Changed Textual Signs in Modern Theatricality: Gombrowicz and Handke

Changed Textual Signs in Modern Theatricality: Gombrowicz and Handke WLADIMIR KRYSINSKI Translated by Ruby Cohn The status of the theory of theatricality is equivocal and perhaps incapable of resolution. As a first critical approach, theatricality may be viewed by analogy with literariness [litterarite). Thus, it is almost a tautology, since theatricality is defined by characteristics of theatre as object, as literature; is literary when a metalanguage views it as an object. But the theatre-object is much more heterogeneous than literature. From another critical angle, theatricality is a concretization of the theatrical fact - histrionic or ludic, but also physical; it is the performance minus the text. But that too is equivocal. Theatregoers are well aware that all spectacles are not theatrical in the same way, and thus theatricality is doubly - at least doubly - in a situation of dependency. In the first place, theatricality depends on the director who conceives the performance, varying according to the signs encoded by a Reinhardt or a Craig, a Meyerbold or a Tairov, a Vitez or a Strehler, a Grotowski or a Krecja. Taking these names as emblems, we note that each ofthem theatricalizes tbeatre, but so differently that it is not easy to discover a common denominator among them. In the second place, the theatricality of the performance depends on the text to such an extent that there are as many theatricalities as plays. Within modemism (where we are still immured unless postrnodemism has absorbed it), we can distingnish many theatricalities in the many theatre texts. Buchner, Strindberg, O'Neill, Chekhov, Pirandello, Brecht, Beckett, lonesco, Genet, Pinter, Gombrowicz, Weiss, and Handke - to name only these - encode a theatricality that corresponds to their respective visions of the theatrical fact. What does it mean to encode theatricality in the text-pretext of performance? This is not an easy question although Barthes, for example, tries to state it clearly and coberently. In "Baudelaire's Theater," Barthes defines both prescenic and scenic theatricality inscribed in the text: 4 WLADlMJR KRYSINSKI What is theatrica1ity? It is theater-minns-text, it is a density of signs and sensations built up on stage starting from the written argument; it is that ecumenical perception of sensuous artifice - gesture, tone, distance, substance, light - which submerges the text beneath the profusion ofits external language. Ofcourse theatricality must be present in the first written germ of a work, it is a datum of creation not ofproduction. There is no great theater without a devouring theatricality - in Aeschylus, in Shakespeare, in Brecht, the written text is from the first carried along by the externality of bodies, of objects. of situations; the utterance irrunediately explodes into substances. I In "Literature and Signification," Barthes develops this definition. Theatricality is always a "density ofsigns," but it is an "infonnational polyphony," since theatre is a kind of "cybernetic machine."2 In spite ofits considerable insight, Barthes's discourse does not explain how the text encodes theatricality; nor does it explain bow, on the one hand, theatricality is to be a "density of signs," and on the other, a kind of "ecumenical perception of sensuous artifice - gesture, tone, distance, substance, light - whicb submerges the text. ... " Barthes resorts to two kinds of metaphors to define theatricality: the first, connoted by "density," is geometric, and the second, connoted by "ecumenical," is religious. But neither geometry nor religion explains how theatricality can be "built" on the wrinen play and at the same time "submerge the text beneath the profusion of its extemal language." I should say that Barthes is projecting the perfonnance upon the text, while artributing to it a secondary and aimost parasitic function with respect to the "density of signs." The names of Aeschylus, Shakespeare, and Brecht therefore indicate the diversity of theatre, but they also refer to a common denominator, to that "devouring theatricality" that is so all-encompassing that it carries the texts along despite their diversity. If theatricality is "devouring," we may ask what part of the text is devoured and how the text lends itself to this. One cannot answer these questions without asking what seems to me essential: what are the textual signs of theatricality? Ishall try to answerby showing to whatextent the text is a vehicular...