ABSTRACT
This essay undertakes a performance analysis of the Sydney Front’s Don Juan in order to re-evaluate the significance of Brecht’s notion of culinary theatre for contemporary performance. The analysis examines how seduction operates as a principle of performance to enable a range of challenging encounters between performer and spectator. The Sydney Front’s seduction of the spectator elicits the figure of the cannibal signaling the entrance of a charged mode of consumption onto the stage. The spectacular display of cannibalism in performance takes place in the context of a discussion of the efficacy of political theatre in “the society of the spectacle” where the audience has been transformed into consumers. In this discussion, the figure of the cannibal acts as a limit term articulating “the horror” of the modern world in which there are evidently no checks on consumption. While questioning whether we are at the limits of our capacity to consume, the figure of the cannibal also illuminates the need for the practice of restraint in the midst of a culture of excess. Thus, the figure of the spectator-cannibal revitalizes thinking about the contemporary mode of the culinary in terms of political and ethical performance.
