Internationale Kulturwissenschaften International Cultural Studies Etudes culturelles internationales
Sektion VII:		"Interkultureller" Austausch, transkulturelle Prozesse und Kulturwissenschaften
Section VII:		"Intercultural" Exchange, Transcultural Processes and Cultural Studies
Section VII:		Echange interculturel, processus transculturel et études culturelles

Ulf Birbaumer (Wien)

German

Theatre - Interculturalism - Intersociability

The Innsbruck Romanist Hans-Joachim Müller speaks of a polyglot dialogue as a lingua franca in his discipline (to differentiate it from "Germanistik" which is increasingly developing into "German Studies"), from an overwhelmingly positive "Creolising" that encourages intercultural exchange. In this I see a definitely expandable model for Cultural Studies in the age of "Globalization". That which was just said naturally refers to literary and language processes respectively, research into them by literary and linguistic scholarship. Literature in general, if we disregard sound poetry and "concrete poetry" and its transcultural character, requires translation - let's follow the traditional dictum traduttore traditore - that can only be an attempt from translation according to meaning up to paraphrase in another language, appears to me in all its genres in the transcultural process to be at a disadvantage with regard to painting and music, but also in the domain of the theatre. The theatre is more international, inter(intra)cultural, intercultural. That also has to do with its multimedial state, wits its completely different reception in comparison with literature. The procedure by which literature is received, drama as a literary text, too, occurs diachronically. The literary text is constituted by means of textual signs. Theatre, especially if one defines it less traditionally as a spectacle (respectively, in its contemporeanity as spectacle vivant), defines as the "Art of Spectacle", is communicated to an audience with the help of scenic signs, the process occurs synchronically. The scenic signs are visual or acoustic; textual signs can be turned into both systems of signs; as dialogues and monologues, acoustically by the actors, on banderoles, projections but also just as visually by means of the bodily interpretation by the actors. The auditory and visual signs on the stage are also accompanied by haptistic and olfactory signs. They appear synthesized in the performance and the member of the audience finds himself in a situation of simultaneous reception. (1). That means, he has to make a selection, by means of which he emphasizes or neglects. He can also replace textual signs that he can't decode by scenic ones and thus literally "stages" them (mise en scene) (2) at least partially access.

Important knowledge results from Uberfeld's considerations, which concern the status of the theatre as regards literature with reference to interculturalism and transculturalism. Firstly, theatre is a communication process, because there are several transmitters, several messages and a multiple audience (even if they are in one place). Secondly, T (the literary drama text) is never identical with P (presentation scenique - performance), because these products are constituted by quite different signs. It pays to insert a T into the working method procedure, which means the actual play text, therefore, the scenically connoted literary text. What is communicated to the members of the audience from the stage through special multimedia effects, receives, as already mentioned, quite a different reception. The ways and means of the reception of scenic signs facilitates transcultural and intersocial processes. It is to be remarked here that interculturality, of course, does not only mean exchange, reciprocity, mutual creativeness between different cultures (e.g. between European and Japanese theatre), but also inter sociability, that means cultural interaction between the cultures of the different social strata and societal groupings (e.g. between workers' culture and the middle class, between mainstream youth culture and various fringe cultures etc.). A further, not less important reference concerns the genre of Theatre the Art of Spectacle - a point that correlates with the problematized definition of the concept made at the beginning. Nonverbal Theatre, Body Theatre ("speaking bodies"). Third theatre in the sense of Barba, anthropological theatre, for example, are all at an advantage with regard to so-called Textual or Literary Theatre. Even if this intercultural advantage of Theatre, the Art of Spectacle, can be portrayed very succinctly and is not hard to prove by numerous examples not only from the most recent times, caution is necessary, however. Inter-Transculturalism also fails in the theatre, not seldomly because of misunderstandings, the monocultural monologue not seldomly hinders the dynamic polylogue. That is especially valid for intersocial attempts, where it is very dependent on democratic sensiblity, if one stumbles into the trap of the satisfaction of compulsions or if it is in fact successful in compensating for cultural-political deficits in cultural/theatre work. One may also not disregard what Victor Turner already pointed to in 1985 (while taking up the discourse of the years around 1968), namely that theatre can be affirmatively and subversivly effective.. (3) For the debate begun in this paper, it would surely be useful to exclude the admittedly more frequent and theatre-historically better researched affirmative variant of theatre. But even in alternatives to established forms of spectacle art produced by theatrical institutions of the last decades, as well as the contemporary spectacle vivant can miss the mark or succeed only partially in its envisaged aim of intercultural and/or intersocial mediation -through wear-and-tear in the theatrical communications process, even if the attempt at a polylogue by means of techniques of polymime/polymage, which markedly promote interculturality(4) completed or replaced.

Negative experiences provoked Peter Brook, for example to embark on his African Theatre Safari. Indeed, to speak in Brook's favour, he knowingly went into the trap, particularly seeking out the falsification of many a thesis of interculturalism, in order to prove to his multicultural group that even their work in the theatre was not free of eurocentric programming. Let's take the legendary "Shoe Show", which provoked aggression on many village squares in black Africa where Brook's people spread their mat: even stones were thrown. Obviously, the story told in it about the magical power of two old shoes was so based on European narrative traditions that its portrayal led to fundamental misunderstandings in some cases. Finally the troupe looked for the lowest common denomenator and when even that didn't work, by means of dance with the use of bamboo rods - it was finally found in a common nonverbal song. Polylogue hadn't even been attempted: in the existing "virginal situation", they sang a neutral tone "a". Peter Brook said on the occasion of a visit to the Theatre Department of Paris University 4 in Nanterre:

"Abbiamo dunque capito che l’inizio più semplice era quello di cantare insieme una sola canzone. All’inizio un solo suono. Cominciavamo a cantare "A a a" insieme, a fare delle variazioni, poi per dieci minuti sviluppavamo questo "a", lo abassavamo a poco a poco, vi aggiungiavamo una variazione. In questo modo tutti capivano, era chiaro, e lentamente anche gli altri vi participavano... E per noi era necessario attraversare il mondo per trovare condizioni vergini come questa." (5)

Brook had immediately understood that it would have made no sense to speak to them about the theatre or actors, because these were words that couldn't be translated. So he had replaced them with dancers and actors. In this way one could, it is true, make oneself understood, but the songs and dances that were performed on the mat as the centre of a circle remained incomprehensible: especially the songs. Because, what was the simplest thing in the world for Brook's multicultural troupe, namely to just string along a Western song, a French chanson, a Japanese and a Yiddish song remained an incomprehensible Tower of Babel for the Central African village inhabitants. According to which surely the cultural bartering, Eugenio Barba for example in his "Book of Dances" suggests would be where to enquire. His intercultural invasion of the village with actors of the Odin Teatre in Sardinia or in Latin America showed itself at least at the beginning of the manifestation as problematic. Only the longer term work that reminds one of anthropological research in the field, lead to exchange and intercultural understanding. (6) And this longer tern view of decentralized cultural work appears, in fact, to become one of the most important criteria of intersocial as well as intercultural "bartering".

Nevertheless, the positive elements predominate, also here their exception proves the rule. The theatre f the "open form" (cf. Klotz,1960, 1.Edition) has every chance - and with this also the scholarship of the theatre as a field of learning of cultural communication - in the iner/intra transcultural as well as in the transsocial field puts up human, democratic values against the global capitalist "Diktat": Integration instead of exclusion and racism, understanding instead of isolation, openness instead of dogmatism, variety instead of standardization, peace instead of war, emancipation instead of repression, democracy instead of dictatorship - the pairs of opposites remain expandable in their variety.

The theatre surely doesn't have power, but the theatre has structures of communication that promote discourse (as a partial system of communication of societal communication as a whole) (7)) and can create awareness: ideallly via head AND stomach. (8)

[...]

NOTES

1	Cf. Anne Ubersfeld: Lire le théâtre. Paris 1982
2	Cf. Patrice Pavis: L’analyse des spectacles. Paris 1996
3	Victor Turner: Theaterspielen im Alltagsleben und Alltagsleben im Theater. In: Der sprechende Körper. Zürich/Berlin 1996, p. 99 ff.
4	Neologe Vorschläge des Verfassers als vorläufige Hilfskonstruktion
5	Peter Brook o il Teatro necessario (a cura di Franco Quadri), La Biennale di Venezia 1976, p. 64
6	Cf. Eugenio Barba: L’archipel du théâtre, "Contrastes" Bouffonneries, Paris 1982
7	Cf. Rudolf Münz: Theatralität und Theater. Zur Historiographie von Theatralitätsgefügen. Berlin 1998
8	Cf. Dario Fo: Mistero buffo. Die Geburt des Spielmanns. Berlin 1984, p.113 ff.

		Internationale Kulturwissenschaften International Cultural Studies Etudes culturelles internationales
Sektion VII:		"Interkultureller" Austausch, transkulturelle Prozesse und Kulturwissenschaften
Section VII:		"Intercultural" Exchange, Transcultural Processes and Cultural Studies
Section VII:		Echange interculturel, processus transculturel et études culturelles