Speaking About Violence

If public executions were practiced today, we can be quite sure that they would have more audience then theatres. Gladiator contests two-thousand years ago, the medieval burning of witches, guillotining during the French Revolution, hanging of Nazis on main squares of European cities quite recently—all of these were theatre performances in a way. Their absolute dramaturgy always attracted crowds.

Hollywood producers still believe that there is a murderer and maniac hiding inside every ordinary citizen. And all middle-class citizens, from teenagers to housewives, love to identify with the criminals, or, at least, with the people who are carrying guns. One might assume that modern society, obsessed with security and shaping itself according to a model that increasingly resembles a totalitarian kindergarten, deep down in its heart, craves for terror, destruction and blood. This may truly seem to be the case if one looks around at what is happening on the stages of world theatres today. But is it really true?

In the first third of the twentieth century, Antonin Artaud promoted a new theatrical paradigm, according to which the human subconscious is to be revealed onstage, and the theatre’s task is to explore the territories that are concealed and invisible. Perhaps this seemed inspiring sixty years ago, yet, today, in my opinion, this is no longer interesting. For these territories did not hide anything of particular depth and complexity. There is plenty of evidence available to prove the fact that human beings originate from monkeys, and searching for some more would be a waste of time. Today, a much more exciting challenge is trying to prove the opposite—what makes people different from animals. In my opinion, Artaud’s idea of the theatre has been fully exhausted by now and is simply boring. Mushrooms don’t grow there anymore. They all have been picked up. It seems to me, Sarah Kane’s example is the last stop or the final destination for this movement in theatre.

And yet, why are theatremakers still convinced that the best way to communicate with the audience is by using aggression and violence? Why today, when the profession of a theatrical makeup artist has almost disappeared, does the amount of artificial blood used on world stages keep increasing? Why do theatre professionals, who try to avoid aggression when communicating with their family members and friends, believe that this is the best way to form a dialogue with the audience—total strangers, who, moreover, have paid their money to make this dialogue possible in the first place?

I am focusing on professionals since, in my experience, there is far less aggression to be faced in the amateur theatre. Is the answer really as simple as that—money and the market? To be as eccentric as possible, to make noise?

Being a professional director, I can assure you that the technique of building a mise-en-scène by escalating its aggressive potential is extremely simple. It is, indeed, a primitive method and does not ask for a very special gift or knowledge. To build a mise-en-scène by evoking instincts is just as complex a task as for a cook to boil an egg and to fry potatoes.

In the New Riga Theatre, we have the following quotation by Peter Brook painted above the door through which the actors walk on stage: “The quality of energy generated in the audience will always be identical to the quality of energy coming from the stage.” Simple physics. Low energies will always communicate only on the same level. It is impossible to hope for a spiritual dialogue if you are using aggression as the means of communication.

Of course, we know that since the ancient history of world drama, the characters of plays are used to solving conflict situations by killing each other, stabbing each other, poking out each other’s eyes or cutting pieces of flesh out of each other’s bodies. This, however, is not how people would normally behave. Let us face the truth: it is obvious that almost all the plays in the history of theatre have been written about...