The Classical Heritage of Modern Drama: The Case of Postmodern Theatre

The Classical Heritage of Modern Drama: The Case of Postmodern Theatre PATRICE PAVIS translated by Loren Kruger Whoever wishes to evaluate the classical heritage of modem drama is confronted from the beginning with the problem of defining notions which are either deliciously imprecise or archaic. This all too attractive opportunity tempts us to unravel the ambiguities attached to every one of these tenms and to test their paradoxical meanings and semantic richness. For it is only by playing on these words, using the negative dialectic dear to Theodor W. Adorno, that we can unblock certain contradictions and shake up some old habits. Each of these notions recalls its opposite, or at least a corrective or a different point of view that relativizes its meaning. I Classical is opposed to modern, but also, more recently, to pastmodern. I shall be examining these borderlines and this overflow of modernity to justify the paradox that posttnodern theatre cannot define itself without recourse to classical nonms. I shall be referring to Roland Barthes's distinction between the classical work and the modem text. 1 2 Heritage is at once a bourgeois and a Marxist idea. With regard to theatre, it refers. in the case of mise en scene, to the traditions of performance and to the interpretation of texts; and it refers, in the case of dramatic texts, to dramaturgical forms available. Postmodern theatre seems unwilling to listen to talk about textual or theatrical heritage, which it treats as no more than memory in the technical sense of that word, as an immediately available and reusable memory bank. 3 Modem, classical, and postmodern constitute three paradigms that are often confused and difficult to define a priori . The criterion separating them most precisely in the case of theatre would be theatrical usage and mise en scene, rather than the origin of the staged text. 2 PATRICE PAVIS 4 Drama, which refers to the written manifestation of theatre (i.e., the dramatic text), does not provide us with a satisfactory means of understanding what is modem about the theatre. The notion of theatre, on the other hand, allows us to juxtapose classicism, modernism, and postrnodernism with respect to the concrete practices of the actor, the stage, the audience - in short, of a specific theatrical enunciation which varies considerably over time, The title of this proposed reflection thus becomes - for the sake of dialectic as well as provocation - "The Textual Memory of Postmodem Theatre." In order to explain these terms, I shall take up each component of this title, defining the relationship between the modern and postmodern theatre on the one hand, and the classical theatre on the other, to justify the paradox that postmodern theatre recuperates by reworking the classical heritage and needs classical norms to establish its own identity. I CLASSICAL WORK OR MODERN TEXT? A The Work and the Text Before sketching a definition of postmodem theatre - a term used rather frequently today without much methodological precaution2 - we should examine the notion of classical text by returning to Barthes's idea of the classical work and the avant-garde text. The historical definition of the classical work or author has been habitually linked to the rather imprecise notion of ancient times, remote from the present. Difficulties arise the moment we look for any inherent structural properties of the classical text: we need, in effect, to evaluate the role of historicity in the signifying process of the text, in its concretization3 at various historical moments in different contexts, especially with respect to the reception and establishment of meaning by the reader or spectator. Concretizing the text, establishing its meaning. depends on factors of reception, which cannot however exclude the production and the intrinsic structure ofthe text. At the end ofthe circuit ofconcretization, one is in a position to give meaning to the "oldest" text (the most classical) or to the most recent (the most modem); this specific signification would tend to relativize considerably the distinction between classical and modern. We may indeed be tempted to treat the classical text either as a work like any other, only more temporally remote, or - as is often the case in contemporary mise en scene - as a text that...