Catching the Wind in a Net: The Shortcomings of Existing Methods for the Analysis of Performance

Catching the Wind in a Net: The Shortcomings of Existing Methods for the Analysis of Performance! JURE GANTAR Despite what we often like to think, academics and theatre practitioner~ for the most part remain safely segregated, each on their own side of the continually widening gap between theory and practice, between reflection and creation. When actors, directors or designers venture into the realm of philosophy , as is the case with Richard Foreman's concept of "Ontological-Hysteric Theatre,'" their treatment of the subject is usually not perceived by the academic community to be quite as significant and methodologically coherent as when a similar problem is addressed by a "proper" scholar. Likewise, theoretical approaches to theatre such as Albert Camus's existentialist interpretation of acting in "The Myth of Sisyphus'" are regularly seen as bewildering , impractical, or outright amateurish by professional directors and actors. It is certainly difficult to imagine from a purely pragmatic point of view how "complex kinemorphs"4 or "semiotic ostension"s are supposed to be performed . Even in a few fonunate examples when theory and practice have been successfully united in the work of a single person - Benoit Brecht immediately springs to mind - it is not uncommon to observe significant discrepancies between one's theoretical teachings and one's practical work. Just.think of the number of comments on Brecht's inability to prevent his audiences from feeling sympathy with Mother Courage6 Frequently, the only thing which connects academics and perfonners is their mistrust in practical criticism as the sole attempt to bridge this gap. Not systematic enough for the scholars and too abstract for the practitioners. criticism is, even in its most constructive form, considered a marginal intellectual activity rather than a legitimate effon to overcome the self-imposed solitudes of Academia on the one hand, and Art on the other. The most writers such as Harold Clurman or Kenneth Tynan are credited with is the role of preservers of theatre history. Modern Drama, 39 (1996) 537 JURE GANTAR Perhaps the main reason for this division lies in the fact that performance as the modus vivendi of theatre is in its very nature ephemeral and indeterminate, and as such represents a serious epistemological challenge or even completely evades the scope of traditional academic inquiry. While most works of art are considered, even from a contemporary perspective, a relatively reliable source and, therefore, lend themselves well to almost any theoretical angle, performance is in tum exposed to coincidence and is thus highly unpredictable. This not only makes any systematic approach to performance an alarmingly subjective enterprise, but may, in a more radical view, preclude it altogether. Nowhere is this concern articulated with more passion and theoretical audacity than in Edward Gordon .Craig's famous essay "The Actor and the Uber-marionette." On the very first pages of the article Craig confidently asserts that [a]cting is not an art. It is therefore incorrect to speak of the actor as an artist. For accident is an enemy of the artist. Art is the e?,act antithesis of pandemonium, and pandemonium is created by the tumbling together of many accidents. Art arrives only by design. Therefore in order to make any work of art it is clear we may only work in those materials with which we can calculate. Man is not one of these materials.7 Vntil our century, scholars have avoided the potential volatility of their subject by limiting their investigations of the theatre to its verbal aspect. With some notable exceptions, most of what qualifies as a theory of theatre before the twentieth century is actually a theory of drama. Aristotle, for example, in his Poetics spends no more than three or four paragr~phs on apsis,' while Hegel almost de.votes more time to discussing the merits and disadvantages of reading aloud than to performance itself.9 Since then such an attitude has been slowly abandoned, and more attention has been paid to visual and spatial explorations. Today, theatre scholars are often more interested in the actors' gestures, or delivery than in the literary analysis of the text on which "production is based. Several important works have been written in the past three decades which...