What's on Stage

Generally, it seems to me that the era of the formal innovations and novel approaches of John Whiting, LeRoi Jones, Harold Pinter, Arthur L Kopit, Peter Handke, Jean-Claue van Itallie, to name a few -- and which innovations might be rooted in the avant-garde of Cocteau, Ionescu et al. --, so this era is largely over. It appears to have ceased at the point when kitchen sink (kitsch'n'sink) realism took over (in which movement I would hesitate to include Pinter), which kind of realism might even be said to continue today.

In order to make this suggestion intelligible, I have somewhat stretched the notion of realism. By this more general "realism" I mean that either the text or its presentation would like to make us believe that what we see are characters from real life rooted in contemporary social structure, who have a life extended beyond the temporal margins of the performance, which are "round" in E. M. Forster's sense.

What this approach leaves out is, I think, the possibility of treating the theatre as theatre. I'm not talking about Brecht's distancing effect (V-effekt) in the strict sense, as my aim is not to call attention to the theatre-ness of the theatre, and I would not like to do away with the "fourth wall" by addressing the audience directly. What I would like to do instead is to restore a ritualistic quality to the theatrical performance. Ideally, such a quality would not stand diametrically opposed to any kind of realism, but would be permeated by it. It would not call our attention to the fact that we are in a theatre, but would deal with the necessary physical manifestations of it (sound of footsteps, etc.) by integrating them into the play. Catharsis (not only in the sense of purification) would not be achieved by identification with one of the characters or by the intellectual process of applying the play's "message" to our world and society. Instead, it would be generated by the power of the story (a myth) to organize its own material into a whole and our experience of our own world into something different than what we are used to. Such a quality would not try to transport us to an exotic island or into the living-room of the house next door; instead, it would show us a different story.

I think the stage-ness of plays has, in some sense, been forgotten. This despite Shakespeare, for example, whose works were most probably played on empty stages. I have even seen a monodrama consisitng of a series of largely unrelated monologues presented in one naturalistic set, which obscured the subject matter of all except one of the scenes. Why not an empty stage furnished with the furnitures of our fancy aided by lighting, acting and sound? Why not trusting the audience and allow them to add to the work seen and heard? Why not something like Marianne Elliott's mise-en-scene of Saint Joan (Design by Rae Smith; NT, Olivier, 2007)?