{"id":636,"date":"2015-11-11T12:47:19","date_gmt":"2015-11-11T12:47:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theodoregrammatas.com\/?p=636"},"modified":"2015-11-11T12:47:19","modified_gmt":"2015-11-11T12:47:19","slug":"re-visiting-the-community-the-politics-of-theatre-beyond-the-theatre","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theodoregrammatas.com\/?p=636&lang=en","title":{"rendered":"Re-visiting the Community: The Politics of Theatre Beyond the Theatre"},"content":{"rendered":"

Weakening spectatorship<\/em><\/strong>
\nWhat the trajectory of modern Western theatre shows is a drastic taming of the audience. Paradoxically, the discovery of the \u201cphysiological man\u201d that realism and naturalism achieved, as Garner accurately points out, was accompanied by a perceptual deactivation of the audience\u2019s own physical presence (2007: 116).
\nThe limiting structures of perception and attention championed by the followers of realism, as well as the gradual casting of the audience in the role of \u201cclients,\u201d along with the elevation of professional artists, managers, public relation people, fund raisers and sponsors to the role of connoisseurs, not only sealed theatre off from the world but also discouraged any unruly responses, narrowing the repertoire of overt reactions on the receiving end to mere applause, thus making it, as Kershaw rightly notes, the major \u201cexpression of audience as community.\u201d An audience \u201cthat refuses to applaud, an audience that is riotous, disrupts theatre\u2019s harmonious ecosystem and exposes its shortcomings\u201d (Kershaw 2007: 190).
\nAs long as the performance was understood as the realization of an already complete project\/play, an act of representation taking place in an already signified topos, the viewing experience remained relatively unchanged, despite occasional challenges. In the last few years, however, the reinforcement of theatre\u2019s ecology and performative arsenal has changed many things, and above all, the way artists deal with the presentational qualities of theatre (for more see Lehmann 2006: 123-24). For example, the presence of narrator(s) on stage, or the use of non-professionals as actors, the activation of all the audience\u2019s senses (not just their ears and eyes), the change of location and its emphasis on the art of the everyday, the use of video recordings, diaries, photos, interviews and other documentary elements, the use of microphones and more advanced hi-tech gadgets, have allowed the emergence of new ecosites and aesthetics of spectatorship (or \u201cspect-actorship,\u201d according to Boal).
\nThese reinforce the image of theatre as an event that is more critical, more conscious of being there, \u201cof being present,\u201d as Kaye points out (2001: 1-12; also Hill 2007: 3-7 and Keidan 2007: 8-16); an event which, by provoking a crisis in the poetics and politics of representation, radicalizes once again viewing and understanding in a very different (and in many cases, more effective) way than other traditional modes of communicating. Using mainly non-traditional surroundings and boundary-pushing subject matter, contemporary artists leverage the power of live performance to provoke a deeper consideration of social, political, and eco-cultural issues. They invite audiences to deconstruct pre-conceived and fixed notions, and to build new understandings of their communities, their world and\u2014why not\u2014themselves. In a way, these artists are theatre-makers and community builders, artists who use performance as \u201ca mode of cultural action and not a simple reflection of some essentialized, fixed attributes of a static, monolithic culture but an arena for the constant process of negotiating experiences and meanings that constitute culture,\u201d as Zarilli claims (1995). They believe that the regular coming together of people would create, with the passage of time, a stronger sense of community, of the kind we experience attending marathon productions, whose duration gives people the chance to share meals, coffee breaks, ideas and to cultivate friendships. Whereas fifteen years ago a long, drawn out production would have scared them off, now it is common practice, if we judge from the festival popularity of shows such as Peter Stein\u2019s twelve-hour Daemons, Lupa\u2019s nine-hour Factory, Warlikowski\u2019s five-hour Apollonia, and the six-hour productions: Dodin\u2019s Brothers and Sisters, Forced Entertainment\u2019s Quizoola!, and Howard Barker\u2019s The Ecstatic Bible, among others. Barker is not exaggerating when he writes in his Arguments for a Theatre, that \u201cone day a play will be written for which men and women will miss a day\u2019s work\u201d (1997: 24). Durational live art surely denaturalizes our mode of spectatorship and forces us to ask questions about the value of art and whether spending so many hours is worth the trouble. Some people think it is.<\/p>\n

Flash Mobs and public space<\/strong><\/em>
\nFlirting with the communal are also the interventions in public spaces organized by professional and non-professional performance enthusiasts, such as the American flash mobs, which appear from nowhere, mix with the crowd that happens to be there, frustrating distinctions between life and theatre. By inserting art into everyday experience, these events surface as a direct critique of the lack of communal activity. Their reason d\u2019 etre is simple and direct: \u201cWe rarely go out to meet people,\u201d their organizers say. Whenever we do, we make sure to carry our gadgets with us, to protect us from mixing with other people (iPods, cell phones). Public spaces no longer have the meaning of the ancient agora, a place for exchanging ideas and discussing issues of communal interest. As an answer to that, these interventions somehow try to put us inside the action (and the ecosystem) and momentarily turn us into a community, blurring the lines that separate us and the spectacle. In terms of traditional hermeneutics, these events challenge the tyranny of the typical, the predictability of the trite, the boredom of the everyday. You never know if something is going to erupt. By storming public space, they claim it and also momentarily transform it into an (eco) art that people cannot purchase, but only participate in, and thus generate their own spectacle as well.
\nI underline the importance of these public interventions not so much for their artistic merit but mainly for their political significations. Especially for us Greeks, for whom the streets are rarely used for art\u2014they are usually a topos for parades, demonstrations, sit-ins, occupations and riots\u2014events which reintegrate art and everyday life, remind people why they should re-discover the city and the community they live in. To walk in the city or to visit a museum are routine activities, no doubt, yet they could cast new light on how places are understood, used or misused. As de Certeau says, these activities are important because they can disrupt standard notions of place and transform it into a more creative, transformative optimistic space (1984). And it goes without saying that the success or failure of all these playfully anarchic and occasionally discomforting events depends on our willingness \u201cto become cogs within a preprogrammed machine\u201d (Muse 2011: 19), which is not always an easy thing to do, because they disrupt the delicate fabric of our certainties. Once overcoming our fears and joining in, we can develop a new awareness of the place we live in and a new awareness of being part of a community (for more Muse 9-23).<\/p>\n

Dramaturgy of the spectator<\/strong><\/em>
\nThis reversal of the traditional, habitual ways of participating and interacting, characterizes a number of theatre ventures taking place in Athens\u2019 theatre life, among them Michael Marmarinos\u2019 successful Athens Festival production of Dimitris Demetriades\u2019 fiction-turned-into-drama Dying as a Country, which was realized with the participation of two hundred volunteers (the original planning was for six hundred) who walked together for some distance before entering the theatre.
\nAlso, the German version of Prometheus, brought to the same festival in 2011 by Rimini Protokoll and staged at the Roman amphitheatre of Herode Atticus, involved 100 local volunteers from all social strata, who answered questions about illegal immigration and local politics as well as questions related to their understanding of the ancient play, its myth, Prometheus\u2019 role etc.1 In cases like these, theatre is reintroduced as a public event partly conceived with and through the audience, shifting the emphasis to a dramaturgy of the spectator, which challenges binary oppositions and especially disperses any authoritarian pretence of objectivity. In these events, one does not simply attend; s\/he attends the event and also participates in it, pretty much the way Peter Handke dramatizes in his Offending the Audience (1966) where he says: \u201cYou are the subject matter. You are the center of interest [\u2026.] You are the event.\u201d And so we are.<\/p>\n

Food collective<\/strong><\/em>
\nOn many other occasions (I have attended about thirty in the last couple of years in Athens alone) the bait for this get-togetherness is the use of food, during, before or after the show. Sharing food with someone is direct communication\u2014face-to-face, not interface communication. Sharing food honors speech and live experience, not virtual reality, says Marranca (2008: 112). And that partly explains why theatre has always flirted with the communicative potential of gastronomy. Ancient Greek festivals, for example, were suffused with intense aromas, including fruits, florals, grains, animal offerings, wine, honey and oil libations. In the lavish feasts of the Middle Ages, food did not just accompany a performance; food was a performance. Aristocrats used food as an opportunity for an elaborate and costly display of their power (Cole 2007: 92-104). Elizabethan banquets and popular carnival events also engaged the senses. In Hasidic culture, Kirshenblatt-Gimblett informs us, there is the tish, a kind of musical banquet during which the rebe (charismatic leader) holds \u201ccourt in the community\u2019s house of study [\u2026.] He will bless food, deliver a discourse [\u2026] and dance with his followers\u201d (2007: 72). In the twentieth century, audiences of many avant-garde events, particularly those of the Dadaists, very frequently \u201chonored\u201d food by throwing it at the performers\u2014 tomatoes and eggs being the most popular, due to their splattering effect. In the post-war era we have numerous instances in which food is used, from Andy Warhol\u2019s soup cans and Coke bottles to Alan Kaprow\u2019s Apple Shrine and Eat Environments, to Carolee Schneemann\u2019s Meat Joy with its celebratory sausages and chickens, to Fluxus artists such as Alison Knowles, among others (for more see Marranca 2008: 113-15).
\nWith the development of performance in the \u201870s and \u201880s, the presence of food continued to appeal to artists. According to Marranca, the renewed interest in storytelling \u201cparallels the ascendancy of restaurant culture. A meal becomes an event through the addition of good conversation that has more often than not less to do with the food consumed than the quality of companionship articulated.\u201d In more ways than one, food helps the creation of culture and civilization (117). As Kishenblatt-Gimblett notes, discussing Great Small Works, the New York ensemble founded in 1995 as a collective of artists who keep theatre at the heart of social life, draw on folk, avant-garde, and popular theater traditions to address contemporary issues. The regular coming together of people creates with the passage of time \u201ca sense of community.\u201d Through \u201ccommensality, more than cuisine, these artists are redefining the nature and meaning of theatre\u201d (2007: 83). This is something the Bread and Puppet Theatre has been doing for many years, Kirshenblatt-Gimblett reminds us. Preparing bread and sharing it with their audiences, they show that theatre is as important to people as bread. By connecting their puppets with bread, they make their shows more meaningful and less about \u201cpainterly and sculptural ambitions\u201d (Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 2007: 83).
\nIt is obvious that the strong comeback of forgotten senses and communication channels betrays people\u2019s need for intimacy in a world of loneliness. Especially in countries like Greece which have been experiencing a devastating fragmentation of their ecosystem, the collective spirit that is achieved through food explains its popularity in the theatre community. Since people cannot turn to their government for help, they turn to each other. One such recent example is the performance of Sylvia Plath\u2019s work Three Women, a Poem, and Three Vices, (staged in SIX D.O.G.S, a bar-restaurant in downtown Athens, 2011), which took place in the bar\u2019s kitchen, a place where, as poetry readers know, Plath loved to spend a great deal of her time. During the performance, the three actresses cooked for the audience.
\nIn another performance, this time staged in a wagon bar, two actresses served coffee and cookies to the audience and the passengers of the train before confessing their personal stories to them. In the performance Food Recipes for Women Writers at Cabaret Voltaire (2011), the protagonist (Alexia Moustaka) used the recipe book she had with her to cook for the audience. In the performance of Robin Soan\u2019s The Arab Israeli Cook Book, staged in the agora of Kypseli (2010), one of the most densely populated areas in Europe with a huge population of immigrants, the director Irene Spanou underlined the similarities between Arabs and Israelis through their food recipes. The spectators were invited to join them while they ate and told each other stories.<\/p>\n

Last but not least is the example of the 2011-12 ticket sales policy for The State Theatre of Northern Greece: for certain productions (five altogether, hosted under the umbrella term \u201cSocial Theatrestore\u201d), instead of cash (normally something between 10-20 euros), people handed over food at the ticket booth. The first production that launched this initiative was Enda Walsh\u2019s Chatroom, for which dozens of spectators showed up carrying bags of pasta, sugar, flour and even toys and baby clothes. As Sotiris Hatzakis, the artistic director of the State Theatre put it, “We are creating a solidarity network that works in terms of direct
\ndemocracy. And we intend to keep it going next year too, since all signs show that the crisis is set to endure.”
\nThis is not to say that a large state theatre like this, which lives on state money, has suddenly turned radical. What I am arguing here is that radical social changes (of the kind that Greece has been experiencing for the last four years) equally trigger inventive ways to inspire audiences, engage communities and also discuss burning national issues that directly affect their lives. 2<\/p>\n

Are they political?<\/strong><\/em>
\nAs already mentioned, by grouping all these trends together I do not claim that they are the same. Many of them are situational responses to specific grievances or desires. Some feel that there is something fundamentally off-kilter and unrepresentative about the way our life is organized. Some others feel that corporate globalization has greatly weakened national governmental power to regulate the life of their citizens. What unites them, however, is their concern and restlessness about the reality (mainly economic) that globalization has created. They all see that new problems have appeared which demand new methods. Brecht speaks for them all when he says: \u201cReality changes; in order to represent it, modes of representation must change. Nothing comes of nothing; the new comes from the old, but that is why it is new\u201d (1974: 51).
\nBrecht is more interested in asking questions and provoking thought in his audience than providing pre-digested answers. And so are many contemporary artists. The fact that they are highly alert to ideas of context and site, and also very attentive to the complexities and sophistication of contemporary audiences\u2014and their cultural values, identities and expectations\u2014makes them political (in a very Brechtian sense).
\nContemporary artists are political because they invest in ideas of immediacy and reality and create new spaces for their audiences to re-consider what it means to be here, now, this moment, to participate, to explore unknown performance cartographies, to wonder about the political and ecological context that governs their habitus. To talk about things forgotten or never talked before.
\nTo share food or inhale the fragrance of simmering food or pay to eat what the actors have cooked during the show, thus forcing them to break free from the constraints of social decorum and become \u201dspect-actors\u201d with the goal of applying what they have learned to their own lives.
\nContemporary artists are political not because they necessarily dramatize political issues as such, but because they interrogate the way in which we receive and translate information in everyday life. By breaking standard norms, by doing away with clich\u00e9s and entering uncharted territories, by disrupting boundaries, disciplines and senses, they bring to our attention issues that matter to the legislature, \u201cthat enervate the elements that pacify the effects of theatre, that stir up emotions and senses in more interesting and engaging ways,\u201d as Kershaw soundly observes (2008: 203).
\nContemporary artists are political because their antidote to what globalization and commodification have brought, is a theatre which creates the conditions for the emergence of an audience with a new attitude towards place, viewing, sharing, participating and mainly consuming theatre. An audience ready to pose questions about the meaning of theatricality, of re-enactment, authenticity, participation: Who is making art? How is s\/he making it? Where? Why? For whom? Questions that challenge us to explore the (im)possibilities of theatre and also interrogate our own citizenship in a world that is constantly in a state of flux.
\nIn these ventures, Brechtian distancing and Boalian spect-actorship intermingle, aiming both to entertain and to engage. At the same time, it should be noted that by entering situations that disturb theatrical space and affect perception, the spectators are inevitably confused because they are not presented with an independent artifact, a separate semiotic system that draws a line between belief and disbelief, artistic and conventional norms. Once art severs itself from its signifier status and claims a life of its own, it becomes an event\u2014an event which opens up the possibility for all participants to experience a metamorphosis. Its object no longer depends on the meanings attributed to them. These events remind the crowds that anywhere (and anything) can become a performance. At the same time, these events also pose a big problem: Who\u2019s to judge?<\/p>\n

How good, how bad?<\/strong><\/em>
\nIn the arts there is always someone that claims the authority to ascertain whether the event succeeded or failed, which, however, does not seem to fully apply here. When someone radically departs from standard poetics and spatial frames, when he searches for a theatre beyond the theatre, things become more complex and confusing, due to the equally complex oscillation between presence (the corporeal) and representation. Fischer-Lichte makes the point that once the artist ceases to be the god of the event, the \u201cpoetic genius\u201d described by Coleridge and other Romantics (and later on by modernists), but rather a subject engaged \u201cin a continuous process of determining and being determined,\u201d it goes without saying that s\/he no longer exercises his\/her free will on the spectators (Fischer-Lichte 2008: 164).
\nEach spectator brings forth meanings according to subjective conditions, contributes to the show and is influenced by it (2008: 148, 154). Which means that the effect is a reciprocal process. The spectator-participant co-determines the course of the performance, and by doing so s\/he opens it up to the endless game of possibilities (Fischer-Lichte 2008: 165, 163). In situations where the \u201cas if\u2019s\u201d and the play of illusion are erased and the audience\u2019s experience acquires utmost importance, the question is no longer how far can performance (or theatre in general) go, but how far the spectator can go to accept a show as an artefact?
\nSumming up<\/strong><\/em>
\nMost of these performances (from Greece and elsewhere) which mingle with people, stretch the limits of established practices, integrate unpredictable elements, dangerously flirt with the possibility of art without illusions, or \u201ctheatre beyond the theatre,\u201d have one thing in common: to reconnect us with life by making the ordinary appear conspicuous, and thus extraordinary. They want to \u201cshow the endless possibilities that performance brings to the formation of unsuspected modes of attention\u201d (Banes & Lepecki 2007: 4). As noted earlier, some of these performances are more concerned with cultural negotiation, which suggest a more pragmatic interest in theatre aesthetics; others are more political through their goal of a more critical reflection on things, whereas others have less specific social concerns. Ultimately, what counts is a commitment to extending the theatre\u2019s topography and democratic participation through active collaboration with different communities and social groups. What we see developing is theatre as cultural force mediating change, what it means to be in the world and its variable ecosystems. In these ventures, theatre is not an abstraction, a thing \u201cout there\u201d in a darkened room, but an embodied experience; or better, a re-inscribed experience.
\nTheatre, no matter in what form, shows once again its transformative powers. Whether what we see of late is the short(est)cut to utopia or a cut that is beautifully drawn between high art and bullshit, time will tell. Until it does, let us at least enjoy the trip.<\/p>\n

NOTES<\/strong>
\n1 This same participatory spirit dominated an earlier work of theirs, the reenactment of an entire parliamentary debate live in Deutschland 2\u2014Berlin Back Up, which lasted sixteen hours with two hundred volunteer-participants (Brandl-Risis 2011: 61).
\n2 A similar tactic is followed by the N.Y based Foundry Theatre, which organizes feasts that bring together the artists and the spectators. Instead of money to get in, each spectator brings his\/her own wine.<\/p>\n

\n

BIBLIOGRAPHY<\/strong>
\nBanes, Sally & Andre Lepecki, eds. The Senses in Performance. New York &
\nLondon: Routledge, 2007.
\nBarker, Howard. Arguments for a Theatre. Manchester: Manchester UP, 1977.
\nBrandl-Risi, Bettina. \u201cMoving and Speaking Through the Event, Once More.\u201d
\nTheater 40. 3 (2011): 55-65.
\nBrecht, Bertolt. \u201cAgainst Georg Lucacs.\u201d Trans. S. Hood. New Left Review 84
\n(1974): 39-53.
\nCertau, M. de The Practice of Everyday Life. Trans. S. Rendall. Berkeley, CA.:
\nU. of California Press, 1984.
\nCole, Denise E. \u201cEdible Performance: Feasting and Festivity in Early Tudor
\nEntertainment.\u201d The Senses in Performance. Eds. Sally Banes and Andre
\nLepecki. New York & London: Routledge, 2007. 92-104.
\nFischer-Lichte, Erika. The Transformative Power of Performance: A New
\nAesthetics. Trans. Saskya Iris Jain. London & New York: Routledge, 2008.
\nGarner, Stanton Jr. \u201cThe Gas Heart.\u201d Modern Drama 50. 4 (2007).
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\nLeslie Hill & Helen Paris. London: Palgrave\/Macmillan, 2007. 3-7.
\nKaye, Nick. Site-specific Art: Performance, Place and Documentation. London
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\nKeidan, Lois. \u201cThis Must be the Place: Thoughts on Place, Placelessness and
\nLive Art Since the 1980s.\u201d Performance and Place. Eds. Leslie Hill & Helen
\nParis. London: Palgrave, Macmillan, 2007.8-16.
\nKershaw, Baz. Theatre Ecology: Environments and Performance Events.
\nCambridge: Cambridge U. Press, 2007.
\nKirshenblatt-Gimblett, Barbara. \u201cMaking Sense of Food in Performance: the
\nTable and the Stage.\u201d The Senses in Performance. Eds. Sally Banes and Andre
\nLepecki. New York & London: Routledge, 2007. 71-89.
\nLehmann, Hans-Thies. Postdramatic Theatre. Trans. Karen Jur-Munby. New
\nYork & London: Routledge, 2006.
\nMarranca, Bonnie. Performance Histories. New York: PAJ Publications, 2008.
\nMuse, John H. \u201cFlash Mobs and the Diffusion of Audience.\u201d Theater 40. 3
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\nZarrilli, Phillip. Acting (Re)considered: A Theoretical and Practical Guide.
\nLondon: Routledge, 1995.<\/p>\n

\n

Savas Patsalidis<\/p>\n

Professor of Theatre Studies, School of English,\u00a0 Aristotle University of Thessaloniki<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Weakening spectatorship What the trajectory of modern Western theatre shows is a drastic taming of the audience. Paradoxically, the discovery of the \u201cphysiological man\u201d that realism and naturalism achieved, as Garner accurately points out, was accompanied by a perceptual deactivation of the audience\u2019s own physical presence (2007: 116).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":637,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[128],"tags":[299,297],"class_list":["post-636","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-global-theatre","tag-politic-theatre","tag-297"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/theodoregrammatas.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/%CE%9F%CE%99%CE%94%CE%99%CE%A0%CE%9F%CE%A5%CE%A3-%CE%A4%CE%95%CE%9A%CE%91%CE%9D%CE%A4.jpg?fit=640%2C472&ssl=1","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theodoregrammatas.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/636","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theodoregrammatas.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theodoregrammatas.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theodoregrammatas.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theodoregrammatas.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=636"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/theodoregrammatas.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/636\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":638,"href":"https:\/\/theodoregrammatas.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/636\/revisions\/638"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theodoregrammatas.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/637"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theodoregrammatas.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=636"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theodoregrammatas.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=636"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theodoregrammatas.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=636"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}