ABSTRACT

In performance, physical presence, the body itself, is the locus at which the workings of ideological codes are perhaps the most insidious and also the most difficult to analyze, for the performing body is always both a vehicle for representation and, simply, itself. Even in the most conventionally mimetic forms of modern Western theatre, the actor’s body never fully becomes the character’s body. As Herbert Blau puts it:

In a very strict sense, it is the actor’s mortality which is the actual subject [of any performance], for he is right there dying in front of your eyes…. Whatever he represents in the play, in the order of time he is representing nobody but himself. How could he? that’s his body, doing time.