The Aesthetics of the Ephemeral

Jennifer Duprey

Description

In The Aesthetics of the Ephemeral, Jennifer Duprey examines five contemporary plays from Barcelona: Olors and Testament by Josep Maria Benet i Jornet, Antígona by Jordi Coca, Forasters by Sergi Belbel, and Temptació by Carles Batlle. She argues that in both the theatrical text and its performance an aesthetics of the ephemeral materializes that is related to specific manifestations of cultural and historical memory in Spain and Catalonia. These manifestations of memory include historical concerns such as the possibility of another form of justice in predicaments of violence after the Civil War, and they also include contemporary issues such as the production of ruins by the processes of gentrification in Barcelona, the complexity of immigration in Spain, and the destruction or preservation of Catalan cultural legacies. In her analysis of these topics, Duprey engages and expands on theories related to questions of subjectivity and identity in late modernity. This book will be of interest to those concerned with Iberian cultural studies and with how theater reflects on and contributes to contemporary political dialogue.
List of Illustrations
Preface
Acknowledgments

Introduction: The Aesthetics of the Ephemeral

1. The Journey in the Desert

2. Ruins, Loss, Rebirth

3. Tragedy, Violence, Justice

4. Immigration, Displacements, Actualities

5. Inheritance, Memory, Natality

In Place of a Conclusion: A (Dys)functional Body Politic

Notes
Works Cited
Index

Sujets

• Spain
• Spain (groupe)
• Portugal

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 01 juillet 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781438452357
• Langue: English

Extrait

THE AESTHETICS OF THE EPHEMERAL
THE AESTHETICS OF THE EPHEMERAL
Memory Theaters in Contemporary Barcelona

JENNIFER DUPREY
S TATE U NIVERSITY OF N EW Y ORK P RESS
Cover: La Plaça del Diamant by Merçe Rodoreda. Adaptation for theater by Josep Maria Benet i Jornet, Teatre Nacional of Catalunya, Sala Gran. Season 2007/2008. Photograph by David Ruano/TNC/(photo1)
Published by
S TATE U NIVERSITY OF N EW Y ORK P RESS , A LBANY
© 2014 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact
State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
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Production, Laurie D. Searl
Marketing, Anne M. Valentine
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Duprey, Jennifer, 1975–
The aesthetics of the ephemeral : memory theaters in contemporary Barcelona / Jennifer Duprey.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4384-5233-3 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Theater—Spain—Catalonia—History—20th century. 2. Theater—Spain—Catalonia—History—21st century. 3. Catalan drama—20th century—History and criticism. 4. Catalan drama—21st century—History and criticism 5. Collective memory in literature. I. Title. PN2785.C4D86 2014 792.09467'2—dc23 2013029957
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
This book is dedicated to Antonio, for the care, curiosity, and rigor with which he read the pages of this book, for filling every aspect of our life together with the inextinguishable promise of love and understanding, and for imagining otherwise.
CONTENTS

List of Illustrations
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Aesthetics of the Ephemeral
Chapter One: The Journey in the Desert
Chapter Two: Ruins, Loss, Rebirth
Chapter Three: Tragedy, Violence, Justice
Chapter Four: Immigration, Displacements, Actualities
Chapter Five: Inheritance, Memory, Natality
In Place of a Conclusion: A (Dys)functional Body Politic
Notes
Works Cited
Index
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Figure 2.1 Sala Petita, Teatre Nacional of Catalunya, season 2011/2012, during the production of Una vella, coneguda olor by Josep Maria Benet i Jornet. Photograph © David Ruano/TNC Figure 2.2 The landscape of ruins in Olors , by Josep Maria Benet i Jornet. Sala Gran, Teatre Nacional de Catalunya, season 1999/2000. Photograph © Pilar Aymerich/TNC Figure 2.3 Maria faces the camera’s lens. From Olors , by Josep Maria Benet i Jornet. Sala Gran, Teatre Nacional of Catalunya, season 1999/2000. Photograph © Pilar Aymerich/TNC Figure 3.1 Antigone’s corpse, at the end of Antígona , by Jordi Coca. Teatre Lliure, season 2002/2003, Photograph © Ros Ribas/Teatre Lluire Figure 4.1 Scenic space of Forasters , by Sergi Belbel. Sala Petita, Teatre Nacional of Catalunya, season 2004/2005. Photograph © Teresa Miró / TNC Figure 4.2 Hassan in front of Guillem’s bed. Temptació , by Carles Batlle. Sala Tallers, Teatre Nacional of Catalunya, season 2004/2005. Photograph © Teresa Miró / TNC Figure 4.3 The “wall” of antiques in Temptació , by Carles Batlle. Sala Tallers, Teatre Nacional of Catalunya, season 2004/2005. Photograph © Teresa Miró / TNC Figure 5.1 The Noi in erotic dress. Testament , by Josep Maria Benet i Jornet, Teatre Romea, season 1996/1997. Photograph © Pilar Aymerich/Teatre Romea
PREFACE

“Whatever we make of performance, theater is desire,” wrote Herbert Blau in his reflections on theater and memory entitled The Audience (Blau 1990, 195). The question at stake is: what kind of desire is this? As we relate it to contemporary culture and society in Catalonia in particular and Spain in general, it might be a desire of portraying for both readers and spectators that which has been understood as forgone and unattainable, and yet it is possible. From such a perspective, this theater that is desire makes the events of the past and the present—and their linkage with the future—the material with which it creates its multifarious mnemonic aesthetics.
Moreover, in its constitutive desire, this might be a theater of “utopian thinking” (Jameson 2005). Yet, this “utopian thinking” is only perceptible as an ephemeral idea that looms over the ruins of political and cultural projects. “Utopias,” Jameson observes, “… tell us more about our own limits and weaknesses than they do about perfect societies” (Jameson 2000b). By speaking about both limits and possibilities, utopias and weaknesses, we might suggest that Catalan theater also is a theater of the frontier, of the borders. Regarding a frontier theater, the Valencian playwright José Sanchis Sinisterra has affirmed that “Hay—lo ha habido siempre—un teatro fronterizo … no es, en modo alguno, un teatro ajeno a las luchas presentes. Las hace suyas todas, y varias del pasado, y algunas del futuro. Sólo que, en las fronteras, las armas tienen que ser distintas” (There is—there has always been—a theater of the frontier … it is not, by any means, a theater indifferent to the present struggles. It makes them all its cause, as well as several struggles of the past, and some of the future, except that, in the frontiers, the weapons have to be different) (Sanchis Sinisterra 1980, 269). From this description of a frontier theater—which is intrinsically concerned with social struggles—one might say with Augusto Boal that theater is necessarily political; affirming the contrary is also a political attitude (Boal 2001, ix). However, even when the relationship between theater and politics is “as old as theater and politics” (xiii), for theater to become political in our depoliticized contemporary societies, “people should make theater their own” (119), meaning that in order for theater to be political, people should have more interest in theater, and theater should be a “visual prism,” to use Christine Boyer’s vocabulary, of their social struggles (Boyer 1996). One of the reasons for the depoliticization of contemporary societies has to do with the pervasiveness of our present form of capitalism and with neoliberal forms of politics in a globalized world. 1 But it is precisely the “[in]vincible universality of [late] capitalism” (Jameson 2005, xii) that makes utopian thinking ineluctable today. 2 Nevertheless, this utopian thinking should not remain in the space of thought and what is unattainable but rather should materialize in real democratic political processes that involve the multiplicity of voices that form a civic, collective space. The end of the processes of gentrification, the possibility of another form of justice that does not stem from the reification of law and its rule, an understanding of immigration qualitatively different from the present one, and the possibility of the existence—within their continuous transformations—of cultural and intellectual legacies are the forms of utopian thinking that these plays of contemporary Catalan theater stage. The plays are Olors and Testament by Josep Maria Benet i Jornet, Antígona by Jordi Coca, Forasters by Sergi Belbel, and Temptació by Carles Batlle. 3 Each represents forms of “utopian thinking” closely related to present-day Catalan society.
Concerning contemporary Catalan society, one might identify another form of utopian thinking in Catalonia’s recent claims for independence from the Spanish state. Regarding its emergence, the words of the Catalan philosopher Manuel Cruz are apposite here:
En una época como la que estamos viviendo, en la que parecía haber quedado aceptado, con el rango de una evidencia incontrovertible, no ya el fracaso de las utopías, el declive de los grandes proyectos de emancipación … sino el ocaso de lo político en tanto que tal, gana terreno en Cataluña una propuesta, la independentista, que en principio choca frontalmente con ese generalizado convencimiento. Alguien podría pensar, en efecto, que cuando daba la impresión de que se había apagado por completo cualquier forma de pasión política, esta reaparece con los ropajes de la aspiración a un Estado propio. (In the epoch in which we are living, it would seem to have been accepted as incontrovertible evidence that not the failure of utopias, or the demise of the great projects of emancipation, … but the decline of the political itself gains ground in Catalonia for the proposal of independence, which, at first, clashes with the above-mentioned general conviction. Indeed, anyone might think that when it seemed that any expression of political fervor was gone for good, it reemerges with the appearance of an aspiration to an independent State.) (Cruz 2012) 4
Actually, the present claim for Catalonia’s independence forms part of a historical constellation that reaches the heyday of the discussion about the political future for Catalonia in the nineteenth century, when the notion of federalism initiated a reflection on the plural composition of Spanish society and developed into a more complex discussion about particularism, separatism, “Estat propi” (own state), and “Estat compost” (composed state). It was a political issue that would be central in twentieth-century Spanish society (1917–1930), and it was concerned with the legitimation of “l’Estatut” (the statute) during the Second Spanish Republic. 5 Likewise, the Spanish philosopher Reyes Mate has