ABSTRACT
THE WORD ‘TEXT’, BEFORE referring to a written or spoken, printed or manuscripted text, meant ‘a weaving together’. In this sense, there is no performance which does not have ‘text’. That which concerns the text (the weave) of the performance can be defined as ‘dramaturgy’, that is, drama-ergon, the ‘work of the actions’ in the performance. The way in which the actions work is the plot. It is not always possible to di»erentiate between what, in the dramaturgy of a performance, may be ‘direction’ and what may be the author’s ‘writing’. This distinction is clear only in theatre which seeks to interpret a written text. Di»erentiating between autonomous dramaturgy and the performance per se dates back to Aristotle’s attitude towards the tradition of Greek tragedy, a tradition already well in the past even for him. He drew attention to two di»erent fields of investigation: the written texts and the way they are performed. The idea that there exists a dramaturgy which is identifiable only in an autonomous, written text and which is the matrix of the performance is a consequence of those occasions in history when the memory of a theatre has been passed on by means of the words spoken by the characters in its performances. Such a distinction would not even be conceivable if it were the performances in their entirety that were being examined. In a performance, actions (that is, all that which has to do with the dramaturgy) are not only what is said and done, but also the sounds, the lights and the changes in space. At higher level of organisation, actions are the episodes of the story or the di»erent facets of a situation, the arches of time between two accents of the performance, between two changes in the space – or even the evolution of the musical score, the light changes, and the variations of rhythm and intensity which a performer develops following certain precise physical themes (ways of walking, of handling props, of using make-up or costume). The objects used in the performance are also actions. They are transformed, they acquire di»erent meanings and di»erent emotive colourations. All the relationships, all the interactions between the characters or between the characters and the lights, the sounds and the space, are actions. Everything that works directly on the spectators’ attention, on their understanding, their emotions, their kinaesthesia, is an action. The list could become uselessly long. It is not so important to define what an action is, or to determine how many actions there may be in a performance. What is important is to observe
that the actions come into play only when they are woven together, when they become texture: ‘text’. The plot can be of two types. The first type is accomplished through the development of actions in time by means of a concatenation of causes and e»ects or through an alternation of actions which represent two parallel developments. The second type occurs only by means of simultaneity: the simultaneous presence of several actions. Concatenation and simultaneity are the two dimensions of the plot. They are not two aesthetic alternatives or two di»erent choices of method. They are the two poles whose tension and dialectic determine the performance and its life: actions at work – dramaturgy. Let us return to the important distinction – investigated especially by Richard Schechner – between theatre based on the mise-en-scène of a previously written text, and theatre based on a performance text. This distinction can be used to define two di»erent approaches to the theatrical phenomenon and therefore two di»erent performance results. For example: while the written text is recognisable and transmissible before and independently of the performance, the performance text exists only at the end of the work process and cannot be passed on. It would in fact be tautological to say that the performance text (which is the performance) can be extracted from the performance. Even if one used a transcription technique similar to that used for music, in which various horizontal sequences can be arranged vertically, it would be impossible to pass on the information: the more faithful one tried to make it, the more illegible it would become. Even aural and visual mechanical recording of the performance captures only a part of the performance text, excluding (at least in the case of performances that do not use a proscenium stage) the complex montages of actor-spectator distance-proximity relationships, and favouring, in all those cases in which the actions are simultaneous, a single montage from among many. It reflects in fact only one observer’s way of seeing. The distinction between theatre based on a written text, or in any case on a text composed a priori and used as the matrix of the mise-en-scène, and theatre whose only meaningful text is the performance text, represents rather well the di»erence between ‘traditional’ and ‘new’ theatre. This distinction becomes even more useful if we wish to move from a classification of modern theatrical phenomena to a microscopic analysis or an anatomical investigation of scenic bios, of dramatic life: dramaturgy. From this point of view, the relationship between a performance text and a text composed a priori no longer seems like a contradiction but like a complementary situation, a kind of dialectic opposition. The problem is not, therefore, the choice of one pole or another, the definition of one or another type of theatre. The problem is that of the balance between the concatenation pole and the simultaneity pole. The only prejudicial thing that can occur is the loss of balance between these two poles. When a performance is based on a text composed of words, there is a danger that the balance in the performance will be lost because of the prevalence of linear relationships (the plot as concatenation). This will damage the plot understood as the weaving together of simultaneously present actions. If the fundamental meaning of the performance is carried by the interpretation of a written text, there will be a tendency to favour this dimension of the performance, which parallels the linear dimension of language. There will be a tendency to consider as ornamental elements all
the interweavings that arise out of the conjunction of several actions at the same time, or simply to treat them as actions that are not woven together, as background actions. The tendency to underestimate the importance of the simultaneity pole for the life of the play is reinforced, in the modern way of thinking, by the kind of performance which Eisenstein in his time was already calling the ‘real level of theatre’, that is, the cinema. In the cinema, the linear dimension is almost absolute and the dialectic life of the interwoven actions (the plot) depends basically on two poles: the concatenation of actions and the concatenation of an abstract observer’s attention, the eye-filter which selects close-ups, long shots, etc. The cinema’s grip on our imagination increases the risk that the balance between the concatenation and simultaneity poles will be lost when we make theatre performances. The spectator tends not to attribute a significant value to the interweaving of simultaneous actions and behaves – as opposed to what happens in daily life – as if there was a favoured element in the performance particularly suited to establishing the meaning of the play (the words, the protagonist’s adventures, etc.). This explains why a ‘normal’ spectator, in the West, often believes that he doesn’t fully understand performances based on the simultaneous weaving together of actions, and why he finds himself in di¹culty when faced with the logic of many Asian theatres, which seem to him to be complicated or suggestive because of their ‘exoticness’. If one impoverishes the simultaneity pole, one limits the possibility of making complex meanings arise out of the performance. These meanings do not derive from a complex concatenation of actions but from the interweaving of many dramatic actions, each one endowed with its own simple meaning, and from the assembling of these actions by means of a single unity of time. Thus the meaning of a fragment of a performance is not only determined by what precedes and follows it, but also by a multiplicity of facets whose three-dimensional presence makes it live in the present with a life of its own. In many cases, this means that for a spectator, the more di¹cult it becomes for him to interpret or to judge immediately the meaning of what is happening in front of his eyes and in his head, the stronger is his sensation of living through an experience. Or, said in a way that is more obscure but perhaps closer to the reality: the stronger is the experience of an experience. The simultaneous interweaving of several actions in the performance causes something similar to what Eisenstein describes in reference to El Greco’s View of Toledo: that the painter does not reconstruct a real view but rather constructs a synthesis of several views, making a montage of the di»erent sides of a building, including even those sides that are not visible, showing various elements – drawn from reality independently of each other – in a new and artificial relationship. These dramaturgical possibilities apply to all the di»erent levels and all the di»erent elements of the performance taken one by one, as well as to the overall plot. The performer, for example, obtains simultaneous e»ects as soon as he breaks the abstract pattern of movements, just as the spectator is about to anticipate them. He composes his actions (‘composes’ used here in its original meaning, deriving from cum-ponere, ‘to put together’) into a synthesis that is far removed from a daily way of behaving. In this montage, he segments the actions, choosing and dilating certain fragments, composing the rhythms, achieving an equivalent to the real action by means of what Richard Schechner calls the ‘restoration of behaviour’. The use of the written text itself, when it is not interpreted only as a concatenation of
actions, can guide elements and details, which are not themselves dramatic, into a simultaneous interweaving. We can draw from Hamlet, for example, certain information: traces of the age-old strife between Norway and Denmark are to be found in the conflict between Hamlet’s father and Fortinbras’s father; England needing to pay taxes to Denmark echoes the days of the Vikings; the life of the Court recalls the Renaissance; the allusions to Wittenberg reflect Reformation issues. All these various historical facets (which we can really use as different historical facets) can be various choices by means of which the play can be interpreted: in this case, one chosen facet will eliminate the others. They can also, however, be woven together into a synthesis with many simultaneously present historical elements, whose ‘meaning’ as it relates to the interpretation of Hamlet – that is, what the play will show to the spectators – is not foreseeable. The more the director has woven the di»erent threads together, according to his own logic, the more the meaning of the performance will appear surprising, motivated and unexpected, even to the director himself. Something similar can also be said for the play’s protagonist, for Hamlet. The concatenation of Shakespeare’s assembled actions (his montage) usually results in an image of Hamlet as a man in doubt, indecisive, consumed by melancholia, a philosopher ill-suited to action. But this image does not correspond to all the single elements of Shakespeare’s total montage. Hamlet acts resolutely when he kills Polonius; he falsifies the message from Claudius to the King of England with cold decisiveness; he defeats the pirates; he challenges Laertes; he quickly notices and sees through the stratagems of his enemies; he kills the King. For an actor (and a director), all of these details, taken one by one, can be used as evidence with which to construct a coherent interpretation of Hamlet. But they can also be used as evidence of di»erent and contradictory aspects of behaviour to be assembled into a synthesis which is not the result of a previous decision about what kind of character Hamlet is going to be. As can be seen, this simple hypothesis brings us much closer to the creative process (that is, composition process) of many of the great actors in the Western tradition. In their daily work, they did not and do not begin with the interpretation of a character, but develop their work following a route not based on what? but on how?, assembling aspects that would at first seem incoherent from the point of view of habitual realism, and ending up with a formally coherent synthesis. Actions at work (dramaturgy) come alive by means of the balance between the concatenation pole and the simultaneity pole. There is a risk of this life being lost with the loss of tension between the two poles. While the alteration of balance for the sake of weaving through concatenation draws a performance into the somnolence of comfortable recognisability, the alteration of balance for the sake of weaving in the simultaneity dimension can result in arbitrariness, chaos. Or incoherent incoherence. It is easy to see that these risks are even greater for those who work without the guide of a previously composed text. Written text, performance text, the concatenation or linear dimension, the simultaneity or three-dimensional dimension: these are elements without any value, positive or negative. Positive or negative value depends on the quality of the relationship between these elements. The more the performance gives the spectator the experience of an experience, the more it
must also guide his attention in the complexity of the actions which are taking place, so that he does not lose his sense of direction, his sense of the past and future – that is, the story, not as anecdote but as the ‘historical time’ of the performance. All the principles that make it possible to direct the spectator’s attention can be drawn from the life of the performance (from the actions that are at work): the interweaving means of concatenation and the interweaving by means of simultaneity. To create the life of a performance does not mean only to interweave its actions and tensions, but also to direct the spectator’s attention, his rhythms, to induce tensions in him without trying to impose an interpretation. On the one hand, the spectator’s attention is attracted by the action’s complexity, its presence; on the other hand, the spectator is continuously required to evaluate this presence and this action in the light of his knowledge of what has occurred and in expectation of (or questioning about) what will happen next. As with the performer’s action, the spectator’s attention must be able to live in a three-dimensional space, governed by a dialectic which is his own and which is the equivalent of the dialectic that governs life. In the final analysis, one could relate the dialectic between the interweaving by means of concatenation and the interweaving by means of simultaneity to the complementary (and not the opposing) natures of the left and right hemispheres of the brain. Each Odin Teatret production uses the scenic space in a di»erent way. The actors do not adapt to given spatial dimensions (as happens on the proscenium stage) but model the architecture of the space according to the specific dramaturgical demands of each new production. But it is not only the respective spaces occupied by the actors and spectators that change from production to production. During a given single production, the actors sometimes work on the sides of the performing area, at other times in the middle; thus certain spectators experience certain actions in close-up, as it were – when the actors are but a few centimetres from them – while other spectators see the whole picture from a much wider angle. These same principles are used in outdoor performances, which take place in squares and streets, on balconies and on the rooftops of cities or villages. In this case the environment is given and apparently cannot change, but the actor can use his presence to make a dramatic character spring out of the architecture, which we are normally no longer able to see because of daily habits and usages and which we no longer experience with a fresh eye.
