Ambient Space in Twentieth-Century Theatre: The Space of Silence

Ambient Space in Twentieth-Century Theatre: The Space of Silence DEAN WILCOX THE APPROACH: OCCUPIED PLACE AND UNDIFFERENTIATED SPACE The concept of space as an element of theatrical presentation is as old as the medium itself. Space has been consistently engaged and manipulated: from the natural space that surrounded the earliest Greek theatres; to the dispersed space that typifies medieval performance; to the containment and control of illusionary space in the Renaissance culminating in the "fourth-wall" realism of the modern era. While the expression of space may vary in the above examples , onc thing remains constant: a superimposition of textuality onto spatiality in which the inherent qualities of the space are subsumed by the locating force of the narrative. The natural world in the Greek performance is easily linked to the exterior of Agamemnon's palace, the fnigmentary quality of performance in the Middle Ages conveys a secluded spot where Abraham intends to sacrifice Isaac, the interior of a banquet hall is magically transformed into a city street, and the familiar proscenium arch theatre becomes the home that Nora inevitably escapes. The process at work in each of these examples is onc not unfamiliar to theatre audiences and scholars. Throughout the history of theatre, "space" has been viewed as a palimpsest that has the potential to transport its viewers to Elsinore one day, late nineteenth-century Scandinavia the next, and a fragmented postmodem landscape that barely resembles either the day after that. While tacitly addressed as "space," what is really at work in each of these examples is the creation of a theatrical place that usurps the distinct qualities of the given space. The question that this essay addresses is whether there is an alternate approach to theatrical space that allows space to be space by embracing it as a fundamental component of the dramatic structure. By drawing on a variety of examples, this paper argues that space, independent of a Modern Drama, 46:4 (Winter 2003) 542 Ambient Space 543 locating narrative, must be considered as much a part of the contemporary theatre as such standard elements as character, plot, and dialogue. In Space and Place: The Perspective ofExperience geographer Yi-Fu Tuan highlights the difference between the two concepts by discussing "place" as "space" that is endowed with value. In opposition to this idea of place, space remains that area of abstract place, unfamiliar and undifferentiated by a unique system of values. In a nod to poststructuralist thought, Tuan is careful to emphasize that the ideas of "space" and "place" are not mutually exclusive, but tend to merge via experience, each requiring the other for definition. Through his observations Tuan raises the question, Can one have a place without space, or the idea of space without its more defined opposite? It is through his denotation of space as "more abstract than 'place'" (6) that Tuan offers convenient categories to illuminate the spatial properties of the stage. Refining this idea in his philosophical/historical overview, The Fate of Place, Edward Casey argues, in relation to the work of such postmodem theorists as Foucault, Derrida, Bachelard, Benjamin, and Tuan, that "the importance of place is a conviction that place itself is no fixed thing: it has no steadfast essence" (286). For each of these theorists, place is not a stable entity, but "part of something ongoing and dynamic" (286). As a perpetual process place is continually defined and redefined with regards to a variety of sociological criteria, not least of which is OUf own body's relation to the surrounding space. As Casey points out elsewhere, "To be in the world, to be situated at all, is to be in place" (Getting xv). When linked with Tuan 's experiential focus, the significance of the body in Casey's work suggests that we understand the idea of space and place primarily because we inhabit them physically and mentally. Tuan's observations share with Casey's discussion of place the dynamic interaction of present bodily forms, yet where space and place diverge is in relation to those same bodies. Summarizing the work of the sixth-century philosopher and theologian Philoponus, Casey explores a distinction made between "bodily extension" ("equivalent to the...