Internationale Kulturwissenschaften International Cultural Studies Etudes culturelles internationales
Sektion VI:		Kunst und "Globalisierung"
Section VI:		The Arts and "Globalisation"
Section VI:		Art et "globalisation"

Knut Ove Arntzen (Bergen/Norwegen) [BIO]

French

On Telling the World and "Recycling" in the New Theatre

New dramaturgical tendencies in visual based project theatre, came about several places in Europe at beginning of the 1990s.Project theatre took further the idea of group theatre as small working groups, but has a more open organizational structure than the free groups used to have. The point of departure is often a person or core group which has no affiliation to any particular stage or ensemble. Workers are recruited to the project as the need arises. One Norwegian example is the Verdensteatret (The World Theatre) from Oslo, with earlier productions as "Thursday 14th of October". This is a production from 1991, which has been shown on several festivals in Europe. It was based on Strindberg’s theoretical writings, and the preface to "Miss Julie" was read aloud as a monologue by an actor, whilst other were dancing and in the middle of it telling funny stories. In their previous production "Wednesday the 13th of October. A Composition", the visual elements had been more predominant than the textual. Still, both productions were examples of a dramaturgy in quest of a new orientation in visual theatre. In the meantime, emphasis has more and more been based on textual presentation, but not in the sense of textual representation but more as an alternative to a purely dominating visuality.

The direction is representing a development of using text the following way: As based on the need of understanding text as intermediation of references in a non-illusionist way. One could speak about the text as a kind of visual implications with regard to tableaux and pictorial elements. This means that actors are reciting, acting and dancing according to textual elements based on improvisations and personal resources. They say monologues and change between slower and faster movements, marked by a steady and sharp timing. Patterns of movements are taken from the dance and theatre of the eigthies, like Rosas, Fabre or Needcompany. The key observation that can be made about dramaturgy, is that new ways of composing and paraphrasing texts and personal improvisations are searched for. The actors are now by the late 1990s moving away from a strict self-referential style of conceptual performance. This is in direction of a more direct communication, which more and more is dispensing with the apparently "cool" expression of the 1980s. This also means freedom in relation to technical requirements, and are changing from one way of expression to antoher, mostly with regard to not-hierarchic staging processes.

Performance like acting based on real time, as well as stylized realism is used to compose and to paraphrase textual fragments. This is combined with personal improvisation, involving dance and show like playing. Theatre again turns into something to be enjoyed in a direct way, instead of being purly reflected on as conceptual art.I think this has found its way into the writing of dramaturg Marianne Van Kerkhoven at the Kaaitheater in Brussels. In the seasonal program of 1990/91 she tried to characterize their productions by using "telling the world" as catchwords. It indicates, like I would interpret it, that dramaturgy is about being developed into a new kind of narrative theatre, but still with fragmentation and means of expression put on an equal footing in the sense of a visual dramaturgy.

What is the difference, is that different kinds of expressions will be mixed up, like also from the 1960s Grotowski style as well as popular comedy. This can be understood as a recycling of different decades, mixed up with traditional or classical theatre. Recycling could be the keyword of the development in the 1990s.

Quite concretely seen, it indicates that elements of style from passed decades are melted into new syntheses, among others the "telling the world". I really don’t believe that Van Kerkhoven was thinking of any ideological or pedagogical way of telling or explaining the world. The contestation of the Brecht-model, with respect to didactical aspects has developed too far. It is, I think, not anymore possible to use theatre in the sense of wanting it to enlighten the world, or even being ideological or "explaining" in any sense. A telling the world today would probably be in a post-ideological sense, and aiming at paraphrasing the world in new ways. This, for certain, will have to be based on the search for new dramaturgical forms and techniques, covering up new ways of discovery and understanding without any ideological legitimation. One also has to be very conscious about the medias as far as video and television is concerned. It has got an enormous impact on how audience perception is being developed, and the task for theatre makers then could be to manage to utilize a "magical" atmosphere, that what only can take place in a live situation with direct contact between action, performance and audience. This is the only way to develop imidiate communication with the audience, instead of wrapping the world into the kind of illusionism that Richard Foreman wanted to unveil in his production of "Radio is Good. Film is Evil" at the New York University, in 1987. I think that Ritsaert ten Cate was aiming at the same in his serial projects called "Theatre beyond Television" at the Mickery Theatre in Amsterdam by the middle 1980s.

A main premiss for talking about a "conscious kind of recycling", is trying to break illusion by ways of paraphrasing texts and images, without any kind of legitimation or flirt with pedagogics.

If the pedagogical "heritage" is still prevailing in a production, or a commercial way of thinking has taken the better of it, theatre is as deadly at the deadly theatre Peter Brook was writing about this in his book The Empty Space from 1968.This also has to do with using clichés and traditions, without putting questions to them. And this is especially important to remember if one is working on classical texts. Today dealing with traditions as well as using styles a la mode without new questionning, is like trying to save something that is already dead. A conscious recycling, I think, is crisscrossing all kinds of demand by adapting prevailing currents and thereby "recycling" them. Quite freely, one puts on stage either the whole text, or taking it apart and paraphrasing it according to both visual and textual references. Conceptuality as an aim in itself has been left behind. Many means of expression can be used to establish a direct contact with the spectators, telling something "from the world" to them. Somebody is communicating without pretending to being educational or bringing forth any kind of moral legitimation.

The blind track of the 1960s and the 1970s, in my opinion, was that groups like Grotowski’s Theatre Laboratory or the Odin teatret, were not aware of that instead of telling from the world, they were telling about themselves, like Brecht apparently was not aware of that instead of telling from the world, he finally tried to tell how it should be understood in a Marxist point of view.

In the following I will try to give some examples of conscious "recycling" in the new theatre from early 1990s, starting with Needcompany’s "Julius Caesar" (Shakespeare). It was a production by Kaaitheater, 1990, co-produced by Theater am Turm in Frankfurt am Main. The director Jan Lauwers is himself also a visual artist. He had designed a marble floor for this production, with a small platform where to put the actor playing Julius Caesar during most of the performance. There was a silent attitude.

His sadness was surely connected with the fact that he was going to be, or allready was killed by Brutus. Then he disappears from the scenic action, just to come back later to distribute some wooden play horses. Lauwers was dealing with the text in a very ironic way, letting one of the actors comment on the action using a microphone. After the very textual first part, effects that one could say were of "signalizing" kind are taken into use, like letting a light-spot suddenly fall to the floor. Or let a ballon be blown up by using an oxygen generator. One way of explaining this dramaturgy, is to designate it as a dramaturgy of composition. The treatment of text is underlined by occasional "evident" caprices. The scenic action is not necessarilly covering up the textual moments or is not even accompaning them. This indicates a great amount of ironic distance, like for instance when Caesar is distributing the play wooden horses after he is dead, and on them all the brave soldiers, having betrayed another, are riding into war again. And as a composition this production is telling something about the world. In her critic in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (1.12. 90), Sylvia Staude maintained that Lauwers has not "reduced" the text because of a German audience not well understanding Flemish Dutch, but to create a very simple or naivistic play on the motive friendship. There were no Octavius, no Lepidus, no Cicero, no senators and even no people. Alltogether it was a recycling of different means of expression with references to a text that also was present "as such".

A corresponding simplicity is to be found in the work of the Dutch theatre group Maatschapij Discordia. They have for instance chosen to play whole texts instead of using fragmentation at all, like in the "De Bronnen" production, Amsterdam 1990. The title covered three plays shown en suite: "Ubu Roi" by Alfred Jarry, "The Maidens" by Jean Genet and "The Dance of Death" by August Strindberg. "De Bronnen" means "sources", and the production was directed by Jan Joris Lamers, who also had a part in it. When it was shown at the Brussel-festival, 1990, a press release from the festival office presented it in the following way: Discordia is almost working in an American way, on the one hand with a strong respect of tradition, and on the other hand they throw this respect away. They have freed themselves from the traditional relationship between actor and part. Acting by illusion in creating the part is avoided, and instead of it a kind of "material reality" of text is put (my reading of the Dutc Flemish text of the press release). This one could interprete in the direction of a playful presentation of the text, based on small improvisations also with regard to the play rythm. In "The Dance of Dead" they start by a sound track with the Lou Reed song "Nobody but You", while the actors are sitting in tableaux on a sofa and a chair. This song was dedicated to Andy Warhol, and Lamers might have tought it to be appropriate to the feeling of life that is analyzed by Jarry, Genet and Strindberg, who all of them are main sources in modern drama.

So, what I then will proceed to, is the Norwegian group Baktruppen’s production "without title", shown the first time in continental Europe at the Felix Meritis theatre in Amsterdam in March 1991, and going on tour to several European cities. This production was based on paraphrasing dramatic texts by Gilbert and Sullivan, Samuel Beckett and others. The actors themselves added personal materials. Dramturgically the production was based on anatomical and astronomical metaphoric structures. There were also strong auditive elements, like electronic sound tracks as well as musical improvisations. The structure was very cabaret like, with numbers of sequenses giving the impression of something evident "occasional", underlining the improvisational "touch". The audience were partly around the playing area, and partly seated on chairs put on floor in half circle. One could say they had got a kind of voyeur like function, as well as being in a party-like situation. Beer and wine was served from a bar during the whole performance. This could also be experienced as as having a ritual character, like at the time productions by Grotowski and Eugenio Barba, for instance "Akropolis" in Wroclaw, 1962, or "Kaspariana" in Holstebro, 1967.

In 1991 in Amsterdam, there was guest production by Wooster Group from New York with "Brace Up", directed by Elizabeth LeCompte. This production based on Tsjekovs "Three Sisters", could to some extent be compared to Needcomanpany’s "Julius Caesar" in the sense of using text. They have in a way created a new play out of the old one. The actors were put into the position of making something else than just giving their parts. They were, to put it like that, working on different performance-like principles, mixing it up with elements from traditional ways of acting in a very ironic way. The main methaphor in "Brace Up", in my opnion, was show or music-hall. There was a conferancier who also was telling who played which part, and the presentation was partly live on stage and partly based on video screens with dialogs or monolgues. They uses Japanese films as a kind of electronic commenting on the action. Nothing was occasional and understatements were quite clear, perhaps even too clear. The audience in a way were asked to understand understatements according to an anglo-saxon sense of reason.

For this reason, I think, it was not so strange that in Amsterdam at the same Touch Time Festival, Baktruppen with its "unclear" and dull ways of using methaphors, were more challenging or even provoking to the spectators. I heard somebody say that we understand and know Wooster Group, but Baktruppen is more of a surprise. So, curiosity is very strong about new ways of telling the world, and "recycling" in unexpected ways is the challenge of today’s new theatre as ot has developed towards even more radical dramaturgical and esthetical forms towards the end of this decade and century as well.

		Internationale Kulturwissenschaften International Cultural Studies Etudes culturelles internationales
Sektion VI:		Kunst und "Globalisierung"
Section VI:		The Arts and "Globalisation"
Section VI:		Art et "globalisation"