Farce and Ritual: Arrabal's Contribution to Modern Tragic Farce

Farce and Ritual: Arrabal's Contribution to Modern Tragic Farce PETER NORRISH T.J. Donahue and J.-J. Daetwyler have recently given various interpretations of the symbolism within the ritual of Arrabal's plays. Looking at what is generally considered the best of them, L'Archirecre er l'Empereur d'Assyrie (I966),' for instance, Donahue says that it is here "that the use of ritual finds its richest and most profound significance, ... " arguing that "the play gradually grows into a parable of the fall of modern, technological man.... '" Daetwyler, for his part, concentrates on three distinct planes of interpretation: the sexual, the social, and the sacred.3 Before they consider possible social and metaphysical implications, both critics begin, however, on a more specifically psychological and emotive note. Donahue tells us that Arrabal's rituals have as one of their uses the provision for "a continuing exorcism of his fantasies" (p. 33), while Daetwyler seems to warn against too elevated or intellectualized a view by saying that Artabal's drama is primarily "un theatre de la terre et du coeur" (p. 9). These hints, which are rather lost sight of in the philosophical complexities oflater chapters, deserve to be followed up. Ritual in Arrabal may then be seen in a different light. The extensive interviews which Arrabal himself has given4 lead one to think that philosophical interpretations of his plays are certainly inore speculative than those which probe the personal and psychological realities that the texts indisputably contain. For Arrabal has constantly referred in these interviews to the autobiographical nature ofmost of his writings, particularly his obsession with unhappy childhood memories and the nightmares related to them. "Writing is perhaps a compensation, a liberation for me," he adds'> An investigation of the personally experienced, psychological symbolism within Arrabal's ritual reveals as well some interesting affinities in terms of genre and expression. On the surface, Arrabal's theatre is alternately light and dark; underneath, it is usually consistently sombre. With this composition, it has a place in new developments in France in the field of tragic farce, more so Arrabal's Tragic Farce 321 because of the juxtaposition or fusion of moods than because ofcontent, which may be less "absurdist" in Arrabal's case than is sometimes supposed. Much of Arrabal's writing has some superficial resemblances to traditional types of farce, and it also fits, to a much greater degree, into the very different modern frameworks of farce as redefined by the avant-garde movement of the 1950'S and 1960'S. This is an aspect of his work that has been neglected. Most of the well-known innovations were achieved by Beckett, and especially by Ionesco, in the first of the two decades. It was in the sixties that Arrabal (born in 1932) joined them in their success, his particular contribution consisting of a combination of farce and ritual. Farce and ritual are terms that are sometimes loosely applied. It may be helpful to recall in the first place that traditional farce has been defined as "broad, physical, visual comedy, whose effects are pre-eminently theatrical and intended solely to entertain; comedy which is slapstick, if you like, in a more or less coherently funny narrative.... ,,6 Ever since the Middle Ages, it has always assumed a wide variety of forms, but all have aimed at comic divertissement, being "uniquely destined to cause laughter."7 Ionesco8 and Beckett9 brought farce much closer to tragedy, mingling lightness and darkness to such an extent that farce became something of a hybrid. For Ionesco, it became an invitation to howl, to scream with derisive laughter. inwardly or otherwise, and thus to mock at the absurdity of contemporary life and of life in general. The blend of the comic and the tragic has always existed in theatre, particularly in the Romantic drama and more recently in Cocteau as far as France is concerned, but never to this degree. As for ritual, it is described by anthropologists as a special kind of behaviour, having a clear shape or pattern that may be repeated in a series of closely similar performances; this patterned behaviour is also of a kind that leads itself usually to symbolic...