ABSTRACT
It seems appropriate that the title of a study concerning the performance Showtime by Forced Entertainment, should allude both to a fragment of popular culture, and the fragmentation inherent in the structure and process of theatrical representation and perception, both of which are reflected in the form and content of the performance. In the context of this study however, the significance of the title lies in the connotations of metaphysical violence that reverberate through the phrase, as I shall theorise they do, through the theatrical space. It is these discourses of metaphysical violence that inextricably link the processes of creation and perception, the actor, the act, and the spectator, and that are inherent in the construction and communication of meaning. Thus the title alludes to a fragment of the metaphysical internal dialectic that exists between the active bodies in the theatrical space, connoting both the abstract and physical registers upon which these violatory discourses function. I suggest that Showtime stages the functioning of these discourses, in the process of the construction of meaning within the theatrical space, and in doing so confronts and questions the inherent violence of that process, and its ideological concealment.
