Theatrical Reality

Campbell Edinborough

Description

Performance, dramaturgy and scenography are often explored in isolation, but in Theatrical Reality, Campbell Edinborough describes their connectedness in order to investigate how the experience of reality is constructed and understood during performance. Drawing on sociological theory, cognitive psychology and embodiment studies, Edinborough analyses our seemingly paradoxical understanding of theatrical reality, guided by the contexts shaping relationships between performer, spectator and performance space. Through a range of examples from theatre, dance, circus and film, Theatrical Reality examines how the liminal spaces of performance foster specific ways of conceptualising time, place and reality.

Introduction

Chapter 1

Locating Theatrical Reality

 

Chapter 2

Embodiment and the Dialectical Reality of Scenic Space

 

Chapter 3

Watching Bodies in Theatrical Space

 

Chapter 4

Authentic Fictions: Truthful Behaviour in Given Circumstances

 

Chapter 5

Alienated Realities

 

Chapter 6

Theatrical Reality Beyond the Theatre Walls

 

Chapter 7

Spectatorial Corporeality and Theatrical Intimacy

 

Chapter 8

Meta-Realities in Autobiographical Theatre, Film and Television

Conclusion

Sujets

• Performing Arts
• Theatre
• Performance art
• General officer
• General
• Cultural Studies

Informations

• Publié par: Intellect Books
• Date de parution: 01 septembre 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781783205882
• Langue: English

Extrait

First published in the UK in 2016 by
Intellect, The Mill, Parnall Road, Fishponds, Bristol, BS16 3JG, UK
First published in the USA in 2016 by
Intellect, The University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th Street,
Chicago, IL 60637, USA
Copyright © 2016 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.
Copy-editor: MPS Technologies
Cover designer: Jane Seymour
Production manager: Richard Kerr
Typesetting: Contentra Technologies
Print ISBN: 978-1-78320-586-8
ePDF ISBN: 978-1-78320-587-5
ePUB ISBN: 978-1-78320-588-2
Printed and bound by Short Run Press Ltd, UK
Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Chapter One: Locating Theatrical Reality
Chapter Two: Embodiment and the Dialectical Reality of Scenic Space
Chapter Three: Watching Bodies in Theatrical Space
Chapter Four: Authentic Fictions: Truthful Behaviour in Given Circumstances
Chapter Five: Alienated Realities
Chapter Six: Theatrical Reality Beyond the Theatre Walls
Chapter Seven: Spectatorial Corporeality and Theatrical Intimacy
Chapter Eight: Meta-Realities in Autobiographical Theatre, Film and Television
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index
List of Illustrations
Figure 1. Josef Nadj and Miquel Barceló in Paso Doble (2006) © Christophe Raynaud de Lage.
Figure 2. Pep Bou in Clar de Llunes (2008) © Robert Ramos.
Figure 3. La Fôret Sacré, Appia’s design for Wagner’s Parsifal , Act One, Scene One (1896). Courtesy of the Swiss Theatre Collection, Berne.
Figure 4. Image of dancers moving to a point of stillness from the video documentation of Steve Paxton’s Magnesium (1972) © Steve Christiansen.
Figure 5. Henrik Ehrsson demonstrating the experimental induction of out-of-body experience in 2007 © Henrik Ehrsson.
Figure 6. Marlon Brando, Eva Marie Saint and glove in Elia Kazan’s On The Waterfront © 1954, renewed 1982, Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Courtesy of Columbia Pictures.
Figure 7. Children running through the Turbine Hall of Tate Modern during Tino Sehgal’s These Associations (2012) © Campbell Edinborough.
Figure 8. Nadia Morgan telling a story in The History of Water (2013) © Campbell Edinborough.
Figure 9. Adrian Howells in Footwashing for the Sole (2010). Public domain.
Figure 10. Children providing a much-needed haircut in Mammalian Diving Reflex’s Haircuts by Children 2006 © John Lauener.
Acknowledgements
I would like to acknowledge the help and support of colleagues and students from the School of Drama, Music and Screen at the University of Hull. The opportunity to share drafts of early material and discuss ideas during teaching and research seminars has been invaluable. I would also like to thank my editors, Jessica Mitchell and Richard Kerr, and the rest of the team at Intellect.
Introduction
T his book is concerned with theorizing the ways in which the aesthetics of theatrical representation are complicated and informed by the embodied and spatial conditions of its realization. The following chapters will examine the various ways in which theatre makers attempt to organize the spectator’s experience of reality within performance. By analysing how the threshold spaces of performance shape the spectator’s perception of the performer’s actions and experiences, the book seeks to explore some of the ways in which representation and meaning in theatre are informed by the spectator’s embodied and affective engagement with the art form.
Throughout the book I will make reference to a variety of critical and theoretical perspectives, drawing on material from the fields of phenomenology, cognitive psychology, neuroscience, geography and sociology. However, it should be noted that many of the arguments developed with this book were sparked by my pedagogical engagement with the practice of making theatre. My work as a theatre maker has always been rooted in personal and idiosyncratic concerns; but as a university lecturer, tasked with teaching others to make theatre, I have been forced towards greater pragmatism. In recent years, I have discovered that, when attempting to help students realize their aims in performance, my most useful questions were always concerned with the intended role of the spectator in performance. It is this realization that drove me to start writing this book.
If the theatre maker is to assess the success of his work, he 1 must be able to judge its impact on an audience. Without having a sense of the different ways in which the spectator is being invited to deploy his emotions and imagination when watching or participating in performance, the theatre maker will remain incapable of judging his work’s effectiveness. I believe strongly that the practitioner must be able to theorize the nature of the spectator’s engagement with the world represented onstage. This is not due to any kind of belief in the intrinsic value of theory. Instead, it relates to the view that a clear understanding of form is creatively enabling. In order to guide the reception of meaning onstage, the practitioner must understand how theatre functions. It is for this reason that this book ultimately focuses on responding to two key questions: What do we mean by theatricality? And: How might we define the experience of reality within the context of theatrical performance?
Theatre is a medium where invisible worlds are rooted in visible objects, where the material becomes metaphor, and where the intimate and personal are made universal. Through referencing theatre’s ability to overcome and accommodate such oppositions, the book will argue that theatrical space establishes unique modes of reality for both performer and spectator. It will also argue that unpicking the complexity of these connections is paramount if we are to assess some of the ways that meaning, place, character and narrative are constructed and conveyed within theatrical performance.
In order to develop my argument, I will draw on a wide range of case study examples, crossing the boundaries between disciplines and attempting to make links between distinct forms of performance practice (from dance, to theatre, to performance art). I would like to make it clear that my aim is not to diminish the importance of recognizing the distinctions between separate aesthetic forms and disciplines of study. Instead, I hope that by encouraging you to cross the borders between theatre and dance, or neuroscience and literary analysis, you will be able to analyse the material, aesthetic and social dimensions of theatrical performance – thus developing your understanding of the complex ways in which spectators and performers occupy and share physical and imagined spaces during performance.
My hope is borne from my experiences as both a theorist and practitioner. The reflexive nature of this dual life has continually encouraged me to question the practical value of theory. It concerns me that so little of the contemporary application of theory within theatre and performance studies is written for the explicit benefit of the theatre maker or audience. Perhaps I am alone in this response, but I invite you to consider how many times you have read an elegantly argued and diligently researched piece of scholarship before questioning whether its insights could usefully be applied by a spectator, performer or designer. Of course, it depends by what one means by ‘useful’; but, for me, so much of the application of theory to performance seems to me to be an abstract exercise – an exercise in which the insights of theorists are applied to theatrical experience in the same way that one might complete a complex jigsaw puzzle. I believe that the application of theory needs to be approached with greater pragmatism, but also greater adventure. As theorists, practitioners and spectators, we should be helping each other to think more efficiently and more fully about how the complexities of theatre function so that the experience of making and watching theatre can become richer and more powerful.
With this in mind, the book aims to demonstrate that the best theatre practitioners are/were often the best theorists. To paraphrase George Devine, great theatre must have an attitude – and such attitudes are necessarily formed from philosophies. Although my concern in this short text is to cross-reference different approaches to thinking about the nature of reality in the shared spaces of performance, I hope that the reader will come away from this book with a clearer sense of how the spectator fits within the philosophies of some of the twentieth and twenty-first century’s key theatre makers. I hope that by questioning what reality might mean in the context of theatre, the implicitly stated theories of figures such as Adolphe Appia, Konstantin Stanislavski and Bertolt Brecht can be freshly illuminated.
When all is said and done, this introduction should not be seen as a polemic so much as a plea for understanding. By selecting the topic of reality in the context of performance, I know I have taken on an insurmountable task. I hope it is understood that this task has not been undertaken for the sake of developing definitive answers. Instead, I am concerned with articulating a wide range of theatrical possibilities. Over the next few chapters, I will move swiftly from one topic and medium to another, no doubt leaving out some important distinctions. However, the shift back and forth between dance, theatre and performance art is not rooted in the belief that these media are the same. By contrast, I believe that the different disciplines and media I discuss should be approached as different ways of thinking about performance – providing different challenges and solutions for those