Practising the Real on the Contemporary Stage

Charlie Allwood, José A. Sánchez

Description

An analysis of reality and 'the real' as presented in contemporary artistic creation, Practising the Real on the Contemporary Stage examines the responses given by performing arts to the importance placed on reality beyond representation. This book proposes four historic itineraries defined by the ways in which the issue of the real is addressed: the representation of visible reality and its paradoxes, the place of the real on the lived body, the limits placed on representation by experiences of pain and death, and those practices that denounce the real. Practising the Real on the Contemporary Stage will be warmly welcomed by scholars of aesthetics and contemporary artistic practice. 

Foreword 

Introduction

Reality and the Visible

Real and Virtual

The Irruption of the Real

Iconoclastic Theatre

At the Limits of Representation

Genocides 

History and Memory 

The Performance of Others 

The Real Is Relational 

Essayism and Representation 

Conclusion: Theatre and Reality 

Appendix: Ethics of Representation 

Sujets

• Energie & environnement
• Théâtre
• General
• Engineering
• Technology
• General officer
• Theatre
• Sciences et techniques
• Performing Arts
• Power Resources

Informations

• Publié par: Intellect Books
• Date de parution: 09 janvier 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781783204182
• Langue: English

Extrait

First published in the UK in 2014 by
Intellect, The Mill, Parnall Road, Fishponds, Bristol, BS16 3JG, UK
First published in the USA in 2014 by
Intellect, The University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th Street,
Chicago, IL 60637, USA
Copyright © 2014 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 designer: Holly Rose
Cover image: Mapa Teatro. Testigo de las ruinas (2005)     © Mapa Teatro Archive
Copy-editor: Michael Eckhardt
Production manager: Claire Organ
Typesetting: Contentra Technologies
Print ISBN: 978-1-78320-416-8
ePDF ISBN: 978-1-78320-417-5
ePUB ISBN: 978-1-78320-418-2
Printed and bound by Hobbs, UK
This publication is a result of the research Project “Teatralidades disidentes / Dissident Theatricalities” (HAR2012-34075) financed by the Ministry of Economy and Competitiviness.

Edited in collaboration with
Contents
Foreword
Introduction
Reality and the Visible
Real and Virtual
The Irruption of the Real
Iconoclastic Theatre
At the Limits of Representation
Genocides
History and Memory
The Performance of Others
The Real Is Relational
Essayism and Representation
Conclusion: Theatre and Reality
Appendix: Ethics of Representation
Bibliography
Index
Foreword
This text is an abridged version of the book Prácticas de lo real en la escena contemporánea , published in Madrid in 2007, followed by a new edition in Mexico City in 2012. The book was the result of a seminar given at the CITRU (Rodolfo Usigli National Centre for Theatre Investigation, Documentation and Information), part of the INBA (National Fine Arts Institute) in Mexico City, between August and September 2004. In addition, later investigations and successive conferences and seminars were given on the same topic in various countries. I would like to thank everybody that attended, especially those who made the sessions possible, as well as those who actively participated with observations, comments and discussions.
My thanks first of all to Ileana Diéguez and Rodolfo Obregón, the managers of the CITRU, and those people with whom I had conversations and exchanged ideas with during my stay in Mexico City and on later visits: Maris Bustamante, Antonio Prieto, Angélica García, Elvira Santamaría, Josefina Alcázar, Edwin Culp and Marcela Flores. And thanks to Jesús Carrascosa for making possible the publication of the first version of this book.
I would also like to thank my colleagues at various Spanish and South American universities for their help, encouraging me to dig deeper into the topic, and giving me clues and ideas: Anxo Abuin (Santiago de Compostela University); Óscar Cornago (CSIC – Spanish National Research Council); Mercè Saumell (Barcelona Theatre Institute); José Fernando Peixoto and Silvana García (São Paulo University); Beatriz Trastoy (Buenos Aires University); Julia Elena Sagaseta and Susana Tambutti (IUNA – National University Art Institute, Buenos Aires); Tamara Cubas (Montevideo University); Fernando Villar (Brasilia University); Gurur Ertem (Yildiz Technical University, Istanbul); Adrian Heathfield and Joe Kelleher (Roehampton University, London); María Delgado (Queen Mary University, London); Mauricio Barría (University of Chile, Santiago); Víctor Viviescas (National University of Colombia, Bogotá); and Anamaria Tamayo (Antioquia University, Medellín).
Many of the ideas contained in this essay arose in conversations with artists. The origins of this book lay in an invitation that Óskar Gómez Mata extended to me to take part in a talk about ‘sincerity’ in the context of the carte blanche he had been offered by Théâtre Saint Gervais in Geneva (2001), and the conversation we both had with Rodrigo García, who was also invited. A critical perspective on the real body and physical reality would not have been possible without the work shared with the choreographers María Ribot, Blanca Calvo and Olga Mesa. In addition to this work and these talks, there were meetings with artists like Roger Bernat, Rolf and Heidi Abderhalden, Toni Cots, María Muñoz and Pep Ramis, Miguel Rubio and Héctor Bourges. All the aforementioned helped to create the contexts necessary for the reflection and criticism that have so enriched the book in meetings in Madrid, Barcelona, Bogotá, Buenos Aires, Girona, Lima, Medellín, Mexico City, São Paulo and Santiago de Chile.
The quality of this version of the text can be attributed to the careful editing work of the people at Paso de Gato Publishers, Jaime Chabaud and Leticia García, and special thanks to Delicia Cebrián, who undertook a meticulous revision of the text, and Zara Rodríguez Prieto for creating the index.
Finally, I must express my gratitude to the people of ARTEA, with whom I have collaborated on various research projects, including: ‘Políticas del cuerpo y de la imagen’ (‘Politics of body and image’, 2006–07); ‘Autonomía y complejidad’ (‘Autonomy and complexity’, 2009–11), as well as ‘Archivo Virtual de Artes Escénicas’ (‘Performing Arts Visual Archive’ – PEII09-0033-4520, financed by the JCCM, 2009–12) and ‘Teatralidades Disidentes’ (‘Dissident theatricalities’ – HAR2012-34075, financed by the Spanish Ministry of Economy, 2013–15).
Introduction
C ontemporary performance was impacted by the renewed necessity of confronting the real that manifested itself in every area of culture over course of the last decades. This necessity first materialised in productions that once again dealt with the representation of reality, thus assuming the controversy brought about by ‘representation’ and the complexity of reality. It also created the space for works in which the real bursts onto the stage, challenging not only representation, but also the construction of reality. Finally, this necessity of confronting the real produced works that challenged initiatives of intervention, whether in the form of actions that attempted to turn the spectator into the participant of a formal, collective construction, or in the form of direct actions on a space not delimited by artistic institutions.
The turn towards ‘realism’ on the European stage signalled the end of an era marked by a certain melancholy, in which postmodern critics focused their attention on condemning the mechanisms used by structures of power and mass media to produce a ‘simulacral’ (Baudrillard 1981) or ‘transparent’ society (Vattimo 1989). Meanwhile, many artists and arts institutions were more inclined to join in with the criticism of culture, but not to consider the decidedly complex task of constructing realities that complied with tensions of the real.
It is not about a naïve return to the past. Over the last few centuries both experimental and social sciences have shown that what we call reality is always a construction. Here, what is sought is not ontological coherence, whereby reality is identical to its representation; what is important is that reality works according to physics calculations or social laws. Furthermore, the act of exclusion inherent in all representation must be taken into account. To represent reality without denying all its complexity might require, just as in quantum mechanics, to consider four or more dimensions. The fourth dimension – regarding the image – could be time; regarding text, it could be the body; regarding movement, language, and so on and so forth.
Throughout the essay, there is an attempt to maintain the difference between ‘reality’ as a consensual or imposed construction, and ‘the real’, which resists construction while simultaneously being the material and object of representation itself. Obviously, when reality is not consensual, but rather imposed, the real returns in a more violent way in the form of political or traumatic resistance. The Return of the Real was the title of the influential essay published by Hal Foster in 1996. Departing from a disqualification of the ‘simulacral’ reading of Warhol undertaken by Barthes, Foucault, Deleuze and Baudrillard, Foster approached the study of the work from the idea of the traumatic (as formulated by Lacan) to suggest a new interpretation of hyperrealism, appropriationism, and art of the obscene and the abject.
In recent years, numerous authors have looked at the problematics of the real on the modern stage. Maryvone Saison (1998) raised French directors’ and dramaturgists’ concerns in the 1990s by recovering the capacity to relate to the real. This is an ambivalent concern, since many of the examples cited by Saison seem to respond to the reaction effect described by Baudrillard – i.e. the search for the immediate experience – rather than to the effort to construct realities that once again include the hidden real. Hans-Thies Lehman considered ‘the real’ as a distinctive feature of ‘post-dramatic theatre’, in opposition to the ‘exclusion of the real’ established by Hegel as a minimum condition of tragedy (Lehman 1999: 64). The real is a constituent element of artistic creation, although it normally exists isolated in the sign; when it reappears in artistic practice, it does so to put pressure on the representation, the fiction and convention, and not as a paralyzing, deeply affecting apparition (as may happen in popular or televisual dramatic forms). Lehman studied ‘the irruption of the real’ on the 1990s stage via several modes, including: concretion; the corporality of the actors and animals onstage; deliberate breaks in continuity; an emphasis on presence, the event and the current situation; and the development of a hypernaturalism coherent with the age of the media. Erika Fischer-Lichte (2008) used real and concrete action to reflect on what she called ‘the performative change of direction in the arts’. In order to achieve this, sh