The Liberated Performance

The Liberated Performance BERNARD DORT Translated by Barbara Kerslake The status of the theatre is fraught with contradiction. Obvious though it may be, we tend to lose sight of that fact. The theatre is based on "mimesis"; out of action it creates an illusion and also occasionally it transforms illusion into action. Its operation is thus governed by a major contradiction: that between text and performance. By definition the text is lasting and can be read or rehearsed any number of times: it tells a story. The performance, on the other hand, is transitory, and while reproducing the text, can never itself be repeated exactly: it portrays. The collusion between text and performance, which is the essence of the theatre, is therefore to some degree an unnatural alliance and is arrived at only through compromise and an uneasy balance of power. In some cases it is the performance which is subordinated to the text. This is true ofone particular tradition in the Western world, but it is after all a fairly recent tradition, dating back only to about the seventeenth century, and certainly it does not apply to all forms of theatre. In fact the so-called popular forms of entertainment, from farces to variety shows, are unaware ofit. In other cases and much more frequently - the text is subordinate to the staged production. This is particularly true of all non-European theatre. For all of its claims to unity and recognition as a full-fledged art-form, the modem Western theatre is still not exempt from these contradictions. In fact they become even more obvious, being always in the forefront and a constant preoccupation. Perhaps these contradictions are the very source of its theatricality. A UNIFIED THEATRE This modem theatre (which emerged toward the end of the nineteenth century) owed its origin to the emergence of the director as master of the stage. Admittedly he succeeded the stage-manager, but he did not merely inherit the The Liberated Performance 61 same function under a new name. The manager's task was to verify and co-ordinate the various elements of the production; he was simply responsible for maintaining a certain pre-established order. In the case of the director, he does not accept these elements as they are; he not only organizes, but anticipates them and thinks out in advance their interrelation. Before long, ifhe does not actually create them, he wiIl at least give them shape. The director sets to work before the elements ofa production have been determined, whereas the stage-manager came on the scene only after the fact. The director does not reproduce, he creates. Thus he is no longer in the position of simply carrying out orders. He is the author of the performance and wants also to be recognized as a creator. There has also been a further transformation. The production worked out by the director has a tendency to become fixed and develops into a kind of script in its own right. Sometimes the director may even put his ideas down in writing before attempting the staging ofthe work. (Otomar Krejca, for example, before beginning rehearsals, writes out a very detailed director's plan which amounts to a master-script for the production.) Thus the actual text of the play is doubled, taken over, or even supplanted by a new text: the performance script. In this way the theatre tries to regain a certain unity, beyond the opposition of text and performance. The great theorists at the end ofthe nineteenth century dreamed of a "unified theatre." As early as 1849, Wagner defined his notion of the "future work of art" as the Gesamtkunstwerk or "joint work of art." This would result from a "union of the arts, working together on a common audience: the trinity of poetry, music and acting, along with architecture and painting.'" Wagner wrote: 'The highest conjoint work of art is the Drama: it can only be at hand in all its possible fulness, when in it each separate branch ofart is at hand in all its own utmost fulness. ,,2 Fifty years later, in 1905, Gordon Craig went even further. In his view, according to Bablet, "the theatre...