Howard Barker Interviews 1980–2010

Description

Mark Brown is a theater critic for the Sunday Herald and lecturer in theater studies at the University of Strathclyde.

Introduction

 

The Interviews 

‘Energy – and the small discovery of dignity’ – With Malcolm Hay and Simon Trussler (for Theatre Quarterly)

 

‘Articulate explorers in an age of populism’ – With Charles Lamb

 

‘The idea of hidden life’ – With David Ian Rabey

 

‘A laboratory of human possibility’ – With Charles Lamb

 

‘On puppetry and All He Fears’ – With Penny Francis

 

‘A demand for the problematic’ – With Dan Hefko

 

‘It has always been possible to improve on God’ – With Charles Lamb

 

‘Death as a theatrical experience’ – With Aleks Sierz

 

‘Crisis is the essential condition for art forms’ – With David Ian Rabey and Karoline Gritzner

 

‘Not what is, but what is possible’ – With Thierry Dubost

 

‘About things on the stage’ – With Elisabeth Angel-Perez et al

 

‘Ecstasy and the extremes of emotional life’ – With Mark Brown

 

‘A rupture to the moral curve’ – With Elizabeth Sakellaridou

 

‘On Shakespeare’ – With Vanasay Khamphommala

 

‘An education in living poetry, vivid and violent’ – With Nina Rapi

 

‘On The Wrestling School’ – With Duska Radosavljevic

 

‘Art is about going into the dark’ – With Mark Brown

Sujets

• Performance art
• General officer
• Anthropology
• General
• Cultural Studies

Informations

• Publié par: Intellect Books Ltd
• Date de parution: 27 mai 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781841505237
• Langue: English

Extrait

Howard Barker Interviews 1980-2010
Howard Barker Interviews 1980-2010
Conversations in Catastrophe
Edited by Mark Brown
First published in the UK in 2011 by Intellect, The Mill, Parnall Road, Fishponds, Bristol, BS16 3JG, UK
First published in the USA in 2011 by Intellect, The University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th Street, Chicago, IL 60637, USA
Copyright 2011 Intellect Ltd
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Cover portrait of Howard Barker by Victoria Wicks.
Cover designer: Holly Rose Copy-editor: Macmillan Typesetting: Mac Style, Beverley, E. Yorkshire
ISBN 978-1-84150-398-1
Printed and bound by Gutenberg Press, Malta.

The publication of this book was supported by The Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland.
For Jill Hallam without whom
In memoriam:
Paulo Eduardo Carvalho 7 July 1964-20 May 2010
Theatre critic, scholar, Portuguese translator of Barker, mentor and friend
Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
The Interviews
Energy - and the small discovery of dignity
With Malcolm Hay and Simon Trussler (for Theatre Quarterly )
Articulate explorers in an age of populism
With Charles Lamb
The idea of hidden life
With David Ian Rabey
A laboratory of human possibility
With Charles Lamb
On puppetry and All He Fears
With Penny Francis
A demand for the problematic
With Dan Hefko
It has always been possible to improve on God
With Charles Lamb
Death as a theatrical experience
With Aleks Sierz
Crisis is the essential condition for art forms
With David Ian Rabey and Karoline Gritzner
Not what is, but what is possible
With Thierry Dubost
About things on the stage
With Elisabeth Angel-Perez et al
Ecstasy and the extremes of emotional life
With Mark Brown
A rupture to the moral curve
With Elizabeth Sakellaridou
On Shakespeare
With Vanasay Khamphommala
An education in living poetry, vivid and violent
With Nina Rapi
On The Wrestling School
With Du ka Radosavljevi
Art is about going into the dark
With Mark Brown
Notes
Notes on Contributors
A Barker Reading List
Acknowledgements
A collection such as this requires the goodwill and support of a number people, and there are a number to thank. Firstly, of course, my thanks to all of the interviewers for agreeing generously to the publication of their work in this volume, and, in many cases, for providing me with material which it would otherwise have been difficult, if not impossible, for me to locate.
An enormous debt of gratitude is owed to Chris Corner, General Manager of The Wrestling School, for his immense and invaluable contribution, in terms of locating and supplying a wealth of images and information. A great debt, too, to the leading Barker scholar David Ian Rabey (Aberystwyth University) for his tremendous support and advice throughout the project.
For various forms of assistance, my thanks to Elisabeth Angel-Perez (Paris-Sorbonne, France); Michelle Brodie; Nicole Brodie; Anthony Cook (Purdue University, USA); Donald Fraser; David Goldie (University of Strathclyde); Jill Hallam; Hugh Hodgart (Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama); George Hunka (Theatre Minima, USA); Kay Jamieson (Brink Productions, Australia); Sonia Legge; Gerrard McArthur (associate artist, The Wrestling School); Catarina Neves; and Simon Trussler (Rose Bruford College).
Thanks to my editors at Intellect, in particular Jelena Stanovnik, who was both supportive and patient in seeing the project through to its completion.
I would also like to thank Victoria Wicks - whose performance in Barker s The Fence in its Thousandth Year remains a highlight of my theatre-going career - for the generous permission to use her superb portrait photograph of Barker on the cover of this book.
Finally, my enduring gratitude is owed to Howard Barker himself for giving this project - from its genesis to its conclusion - the most generous moral and practical support.
Introduction
H oward Barker can, and should, be considered a classical author, such is the imaginative originality, intellectual and spiritual ambition, and the sheer poetic brilliance of his Theatre of Catastrophe. Moreover, his highly distinctive oeuvre (characterized, as it is, by a profound regard for tragedy) has been accompanied by his own powerful theatre theory (encapsulated, in particular, in his books Arguments for a Theatre and Death, The One and the Art of Theatre ).
Barker is a divisive figure. The response to his work by the English or, at least, the London theatre and critical establishment has made him an internal exile in England. However, his theatre also generates great loyalty among many theatre-goers and theatre practitioners (not least actors), and has given rise to an entire academic discipline of Barker Studies, both within the UK and internationally (indeed, interviews conducted by many of the leading lights in this discipline appear in this volume).
I hope and believe that this collection of Barker s interviews will prove to be a substantial and unique addition to the growing body of literature related to his work as a dramatist, theatre theorist, poet and painter. Beginning in 1980 (a decade after the first staged production of Barker s work, 1 and the year in which the Theatre Quarterly interviewed him as a key figure amongst the new theatre voices of the seventies ) and culminating some 30 years later, these interviews provide a fascinating, chronological insight into the development of Barker s thought.
The distinctiveness of these interviews as a reservoir of Barker s theory is enhanced by the particular qualities which attach to ideas expressed in conversation (rather than in essays or other critical writings). On the three occasions on which I have interviewed Barker, I have been struck by both his sharp intelligence and his intellectual certainty; of the many people I have interviewed as a theatre critic and arts journalist, only the late, great dramatist Harold Pinter and the wonderful actress Fiona Shaw compare with him in these regards. Moreover, Barker has a remarkable capacity to formulate ideas seemingly instantaneously and to express them with style, wit and clarity; making his interviews a gift to the editor of a volume such as this.
Due to the nature of interviews, the material in this volume also has an autobiographical aspect; indeed, it is one which sets this book apart, even from the artistic autobiography contained within the Barker/Eduardo Houth book A Style and its Origins. No matter how assiduously the interviews adhere to Barker s art and artistic processes, they inevitably provide us with insights into Barker as a human being. There is, I think, something rather beautiful in the gentle excavation of Barker the man which some of these interviews contain. In these days of increasingly blunt prurience in our hyper-commercial mass media, it is a pleasure to gain subtle windows into the personality of an artist through his discussion of his art.
Ironically, given Barker s understandable suspicion of critics, there is a strong relationship between these interviews and theatre criticism. Criticism - whether manifested in reviews of particular theatrical productions or in works of more general analysis - is unfashionably, ideological. It codifies and classifies, it takes pugilistic stances, both in defence and attack, precisely in order that the art of theatre itself has the freedom not to do so. Side-taking - whether philosophical, political, moral or cultural contestation - is the vocation of the activist, the politician, the theologian, the ideologue and the critic. Any attempt to impose a prescription which requires the artist to fulfil such a role is inimical to the freedom of the artist. What we have in much of this book is Barker as ideological defender of his Theatre of Catastrophe, as critical observer of a culture which is hostile to his drama, and, often, as generously engaged analyser of his own work, in conversation with those who seek, paradoxically, to find language and concepts to analyse a body of work which is inherently resistant to analysis.
We see in these conversations some major changes in direction; for instance in Barker s relationship with a self-consciously instructional or satirical, typically left-wing drama, from which he has already begun to become dislocated in 1980, and with which he finds himself in a mutually, and increasingly, antagonistic relationship in the decades which follow. More significantly, however, we also find continuous threads in his artistic thought, particularly as regards his deep respect for the timeless power of tragedy and the theatre s enduring need of metaphor and ambiguity, despite the prevailing culture s hostility towards them. Time and again, in a rich and diverse array of artistic contexts, Barker returns to the seminal and enduring connection between sexual desire and death which, he insists, lies at the heart of tragedy, and which forms the fundamental basis of the Theatre of Catastrophe.
As we move chronologically through the interviews, Barker s separation from what he calls the theatre in England (as distinct from the art of theatre 2 ) becomes increasingly pronounced; a reflection both of the London establishment s growing hostility towards him, and his increasing artistic self-reliance (which is epitomized by the creation of his own theatre company, The Wrestling School, in 1988). However, in many of the interviews, we also find Barker explaining the singularity of his artistic vision in terms which extend well beyond a defiance of the very serious and concerted efforts which were, and are, made in England to destroy him as an artist.
Barker has long been criticized in cer