi sta, kot povzema avtorica, naredili velik vtis na občinstvo, ki so ga sestavljale ženske iz družbenih elit. Druge ženske je doseglo t. i. intervencijsko gledališče, ki ženske spodbuja, da se pridružijo odrskemu ustvarjanju. S podobnim ciljem, ponuditi ženskam možnost, da spregovorijo o nasilju, ki so mu podvržene, sta pisateljici in performerki Petrona de la Cruz Cruz in Isabel Juárez Espinosa leta 1994 ustanovili FOMMA (Fortaleza de la Mujer Maya). Ob gledaliških uprizoritvah sta organizirali tudi delavnice, kjer sta ženske spodbujali k pisanju in branju. Eno izmed iger, ki je nastala v tem ustvarjalnem in spodbudnem okolju, predstavi tudi Diana Taylor, avtorica članka o obeh umetnicah. La bruja monja, 2003, je humoren prikaz življenja ženske, ki je poročena s pijancem in razuzdancem in zaradi tega išče zatočišče v veri, a je tudi v tem razočarana. Z inscenacijo življenj, ki so tamkajšnjim ženskam blizu, se je FOMMA uspešno približala svojemu ženskemu občinstvu. Vsem predstavljenim prispevkom je skupno navdušenje nad novimi pristopi in tematiziranje sicer spregledanih problemov, povezanih predvsem z ženskami in njihovim mestom v svetu, ki ga zaznamujejo tradicionalno maskulini koncepti. Vrednost sestavkov, ki tvorijo drugi del zbornika, se razkriva predvsem v tem, da dokumentirajo izjemno zanimive projekte, ki so doživeli odziv v svojem okolju, a jih zaradi njihove lociranosti v svet, v katerega ni vselej uperjena kritiška in akademska pozornost, sicer širša javnost ne bi poznala. Hkrati avtorice opozarjajo tudi na pasti, ki so se jim bolj ali manj uspešno izmaknile omenjene inscenacije, zaradi česar prispevki niso le nereflektirana hvalnica feminističnim performansom, temveč tudi tehtni pretresi te ustvarjalnosti. Zadnji del knjige je usmerjen v prihodnost. Avtorice petih esejev razmišljajo o že opravljenem delu in podajajo vizije za nadaljnje aktivnosti. Avtorica prvega manifesta, Isabel Juárez Espinosa, ki je bila predstavljena v zadnjem prispevku drugega dela knjige, piše o skritih ovirah, s katerimi se ženske še vedno soočajo v okoljih, ki so, kakor mehiško, izrazito patriarhalna. Lois Weaver in Peggy Shaw podajata manifest v obliki dialoga, v katerem so izražene naloge, s katerimi ženske lahko sprožijo spremembe. Vanj so vključene tudi misli o tem, da se ženske

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ne bi smele podrediti globalističnemu pogledu na svet.

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Manifesti, ki sledijo, napovedujejo spremembe v državah, kjer je do enakopravnosti žensk še dolga pot. Fawzia Afzal-Khan piše o pakistanskem muslimanskem gledališču doma in v tujini, Irene Isoken Salami-Agunloye piše o svojem literarnem performativnem gledališču, v katerem je tematizirala usode Nigerijk, diskriminatorne prakse in vprašanje spolne razlike. V manifestu naniza, kako je v svojih delih izrazila želje po alternativnih oblikah subjektivitete, po možnosti izbire glede rojstva otrok, po uporu nasilju, ki ga ženske izvajajo druga nad drugo in po tem, da ženske spregovorijo tako, da bodo slišane. O izraelskem gledališču in družbi ter vlogi žensk piše Yael Feiler. Ugotavlja, da morajo Izraelke, da bi bile del naroda, sprejeti vlogo objekta, vlogo simbolične neveste, zveste in lojalne, koristne pri delu za narodno stvar in aktivne pri ustvarjanju in reprodukciji v “nacionalnem domu”. Avtorica analizira igre dramatičarke Miriam Kainy, saj je v njih v središču ženska, ki zahteva prevrednotenje izraelske (moške) narodne identitete v smislu odprtosti za tiste ženske želje in pričakovanja, ki ne sovpadajo s tradicionalnim pogledom na vlogo ženske v izraelski kulturi. Pričujoči sestavek je zanimiv, ker govori o temi, ki je bila v evropskem kontekstu aktualna v drugi polovici 19. stoletja, medtem ko je danes skorajda ni več. Zadnji prispevek v knjigi je manifest za feministični performans in utopijo. Njegova avtorica Jill Dolan je svoje zahteve združila v osem točk, ki izražajo načine, na katere lahko s feminističnim performansom spremenimo svet. Ti načini so pisanje o spremembah, pogovor o njih, razširjanje utopičnih idej in ustvarjanje performansov, ki jih predstavljajo, pomembno je tudi iskanje sredstev za uresničitev teh idej. O njih je potrebno pisati in govoriti s feminističnega stališča ter se aktivno udeleževati feminističnih performansov in vzpodbujati vse, ki jih izvajajo. Utopija se v tem projektu izkaže kot gonilna sila, saj moramo, kakor pravi J. Dolan, sanjati, “da se stvari lahko spremenijo na bolje, da je utopija, kot otipljiva sila za premišljevanje, polno želja, ne v naivnem, idealističnem smislu, temveč na nasilno pragmatično političen način, tisto, kar naj neti našo strast za zamišljanje sveta, kot bi moral biti, in nam ne dovoli, da se sprijaznimo s takšnim, kot je.” (219) Upornost, nepopustljivost, ko gre za vztrajanje pri enakih pravicah in možnostih za ženske na vseh koncih sveta in za

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druge zapostavljene, je rdeča nit vseh prispevkov v zborniku Staging International Feminisms. Tisto, kar v njem najbolj navdušuje, je ob strokovnem pristopu izjemna energija,

Katja Mihurko Poniž Uprizarjanje feminizmov

s katero so se posamezne avtorice, vse po vrsti izjemno uspešne ženske na svojih poklicnih področji (najsi gre za univerzitetne profesorice, raziskovalke, umetnice ali aktivistke ali pa kar vse skupaj), posvetile vključevanju tem, ki so povezane s spolno pripadnostjo, v gledališki prostor.

Katja Mihurko Poniž, doktorica ženskih študij in feministične teorije, je diplomirana dramaturginja, literarna komparativistka in profesorica nemščine. Ukvarja se z reprezentacijami ženskosti in moškosti na področju književnosti in literarne vede ter objavlja članke o ženskem gibanju pred drugo svetovno vojno. S prispevki s področja dramatike sodeluje v gledaliških listih, piše tudi recenzije. Je avtorica monografij Drzno drugačna. Zofka Kveder in podobe ženskosti (2004) in Labirinti ljubezni v slovenski književnosti od romantike do II. svetovne vojne (2008). Na Fakulteti za humanistiko Univerze v Novi Gorici predava slovensko književnost. katja.mihurko-poniz@guest.arnes.si

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Vabilo k razpravam

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Procesi dela in sodelovanja v sodobnih scenskih umetnostih

Od druge polovice 20. stoletja naprej smo priča številnim spremembam v načinih sodelovanja, ki ne vplivajo le na metodologije dela, pač pa tudi temeljno posežejo v razumevanje in percepcijo gledališkega in plesnega dogodka. Pojav gledaliških kolektivov in avtorskih skupin v šestdesetih letih 20. stoletja je vezan tako na preseganje tradicionalne vloge avtorjev (režiserja, koreografa, igralcev) kakor tudi publike. Številne spremembe v procesih dela in sodelovanja izhajajo iz emancipatornih zahtev po približevanju umetnosti in življenja, ki demokratizirajo umetniške procese dela ter prekinejo s hierarhično razdelitvijo ustvarjalnih vlog. Pri tem imajo še posebej pomembno vlogo procesi eksperimentiranja in raziskovanja, ki so druga poimenovanja za različne postopke sodelovanja, pri katerih namesto končnega umetniškega dela v ospredje stopi sam proces nastajanja dela. Sodelovanje v sodobnih scenskih umetnostih danes ni več nekaj, kar bi bilo samo po sebi transgresivno, pač pa je postalo integralni del umetniškega procesa. Obenem se sodobni procesi dela razlikujejo od samoizražanja subjektivnosti in osvoboditve želečega subjekta, kar je bilo v središču mnogih formacij skupnosti v šestdesetih letih. Kreativnost, nepredvidljivost, naključnost in procesualnost umetniških raziskovalnih postopkov so danes v središču postindustrijskih načinov dela in tako nimajo več moči prehajanja med umetnostjo in življenjem. Tako so se v zadnjem desetletju obudile razprave o načinih dela in sodelovanja, ki v scenskih umetnostih šestdesetih let sicer prepoznavajo določeno historično ozadje, a obenem zahtevajo

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jasno artikuliranje razlike med različnimi odprtimi procesi ustvarjanja umetniškega dela. Spremenjene kulturne in politične okoliščine, razočaranje nad oblikami skupnosti, ki so se vzpostavile konec 20. stoletja, vplivajo na kritično refleksijo obstoječih načinov sodelovanja. Obenem pa zahtevajo razmislek o možnostih sodelovanja in dela, ki odgovarjajo na izčrpanost postpolitičnega časa. Ti postanejo še posebej aktualni, če se nanje ozremo z vidika sprememb v pojmovanju nematerialnega in kreativnega dela, interdisciplinarnosti in večžanrskosti sodobnega gledališkega in plesnega dogodka, razmerja do novih tehnologij in znanosti ter medijske posredovanosti dogodka. Vabimo vas, da na osnovi predstavljene teme pripravite prispevke (v obliki teoretske refleksije, zgodovinskega pregleda ali študije primera). V premislek se ponujajo naslednja možna izhodišča: - Kako misliti aktualnost sodobnih oblik dela in sodelovanja v odnosu do zgodovinskih postopkov dela in oblikovanja skupnosti? - K akšna je vloga interdisciplinarnih procesov sodelovanja v nastajanju gledališke in plesne predstave in kako ti vplivajo na samo umetniško delo? - Na kakšen način tehnologije in mediji (video, film, novi mediji) spreminjajo oblike sodelovanja v sodobnih scenskih umetnostih? - K ako spremembe v načinih dela v postindustrijski družbi vplivajo na razumevanje procesov sodelovanja v sodobnih scenskih umetnostih? - K ako različne oblike dela in sodelovanja redefinirajo pojmovanje igre, režije, koreografije? - K akšna je vloga dramaturga v novih oblikah sodelovanja, še posebej če upoštevamo razširitev njegove dejavnosti na področju scenskih umetnosti v zadnjih desetletjih? - Kako misliti umetniške procese dela in sodelovanja v razmerju do širšega družbenega, kulturnega in političnega konteksta? - K ako danes razumeti poimenovanja, ki se vsa nanašajo na procese dela: improvizacija, delo v nastajanju, odprto delo, eksperiment, laboratorij? Avtorji naj pošljejo povzetke (250 besed) do 30. marca 2009 na naslov: amfiteater@agrft.uni-lj.si. O uredniški odločitvi bodo obveščeni do 15. aprila 2009. Avtorji sprejetih predlogov bodo naprošeni, da oddajo razprave (v obsegu od 30.000 do 45.000 znakov s presledki) najpozneje do 22. junija 2009. Vsi članki v reviji Amfiteater so recenzirani.

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Call for Papers

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Work and Collaboration Processes within Contemporary Performing Arts

During the second half of the 20th century collaboration modes underwent many changes which affected not only the methodology of work but also the understanding and perception of theatre and dance performances. The emergence of theatre collectives and authorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s groups during the 1960s was related to the surpassing of traditional roles of both authors (directors, choreographers, actors) and the audience. Numerous changes within work and collaboration processes arose from emancipatory demands that art should approximate life. These demands have democratised artistic processes and shattered the hierarchy of creative roles. In this process, an especially important focus is placed upon experiment and research which are simply alternative names for collaboration procedures in which it is the very process of work creation rather than the resulting work of art that has taken centre stage. Today, collaboration within contemporary performing arts is no longer something that is transgressive in itself; it has become an integral part of artistic process. At the same time, contemporary work processes differ from the self-expression of subjectivity and the liberation of the desiring subject, which was the focus of many communities formed during the 1960s. Creativity, unpredictability, coincidence and processuality are today in the centre of post-industrial artistic research methods, which are no longer capable of switching to and fro between art and life. As a result, the past decade saw the revival of debates on work and collaboration methods, which indeed acknowledge

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a certain historical background to the performing arts of the 1960s, even as they demand clear articulation of differences among various open processes of artistic creation. Changes in the cultural and political circumstances and disappointment over the community forms that took shape during the late 20 th century have influenced critical reflection on existing ways of cooperation. At the same time, they require a consideration about the collaboration and work options that can respond to the exhaustion of the post-political era. These become even more relevant if we look at them in the context of changes in understanding immaterial and creative labour, interdisciplinarity and the multi-genre nature of contemporary theatre and dance events, relationships to new technologies and science, and media-communicated events. You are invited to send your contributions in the form of a theoretical study, historical overview or case study. Possible starting points include, but are not limited to the following: - How should we contemplate contemporary modes of work and collaboration with respect to historical work procedures and community formation? - W hat is the role of inter-disciplinary collaboration processes in the creation of a theatre or dance performance and how does this affect a work of art itself? - I n what way do technologies and media (video, film, new media) change collaboration modes within contemporary performing arts? - I n what ways do changes in work methods within postindustrial society influence the understanding of collaboration in contemporary performing arts? - How do various modes of work and collaboration redefine our perception of acting, directing and choreography? - W hat are the roles of dramaturgs within these new collaboration methods, particularly when taking into account their expanded involvement in performing arts over the past decades? - How should we contemplate work and collaboration processes in relation to the wider social, cultural and political contexts? - H ow should we understand the contemporary namings relating to work processes: improvisation, work in progress, open work, experiment, laboratory?

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Contributors are requested to send their abstracts (250 words)

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by 30 March 2009 to amfiteater@agrft.uni-lj.si. They will be informed about the editorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s decision by 15 April 2009. The authors whose proposals have been accepted will be requested to send their contributions (30,000 to 45,000 characters with spaces) no later than 22 June 2009. All articles published in Amfiteater are peer reviewed.

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Navodila avtorjem

Amfiteater objavlja izvirne članke s področja scenskih umetnosti v širokem razponu od dramskega gledališča do novomedijskih umetnosti, s poudarkom na interdisciplinarnih študijah uprizarjanja v kontekstu različnih medijev, kultur, znanosti in umetnosti. Uredništvo sprejema prispevke v slovenskem in angleškem jeziku ter pričakuje, da oddana besedila še niso bila objavljena in da istočasno niso bila poslana v objavo drugam. Vsi članki so recenzirani. Priporočena dolžina razprav je od 30.000 do 45.000 znakov s presledki. Na prvi strani naj bodo navedeni podatki o avtorstvu (ime in priimek, poštni naslov in elektronski naslov) in objavi namenjena biografija v obsegu do 550 znakov s presledki. Razprave naj vsebujejo povzetek (do 1.800 znakov s presledki) in ključne besede (5-8). Zaželeno je, da avtorji priložijo njihov prevod v angleškem jeziku. Članki naj bodo zapisani v programu Microsoft Word, v pisavi Times New Roman in velikosti črk 12 z dvojnim medvrstičnim razmikom. Vsak nov odstavek se označi z vrinjeno prazno vrstico. Daljši citati (nad 5 vrstic) so od preostalega besedila ločeni v samostojne odstavke; zapisani so v velikosti črk 10 in niso navedeni v narekovajih. Okrajšave in prilagoditve citatov se označijo z oglatimi oklepaji. Opombe niso namenjene sklicevanju na literaturo in vire. Natisnjene so kot sprotne opombe in so zaporedno številčene.

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Pri navajanju avtorja in citiranega dela med besedilom v oklepaju

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označimo samo strani, npr. (161-66). Kadar avtor citata v stavku ni omenjen, zapišemo njegovo ime in številko strani v oklepaju, med njima pa ne postavimo ločila, npr. (Reinelt 161-66). Različne bibliografske enote istega avtorja imenujemo z okrajšanimi naslovi, npr. (Reinelt, Javno 161-66). Seznam literature sestavimo po standardih MLA (6. izdaja): – za knjigo: Reinelt, Janelle. Javno uprizarjanje. Eseji o gledališču našega časa. Prev. K. Jerin in K. J. Kozak. Ljubljana: Mestno gledališče ljubljansko, 2006. (Knjižnica MGL, 143). – za del knjige: Auslander, Philip. “’Just Be Your Self ’: Logocentrism and difference in performance theory.” Acting (Re)Considered: Theories and Practices. Ur. Phillip B. Zarrilli. London in New York: Routledge, 1995. 59-67. – za članek v reviji: Strehovec, Janez. “Računalniška igra kot igra.” Maska 18.78-79 (2003): 26-32. – za članek v gledališkem listu: Kermauner, Taras. “Nova Sizifova viža.” Gledališki list SNG Drama Ljubljana 76.5 (1996/97): 10-15. – za članek v časopisu: Inkret, Andrej. “Smole: o vprašanjih modernega slovenstva.” Delo 14. okt. 1981: 8. Seznam arhivskih virov navedemo ločeno od seznama literature in ga sestavimo tako, da najprej zapišemo ime arhiva, nato ime fonda ali zbirke in signaturo. Ko arhivski vir citiramo med besedilom, v oklepaju navedemo ime arhiva in skrajšano oznako arhivske enote. Članke pošljite na naslov: amfiteater@agrft.uni-lj.si.

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Submission Guidelines

The journal Amfiteater publishes articles in the field of the performing arts, with an emphasis on interdisciplinary studies of performance in the context of different media, cultures, social sciences and arts. Articles are accepted in Slovenian and English languages. It is expected that any manuscript submitted has not been published before and has not been submitted at the same time for publication elsewhere. All submissions are peer reviewed. The recommended length of articles is from 30,000 to 45,000 characters including spaces. Authorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s name, postal address and e-mail address are to be specified on a cover sheet along with a short biography for publication that does not exceed 550 characters including spaces. An abstract of up to 1,800 characters (including spaces) and a list of keywords (5-8) are to be added at the end of the article. Submit articles as an attachment file in Microsoft Word format, in the Times New Roman font, 12 point, with double line spacing. Each new paragraph is marked with an empty line. Quotations longer than five lines are placed in separate paragraphs, in 10 point size, without quotation marks. Abbreviations and adaptations of quotations are marked in square brackets. Notes are not meant for quoting literature; they should appear as footnotes marked with consecutive numbers.

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When quoting an author and related work within the text, state

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only the page numbers in brackets, e.g., (161-66). When the author of the quoted work is not mentioned in the sentence, state the author’s name and the page numbers in brackets without punctuation between them, e.g., (Reinelt 161-66). For different bibliographical entries by the same author, include a shortened title of the work, e.g., (Reinelt, Javno 161-66). The bibliography is structured according to MLA style (6th edition). – Book: Reinelt, Janelle. Javno uprizarjanje. Eseji o gledališču našega časa. Trans. K. Jerin and K. J. Kozak. Ljubljana: Mestno gledališče ljubljansko, 2006. (Knjižnica MGL, 143). – Book Article or Chapter: Auslander, Philip. “‘Just Be Your Self ’: Logocentrism and difference in performance theory.” Acting (Re)Considered: Theories and Practices. Ed. Phillip B. Zarrilli. London and New York: Routledge, 1995. 59-67. – Journal Article: Strehovec, Janez. “Računalniška igra kot igra.” Maska 18.78-79 (2003): 26-32. – Newspaper or Magazine Article: Inkret, Andrej. “Smole: o vprašanjih modernega slovenstva.” Delo 14 Oct. 1981: 8. The list of archival sources is stated separately from the list of literature and is constructed so that the name of the archive is written first, then the name of the repository or collection and the signature. When archival sources are cited within the text, the name of the archive and a shortened version of the archival unit (box or folder) is written in parentheses. Send submissions by email to amfiteater@agrft.uni-lj.si.

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AMFITEATER Revija za teorijo scenskih umetnosti Journal of Performing Arts Theory ISSN 1855-4539 Mehanizmi nadzora in moči Mechanisms of Control and Power Uredila Edited by: Barbara Sušec Michieli

Glavna in odgovorna urednica Editor-in-chief: Barbara Orel Uredniški odbor Editorial Board: Bojana Kunst, Blaž Lukan, Aldo Milohnić, Denis Poniž, Janez Strehovec, Barbara Sušec Michieli, Rok Vevar Mednarodni uredniški svet International Advisory Board: Mark Amerika (University of Colorado, US), Marin Blažević (Sveučilište u Zagrebu, HR), Ramsay Burt (De Montfort University, GB), Jure Gantar (Dalhousie University, CA), Janelle Reinelt (The University of Warwick, GB), Anneli Saro (Tartu Ülikool, EE), Helmar Schramm (Freie Universität Berlin, DE), Miško Šuvaković (Univerzitet umetnosti u Beogradu, RS), S. E. Wilmer (Trinity College Dublin, IE) Izdaja: Univerza v Ljubljani, Akademija za gledališče, radio, film in televizijo (zanjo Aleš Valič, dekan) v sodelovanju z Društvom gledaliških kritikov in teatrologov Slovenije Published by: University of Ljubljana, Academy of Theatre, Radio, Film and Television (represented by Aleš Valič, Dean) in cooperation with the Association of Theatre Critics and Researchers of Slovenia Ta številka je nastala v sodelovanju z Mednarodno zvezo za gledališke raziskave (Delovna skupina za zgodovinopisje). This issue was prepared in collaboration with the International Federation for Theatre Research (Historiography Working Group).

Prevod v slovenščino Translation to Slovenian: Polona Glavan Prevod v angleščino Translation to English: Benjamin Carter, Sari Hantula, William McCann, Jana Renée Wilcoxen, Olga Vuković Lektoriranje slovenskega besedila Slovenian Language Editor: Katarina Podbevšek Lektoriranje angleškega besedila English Language Editor: Jana Renée Wilcoxen Korekture Proofreading: Jana Renée Wilcoxen, Maja Savelli Oblikovanje Graphic Design: studiobotas Tisk Print: Mat-Format Naklada Copies: 400 Revija izhaja dvakrat letno The journal is published twice annually. Cena posamezne številke Price of a single issue: 10 € Letna naročnina: 16 € za posameznike, 13 € za študente, 20 € za institucije Annual subscription: 16 € for individuals, 20 € for institutions Poštnina ni vključena Postage and handling not included. Prispevke, naročila in recenzentske izvode knjig pošiljajte na naslov uredništva Send manuscripts, orders and books for review to the Editorial Office Address: Amfiteater, UL AGRFT, Nazorjeva 3, SI-1000 Ljubljana, Slovenija E-pošta E-mail: amfiteater@agrft.uni-lj.si www.amfiteater.si Ljubljana, december 2008 Ljubljana, December 2008

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