Stage Presence (review)

Jane Goodall's newest book continues her previous project of tracking and analyzing the intersections of performance and science in the 19th century (2002). This time she narrows her topic and extends her timeframe by considering Western discourses on stage presence from the 17th through the 20th centuries. Goodall looks less at the phenomenon in question and more at the poetics addressing it, emphasizing its continual alteration by scientific advances. Stage Presence adds to the growing number of works treating presence by showing how writers have struggled to describe this strange phenomenon that operates as a centrifugal and centripetal force, appearing alternately to radiate from performers and to draw us towards them.

Using reviews, memoirs, and histories of science, Goodall establishes connections between presence and "the new order of scientific understanding" (60). Thus, as Sir Isaac Newton achieves notoriety, so successful actors find themselves described as centers of gravity, and as magnetism occupies scientific minds and popular imaginations, so acclaimed performers become magnetic and are portrayed as drawing audiences to them. Goodall mines a rich seam of discourse focused on the exploration of electricity, a trope readily adapted by critics to describe different varieties of performer presence. Whether portrayed as sources or conduits of electrical charge, David Garrick and other performers deemed to have presence became "electric" and benefited from a vocabulary that expanded to accommodate advances in understanding how electrical charges pass between bodies.

And yet, Goodall also notes how writers have often referred to forces impossible to understand in order to illustrate that, no matter how much faith an age might have in science, special performers are often figured as embodying a link to unsolvable mystery. When witnesses to performers such as Élisa Rachel Félix and Sarah Bernhardt compare them to ancient celebrants of chthonic rites, they invest "presence" with other-worldliness and an unnatural connection between the dead and living. As scientific certainty waxes, the perception of magic does not necessarily wane, but instead finds expression through extraordinary performers.

The uneasy alliance between magic and science found powerful expression in the work of Franz Anton Mesmer (1734–1815), whose research gained such notoriety that his name became part of the lexicon describing compelling performers. Mesmer believed that people could operate as living Leyden jars, storing electrical current that might be released to alter others. Although widely discredited as a scientist, Mesmer's ideas took root in the popular imagination, and throughout the 19th century actors became "mesmerizing." Performers associated with this power often displayed or represented untamed sexuality, and descriptions of Vaslav Nijinsky's performances depict both attendants and fellow dancers destabilized by his force.

Goodall contrasts the mesmerized audience with the dazzled one, the former undergoing a profound and lasting alteration while the latter experiences a fleeting, enjoyable jolt. The dazzling performer shoots out energy instead of drawing it in, producing blinding displays of virtuosity and shocking her audience with excitement. Josephine Baker and Dame Edna Everage are examples of this art in which "natural" luminousness combines with fierce discipline to disorient and thrill audiences. For her closing chapter, Goodall analyzes the work of Bertolt Brecht, Samuel Beckett, and Bob Dylan, arguing that while they purported to combat the deleterious effects of presence, each in fact achieved the contrary: Brecht with his star vehicles, Beckett with his potent distillations of activity, and Dylan with his chameleon personae—all magnified their performer presence in one way or another.

Goodall has an impressive familiarity with a wide array of sources and a wonderful way with the odd anecdote: Who knew that Mesmer and Victor Frankenstein attended the same university, or that two French researchers competed in the 1740s to determine how many Carthusian monks could pass between their clasped hands an electric charge from one Leyden jar? And yet, the book remains weakened by its structure and Goodall's focus on science. The book's strong chronological progression suggests the possibility of a genealogy of stage presence discourse, and yet its chapter structure leans towards characterizing the discourse by trope...