Theatre and Space: A Historiographic Preamble

Theatre and Space: A Historiographic Preamblel MICHAL KOBIALKA During long periods of his/DIY, the mode oj human sense perception changes with humanity's entire mode of existence. The manner in which human sense perception is organized. the medium in which it is accomplished, is determined lIot only by nature but by historical circumstances as well. Benjamin, "The Work of Art" 222 This essay begins with a statement that, to paraphrase Giorgio Agamben in Infancy and History, every conception of theatre (mental/physical, imaginary/ real, produced/producing, material/social, immediate/mediated, and so on) is invariably accompanied by a certain experience of space (mental/physical, imaginary/real, produced/producing, material/social, immediate/mediated, and so on) that is implicit in it and that conditions it? To continue this thought, since theatre is first and foremost a particular experience of space, no new theatre should be possible without taking into account this particular experience of layered spatiality. In its assumption, as I wish to suggest, this statement is much closer to Henri Lefebvre's production of space, wherein power relations are embedded, than to Gaston Bachelard's poetics of space reflecting the impact of human psyche and imagination on a geometrical fOnTI. Indeed, it is worth quoting here the passage where Lefebvre unequivocally indicates that space may be said to embrace a multitude of intersections, each with its assigned location. As for representations of the relations of production, which subsume power relations, these too occur in space: space contains them in the form of buildings, monuments and works of art. Such frontal (and hence brutal) expressions of these relations do not completely crowd out their more clandestine or underground aspects: all power must have its accomplices - and its police. (33) Lefebvre elaborates on this multitude of intersections in his well-known triad of spatial relations: Modern Drama, 46:4 (Winter 2003) 558 Theatre and Space 559 I Spatial practice, which embraces productionand reproduction, and the particular locations and spatial sets characteristic ofeach social formation. Spatial practice ensures continuity and some degree of cohesion. In terms of social space, and of each member of a given society's relationship to (hal space, this cohesion implies a guaranteed level of competence and a specific level of pe,f ormance. 2 Representations ofspace, which are tied to the relations of production and to the "order" that those relations impose, and hence to knowledge, to signs, to codes, and to "frontal" relations. 3 Representational spaces, embodying complex symbolisms, sometimes coded, sometimes not, linked to the clandestine or underground side of social life. as also to art (which may come eventually to be defined less as acode of space than as a code of representational spaces). (33, emphasis in original) Lefebvre's triad of spatial practice (perceived), which embraces the production and reproduction of each social fonnation, representations of space (conceived), which are linked to knowledge production, and representational spaces (lived), which fonn all senses and all bodies, has opened up that which used to be thought of as empty and absolute since Newton's Principia (1687).3 While Lefebvre is generally credited with altering the course of spatial studies (geography, architecture, theatre, and dance, for example) in the twentieth century, the fundamental conceptsof classical physics- space, time, matter. and causality - were already questioned toward the end of ·the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century with the introduction of Maxwell's field theory, Mach's idea of relative spaces, Lorentz's experiments with objects moving through a motionless ether, Riemann 's notion of an ndimensional geometry, Minkowski's space-time manifold, Einstein's theory of relativity, and quantum mechanics.' Absolute space was deemed to be an illusion, though a powerful one, indeed so powerful and "so fruitful that the concepts of absolute space a nd absolute time will ever remain in the background of our daily experience" (Jammer 173). Classical perceptions of space clashed with the concept of quantum space. Einstein's famous dictum - "Time and space are modes of thinking and not the conditions by which to live" (qtd. in Forsee 81) - not only challenged the existing scientific model but also freed many thinkers from the constraints of Newton's Principia that had...