Leçon magistrale d'écriture scénique : Le garçon du dernier rang (El chico de la ultima fila)

Irène Sadowska Guillon

Auteur : Juan Mayorga. Traduction : Yves Lebeau. Mise en scène: Jorge Lavelli. Théâtre de la Tempête, Paris, 2009. Tournée en France, Belgique, Luxembourg en 2010.

Juan Mayorga, 43 ans, occupe une place singulière dans la nouvelle dramaturgie espagnole. Il propose un grand théâtre du monde actuel, complexe et radical, qui interroge les conflits et les contradictions de notre système politique et social : rapport du politique à l'histoire, falsification et instrumentalisation de l'histoire et du présent, mécanismes de domination et d'appropriation de l'autre, perte de l'identité.

Le théâtre de Juan Mayorga transgresse les codes habituels de l'écriture dramatique et de la représentation scénique, brisant de surcroît la routine apathique de la réception du fait théâtral par le spectateur qu'il amène à sortir du rôle de consommateur pour devenir architecte de sa propre lecture du spectacle. Ce théâtre fait figure d'ovni sur nos scènes pavées de « bien-pensance » consensuelle et de messages idéologiques.

Il va sans dire qu'une mise en scène illustrative, réductrice, substituant les effets à l'imaginaire peut assassiner un auteur et une œuvre la meilleure soit-elle.

Pour donner vie aux pièces de Juan Mayorga, il fallait donc traduire dans l'espace et dans le jeu la singularité et la complexité de son écriture. C’est ce que nous a proposé un artiste d'exception, Jorge Lavelli qui, après avoir créé en France en 2007 Himmelweg, chemin du ciel de Juan Mayorga signe du 3 mars au 12 avril 2009 la création du Garçon du dernier rang au Théâtre de la Tempête, à Paris.

Germain, professeur de littérature dans un lycée, tente d'initier ses élèves aux arcanes de l'écriture et aux rudiments de l'analyse littéraire. Au milieu de copies anodines et sans intérêt, il découvre avec surprise dans la rédaction de Claude, élève terne et en retrait, une maîtrise peu commune de la langue et de l'écriture. Il pousse Claude à poursuivre l'histoire entamée, ce qui conduit le garçon à pénétrer de plus en plus dans l'intimité de la famille de son ami Rapha dont, sur le mode d'un voyeurisme malsain, il se nourrit pour écrire. Le jeu entre le réel et la fiction séduit peu à peu et contamine le professeur et sa femme Jeanne, confidente et complice.

Au gré des épisodes successifs écrits par Claude, des conseils et des remarques que lui prodigue Germain, le récit s'ordonne et la pièce se construit à travers un subtil jeu dramatique dans lequel la fiction et les éléments du réel, la vie et la littérature mutuellement jusqu'à se confondre.

Jorge Lavelli transpose avec maestria dans sa mise en scène du Garçon du denier rang le processus de l'écriture en devenir dont la clef de voûte est la relation ambiguë de prédation et de manipulation réciproque qui s'instaure entre Claude et Germain, son professeur, devenu complice. Le metteur en scène confère sur le plateau une continuité au récit fragmenté de Claude en l'inscrivant dans un espace-temps dans lequel, comme sur une page blanche, s'écrivent et s'emboitent les histoires des personnages.

Avec une totale économie de décor, Lavelli crée un espace où seules les relations entre les acteurs, le jeu d'une absolue rigueur et précision font advenir les situations qui s'imbriquent, se superposent et s'enchaînent avec une extraordinaire fluidité.

Une scène nue avec au fond un rideau de fils de perles permet les apparitions instantanées des acteurs qui arrivent parfois aussi depuis la salle et apportent à certains moments quelques accessoires : chaises, livres, œuvres d'art, nécessaires au jeu. Deux panneaux mobiles réfléchissants délimitent certains espaces de jeu.

C'est un espace où les divers plans de jeu simultanés ou juxtaposés, les différents niveaux de narration, l'interprétation de la réalité et de la fiction, la multiplicité des points de vue se matérialisent en un instant.

La quête initiatique, vampirique, de Claude, l'écrivain en devenir, qui traverse les territoires interdits de la vie intime de la famille bourgeoise de Rapha et du couple d'intellectuels (le professeur et sa femme), est en même temps un lieu de réflexion sur l'acte de l'écriture, la genèse de la fiction littéraire, l'enseignement, la culture bourgeoise, l'art contemporain.

Lavelli dessine finement l'évolution de la démarche de Claude qui, pensant dominer la situation, avec un certain cynisme d'adolescent, provoque chez Esther, mère de Rapha, la compassion, le sentiment de protection, cherchant à la séduire à la fois par l'écriture (le poème qu'il lui adresse) et par sa propre fragilité. En manipulant les personnages de sa fiction, à force de les observer de trop près, contrairement à ce qu'il a prévu, se laissant entraîner dans la fiction qu'il a créée, il finit par devenir amoureux de la mère de Rapha.

À l'opposé de tout réalisme, le jeu des acteurs se tient toujours à la fois dans l'artifice et l'émotion. Une alchimie du travail sur l'énergie, sur sa circulation, sur la rythmique, la justesse du ton dont seul Lavelli connaît le secret pour donner corps aux personnages et aux situations.

Tout est organisé comme dans une partition musicale et chorégraphique, en une confrontation de rythmes différents, chacun des acteurs ayant son propre rythme. Ainsi Rapha bondissant, sportif, dynamique, Rapha père en mouvement constant, en action, Claude dans un registre d'équilibriste, dans une avancée permanente, le professeur et sa femme comme drogués par l'écriture de Claude, impatients de lire la suite, Esther disponible, flottant dans un rêve inaccompli, dans l'attente de quelque chose.

La distribution est en tout point parfaite. Pierre Alain Chapuis, félin et imposant, qui dans Himmelweg était un commandant éblouissant, inoubliable, crée ici le professeur à la fois mentor et rival, pervers et exalté. Isabel Karajan confère à Jeanne, amatrice inconditionnelle d'art conceptuel, une énergie impétueuse, d'une combattante. Christophe Kourotchkine (Rapha père), Nathalie Lacroix (Esther) et Pierric Plathier (Rapha fils) forment, sans jamais tomber dans la caricature, une famille de petits bourgeois compassés et frustrés. Enfin l'extraordinaire Sylvain Levitte relève les différentes nuances et les ambiguïtés du personnage de Claude : fragile et manipulateur, obstiné, cynique et sensible.

La scène finale, la confrontation de Claude avec le professeur, avec en fond de scène les personnages de son récit, comme s'ils assistaient à la fin de celui-ci, est sublime et d'une force inouïe. Claude provoque le professeur, la tension monte et culmine dans la gifle que Germain lui donne. Ce geste de violence d'un mari humilié marque la rupture entre eux et en même temps la victoire de l'élève qui, obligeant ainsi le professeur à sortir de son rôle de maître, se retrouve non seulement sur un pied d'égalité avec celui-ci mais encore l'auteur souverain de la fin qu'il donne à son récit.

Par sa virtuosité, cette mise en scène est une leçon magistrale d'écriture scénique, ce que n'a pas manqué de reconnaître la critique française.

Patrice Pavis[1]

Philosophy and New theatre

Philosophy has been in demand during the whole history of theatre. In the last fifty years the following theories have been used: Marxism and dramaturgical analysis, critical theory, structuralism, deconstruction, hermeneutics, semiotics, phenomenology. They all for their part have provided us with important insights for the study of theatre. Recently, two important questions have been raised: performativity and aesthetic experience. In a certain reversal of perspective theatre has become a way of challenging philosophy and leading to new  views of performance. A few photos are described in order to illustrate the way philosophy has been influential for the development of contemporary performance.

Chaque nouvelle mise en scène, chaque texte dramatique fraîchement écrit, chaque  expérience théâtrale originale nous oblige à repenser le monde, à le reconstruire par l’imagination. Pour construire cet objet minuscule ou dérisoire, ce monde en miniature, nous devons le ramener au nôtre et donc réfléchir (à) ce monde. La philosophie n’est pas loin. Elle s’est d’ailleurs depuis toujours intéressée de près au théâtre, même si, avec Platon par exemple, c’était pour bannir les poètes de la cité, ou avec Aristote pour se méfier du jeu de la représentation.
Il y a longtemps que la philosophie ne se demande plus si le théâtre est littérature ou art autonome, s’il peut représenter le monde, corriger les mœurs,ou bien encore si l’acteur ou le dramaturge est nécessairement, comme l’affirmait Nietzsche,  capable d’ « assister soi-même à sa propre métamorphose et agir dès lors comme si l’on était effectivement entré dans un autre corps, dans un autre personnage » (Naissance de la tragédie, §8, p.60). Nous sommes à présent bien éloignés de la suspicion des penseurs grecs, des pères de l’Eglise et des scénophobes de tous poils. Loin donc des grandes questions de la philosophie. Mais le besoin de philosophie demeure ! Pourquoi ?
Le besoin de philosophie :
Est-ce parce que la philosophie nous aide à mieux comprendre la pratique contemporaine du théâtre et de la performance ? Au-delà d’une réflexion normative sur la manière dont le théâtre est censé imiter les actions humaines ou corriger les mœurs, on constate l’utilité de la philosophie dans l’usage quotidien du théâtre du point de vue des créateurs comme de celui des spectateurs. Au-delà des grandes questions sur l’origine et l’essence du théâtre, après les grandes révolutions des sciences humaines des années 1950 à 1970, la philosophie semble s’être fragmentée en une longue série de théories souvent  contradictoires et fermées sur elles-mêmes. A chaque époque, à chaque moment historique correspond une philosophie dominante, laquelle s’explicite en diverses théories, voire méthodologies.

• Le marxisme fournit dans les années 1950 et 60 une armature à l’analyse dramaturgique des pièces et des spectacles, analyse inspirée du brechtisme.
• L’école de Francfort (Horkheimer, Adorno, Habermas) prolonge les études marxistes. La réception américaine de la Critical Theory incite à critiquer l’idéologie des œuvres, à examiner leur potentiel émancipateur, tout en critiquant sans trêve ses présupposés et la situation dans laquelle elle est employée. Malheureusement, les gens de théâtre y font fait très peu appel, en dépit de l’intérêt de montrer combien les perceptions fausses du lecteur comme du spectateur sont liées à leur emprisonnement cognitif autant qu’idéologique.
• Le structuralisme, dans les années 1960, puis la sémiologie vers 1970-1980, s’appliquent bien à la mise en scène considérée comme système clos et cohérent.
• Par opposition, et quasi simultanément, la déconstruction d’un Derrida, le poststructuralisme et la Théorie Critique  qui en découlent, notamment aux Etats-Unis, deviennent un bon outil pour décrire la performance et les pratiques scéniques, lesquelles prennent parfois le nom de « théâtre postdramatique » (Lehmann, 1999).
• La sociocritique, la psychocritique, à la suite des travaux de Goldmann et Mauron, fournissent de précieux modèles d’analyse, trop vite abandonnés
• L’herméneutique d’un Gadamer ou d’un Ricoeur permet d’assouplir les analyses en prenant en compte les attentes du lecteur  ou spectateur. La Rezeptionstheorie (théorie de la réception) allemande d’un Jauss ou d’un Iser, systématise l’horizon d’attente du public et établit la suite des concrétisation d’une même œuvre par une série de moments historiques ou de mises en scène.
• La phénoménologie, inspirée de Husserl et de Merleau-Ponty, appliquée au théâtre par Bert States (1987) ou Stan Garner (1994), nous montre la manière dont le spectateur reçoit et traite l’objet esthétique.

Le déplacements des grandes questions  

Ces théories continuent à évoluer et donc à influencer à des degrés divers la manière de penser le théâtre. Elles sont cependant souvent « dépassées », ou « survolées », par deux tendances actuelles de la théorisation : la performativité et l’expérience esthétique.
  *La théorie linguistique des performatifs, appliquée à la littérature et aux sciences humaines, insiste sur l’action produite par toute énonciation. Qu’il s’agisse de l’identité sexuelle (le rôle sexuel comme acte performatif), gestuelle pour l’acteur ( la gestualité soumise aux mêmes techniques corporelles et esthétiques) ou sociale (les conventions réglant la communication), les performatifs structurent la vie sociale en repérant les actions accomplies à tous les niveaux du comportement humain. D’où le schisme depuis une trentaine d’années entre « theatre studies » et « performance studies »
    * L’expérience esthétique du spectateur est censée être le but ultime de l’œuvre d’art, ce qui déplace vers le récepteur le gros des troupes théoriques. Il est vrai que beaucoup d’œuvres récentes dans les arts plastiques  ou scéniques exigent du spectateur une activité et une inventivité, pour ne pas dire une patience, que l’oeuvre classique, avec ses règles strictes n’avait pas rendues nécessaires. Cette expérience engage donc le spectateur, y compris sur le plan éthique, puisqu’il doit répondre de l’impact de l’œuvre sur la collectivité. La théorie ou la philosophie ne nous disent toutefois pas comment formaliser et systématiser cet acte réceptif. Souvent l’expérience de la perception est désarmée lorsqu’elle doit mettre en mots ce que le sujet éprouve en affects et en sensations. Il est alors tentant de ramener le texte ou la mise en scène à quelque chose d’ineffable, d’imperceptible, voire de postdramatique : manière de repousser à plus tard sa définition ou sa saisie philosophique.

Renversement de la perspective

La question est de savoir s’il existe aujourd’hui une philosophie, ou même simplement une théorie, qui permette de rendre compte de l’avènement du théâtre postdramatique et de l’élargissement du théâtre occidental à d’autres formes. Il faudrait nous mettre en quête d’une philosophie qui nous offre de nouveaux modèles d’intelligibilité de l’objet « (cultural) performance ». Au-delà  d’une philosophie cartésienne du sujet, ou hégélienne de la dialectique historique, le modèle cognitiviste de Lakoff et Johnson (1999) tente de dépasser le dualisme du corps et de l’esprit ; il propose un mode de pensée qui n’oppose plus le sensible et l’intelligible, le percept et le concept, la matérialité  concrète et la compréhension abstraite. La mise en scène, et avec elle tout objet spectaculaire ou performatif non identifié, instaure précisément une médiation entre l’abstraction de la philosophie et le concret de l’oeuvre plastique ou gestuelle.
Quel que soit le respect qu’on porte à la philosophie et à tout ce qu’elle éclaire de la création théâtrale, il faut à présent se demander si, inversement, la pratique théâtrale ne nous aide pas à faire aussi une nouvelle expérience de la philosophie, si  le travail de l’écriture dramatique ou de la scène ne débouche pas sur quelque inespérée « illumination » philosophique !
On sait que les philosophes, au moins depuis les Lumières, ont souvent été à la fois des littérateurs ou des dramaturges, pratiquant les deux genres avec un égal bonheur (qu’on pense à Diderot, Voltaire ou Schiller). Mais la séparation de corps restait de rigueur, car  c’est seulement avec des essayistes comme Blanchot ou Derrida que littérature et philosophie se sont interpénétrées. Les gens de  théâtre ont été plus timides, les discours passant pour trop éloignés et mutuellement exclusifs. L’écriture dramatique de philosophes comme Sartre ou Camus reste   trop esclave du message à faire passer pour qu’on puisse parler d’une recherche de contenus philosophiques à partir d’expériences dramatiques. En revanche, avec des auteurs comme Beckett ou Novarina, Handke ou Jelinek, la recherche littéraire et dramatique aboutit à une réflexion sur le sens ou l’absurde, à une remise en cause  d’un principe philosophique. Un auteur comme Koltès qui passe à tort pour un peintre de la vie des marginaux, teste dans une pièce comme Dans la solitude des champs de coton le principe hégélien de la dialectique, de la contradiction et de l’identité des consciences. Il pousse la déconstruction jusqu’à parodier la disputatio philosophique ou théologique en employant des arguments aussi vides que  flamboyants dans l’usage de la théorie. Comment mieux dire la réification, la marchandisation des relations humaines ?

A fortiori, la performance, au sens de  Performance art  des années 1950 et 60 se donnait comme tâche de contredire et de provoquer des certitudes esthétiques et philosophiques (la représentation, l’identification, la mimèsis notamment). Même sans la radicalité de leurs aînés, beaucoup de metteurs en scène se donnent pour but, parfois sans le savoir et par pure intuition, de faire découvrir grâce à la forme théâtrale une vérité ou une hypothèse philosophique. Ainsi la Digital Performance  lance un défi aux notions de présence, d’identité, de personne. Quoi qu’elle raconte, elle ne manque pas de rendre le public attentif à ces notions, le forçant à réévaluer ses certitudes. Ou bien l’écriture dramatique dite chorale : elle  détourne le principe de l’échange dialogique,  elle produit également un effet inattendu en pulvérisant la notion de sujet ou de locuteur, en ouvrant le texte à des échos innombrables, pas seulement sous-textuels et psychologiques (comme chez Tchékhov), mais polyphoniques et indécidables  Se trouve ainsi posée la question de la mobilité du sens,  de son espacement quasi derridien. Dans tous ces exemples on retrouve ce procédé de la déconstruction selon le philosophe français : seule la pratique textuelle ou scénique est en mesure de donner une image de ce procédé philosophique si fréquent et aussi difficile à définir qu’un Koan chinois.
Ira-t-on jusqu’à affirmer que le théâtre de recherche provoque toujours la philosophie, la fait avancer ? Serait-ce une trop grande prétention de sa part ? Peut-être pas si l’on admet l’hypothèse de l’apparition depuis la modernité d’un discours hybride, fait de littérature, de théâtre, de théorie critique et d’essai philosophique. Si la mise en scène est non seulement un réglage du sens, mais un « dérèglement des sens », elle est alors un système provisoire, fluctuant, saisi instantanément par un collectif  d’artistes pour un collectif de spectateurs. En essayant plusieurs « solutions », elle révèle quelques principes de sa construction, et donc des clés philosophiques  qui en retour aideront à l’ouvrir. Ainsi donc la philosophie n’est pas seulement nécessaire aux spectateurs pour intégrer ces savoirs hétérogènes, mais elle a besoin, pour bouger, de la création fictionnelle ou de l’essayage de la mise en scène, et de la création artistique.
Entre philosophie et théâtre, la dispute éternelle ne fait pourtant que commencer.

 

Bibliographie

GARNER, S. 1994. Bodied Spaces, Phenomenology and Performance in Contemporary Drama. Ithaca : Cornell University Press.
JAUSS , H.-R. 1977. Asthetische Erfahrung und literarische Hermeneutik. München : Fink Verlag.
LAKOFF , G. / JOHNSON, M. 1999. Philosophy in the Flesh. Basic Books.
LEHMANN , Hans Th. 1999. Postdramatisches Theater. Frankfurt: Verlag der Autoren.
NIETZSCHE , F. 1977. Naissance de la tragédie. Paris : Gallimard.
STATES, B. 1987 Great Reckonings in little rooms, Berkeley : University of California Press.

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[1] Patrice Pavis was professor of theatre studies at the University of Paris (1976-2007). He is currently professor in the department of Drama at the University of Kent at Canterbury. Educated in the Ecole normale supérieure de Saint-Cloud (1968-1972), where he studied German and French literature, he has published a Dictionary of theatre (translated in thirty languages), and books on Performance analysis, Contemporary French dramatists and Contemporary mise en scène. He is an Honorary Fellow at the University of London (Queen Mary) and Honoris Causa Doctor at the University of Bratislava.  His most recent publication is: La Mise en scène contemporaine, Armand Colin, 2007.

Estorino dreams of another American Medea: Medea sueña Corinto

Vivian Martínez Tabares[1]

Author: Abelardo Estorino. Director and set designer: Abelardo Estorino. Light: Carlos Repilado. Set design and costumes: Eduardo Arrocha. Music: Juan Piñera, Actress: Adria Santana.

One of the most prevalent and successful trends in contemporary Latin American theatre has been the rewriting of classical texts, mainly tragedies. The preference has been for plays with political implications, which dramatists have used to create characters and mythical projections which have related to the historic, social and cultural circumstances of their own times. Thus have they kept in touch with their own audiences. Within this tendency, Antigone has certainly been, in recent years, one of the most efficient examples of a rebellious heroin who defies arbitrary and autocratic rules. However, Medea has also been a persistent presence, not only for her specific tragic condition, as an unnatural mother who does not hesitate in sacrificing her children to have her revenge over her treacherous husband, but also as the foreigner, the immigrant, a desperate witch who terrorises in order to annihilate Jason, thus affirming a perverted identity.

We should say that, very often, these rewritings deliberately violate the canon in a mostly bold and conscious way, thus freely taking hold of heritage and refashioning it according to specific deeds and contexts.

Medea proves to be extraordinarily powerful in contemplations of serious problems of today’s world, such as difference – the other, marginality –, gender and migration. This is true of all the versions of Medea written by Euripides, Seneca, Corneille, Jean Anouilh and Heiner Müller, and we can find echoes and references to them in the plays by, among others, Pepe Triana, Ramiro Guerra, Hugo Argüelles, Chico Buarque de Hollanda and Paulo Pontes, Pedro Santaliz, Reinaldo Montero, Denise Stoklos, Teatro Matacandelas, Pecky Andino, David Hevia, Raquel Araújo, Rolando Pérez and, now, Abelardo Estorino’s Medea sueña Corinto.

As a playwright, Estorino takes as sources for his creative work some of the readings of Greek tragedy which exist within Cuban heritage, such as a noted adaptation of Medea created in the 1950s. He also draws upon his own experience as theatre director of Reinaldo Monter’s Medea, a curious experiment which adopts structural elements of the Greek tragedy, but contaminates them with mockery and irony, in an unequivocal Cuban language, intertextualizing popular expressions and slang, thus highlighting the theme of migration and its attendant notions of insularity, identity and belonging/estrangement.

Estorino blends references to the common everyday life with the universal literary heritage when processing the myth via Western history and culture. And he also highlights the condition of the migrant when he characterises the protagonist as a poor woman from the South – mestiza from the Caribbean – rather modest and working class, who enjoys the sea and the simple pleasures of life. When she meets Jason she is overwhelmed and fascinated by the possibility of changing her life in search of an unknown comfort, considering: “Isn’t it true that everything is ever changing?”

In order to have her dream come true – crossing the sea towards the Promised Land – Medea bestows to Jason a power and the most cherished treasure of her land, with no hesitation or remorse. And she goes even further: she questions the ethical values that have defended the preservation of that treasure in the altars of the common well being. The voyage is a clandestine and risky escape that reminds us of suicide crossings in rafts and dinghies, in which people are willing to overcome all obstacles and risk any mishaps in order to achieve that goal. This is not very different from many stories we encounter in the international sections of today’s news reports. This is especially true when Medea finally discovers that the status of a migrant still creates an indestructible barrier, the immigrant remains other, despised, used, put aside and sent back.

As an aside, Medea questions the audience about its silence and its lack of opinion. These, she implies, are immobilising vices, which neglect human action and, therefore, ideology and politics. The social masks worn by the audience are exposed, and the onlookers are satirised as a homogenous block, false, sterile and mischievous. For Abelardo Estorino, truth is the essential ethical principle of man’s behaviour in society and an indispensable condition of his complete emancipation, as well as a conceptual leitmotiv.

Estorino proposes a dialogue with Euripides, through engagement with the dualities and contradictions identified in the character of Medea. If Euripides articulates the traits of the mythical Medea, as a wise woman and witch, young woman in love and revenging wife, lovable mother and implacable murderer, respected lady and despised foreigner; Estornino enriches the figure with ingredients coming from various cultural sources. The dilemma: to leave or not to leave, so dear to Electra Garrigó,[2] is one of the characteristics of a rich dual play: two worlds – one primitive, the other sophisticated –, periphery and centre; change or not to change, antiquity and the New World. And he imports the compositional metadiscourse that comes from tradition: Euripides is and is not there, as well as Seneca, Corneille, Anouilh and Triana.

We can detect once more, as in other of his plays, the questioning of a prescribed history, legitimated by tradition and the canon. Medea, a divided feminine subject, held as barbarian in the colonial gaze of the Empire, belies the accepted truth, wants to change her destiny and rebels against the inexorable fact that she is a character of a legend: “I want to be a free woman”. She questions all those who have told her story, even Euripides himself, with whom she discusses matters from different perspectives. The authors she challenges are themselves characters that the actress – for whom this play has been written specifically – impersonates. Indeed, Adria Santana is a close collaborator of the playwright. As an author, Estorino has become more and more involved with the stage, directing the actress, designing the movement, and allotting to the actress the responsibility of a direct and committed dialogue with the audience, thus activating an exchange of ideas and relations that go beyond the script.

We also find in the play the sensual and erotic trait that seems to be characteristic of the Cuban identity, tackled by the author with delicacy and elegance. When Medea prepares for the presentation of Jason in her story – as well as when she tries to remove those terrible memories – she rejoices in the pleasure the sea brings to her body. The description of the contact with the water, the awareness of its mild temperature, the way it contracts her muscles and the salty taste on her lips are the perfect prelude to the appearance of the man she has desired so strongly: “There you are, Jason, on your feet, in the sea, as master of the sea, the whole blue belongs to you: a blue smile, the blue indigo of your eyes.”

In Medea Dreams about Corinto, the tragic flaw is diminished by “the accident”: more than hubris, we find a miscalculation, and the pathos lacks transcendence, since Medea has not premeditated to kill her children, but loses them when she uses them as a tool to destroy Creusa and Creon. The outcome is much more prosaic and desolate while the protagonist – reunited with Jason – serves him soap and coffee as a perpetual and daily routine related to their curse, and the sour smell that fills the house: “Ever since we have met we have only bred lies and treacheries.”

Medea is cast as a dominated victim. She has failed in her intention, as do so many in these times of acute economic crisis in the process of globalisation. Like so many migrants who find that the grass was not, in fact, greener on the other side, she wishes she was able to return home. She does not succeed in reaching the consecration that the tragic poet – here a traitor, in a certain sense – had promised her. Estorino dreams of another, American Medea who repeats her story as a sad farce.

In the first scene Medea is dressed in red, the light comes in vertically and she steps on to a circular platform which represents the island, surrounded by four wooden beams with candles. The appearance of Jason in her memory-tale is an orgasm of gasping and gestures, with no false modesty, performed under a bleak and intimate light that underlines the Caribbean sensuality of this Cuban Medea. The actress comes to the proscenium, addresses us directly and ironically with speeches which engage not only her but ourselves today, in this moment in this very place. She shares her doubts with us, and - both as Medea and as Adria Santana - she proposes a dialogue with us. For a moment she forces us, as an open assembly, to stand in order to welcome Seneca and discuss the double m

orality, a contemporary contradiction that involves each and every one of us. She asks us “Shall I leave or not?”, and, secretly, in the obscurity of the hall, she shares with us examples of departures, evoking the circumstances and dramas of contemporary migrations from the South to the North that go far beyond local problems.

The light, by Carlos Repilado, creates illusionary zones and varied dramatic sensations with splendid atmospheres, suggestive beams of light and the appalling abyss in which Medea’s presence almost disappears when she loses her children, in the gaping wind. Set design and costumes, by Eduardo Arrocha, are also inspired, stressing the brownish and coarse tones. Having worked with Estorino in the past, Eduardo Arrocha was able to translate the visual poetry and the efficient images of this play.

The powerful energy that the actress gives to her actions with her children and her husband – momentarily interrupted by moments of sterile dialogue with Euripides – is strong enough to compensate the only virtual presence of her relatives. As when she flavours the salt of the beach – before the emergence of the ship with that splendid man Jason - a moment which is accompanied by the music of Juan Piñera, which is a beautiful fusion of rhythms evoking ancient atmospheres and contemporary sonorities.

Adria Santana displays a vast possibility of physical and vocal resources when changing from love to hatred, gives life to the few props on stage – a cushion; the pillar she strikes; the barrier that hides the golden fleece; the ritual mask representing the authors of the saga; the military cap that will be the allegory of Creon and his arbitrary and imperial power; the broad black veil that will come with the hubris; the single candle, with which she says goodbye to us all, while resigning, defeated, to her wretched destiny.

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[1] Vivian Martínez Tabares is a theatre critic and researcher, as well as editor and teacher. She directs the journal on Latin Ameritan Theatre Conjunto and has recently published a compilation of her reviews in: Pensar el teatro en voz alta (To think on theatre aloud). She is presently Cultural Attaché of Cuba in Mexico.

[2] Main character of the emblematic play by Virgilio Piñera (1912-1979) that rereads Electra from the Cuban viewpoint of the sentimental education granted to us by our parents. Written in 1941, the play marks the entrance of Cuban theatre into modernity.

Playing seriously with Augusto Boal (1931-2009)

Veronika Baxter[1]

Augusto Boal died on 2 May, 2009 after struggling with leukemia for some time. He is survived by his wife Cecilia - and sons, Fabian and Julian Boal - who is active in the Theatre of the Oppressed methods, and edits the quarterly online newsletter, Under Pressure (http://www.theatreoftheoppressed.org/en/index.php?nodeID=21).

The Augusto Boal that I so admired was a poetic, gregarious man who laughed, made jokes about his big nose, and waved his arms about while making theatre. He was in essence the embodiment of his own methods – playful - and an optimist despite everything. When he ran for election as Vereador in Rio in the late 1990s his election slogan was ‘Have the courage to be happy’. In his brief emails to me over the last years, he was always upbeat about his life, semi-retired in Brazil, but still going off to talk or give workshops when his physical health allowed him. At the time of his death, he had completed a revision of his last book, Aesthetics of the Oppressed.

In the workshop where I met him, a hot New York summer in 1996, he was bemused by our group. We started off getting an ‘A’ for his class and we amended class times to what seemed like all day, intense and exciting. We were a mixed bag of graduates mostly from New York, but a few like myself, who had traveled far to do the workshop. I thought I would be the oldest person there, but surprisingly, there were several people older than my 34, and one woman was at least as old as Boal at that point. And a large cohort of twenty - somethings - brilliant and wide-eyed.

Boal wore silk shirts to class, every day. He liked them for their feel: cool in the summer humidity. We gave him one as a parting gift – a good one – and signed our names in fabric paint on another cheaper one. He started in Peter Brook style – placing an empty chair in a section of the studio, waited for us to gather around and then entered the space and sat down. He reminded us that this was theatre, and his favourite question was if you felt ‘resonance with’ the dramatic moment being presented. He argued that, without ‘resonance’ (identification with), the theatre questions being asked would not be answered.

There were those who felt that Boal raised more feelings than could be accommodated in the workshop, that there was no ‘safety net’ for those who felt vulnerable, in particular when we worked with the more introspective techniques or ‘cop in the head’ (found in Rainbow of Desire – The Boal Method of Theatre and Therapy).

Some of the problems raised seemed quite foreign to him, for example a group concerned with mediated body images – where the oppressor lay partly in the head, but also in the obsessions of neoliberal capitalism. But as much as he may not have felt ‘resonance’ with the issues, he was respectful of their effects on, for example, the dancer who was deemed too fat, or the actor who was too short. I think he was more comfortable with socio-political issues where an oppressor was evident, tangible and ironically, could be embodied.

So much of his work has been critiqued from the intellectual, academic place that seeks to break down his work, examining it from all angles, as if it were the pyramids, fixed in time and space. The thing is that Boal’s methods aren’t fixed in stone, but more fluid. I think they are adaptable, and are useful in any context as long as people don’t apply them as if they were gospel, or an infallible formula. He warned us from the start that we weren’t getting the ‘recipe’ – but that his work was a proposal for thinking through. Philip Auslander (1997:107) suggests that in using Boal’s methods, “a fractured, postmodern subjectivity becomes the necessary condition for critical distance rather than the condition that renders critical distance impossible”.

I think that Boal’s methods are misapplied all too often, where practitioners are perhaps thoughtless of their local context and the essential aspects of Socratic questioning, leading to critical distance and thinking. Boal reiterated to us that our work must ‘ask good questions’ in our theatre.

Used correctly and in the right conditions however, Boal’s methods can be participatory, problem-posing strategies for education and development. All too often in my experience, this questioning is reduced to imparting closed skills, which runs counter to Boal’s intentions, and to the nature of the questioning or problem-posing education advocated by Freire (1970). When poorly used, Theatre of the Oppressed methods move the emphasis away from the collective social transformation, and towards an individualist, ameliorative or adaptive imperative.

Boal argued that the Joker is a ‘difficultator’ (1995) since her/his job is to make it impossible to arrive at naïve, ‘magical’ or fatuous solutions to the problems posed. In other words, the Joker is the medium of critical pedagogy. Boal liked being the Joker and it was as Joker of our various Forum Theatre pieces that he revealed his playful self, interacting with spect-actors and actors, trying out new ways of looking at old problems. In my mind, and despite all the academic writing I have read about him, it is the image of him laughing as he worked a piece of Forum theatre, that I will remember.

Augusto Boal’s work has had a profound effect on the practices of theatre in southern Africa. His only visit to South Africa (to my knowledge) was in 1998, together with Adrian Jackson (translator of his books), running a 10 day workshop near Johannesburg. However his work has permeated many corners of the continent, from Egypt to the DRC, Mozambique to Burkina Faso. Mention Forum Theatre and immediately practitioners are ready to play, audiences are waiting to intervene in the action. The nature of Forum Theatre is familiar to African performance traditions, where interaction or participation has always been the norm. The notion of a forum for discussion of problems is also familiar, where the telling of a story illustrates a point in the argument at a kgotla or imbizo (meeting). So you may say that African practitioners took to Boal’s methods easily, even while the problems they faced were not.

If I think of the various theatre projects with which I am familiar in southern Africa, the influence of Boal is everywhere, probably mostly in the use of Forum theatre. In South Africa Boal is credited in the work of DramAidE (KZN), Drama for Life (WITS), Bonfire Theatre Company (WC), Themba HIV/AIDS, Tsogang Theatre Education (Gauteng), the Learning Theatre Company (Gauteng) and so many more practicing groups and artists. Further afield in sub-Saharan Africa, there are networks reflected in the Communication Initiative (www.comminit.com) where literacy, civic, theatre and health organizations regularly use Boal methods to investigate socio-economic issues and generate new understanding of people’s lives. If one zooms out, similar patterns are found on other continents. It is no wonder then, that in 2008 Augusto Boal was nominated for a Nobel Prize. I for one, would have been happy to see him win, straddling the awkward space between theatre that isn’t literary, activism that isn’t violent, learning that isn’t prescriptive. Most of all, it would have celebrated the seriously playful space that makes us human.

Select bibliography

AUSLANDER, Philip. 1997. From Acting to Performance – Essays in Modernism and

Postmodernism. London: Routledge.

BOAL, Augusto. 1979. Theatre of the Oppressed. London: Pluto Press.

_______ 1992. Games for Actors and Non-Actors. Translated by Adrian Jackson. London: Routledge.

_______ 1995. Rainbow of Desire – the Boal method of Theatre and Therapy.

_______ 2006. The Aesthetics of the Oppressed. Translated by Adrian Jackson. London:

Routledge.

COHEN-CRUZ, Jan / SCUTZMAN, Mady. 1994. Playing Boal – theatre, therapy, activism. ___________ 2006. A Boal Companion – Dialogues on theatre and cultural politics. New MILLING, Jane / LEY, Graham. 2001. Modern theories of Performance: from Stansilavski to

Boal. Basingstoke: Plagrave.

Photo Credit:

http://www.mind-the-gap.org.uk/sites/default/files/u3/Boal%20with%20dates%20V2.jpg

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[1] Dr. Veronica Baxter researched applied theatre in rural and peri-urban education through theatre in South Africa. She has relocated to the UK after more than 20 years of teaching in South African higher education, and is currently a research fellow at Warwick University, and teaching part time.

A Brief History of Theatre Commentaries in Japan
: Its Beginning and Its Modernization

Manabu Noda[1]

1. Hyōbanki reviews of the Edo Period

The earliest example of theatre commentary in Japan can be dated back to the mid-eleventh century’s Shin Sarugō-ki (The New Record of Sarugaku), although it was more of travel writing than an account dedicated solely to theatre performances. Commentaries including the description and evaluation of nō and kyōgen performances can be found sporadically in the ensuing historical periods, but we must look to the 17^th century for theatre commentaries intended for mass consumption as part of the print culture.

 About the time Shakespeare was active in London, the legendary actress-dancer Okuni reportedly performed the prototype kabuki and came into vogue in Kyoto during the Keichō period (1596-1615). A little more than fifty years later, theatre reviews came to be published in booklets for the general public in Japan. These reviews started the tradition of yakusha hyōbanki, yakusha meaning ‘actors’ and hyōbanki ‘recorded reputes.’ The first of its kind usually cited is Yakusha-no Uwasa (Gossip about Actors, 1656), but no copies of this have remained. The oldest review extant is Yarōmushi (Rogue Insect) of 1660, in which actors are evaluated in the manner of a showcase catalogue of prostitutes in major pleasure districts with evaluating descriptions for each of them, although their looks and entertaining skills were the main subjects and their actual performances and acting skills were secondary.[2]

Then in 1699, Yakusha Kuchisamisen (Puffing Actors) written by Ejima Kiseki was published, setting the basic format for the tradition of hyōbanki reviews. It came out in three volumes, each of which was dedicated to the three theatrical centres of Japan: Kyoto, Osaka, and Tokyo, the last being called Edo back then. At the head of each volume is the rating and classification of actors, followed by an introductory article in the form of dialogue among fictional characters of different tastes and theatre-going experiences, somewhat like Addison and Steele’s Spectator in early eighteenth-century England. Then after some graphical illustrations, full reviews of actors’ skills and performances ensue. Booklets of this kind preceding Yakusha Kuchisamisen reviewed only young female impersonators and young handsome actors with their portraits, with main emphasis on their looks, voice, entertaining skills at drinking occasions, and even how good they were in bed as male prostitutes. Yakusha Kuchisamisen was new in critiquing actual performances with graphic illustrations. It also covered actors of all the stock types and discussed their skills as stage performers.

So does it mean that theatre commentaries came to maturity in Japan in the latter half of the seventeenth century? Did theatre commentaries in the period grow out of their rather seedy equivalent of bromides or Hello Magazine into proper criticism on their own? Is it even possible to assume that the maturity of theatre commentaries helped kabuki develop from its initial revue-like shows into performance with full dramatic content?

It is true that kabuki changed from often prurient sketches in pleasure districts to cater to the urban taste for the risqué to performances embracing dramatic material taken both from contemporary scenes and classics, but apparently the change was occasioned to counter or evade censorship and bans by the authorities. Okuni kabuki of the early seventeenth century celebrated the ‘wicked’: the actress called Okuni was reported to cross-dress as a wild thing in unusually flamboyant and strange outfits showing off themselves in pleasure districts. Soon the top-rank courtesans followed suit. They also dressed as men and vied with each other on stage in singing and dancing. This is called On’na kabuki, or female kabuki.

When authorities banned stage actresses in 1629 (Kan’ei 6), boy prostitutes took over as performers. This is wakashū kabuki (boy kabuki), its main point being to adorn boy performers to suit the taste of the gay clientele. It is banned again in 1652, and then yarō kabuki (guy kabuki) came in its stead, in which adult male performers played both genders. These early forms of kabuki served as a showcase for sex industry, and their shows characteristically drew from contemporary scenes in pleasure quarters. No wonder theatre commentaries of the period borrowed their format from courtesan reviews and brazenly featured the looks of handsome male performers.

The peak years of yarō kabuki spanned from the 1650s to early 70s, but after repeated censorship it became clear the troupes had to include more respectable pieces in their repertoire other than the sketches of the Japanese equivalent of Restoration rakes and whores in England. It was only then that kabuki expanded its pieces with multiple acts, and seriously developed its dramatic repertoire by borrowing from the preceding traditions of nō, kyōgen and the jōruri chanted recitative, leading to its first golden period in the Genroku years from 1688 to 1704. So, going back to the initial questions concerning interactions between theatre and reviews in seventeenth-century Japan, it s perhaps more true to the fact to say that hyōbanki commentaries simply followed the burgeoning kabuki, which was changing its shape in its constant negotiation with censorship.

2. Newspaper and journal reviews in the Meiji period

The hyōbanki type of theatre reviews continued to be published during the Edo period, chronicling kabuki’s development and changes as a form of theatre. For theatre historians today hyōbanki reviews are materials of immense importance because of their sheer volume and long and constant publication throughout the period. Hyōbanki reviews survived the 1868 Meiji Restoration regime change into the early years of the Meiji period (1868-1912), the time during which the modernization (i.e. westernization) of Japan was relentlessly promoted as national policy. The last generation of hyōbanki reviewers were the organizers of the theatre-goers’ group called Rokuni-ren, who published their own hyōbanki between 1878 and 87. They were mainly affluent urban connoisseurs who not only witnessed past performances in the preceding Edo period, but also had always kept up with the latest gossips about actors. Their hyōbanki reviews were different from the preceding reviews of the kind in two respects: (1) they welcomed outside contributors, and (2) their reviews gave the full synopsis of the play in review. What they did not change, however, was the shop-talk terminology and rhetoric they used: written in a laid-back, colloquial style, their reviews were ridden with jargons and clever rhetoric typical of the pleasure-loving urban theatre buffs of the time. Kamiyama Akira, a theatre historian to whom my account of the modernization of theatre commentaries in Japan owes heavily, describes the style and rhetoric these theatre commentators used as follows:

The highest accolade they give is hardly discernable from mere bantering or joking. They appear unmoved however good the performance is, or even if they are moved indeed, they seem to turn all that sentiment into a joke.[3]

Beneath the non-committal and nonchalant façade of connoisseurship lurked the urban elitism of those whose long-time immersion in Edo culture allowed them to enjoy theatre without being too analytical. It was characteristic of the popular writers of the Edo period: playful and jocular with a penchant for twists and far-fetched conceits which always had the ring of cynicism.

With the Meiji Restoration in 1868 came modern newspapers. The theatre reviews on newspaper in Japan started in 1874 (Meiji 7). Initially, however, newspaper articles on theatre were rare, and some readers even found it objectionable for a major newspaper to give an article on popular entertainment. There was also a tension between the old-guard and the newcomers. The born-and-bred Tokyoites who wrote the last of the hyōbanki reviews prided themselves on their connoisseur knowledge of kabuki as urban entertainment, so there was a tendency among them to look down upon the newcomers who came from outside Tokyo and began to see kabuki only recently. It was evident, however, that the shop-talk rhetoric of the urban connoisseurs was becoming unsuitable for the more general readers of modern newspapers of a new demographical makeup after the Meiji Restoration. The hyōbanki reviews by the Rokuni-ren group ended in 1885, while major papers began to give theatre reviews regularly around 1882. By the third decade of Meiji period (1887-96) theatre reviews had become a selling point for newspapers as many renowned men of letters were hired for their reviews.

The most popular of theatre reviewers for newspapers in the period was Kōson Aeba (1855 [Ansei 2] - 1922 [Taishō 11]), who contributed to a major newspaper Tokyo Asahi Shimbun from 1879 (Meiji 22) until his death in 1922 (Taishō 11).

On the historical map of literature his novels are positioned in a transitional area between a jocular and cynical Edo style and a more modern Meiji style of psychological realism. Aeba is a representative theatre critic when theatre criticism for newspapers became a profession, but what made him different from the hyōbanki reviewers was that he tactically fashioned himself as a humble outsider and avoided the shop-talk rhetoric of the hyōbanki reviewers. His pretense of being an untainted outsider as a reviewer was part of his strategy to appeal to the more general public who read the newspaper for which he wrote, although he was in fact a fully respected urban connoisseur conversant in past kabuki performances.

On the other hand, Takeji Miki (1867 [Keiō 3] - 1908 [Meiji 41]), another representative theatre critic of the time, was a real outsider, born and raised in a remote region from Tokyo. What Aeba Kōson did, Miki Takeji did head on. Kōson put on a pretense of being an untainted outsider to shed elitism which could be off-putting to the general readership of his newspaper. On the other hand, far from maintaining the hyōbanki reviewers’ non-committal façade of urban connoisseurship, Miki did not hide enthusiasm. He also openly criticized the sort of urban elitism inherent in urban connoisseurship. When Kōdō Tokuchi, an old-guard urbanite complained about new kids in town criticizing scripts, Miki Takeji was adamant in defending his position as an outsider:

According to Kōdō Tokuchi, true seasoned spectators in olden days would not nitpick playwright’s faults and criticize scripts. He is not happy about ‘outsiders’ nowadays imprudently meddling with the script’s storyline. I wonder what made Kōdō say such a thing. Our time should not be blamed for everything when there are no precedents. By outsiders he means those who are not playwrights. If, however, critics do not evaluate the poetry of plays, what is there for them to do? Isn’t it absurd to argue that plays should be untouchable just because they are dramatic texts?[4]

As Miki’s elder brother Ōgai Mori was the most representative literary figure of the Meiji period along with Sōseki Natsume, his emphasis on the importance of textual criticism is quite understandable, but literary approach to text was not the only thing Miki adopted. The most remarkable thing he did was to make a record of kabuki’s kata. Kata, literally meaning ‘form,’ is a once popular interpretation of a role, which turned into a mannerism that the succeeding generations came to adopt. There were records of kata before Miki, but they were more or less fragmentary snapshots of what a certain popular actor did in a certain role at some climactic moment, without any references to the build-up or context of the play. What Miki did was to record all the proceedings in one act,

making his review a record of on-the-spot running commentary. Kamiyama explains the significance of Takeji as a theatre critic:

Originally it was a general practice for kabuki’s script and contingent factors to be changed at each performance. [...] It was only in the Meiji period that the whole sequence of actions in an act came to be recognized as fixed convention. It would be a more precise way of saying that these conventions came to be regarded as such because they were recorded, than to say that these conventions existed before recording. For a connoisseur like Kōdō, therefore, it was an outrageous act of a novice to attempt such recording. A connoisseur who bothers to record was a contradiction in terms.[5]

No doubt he imbibed the positivist spirit of the new era undergoing modernization. Like his brother, Miki was also a practitioner of western medicine, so his strong inclination for detailed recording was partly due to his professional background as well.

3. Conclusion

What we saw in the formation of hyōbanki reviews was that in this case changes in theatre reviews mirrored the changing condition of the theatre market.

The shift in rhetoric from Edo-period hyōbanki reviews to Kōson Aeba reflected the demographic change in readership from the born-and-bred Tokyoites to the more generalized newspaper readers in the capitol city. In the case of Takeji Miki, his strong inclination for detailed recording was partly due to his professional background. And there was also a sense of crisis. The representative kabuki actors until the beginning of the 20^th century wer Nakamura Danjirūro IX, Onoe Kikugorō V, and Ichikawa Sadanji I, all of them had to handle the difficult task of negotiation with the rapid process of modernization in the Meiji period. The tradition of kabuki itself was torn between the backward glance on the past and the need to renovate its tradition, achieve respectability, and explore new spectatorship which was emerging out of Tokyo’s demographic change. As in all such endeavours to cope with changing times there were hits and misses, and Miki was one of the theatre reviewers who sensed the possible danger that kabuki as they knew it would become extinct. His detailed description of Danjurō’s and Kikugorō’s performances was a part of his efforts to check the shift in balance, and it is ironical that the detailed records of kabuki performances initiated by Miki have contributed, at least partly, to turning kabuki from an amorphous art into a tradition of classical theatre.

[1] Manabu Noda is Professor at Meiji University, Tokyo, Japan, and a member of Executive Committee of the International Association of Theatre Critics.

[2] See Akira Ikeyama, ‘Kankyaku-no-Shiten (1): Yakusha Hyōbanki’ (The Audience’s Perspective: Yakusha Hyōbanki) in Kabuki Bunka-no Shosō (Some Aspects of Kabuki Culture), ed. by Bunzō Torigoe, et al (Tokyo: Iwanami, 1998), pp. 61-87 [62]. Kabuki Bunka-no Shosō gives a concise but broad overview of theatre commentaries during the Edo period (1603-1867) and the Meiji Period (1868-1912).

[3] Akira Kamiyama, ‘Shirōto-no Jidai-no Senryaku: Gekihyōka Aeba Kōson to Miki Takeji (Strategy in the Age of “Amateurship”: Theatre Critics Aeba Kōson and Miki Takeji),’ Nihon Kindai Bungaku (Modern Japanese Literature), 62 (May 2000), pp. 1-13 [4].

[4] Takeji Miki, Kangeki Gūhyō, ed. by Tamotsu Watanabe (Tokyo: Iwanami Bunko, 2004), pp. 40-41. The cited passage is from Miki’s review on the 1890 kabuki performance of Sōma Heishi Niidai Banashi.

[5] Kamiyama, pp. 9-10. Kamiyama’s view of Aeba and Miki echoes Yoshikazu Gondō’s 1954 argument of the two critics in his Kindai Kabuki Gekihyōka-ron (On Modern Kabuki Critics) revised ed. (Tokyo: Engeki Shuppansha, 2006), pp. 163-201. Kamiyama, however, emphasizes the ironical effect Miki’s reviews came to have on kabuki’s turning into a “classical theatre.”

A History of Theatre Commentary in Korea

KIM Yun-Cheol[1] (President/IATC)

The beginning of theatre commentary in Korea coincides with that of the modern Korean theatre, just one hundred years ago. At that time, a Korean-style opera by Lee In-Jik, called The Silvery World, premiered at the first indoor theatre in Korea, called Wongaksa. For this historic centennial year of modern Korean theatre, we have been celebrating all year in various ways; that is, holding seminars, publishing books, producing commemorative performances, and so on. Politically, the beginning of our theatre commentary nearly coincides with the beginning of Japanese colonial rule. In fact, Lee In-Jik had studied theatre arts in Japan before he launched his theatre movement for national enlightenment in Seoul.

By far the most important subject of theatre commentary in that initial period was Enlightenment. And its chief form of criticism was impression-based. Naturally, most critical writing was done by anonymous journalists who had no expertise, and no education in theatre arts. These socially-oriented journalists tried to educate the theatre practitioners in common sense terms, and at the same time teach the spectators basic theatre etiquette. The following quotations show the typical approach to theatre reviewing in that early period, reprinted from Prof. Yang Seung-Kuk’s well-researched book on the history of modern Korean theatre criticism:

There is no question that the new theatre piece by Hyukshin-dan (The Reformist Theatre Company) is both excellent and exemplary, but I would have liked it rather better if its principal actor LIM Seong-Gu and the actress KO Soo-Cheol who played the high collar woman (--meaning, a woman of high education--) had not wept that much. They should have wept and laughed only when they had to, but they kept on weeping throughout the performance, and I hated it. It was a terrible mistake.[2]

And a few days later:

Many of the spectators made noises when laughing and when they had to shed tears, and this was not the fault of the players. The spectators simply did not know how to watch a play. This reporter wants to give an important piece of advice to the players. You cannot say your performance is a success, no matter how good it is, unless the audience understands and recognizes what is happening on the stage. You had better explain for the audience what will happen in the next scenes before you go into them.[3]

The first theatre review we can call “real” appears in 1916 in the same daily newspaper. CHO Il-Jae, who was not only a journalist but also a well-known playwright himself, sounded both authoritative and instructive: in his review, he tried to combine description of the scenes with analysis of the acting and information about the next performance. His description of the main character’s acting is quite specific:

Act I. In front of an opera house. Actress PAEK Hap-Ja, holding her skirt with her right hand, and flowers in her left hand, is quite tense as if her hands were glued together, and tries to show her attitude entirely with her face, which turns out to be inexpressive. It is wrong to use the hands and body too much, but...”[4]

As you can see from the review by CHO, theatre commentary in the 1910s was mostly based on impressions—but still there was one criterion for critiquing that remained dominant; the reality achieved on the stage.

In the 1920s, theatre commentary became very heated as the Korean theatre community divided into two groups. The first group advocated the New Wave Theatre (or shimpa), and the second group was for the New Theatre (or shingeki). Both of these theatre movements originated in Japan and were later brought to Korea. Commentators HYUN Cheol, YUN Baek-Nam, and LEE Ki-Se and the like, who were also theatre practitioners, argued theory with each other in various print media, focusing on questions such as “What is theatre?” and “What is theatre not?” Their approach, however, was rather more emotional than logical. They didn’t mind, for example, making personal insults like these: “Nobody knows less than you about…”; “A tiny knowledge of theory, but no understanding at all of practice…”; “What kind of silliness are you talking?”

Despite being personal, these passionate debates contributed to opening the new era of theoretical criticism in the 1930s. This theoretical approach was initiated by new and young theatre artists who returned from Japan, where they had studied theatre arts. Commentators gave their attention 1) to the nature of drama, which combines literature and action, 2) to the nature of theatre, which is based on the interaction between the actors and the spectators, and 3) to theories of directing and acting based upon realism. On this subject, playwright PARK Young-Ho sought to define realism in drama, which he believed required the unification of three realities: the reality of the dramatic work, the reality of the actors, and the reality of the spectators.[5] LEE Woon-Gok further developed the idea of inter-relatedness or interaction between the three realities concerned, arguing that “Good theatre is possible only when the play, the actors, and the audience are good together.”[6] Playwright-director YU Chi-Jin introduced the Stanislavski system, and criticized Gordon Craig and Alexander Tairov for their alignment with non-realistic movements. All the major Western directors, from André Antoine to Erwin Piscator, were introduced one by one in the 1930s, but most of the commentators were lopsidedly in favor of interpretative directors, as faithful as possible to the author’s text. Director HONG Hae-Seong was by far the most ardent commentator in this vein, and it was also HONG who most methodically advocated the Stanislavski system of actor training. HONG did this by contributing pieces on Stanislavski’s theory of acting to the major daily newspaper of the time, Donga Ilbo, every day for twenty-five days, from August 14^th to September 16^th, 1931. Theatre commentaries of this period were this educational in style, and this introductory in substance.

By far the most important and productive theatre commentator of the period was playwright-director YU Chi-Jin. His wide-ranging theatre reviews focused on everything from production aesthetics, to theoretical ponderings on the interaction between players and spectators, to dramaturgical analyses, and to the manifestoes of theatre movements. He was the first to emphasize the importance of restoring Korea’s unique national tradition of performing arts, which had long been discouraged and forgotten under Japanese censorship: “Fresh life comes from old traditions…We cannot expect the birth of new art where traditions do not exist.”(Donga-Ilbo, 1931. 6. 20)[7] His argument was quite extraordinary at a time when most theatre commentators were anti-tradition and pro-Western/Japanese practice. He advocated popular theatre, and criticized the little theatre movement of the time for its artistic and realistic orientation. Most importantly, he maintained that original, local plays should take preference over translated, foreign plays: “We should not allow the dominance of foreign plays, which will block the birth and growth of Korean plays. Foreign plays’ reason to exist, their role to play, is only as a midwife who helps the birth of an original play.”(Donga Ilbo, 1933. 9. 29.)[8] His cries for original plays and respect for tradition had to wait almost half a century to be fully realized; it was only then that local plays began to dominate foreign plays for the first time in the history of modern Korean theatre.

The last years of Japanese rule were the dark ages of Korean theatre criticism. Commentators concentrated on dispensing opinions as to the ideal “national theatre”—also a concept imported from Japan, and a call for patriotism toward Japan. Its purpose was to praise the new political system through theatre. This national theatre aimed at harmonizing the new modern theatre with the new popular theatre, combining their artistic and entertainment orientations in new productions. Because of its stance in favor of the Japanese cultural policies, today, the activists of the national theatre movement have come to be seen as collaborators, and been disgraced both inside and outside the Korean theatre community.

As we have seen so far, Korean theatre commentaries during the period of Japanese rule introduced and then educated theatre practitioners and audiences in the Japanese version of Western theatre study. Debates between commentators were frequent, passionate and harsh, and they did not mind employing personal insults in their rebuttals. These heated arguments, however, were given huge space in the daily newspapers and contributed enormously to attracting readers and generating their interest in theatre. By comparison, the current day’s scientific and analytical commentaries have much less space and severely reduced stature—and thus, much less impact.

It was in the 1960s that the Korean theatre had its first professional theatre critic. YOH Suk-Kee, who studied English literature in both Japan and the United States, opened his “playwriting workshop” in the early 1960s. Just as George Pierce Baker did in the United States, YOH attracted many of Korea’s most talented young people, instilling in them high standards and helping them to acquire skills in dramatic composition. Dramatists such as PARK Jo-Yeol, YUN Dae-Sung, OH Tae-Suk, NOH Gyung-Sik, YUN Jo-Byung and more, were trained in YOH’s workshop, and led the Korean theatre for the next thirty to forty years. Above all, YOH launched in 1970 the first professional theatre journal in Korea with the name of “The Drama Review,” to which critics contributed their theatre reviews and critical essays. These we call the first-generation critics of modern Korean theatre—critics such HAN Sang-Cheol, LEE Tae-Joo, YU Min-Young, LEE Sang-Il, YANG Hye-Sook. Some of these critics are still active today. It is important to point out that, unlike their predecessors, all of these first generation critics were professors of literature—either Western or Korean—with no background in practical theatre. Consequently, their reviews focused on dramaturgy rather than on theatricality, on interpretation of the texts rather than on their production aesthetics. They did not even mind reviewing theatre performances without having seen them, thus antagonizing the practitioners, who in return, ridiculed the critics as “literary parasites.” However, the dominance of these critics in theatre commentary lasted until the mid 1980s, because we did not have journalistic critics until then. In the meantime, all reviews for the daily newspapers were written by this group of literary scholars. Their influence over box office was minimal, though, because their reviews used to be published only after the shows were over.

In the mid 1980s, there emerged a group of young critics with backgrounds in theatre study, and they began to shift the focus of criticism away from literature and towards theatricality, and away from interpretation towards performance aesthetics. Critics such as these—KIM Moon-Hwan, KIM Bang-Ock, AHN Chi-Woon and myself—have since led this new practice of theatre reviewing, which I believe is not much different from yours.

Another notable group of theoretical critics has emerged in the critical community since the early 1990s. Armed with cultural theories, they tend to view theatre performances through the lenses of specialties like feminism, post-colonialism, inter-culturalism, new historicism, or multi-disciplinary studies. Their writing style is esoteric and dense. Their reviews are full of professional jargon that does not communicate with either general readers or theatre practitioners, whom they do not seem to mind angering or frustrating. But nowadays you can find this kind of self-centered critic anywhere in the world. Can’t you?

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[1] KIM Yun-Cheol is President of IATC, teaches at School of Drama, Korea National University of Arts, and edits The Korean Theatre Journal, a quarterly. Two time winner of "The Critic of the Year Award", he has published nine books so far, two of which are anthologies of theatre reviews.

[2] Maeil-Shinbo, or The Daily News. 1912. 3. 27. rpt. A Study on the History of Modern Korean Theatre Theatre Criticism. YANG Seung-Kuk, Seoul: Taehak-Sa, 1996. p.247.

[3] Maeil-Shinbo, or The Daily News. 1912. 3.31. rpt. Ibid. p.248

[4] Maeil-Shinbo, or The Daily News. 1912. 3.29. rpt. Ibid. p. 249

[5] YANG Seung-Kuk, A Study on the History of Modern Korean Theatre Criticism, p.304.

[6] LEE Woon-Gok, Sahaekongron, January, 1937, p.158. rpt. A Study on the History of Modern Korean theatre Criticism, p.316.

[7] YU Chi-Jin, rpt. A Study on the History of Modern Korean Theatre Criticism, p. 364.

[8] Ibid, p.374.

The History of Criticism: English

John Elsom[1]

The narratives of English theatre often tell a drab story of the early 18^th century, too many doggerel tragedies and comedies without the bawdiness of the Restoration. But the years saw the arrival of three characteristic features of our theatre, as enduring as Shakespeare, – the musical, the pantomime and the start of English theatre criticism.

To suggest that they are somehow spiritually linked may seem to stretch a point too far, but that is going to be the drift of my argument. Indeed, I want to venture further by suggesting that the respect that we pay to Shakespeare and his time overshadows the strange qualities of this period from 1700 to 1730, when we can feel the tolerances and accommodations of modern British society coming into being.

What do these three have in common? The first musical, as opposed to opera or operetta, was John Gay’s The Beggars’ Opera, which had a phenomenal success when it was first performed in 1728. It was a Jonathan Swift-inspired satire parodying the Italian opera, in which the gods and goddesses, swains and shepherdesses, were replaced by the whores and highwaymen in Newgate prison. The florid arias in which heroes took a long time in dying were replaced by street songs and catchy numbers that anyone could sing. The hero, the highwayman Macheath, was the James Bond of his time, the sort of person that Boswell admired and imitated in fancy dress parties.

The theatre manager, who first produced The Beggars’ Opera, was the amazing John Rich at Lincoln’s Inn Theatre, who became the first model of a modern impresario, not dependent on patronage, inherited wealth or any other source than the box office. He was an actor, whose stage name was John Lun, but his speaking voice was poor, and he became a mime and a magician. In 1716, he borrowed from Italian companies in Paris something like Commedia dell’Arte, but a poor man’s version of it, the “Harlequinade”, to which he added magic and comedy scenes, using a troupe of actors from Drury Lane.

It was the family entertainment of its time and later on in the century it borrowed fairy stories, such as Cinderella, from various sources and Rich’s old role of Harlequin, which survived as the central figure until the middle of the 19^th. century, was taken over by the clowns, such as Joey Grimaldi, dancers, more special effects, more comedy actors, more music hall stars and the sexual inversions of Prince Charming, played by a woman, and the Pantomime Dame, played by a man.

We have pantomimes today at Christmas in nearly every town and village in the UK and the money that they bring in to theatres is expected to cover the slack months in the spring. What do musicals and pantos have in common, apart from having John Rich as an ancestor? They both started out as parodies of continental models and behind them, you can feel a rebellion against the cultural dominance of the court of Louis XIV and of other courts in Europe. Within living memory, Britain had gone from being an autocratic monarchy to a commonwealth without a royal family and back to a monarchy and then to a sort of half-way house, a constitutional monarchy, in which the crown’s power to tax and spend was curbed by parliament. It was not yet a democracy in the modern sense of the word, and still may not be, but a step towards democracy had been taken.

London was a major trading port, a cosmopolitan centre and the place which the offices of state, as well as parliament itself, had their homes. It was a relatively new city in that the oldest, most ramshackle and dangerous parts of the town had been devastated in the great fire of London. It was becoming the first Enlightenment city. Its theatre was trying to appeal to the middle classes, deliberately not too posh, asserting its separateness from continental and aristocratic models. If Handel was staging his Italian operas at the King’s Theatre, Rich could retort with The Beggars’ Opera at Lincoln’s Inn Fields.

One of the changes that had taken place was the partial abolition of censorship. It was not a complete abolition, because there were laws against sedition, profanity and libel, and in 1737, rigorous laws were passed that survived as stage censorship until 1968. But laws that required publishers to have licenses from the government before they could publish anything at all, went in 1698. The aim was to have, in John Milton’s words, an “open market in ideas”. As a result, there was an explosion of small publishers and the new city society sought its own distinctive voice. It got one, The Spectator, that appeared every day from 1711 to 1712, 555 issues, and in 1714, for 80 issues. 

Its essays were widely read, the tone of its writing was imitated; and its style and flavour permeates British cultural journalism. Its name is retained in a quite different magazine. The editors and main contributors were Joseph Addison and Richard Steele, who started a journal called The Guardian in 1713. Their essays were much admired and reprinted as models throughout the 18^th century and they included the first examples of modern theatre reviewing, in that they wrote about plays and performances, praising where praise was due, blaming those who deserved blame and generally behaving as British critics are supposed to do.

How can this tone be described? It was a complicated mixture. “Mr. Spectator” himself, the eponymous author, was a man about town, who took “no practical part in life”, other than as a spectator. “He” was not a publicist. “He” was not a spokesman for the church or a political party, although might have the political views of an independent man. “He” used his passive presence to comment upon others; and much of the appeal of The Spectator essays lies in portraits of other people, such as Sir Roger de Coverley, the bluff old boy from the Shires, dumbfounded by what went on in London. Through Sir Roger, Addison and Steele were able to mock, albeit mildly, both the fashions of the times and the stick-in-the-muds who thought that women had finally gone too far - and other subjects of similar importance.

Although their classical references might seem to us to be erudite, they are, on the whole, anti-intellectual. They do not want to be boring. “Mr. Spectator” was, in a word of the times, “clubbable”. “He” was writing for the tea houses and coffee shops, did not try to belabour the reader with morals and biblical examples, while staying on the side of the church, the royalty and the powers that be. The one thing that “Mr. Spectator” was not was revolutionary, although Addison and Steele could be ironically subversive.

Theatre criticism took its place among Mr. Spectator’s observation of pastimes. On September 10, 1714, he wrote:

“I look upon the play-house as a world within itself. They have lately furnished the middle region of it, with a new set of meteors in order to give the sublime to many modern tragedies. I was there last winter at the first rehearsal of the new thunder, which is much more deep and sonorous than any hitherto made use of before… Their lightnings are made to flash more briskly than heretofore; their clouds are also better furbelowed, and more voluminous, not to mention a violent storm locked up in a great chest, that is designed for the Tempest. They are also provided with above a dozen flowers of snow, which, as I am informed, are the plays of many unsuccessful poets artificially cut and shredded for that use…” a slightly catty remark from another would-be playwright.

After questioning why these effects were enjoyed by the audience but despised by some critics, Mr. Spectator enquired why some people are so scathing of popular success, striking a blow for the general public, as opposed to literary snobs. He praised the work of the ancient Greek and Roman critics, such as Aristotle and Longinus, - and Boileau among the French – and wondered why British critics did not learn from their examples. “It is our misfortune that some, who set up as professed critics among us, are so stupid, that they do not know how to put ten words together with elegance or common propriety, and withal so illiterate that they have no taste of learned languages, and therefore criticize upon old authors only at second hand.” Well, I feel the same about…

But perhaps I should not mention names. It would be unclubbable.

“Mr. Spectator”, in short, touches upon topics that are part of today’s criticism. Problems with too much scenery? Aristotle, as we all know, rated mise en scène as the least important element in the theatre, which is one reason why, when we see massive musicals, like the recent The Fellowship of the Ring at Drury Lane, we critics, who often have (like Addison) a grounding in the classics and the old humanities, tend to feel a bit snobbish about them. “Nice costumes, but can you really rhyme crazy with laser?”

 

Modern British criticism in the press treads a very narrow line. It wants to seem intelligent without being intellectual; informed without being academic; open-minded without being vacuous; in touch with popular opinion without being vulgar; and witty without being smart-assed. It exists within very narrow stylistic parameters. The first paragraphs of Kenneth Tynan’s reviews nearly always contained his best jokes. The dullness and mediocrity of the rest was usually overlooked. Much the same can be said for Mr. Spectator’s essays. They start brightly but fade quickly, the endemic sickness of daily journalism.

In the latter half of the 18^th century and the early 19^th century, British criticism became more ambitious. Samuel Johnson’s The Lives of the Poets, published in 1781, represented the beginnings of academic criticism of the Who-did-What-When-And-To -Whom variety, a useful reference work, raised to a high level by Johnson’s knowledge, wit and human insight. William Hazlitt’s Characters of Shakespeare in 1817 established him as the greatest descriptive critic of the stage in his time, perhaps even in our history, and the full body of his work illustrated his ambitious attempt to create a critical history of the English theatre, rooted in first-hand experience of what happens in the theatre. The flowering of English criticism came a long time after Addison, Steele and Mr. Spectator.

But the Spectator tone is still around. Our modern critics too like to be clubbable, detached but not isolated, witty but not too clever, engaged but not bigoted, and as men, women or both of the town. They like to engage with their audiences in cultural banter. And behind his easy-going façade, little prejudices creep in. One is, in my view, a slight distrust of the antics that foreigners get up to. British critics do not want to be taken for provincial fools or suckers; which is why when anything foreign puzzles them, a common response is either to stay aloof or to mock. Waiting for Godot was one example, saved by Tynan’s review. Another was The Water Hen (Kantor’s first production in the U.K. of a Witkazy play) and yet another, An evening of Theatrical Rubbish, conceived by Jan Fabre. Ian Herbert and I have both found it difficult to engage British theatre critics in what is happening elsewhere.

Just as The Beggars’ Opera and pantomimes parodied genres from abroad, so the response to foreign works can be defensive and skeptical. The World Theatre Seasons in the 1970s and the BITE seasons at the Barbican today have done something to remove this instinctive response from dedicated theatre goers, but it still persists. If you look back at the Spectator essays, which cover a wider ground than the stage, you will notice that how these suspicions spread into many little prejudices and assumptions that we would now call racist – and sexist and chauvinist. You can feel how the women were being barred from gentlemen’s clubs, and Jews from golf clubs, and Catholics from succession, and blacks from white residential areas. To be clubbable meant that some were regarded as not clubbable. They might not have the right tie, manners or colour.  

Such small prejudices might conceal bigger ones. We have the nightmare of the Holocaust in our minds. For those who feel that they are victims of British snobbery, the Spectator contains too many examples of social habits that have humiliated them, dressed up as jokes, observations and ironies. There is something dangerously secure and free of doubt abut the clubbable Englishman. Is this the tip of an iceberg of prejudice? The first signs of a gathering storm? Anything else ecological?

Perhaps, but there is another way of looking it. If you compare the theatre of the early 18^th century with Jacobean tragedy or even the angry young men of the 1960s, the big hatreds are not there. Sir Roger is neither a Falstaff nor a wicked baron. Mr. Spectator made fun of foreigners. He did not make fodder out of them. Women were not put up for auction: they were not beaten or mutilated. During this time of constitutional change, the violence and brutality that we associate with the religious wars of the previous century are moderated into milder forms of prejudice. Prejudices may be there, but the urbane and clubbable tone stifles the rage. You might even see the signs of a civilizing process.

Well, let us not get too carried away. The decades ahead were the ones of British imperialist expansion - Britain rules the waves, that sort of thing! But it could be argued that the characteristics of British imperialism were influenced by the social confidence of the time, the sense that the English had got the indiscipline of the past ages under control, revolutions were out of fashion and the constitutional monarchy managed to reconcile the best of the past with the hopes for the future. Complacent? Yes, but recognizable today.

When Addison was on the point of death, he invited his sons to his bedside, and said: “This is how a Christian gentleman should die!” And died. We do not know the reaction of his sons, except that they left the room very quickly.

When our much loved and eminently clubbable critic, Michael Billington, lays down his quill for the last time, I imagine something similar happening in the Guardian offices. The junior staff will gather around his desk and he will say something to the effect that this is how a political correct and leftward leaning spectator of human affairs should pass on the baton to the next generation. And he will look around and try to pass it on, but, alas, there may be very few people around who will want to receive it.

 

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[1] John Elsom is a writer, university teacher and company director. He has held posts with Paramount Pictures and the BBC, broadcast widely and taught in universities in Britain and the U.S., including the Department of Arts Management at City University in London, where he started the first MA in Arts Criticism. He has written for many magazines and journals world-wide, including on a regular basis, and was the President of the International Association of Theatre Critics (IATC) (1985-1992), a UNESCO-affiliated non-governmental organization, and is now its Honorary President. His books include Theatre Outside London, The History of the National Theatre, Erotic Theatre, Post-War British Theatre Criticism, Cold War Theatre, Is Shakespeare Still Our Contemporary?

Acting before and after Grotowski: Presence/Absence

Tomasz Milkowski in Wroclaw, Poland

"Acting before and after Grotowski" was the title of the colloquium on Grotowski in the framework of the 13^th Europe Theatre Prize in Wroclaw. Some may wonder if there were any hidden agenda behind the title, especially in "before" as well as "after", indicating not only his presence but also his absence. Naturally the presence of Grotowski was everywhere. We were in Wroclaw, the cradle of Grotowski Theatre and his revolutionary ideas. The year was 2009, the officially designated Grotowski Year under the auspices of UNESCO, marking ten years after his death, 25 years after the dissolution of the Grotowski Theatre Laboratory, and 50 years after he and Ludwik Flaszen took over the 13 Row Theatre in Opole, which was the direct forerunner of the Theatre Laboratory. The colloquium was organized by the International Association of Theatre Critics in collaboration with its Polish section and the Grotowski Institute in Wroclaw. So why "before and after"?

The title of the colloquium meant it was not devoted solely to the interpretation of Grotowski's ideas. We wanted to discuss not only his discoveries but also the consequences of his influence on artists and humanity in general. Nonetheless, a close study of Grotowski's ideas per se was made by Krzysztof Kucharski from Wroclaw in the colloquium. His paper examined the writings of Tadeusz Burzyński, the great Wroclavian critic who closely pursued Grotowski and his works. Three years ago — ten years after Burzyński's death — his friends, including those from the Grotowski Institute, published his vital texts consisting of reports, interviews, and reviews on Grotowski. Kucharski greatly contributed to the colloquium by helping us see the difficulty inherent in the understanding and development of Grotowski's revolutionary ideas.

The overall colloquium, however, chose to discuss wider topics concerning Grotowski instead of getting mired in the close examination of Grotowski's ideas and experiments, which are already the subject of numberless researchers and specialists. The organizing members of the colloquium thought it would be more appropriate for theatre critics and reviewers who are always more interested on the practical side to see how Grotowski's legacy is still alive in the modern theater, as well as how it helps us define its new tendencies. I am not going into the so-called Grotowski Method or his thoughts to stress this point. Instead, I would like to recall a short reflection given by the great Wroclavian poet and playwright Tadeusz Różewicz on Grotowski's legendary Apocalypsis cum figure:

They give birth to these texts, do it once more. They give birth to it at every new performance. The roars of delivery reverberate in this enclosed space (or operating theatre). The word becomes the body in front of our very eyes. It arises during the performance. It changes into an aggressive body. Raped and raping. This group feeds on the word (literally). The word is digested and extracted.

    The word is bled, broken, beaten to a mummy, rejected.

    Blood, sperm, silence are gushing in spurts from his side. Their feeding on word is done. The time of feeding is 7 pm. The murmur, the smack, silence. Roars. The word is extracted.

Thus spoke the poet, eloquently enough to underline the importance of thinking about Grotowski in the phase of the "here and now."

But why did we need to discuss acting before Grotowski as well? The reason was simple. The year 2009 also marked one hundred years after the death of Helena Modjeska, the great Shakespearean star actress who achieved fame in two continents. While all we can do now is to imagine her acting through her pictures, Prof. Andrzej Żurowski made for the colloquium a short comparative study on this great actress, providing a pleasant excursion into the past tradition. After his symbolic tribute to the past, we had Prof. Nina Kiraly, who drew for us a map of questions most important for the contemporary theatre when the text and metaphors are created collectively in the rehearsal room..

The colloquium was honored to have two important witnesses of Grotowski's theatre. Jaroslaw Fret interviewed Ludwik Flaszen, the co-founder of the Theater Laboratory, and Prof. Barbara Osterloff moderated a session with Maja Komorowska,  who is a marvelous actress with the experience of working with Grotowski almost from the very beginning when he took over the 13 Row Theatre in Opole with Flaszen before he moved to Wroclaw to found the Theatre Laboratory. I remember writing after the death of Grotowski: "Some actors derive a great deal of energy directly from Grotowski — for instance Maja Komorowska, whose performance in Beckett's Happy days in the Dramatyczny Theater in Warsaw demonstrated how far one can reach by using the technique from the Theatre Laboratory."

When I had an opportunity to read a paper on the Polish theater in Japan in 2006, I was asked about the theatrical tradition Grotowski created in Poland. "Oh, Grotowski," I said, "he is our legend, our monument, our hero." "But who in particular is still following the tradition?" the floor asked. "In particular," I answered, "we have Theater Pieśń Kozła, and of course Maja Komorowska." I'm very happy that Mark Brown from Scotland came to a similar conclusion in the colloquium when he introduced the works of Theater Piesn Kozła, the company that is the best example of Grotowski's tradition in the present tense.

As the title of my report suggests, it is time we verify our diagnosis of Grotowski's presence and absence in the theatre of our time. I am sure this colloquium made one step in this path. As a member of the organizing team, I would like to thank once again Alessandro Martinez (General Secretary of Europe Theatre Prize), Jaroslaw Fret and Joanna Klass (Directors of Grotowski Institute) and Kalina Stefanova (Cultural Bridge, IATC) for making this colloquium possible.

  

Ionesco Translated by Octavio Paz

By Rodolfo Obregón[1]

Traduit la première fois par Octavio Paz en 1956, Ionesco a été une présence constante au théâtre mexicain. Ses pièces ont résonné sur la sensibilité macabre du public, ont fait une fort influence sur quelques auteurs opposés au réalisme dominant, et, dans les mises en scène de Juan José Gurrola et Alexandro Jodorowski, parmi d’autres, ont ouvert un chemin pour l’expérimentation sur la scène mexicaine.

Nobel Prize winner, Octavio Paz, had an enormous influence on every aspect of Mexican culture. Even though he had only one brief contact with the theatre there, he exerted an intense influence on modern Mexican stages through his artistic direction of the second, third and fourth programs given by the Poesia en Voz Alta[2].

In 1956, shortly after returning from France—where he had joined the André Breton circle—Paz selected and translated into Spanish, specially for Mexican audiences, three short plays, by three—at that time unknown— playwrights: Jean Tardieu, Georges Neveux and Eugène Ionesco (Le salon de l’automobile). He completed the program with his first and last attempt to write for the theatre: La hija de Rapaccini. The program notes were written by a most distinguished Mexican writer: Carlos Fuentes (b. 1928).

The importance of his own attempt seems not to have attracted the critics’ attention to an author who, ultimately, has proven to be a continuous presence from that time on in the Mexican theatre: Eugène Ionesco. Nevertheless, it was a young actor from Poesia en Voz Alta who staged here for the first time one of Ionesco’s favourite plays: La cantatrice chauve. The 1960 production by Juan José Gurrola assured the success of the published Spanish version, which was sold out in a very short time.

That same year, three other Ionesco plays were staged in Mexico City: Amédée, La leçon and Les chaises. The latter two were produced by Chilean director Alexandro Jodorowski, who had stayed in Mexico after a tournnée with Marcel Marceau’s mime company, and had continued to produce other Ionesco, Fernando Arrabal and Samuel Beckett’s plays until the 1970s.

Thus, when Ionesco arrived in 1968 in Mexico as part of the Olympic Games Cultural Program, he was already a well-known dramatist. He lectured and travelled around, accompanied by the French productions of three other plays presented by Jacques Mauclair’s company.

From then on, Ionesco was a constant presence on Mexican stages and a strong influence on those Mexican playwrights who had seemed—until then—to be strongly committed to the realistic canon. After all, his preference for macabre situations suited quite well the Mexican sensibility and its humor about the proximity of death.

But Ionesco’s dramatic discovery of language deprived of sense also opened the way to scenic experimentation through directors such as Jodorowski, Gurrola and other participants and heirs to Poesia en Voz Alta.

[1] Rodolfo Obregón is a theatre director and critic, as well as a teacher of acting. He has published three books relating Mexican theatre to world theatre. He has been, since 2003, Director of the National Centre for Theatre Research in Mexico.

[2] Poesia en Voz Alta (1956-1963) was a gathering of poets, painters and very young theatre practitioners that represents—in my opinion—the arrival of Meyerhold's reforms on Mexican stages. Its developments have been registered by American scholar Roni Unger (Poesia en Voz Alta in the Theatre of Mexico, University of Missouri Press, 1981).

A Proust Questionnaire for Eric Bentley

By Randy Gener[1]

ERIC BENTLEY received IATC’s THALIA PRIZE from Korea’s Ministry of Culture at the association’s 50th birthday congress in October 2006 in the capital city of Seoul in South Korea.

IATC’s THALIA PRIZE was established to honor a personality who has made a major contribution to theatre in the world, especially someone who has changed the nature of critical thinking about the theatre.

The first recipient of this prestigious international prize, Mr. Bentley won for the distinction of his writings in and about the theatre and their continuing relevance today. His name was selected after consultation among IATC’s several thousand national and individual members in about 50 countries worldwide.

 

What is the Thalia Prize?

Presented at the biennial congresses of the association, the prize takes the form of a cane with a silver top, representing Thalia, the Greek muse of comedy. It has been specially commissioned from the distinguished Romanian stage and artist-designer Dragos Buhagiar.

The making of the statuette was made possible by the generous sponsorship of the Craiova William Shakespeare Foundation chaired by Mr. Emil Boroghina, and with the assistance of the office of IATC’s Romanian section.

Who is Eric Bentley?

Born in 1916, Eric Russell Bentley is one of the twentieth century’s most influential men of the theatre. As critic, translator, editor, playwright, professor, mentor, director, lyric writer, singer, pianist and performer, the British-born Bentley became an American citizen in 1948 and has been a dominant figure for more than six decades.

Educated at Oxford and Yale and later holding distinguished professorships at Columbia University, the State University of New York at Buffalo, and the University of Maryland, Mr. Bentley first gained public recognition in the 1940s for his translations into English of the plays of Bertolt Brecht. Between 1952 and 1956, he worked as theatre critic for the American magazine The New Republic and his reviews—still in print today in his volume, What Is Theatre?, 1^st ed. 1956)—became standard reading. During the same period, his volume In Search of Theatre (also still in print) gave a classic account of mid-century European theatre. Through the 1950s, his writings and translations (including the major plays of Pirandello) helped to create what many would call the 20th century playwriting canon in English. His two multi-volume series, The Modern Theatre and The Classic Theatre, brought serious attention in the English-speaking academic and theatre worlds to a number of other important European writers including Schnitzler, Sternheim, Wedekind, Gogol and Kleist.

From translations and adaptations, Mr. Bentley moved into original playwriting, producing a range of plays often connected to social and personal politics. These included The Kleist Variations, three plays based on the writings of the German dramatist Heinrich von Kleist; Lord Alfred’s Lover, a play about Oscar Wilde’s trial; and later Are You Now or Have You Ever Been …?, a play about the McCarthy hearings in the United States. A play about Brecht and Bentley written by Charles Marowitz, entitled Silent Partners, was recently premiered in Washington D.C. One website devoted to his work lists some 40 translations, adaptations and original plays by Bentley.

Mr. Bentley has also written numerous books on theatre generally and the role of the dramatist specifically. For many years he has been an outspoken advocate for gay issues. Among his major scholarly volumes are The Playwright As Thinker (1946); The Life of the Drama (1964), a poetics of drama based on his Norton Lectures at Harvard; and Thinking About the Playwright (1987). Still most closely associated with the writings and ideas of Brecht, Mr. Bentley is the editor of the Grove Press edition of Brecht’s works and is the author of two books about Brecht, The Brecht Commentaries and The Brecht Memoir, later published together as Bentley on Brecht.

 

Mr. Bentley has performed in and recorded several albums of songbooks of popular music and theatre songs for the legendary Smithsonian Folkways Records labels. Notable albums, most of which had never been recorded in English before, include “Eric Bentley sings ‘The Queen of 42d Street’ and other songs by Jacques Prevert and Joseph Kosma” (http://www.folkways.si.edu/AlbumDetails.aspx?itemID=1460); “Bentley on Brecht: Songs and Poems of Bertolt Brecht” (http://www.folkways.si.edu/albumdetails.aspx?itemid=1009); “Bentley on Biermann: Songs and Poems of Wolf Biermann” (http://smithsonianfolkways.org/albumdetails.aspx?itemid=1007); and “Songs of Hanns Eisler” (http://www.amazon.com/Songs-of-Hanns-Eisler/dp/B000S5AZ6G). These albums are also available for purchase on iPods.

In 1990, Mr. Bentley was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. During the 1997-98 theatre season, he became a member of the U.S. Theatre Hall of Fame.

Mr. Bentley, 93 years old this year, makes his home in New York City.

What is the Proust Questionnaire?

The Proust Questionnaire is a form of interview about one’s personality. Its name owes to the popularity of the the responses given by the French writer Marcel Proust, who answered the questionnaire several times in his life, always with enthusiasm.

Two sets of Proust’s answers to the questionnaire survive today: the first set (dated roughly in 1885 or 1886) consisted of Proust’s French answers to an English-language confessions album, and the second set (roughly 1891 or 1892) appears in a French album, Les confidences de salon (Drawing-room confessions).

What follows are Mr. Eric Bentley’s answers to a modified version of the original Proust Questionnaire.

RANDY GENER: As the first recipient of AICT-IATC’s Thalia Prize, you took home a walking stick. Has that walking stick been useful or practical—or do you simply put it on display?
ERIC BENTLEY: Practical, because I am 92 years old and need a walking stick.

If you were asked to nominate for the AICT-IATC Thalia Prize a critic living in any part of the world who has made a global impact, who would you suggest? Why?
None of us make a global impact, and Michael Jackson is dead.

Which of your original plays do you consider your finest work? Why?
I don't consider any of them my finest work.

Which of the playwrights you’ve translated or adapted into English, from Brecht to Pirandello, do you consider your best work?
I am not sure. I am somewhat proud of my translation of Bertolt Brecht’s Edward II. Also my version of The First Lulu by Frank Wedekind.

You were twice married before coming out at the age of 53 in 1969. Have you ever regretted coming out?
Hey, this is an odd question to put before readers outside the U.S. Many of them have never heard of Coming Out. Didn't I “come out” in 1942 when I told the U.S. Army all about my sex life?

You have called U.S. society a “plutocratic democracy.” What do you mean by that?
Just look up “plutocracy” in the dictionary.

When you were a young British subject, you joined the Independent Labor Party, a democratic socialist party at odds with Soviet Communism. Your book, The Kleist Variations, chronicles what subsequently happened to that young British socialist—not in a literal way but in an artistic sense. Has socialism failed? Is socialism still relevant today?
The Republicans call Obama a socialist. I wish they were right.

Claus Peymann, the 72-year-old director of the Berliner Ensemble, and Rolf Hochhuth, the playwright and co-owner of Theater am Schiffbauerdam, (where the Berliner Ensemble performs) recently had a public spat that went to court. Peymann’s plead to the Berlin court that Hochuth should be barred from rehearsing in the theatre for a production of the latter’s play. What would have Brecht done?
Brecht would not be in a position to do anything. The two gentlemen have to fight it out in court. I don’t know which of them has the better case in German law. Both are good men. As for Hochhuth, my personal memory is of having supported him with a book entitled The Storm over the Deputy (Grove Press, 1964). I also translated something of his for (yes) Playboy...

As a student of Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, what lesson did you learn from either that you feel needs to be passed on to future writers and critics today?
They did not try to convert (or re-convert) me to Christianity. They were themselves and helped me to become MYself.

With the emergence of the Internet, the print publication is experiencing the greatest revolution since Gutenberg. Is the traditional practice of criticism dead?
What is traditional criticism?

You once suggested that in your ideal world, criticism should be reduced to just one-line statement in a publication? Well, that happens already online. It’s called Twitter. Your prophecy is now a reality.
My ideal world? No, Randy. My suggestion was meant for this imperfect but all too real world.

What is your most marked characteristic?
Marked by whom?

The quality you most like in a man?
Just quality itself. High equality as a human being.

The quality you most like in a woman?
Same.

What do you most value in your friends?
Their friendship.

What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?
Timidity. Fear.

What is the trait you most deplore in others?
Cruelty.

You have been a drama critic, translator, editor, playwright, professor, mentor, director and performer. What is your favorite occupation?
Singer. I am serious. I never enjoyed myself more than singing at the New York nightclubs Reno Sweeney and s.n.a.f.u.

Do you think that critical writing should be constructive or destructive?
I think criticism is sometimes constructive, sometimes otherwise.

If you were to criticize today’s theatre criticism scene (either in the U.S, in Britain or internationally), what would you say is wrong with how criticism is practiced today?
I don't make pronouncements of this sort.

What would you say is right about how criticism is practiced today? 
Same answer.

Which of the songs you’ve performed over the years do you consider your favorite?
No one song. I began as a singer of Bertolt Brecht/Hanns Eisler. I ended up singing new songs, especially those of Arnold Black.

Is critical theory dead? If not, should it die?
I don't get it. Don't understand the question.

What to your mind would be the greatest of misfortunes?
I think the greatest of misfortunes has already happened in the 20th century—from there, there's nowhere to go but up.

In what country would you like to live?
England

Who are your favorite writers?
Read my books to find out.

Who are your favorite directors?
Same answer.

Who are your favorite poets?
Same answer.

Who is your favorite hero of fiction?
Don Quixote.

Who are your favorite composers?
Mozart (and many also-rans)

Who are your heroes ?
My Unholy Trinity has been Jesus, Galileo, and Oscar Wilde.

Which living person do you most admire?
Among my personal friends, Jacques Barzun. Among the more distant, Nelson Mandela.

Which living person do you most despise?
I try not to despise anyone, and I usually succeed. Contempt is bad for the soul.

Which theatre critic do you most despise?
See the above.

Which theatre critic do you most admire?
After 1900: Stark Young.

What’s under your bed?
Do you mean who?

If you could see just one more play, what would it be?
My next.

What’s the secret to a long and rewarding life in the theatre?
Living a long time and keeping one’s distance from show business. In other words, making a living in some other business.

What’s the single most important thing it takes to be a good critic?
Intelligence.

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[1] RANDY GENER is a writer, editor, critic, playwright and visual artist in New York City. He recently debuted a photographic installation-art exhibition, In the Garden of One World, at New York’s La MaMa La Galleria and is the author of Love Seats for Virginia Woolf and other Off-Broadway plays. He is the 2009 winner of the George Jean Nathan Award, the highest accolade for dramatic criticism in the United States given during the 2007-08 theatrical year[for his essays in American Theatre magazine, published by Theatre Communications Group, where is the senior editor.