* If you read many of my pages, you should notice that every analysis starts or ends with the reference to spectator or spectacle. Aristotle introduced the idea of Specticle in the Poetics, but the phenomena of spectator is the central for me. In theatre and, of course, in film. Read POV, my old thought about the creative powers of seeing.
Or read Virtual Theatre pages, the reseach -- from the theory's POV it was the same drive to invistgigate the nature of spectatorship, the nature of theatre... and, finally, this is the place where my ideas about theatre and film come together. So I made a directory under the name "The Book of Spectator"!
Adorno on Theatre & Postmodernism:
To create a kind of theatre that tells the story from a different perspective, in a language that a different group of people understand, i.e. to create a working-class form of theatre appropriate to the late twentieth century, we have to look at the language of working-class entertainment, at least to see what kind of language it is (McGrath 1981, 22).
This language, he suggests, consists of forms such as sports events, the parade, the circus, etc., which are to be used in a "creative, critical" manner by the theatre practitioners (93; 67). (NB. Meyerhold)
Questions
"4 Theatres":
as entertainment / art
as instrument of education
as weapon of social / political change
as document of history -the plays and the theatrical events of various periods can be seen as historical documents reflecting that period.
Notes
The avant-garde theatre has brought about a crisis in the semiotic and the referential relationship of the sign with the world. It has lost all confidence in a mimetic reproduction of reality by the theatre, without having invented a semiological system and an autonomous theatrical language capable of taking its place (Pavis, 185).
THE SEMIOTICS OF ACTING: FROM HIEROGLYPHS TO IDEOGRAMS
by Edward Isser
Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas: LMDA is committed to the following objectives:
To affirm, support and broaden the roles that literary managers and dramaturgs play in the theatre.
To promote the exchange of information about the function, practice and value of literary management and dramaturgy.
To encourage and foster cooperation among the practitioners and theoreticians of dramaturgy, other theatre professionals and their academic counterparts.
To expand the boundaries of the field to include other literary and performance media and institutions.
The identifying signature of avant garde art, all the way back to Bakunin and his anarchist journal L’Avant-Garde in 1878, has been an unremitting hostility to contemporary civilization. Its most obvious aspect has been negative: the rejection of social organization and artistic conventions, aesthetic values and materialistic ideals, syntactical structure and logic, as well as everything associated with the bourgeoisie. But this apparent nihilism always implied a utopian alternative to the status quo, which has three aspects. Broadly speaking these can be called the philosophical, the populist and the primitive—although such avant garde categories are often inseparable, equally political and tend to be expressed in psychological terms.
As a philosophy, the avant garde corresponds to anarchism, which also has its nihilistic side. Although its public image became misleadingly associated with bearded, bomb-throwing terrorists, the basic principle of the turn-of-the-century anarchist movement could be best described as extreme individualism. For Bakunin and his followers, personal rights totally superseded those of the state, which by definition were coercive; egalitarian communes would be the only valid form of social organization; and all set rules that prescribed behaviour (‘being’) had to be discarded for a fluid sense of individual fulfilment (‘becoming’). In general terms these remain the ideals of the avant garde, even if their source frequently went unrecognized, while translating them into theatrical practice tended to disguise the link with Bakunin’s ideas. Thus the anarchist battle against political hierarchies turned into an attack on the cultural hegemony of the establishment (which was sometimes little more than épater les bourgeois ). Personal liberation came to be conceived psychologically or even spiritually, rather than as an external condition, although the route to its achievement was frequently physical—freeing the mind through assaulting the senses—and had strong political overtones. The commune was identified with the acting group: again, in a sense, an internalization of the anarchist aim. And an emphasis on artistic creation as ‘process’, in place of presenting a theatrical ‘product’, substituted for the notion of ‘becoming’ versus ‘being’.
Exactly the same anti-hierarchical ethos characterizes the populist aspect of anarchism, which is perhaps best defined in Mikhail Bakhtin’s work. Despite being isolated from avant garde developments in Stalinist Russia and restricted to literary theory, his path-breaking studies of Dostoevsky and particularly Rabelais are not only representative, but also offer a critical tool for analysing avant garde work. By contrast to classical and mimetic literature—seen as inherently authoritarian and logocentric in its ‘monologism’ (his term for Aristotelian unity and the separation of genres, in which aesthetic harmony is achieved by a singleness of voice and perspective)—Bakhtin traces a counter-culture archetype to popular street carnivals. All of what has been defined as ‘great literature’ since the Renaissance is considered an aberration in the context of this much longer ‘folk tradition’, which incorporates contradictory elements, combining the comic and tragic with the grotesque, to create a multi-tonal or ‘dialogic’ model that is intrinsically revolutionary. 1 Derived from the Russian Formalist school of linguistics, Bakhtin’s literary sociology parallels anarchism but gives it a Marxist gloss.
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This is not good; everything I use in classes and directing does come from the thoughts about the theory of theatre... and I have no time to write about it, the theory. About the great laws and principles that govern the spectacle! The theory of the stage events (like "screen events" in film studies), for example. I even don't know where are the notes on this subject! So many things could be explained so easy, you we would have the overall theorical principles of stage and staging.... What a paradox; film is only a century old and has much more advanced film studies, than theatre...
"As long as a thing works it is not successful, and when success is there then the impact is over. This is because there can only be an impact if, for example in the theatre, the audience is split, brought home to its real situation. . . . Success happens when everybody is cheering, in other words, when there is nothing more to say. For me the theatre is a medium which still permits one to avoid that kind of success." (Muller 1984, 138; 139). (more in POMO script.vtheatre.net)
You see? "Theatre Theory" doesn't sound right. "Acting Theory" too. But what about "Performance Theory"? Better. Performance is broader. What if we to look at acting from the Performance Arts zone? Maybe my attitude toward the subject itself is completely wrong?
Did you read intro or title pages? Okay, this is an accidental directory, my friends. I was dumping notes and pages for myself (some were from the era, when I was giving papers). Some had no obvious home... I call this directory "theatre theory" simply because most of my pages are instructional!
Yes, I started Research Directory, which I am not using, since the directory you are in is back from being "Anatoly's Online Portfolio" (forget it).
I read my handwritten notes -- "wrong subjects, wrong issues, wrong questions".... Well, I don't think I can send a paper on "Theology of Theatre"...
You see, the postmodernist somehow died in me (I still like the New French, who are not new anymore), but I think that with theatre it must be between science and belief. Metaphysics? Perhaps. Philosophy? POMO writers left the traditional scholastic mode anyway, maybe this new century and millenium should shake off the shock theatre got in the 20th century with the cinema and other IT technologies. It's live, immidiate, direct! Maybe theatre is the only last church we could have now, when alive people can get tother. The last refuge in the universe of alienation, which became total and final.
The obvious problem: the distance between what we are and what we know about ourselves! The biggest (and the invisible, like every big historical event) revolution took place with us. Only Marxism, fascism and nazism talked openely about changing the nature of man: the new man as they saw it. We got it!
All my nonfiction is about it, but -- in pomo traditions; twisted, unfinished, fragmented on purpose and so on. It's all already discribed by the PM writers. Nevertheless, I kept my writing (and thoughts) separate from my teaching... I am lucky if I manage to get to the basics of the traditional, core knowledge of theatre.
In fact, the webpages are to give an extra step deeper into theory behind the practical application of performance and directing principles. It's supplimentary; go for "theory" if you need greater systematization in your understanding of theatre. The conflict beteen Art and Craft is a curse of our education; too much of the vacational stress, instead of the education (self-development) of theatre artist (in classical Plato' sense). The nature of the two processes are different, if not opposite. Teaching craft, I am couching, in developing an artist -- I am an asisstant and the teacher is you. So, during those 4 years, you, my dear student, have to develop this "instructor" in you, who will be guiding your self-study for the rest of your life. Do we have a methodology for this most important process? Not really. Therefore each web-book eands with the attempt to switch the modus of study and learning, when you are supposed to become a teacher (of yourself).
First, the attitude. You have to change it, my friend. You heard million times that art can't be taught, only learnt. What does it mean? To put it simply, you can study the elements of the theatre craft, but this is not what is your altimate goal -- to bring to this world your (new) ART. The theory is a good neutral ground to jump from the past (known) to the future (which doesn't exist yet -- and you are the link between the two). "Theory" by definition is not personal and you can see youself from the outside (remember the Alienation Effect in Epic Theatre?) -- you get a chance yo comment on yourself (that is what director does to actor as a separate and diffirent artistic entity). "Theory Bone" could guard you from stagnation -- a must for any artist. Once a tree stops growning, it's a dead tree. I tried to express this sentiment in "24-hour-actor" chapter, which still floating between the subjects without an anchore. Please, develop this "theoretical" dimession in you, the need for the marginal knowledge, the place all discoveries are made. The need for books and music, fine art and philosophy -- Meyerhold was one of the best examples of this school of inner development (or his teacher Eisenstein).
I fear that my ode to theory can't be misunderstood: this is not theory for the theory sake. No, theory is a tool for any practicing artist. Can practice without it? Yes, of course. But this is where the line is marked between a good actor and Stanislavsky. Between a film director and Eisenstein. Maybe you don't understand it now, you are too young, you still growing naturally -- too bad if you are to miss this "theoretical" craving stage in your development, it could be too late later.
....
Muller: "I want to see the face of war. And that's not easy, now the face of war is McDonald's" (1990a, 83).
- Adolphe Appia and "The Work of Living Art"
- Preface
- 1. the Elements
- 2. Living Time
- 3. Living Space
- 4. Living Color
- 5. Organic Unity
- 6. Collaboration
- 7. the Great Unknown and the Experience of Beauty
- 8. Bearers of the Flame
- Designs
- Adolphe Appia's "Man is the Measure of All Things" (protagoras)
- 1: Drama and Theatre as University Subjects
- 2: Drama and the Literary Tradition
- 3: History, Theatre, Society
- 4: The Essence of Drama
- 5: Women, Theatre and the Ethics of the Academy
- 6: Performance, Art and the Avant Garde
- 7: The Rise of Performance Studies
- 8: Performance Studies: Some Basic Concepts
- 9: Postmodernism and Performance
- 10: Recent Mappings of Drama-Theatre- Performance
- Part Two: Keywords
- Action
- Aleatory
- Catharsis
- Character, Mask, Person
- Defamiliarisation and Alienation
- Embodiment
- Empathy
- Interculturalism
- Kinaesthetic
- Mimesis
- Performativity
- Presence and Representation
- Semiotics and Phenomenology
The Work of Living Art: A Theory of the Theatre by H. D. Albright, Adolphe Appia, Barnard Hewitt; University of Miami Press, 1960 : + "MAN IS THE MEASURE OF ALL THINGS" A THEORY OF THE THEATRE
@2000-2004 film-north *
PS. I don't even know where to position my "theory" pages; I do not need another project! "Theory of Theatre" or "Theology of Theatre"? Wow! No, no, I don't want get involved with this kind of project! I won't have time for anything else! Anatoly, August 2002
* total actor & total director files (new)
* teatr.us + regisseur.us ?
* The Poetics (notes?)
Aristotle:
