Publisher’s Opening words

Yun-Cheol Kim
President, the IATC

Critical Stages will reach out to theatre practitioners, audiences, and general readers, whom we critics have somewhat isolated from our inner circles of critical discourse with a communication-unfriendly writing style, particularly since we were inundated with, and fascinated by, post-modern or post-dramatic theories of theatre. I firmly believe that the most important function of theatre criticism is—and should remain—to generate interest in the theatre arts in society. And that interest cannot be generated by our inaccessibly esoteric, equivocating critical language. Interest can be aroused only through interesting writing—and by “interesting” I mean: 1) the criticism that is practiced is accessible--or even journalistic, if you will; 2) the criticism has academic depth in its analysis and reading; 3) the criticism has literary value in itself, in both style and creativity; and 4) the criticism conveys our whole theatre experience and connects it to our daily lives. With all these in mind, Critical Stages will seek more and more ways to ensure that theatre and theatre criticism thrive to their fullest extents by reaching out to the world and generating social interest in the theatre.

On behalf of the International Association of Theatre Critics, I offer my deep gratitude to the Seoul Foundation for Arts & Culture and its president, Mr. Ahn Ho-sang, for kindly sponsoring the publication and operations of the journal. By their sponsorship of the journal, the Foundation demonstrates eloquently its understanding of the importance of the theatre arts, and of theatre criticism, in our violent, anti-intellectual world.

I would also like to express my deepest thanks to all the members of the editorial board of Critical Stages, especially its Editor-in-Chief, Dr. Maria Helena Serodio. Without her enormous commitment, sacrifices, and editorial competence, Critical Stages would never have been born. I would also like to extend special thanks to those who have participated in the editorial work from outside IATC, such as Dr. Patrice Pavis, internationally known French theorist, and Dr. Maria Shevtsova, Professor of Drama at Goldsmiths College, U.K. Last but certainly not least, my gratitude is cordially offered to Dr. Lissa Tyler Renaud, master teacher of directing and acting, and Dr. Michel Vaïs, Secretary General of IATC, who have tended to the authenticity of the journal’s official languages, English and French, in those texts written by non-native speakers. I want to give my personal thanks to Myoung-Jae “Andrew” Yim, Webmaster, and Assistants Yu-jin Kim, and Ji-soo Nam, who have worked so hard to launch the journal on time. 

Finally, I would like to express my special thanks to all the contributors to this inaugural issue for their insightful critical articles.

Norén's diary gives critics a lesson or two

Le journal de Norén donne une leçon (ou deux) aux critiques

Matti Linnavuori¹

Resumé

L'auteur suédois Lars Norén (né en 1944) a publié son journal de cinq ans sous le titre En dramatikers dagbok (Bonniers, 2008). L'ouvrage d'environ 1700 pages couvre la période d'août 2000 à l'été de 2005.

Norén y traite davantage de ses repas et de ses vêtements que de ses créations. Pendant la période couverte par son journal, il a terminé plusieurs pièces et en a dirigé non seulement en Suède, mais aussi en Norvège, en Allemagne et en Suisse-France.

Norén préfère les acteurs qui « se surprennent  eux-mêmes. Je veux qu'ils soient attentifs aux choses qu'ils ne savent pas sur eux-mêmes. » (18 sept. 2003).

On trouve dans ce livre plusieurs attaques verbales contre les médias suédois, certains critiques et l'establishment théâtral.

Who is Lars Norén?

The book is a heavy volume with unnumbered pages. Even his native Swedes have made varying counts, but ca 1700 pages is a fairly reliable figure.

Norén kept a diary from August 2000 to summer 2005 and not only that, he then retyped it, apparently with only very light editing. He writes with a typewriter, not a computer.

All that time Norén was busy directing, and writing his own plays. He sometimes mentions an idea for a new play, but seldom goes into detail. By reading the diary one cannot gain an insight into how Norén treats or solves his artistic problems, only that he rewrites and revises continuously. Instead, the diary paints an accurate picture of the conditions, the landscape in which he does his creative work.

Norén seems to be more interested in designer clothes, furniture and music than any other art form. He buys a lot of books but hardly mentions reading them. Well, The Castle by Franz Kafka he finds the most erotic book ever.

Norén rarely goes to the theatre to see the work of other directors, but is always delighted to hear from his trusted friends that such-and-such a production was bad.

The diary is very outspoken; e.g. Norén feels free to attack the highest theatrical authority in the country, namely Ingmar Bergman, by noting that "Bergman's productions of the last ten years have been like hospital food, already eaten up and shitted out when it is served" (September 9, 2002, my translations from Swedish).

Meals and roses

He registers the content of his meals so carefully that the repetition makes a nauseating read. He buys expensive designer clothes and complains he cannot afford them. He regularly falls in love with the most beautiful actress in his production and makes his presence felt in her life. He toils in the garden of his summer house, where "the roses are unheard-of" (July 7, 2002).

Early on Norén decides to publish the diary. From then on he also keeps repeating that he will have no friends after publication date. He writes down hearsay, because after all, this is a private diary. He did not directly witness a critic fall asleep during a performance, but when Norén published his name, this was received as an accusation.

The relationship between Norén and the media was strained to begin with. In 1999, escaped neo-Nazi inmates from his prison production 7:3 killed two policemen in the village of Malexander, and the media suggested Norén should publicly admit at least partial guilt.

No wonder then that hell according to Norén is the news desk of the tabloid paper Expressen (Apr 27, 2004). Norén declares one Swedish critic "a vulgar alcoholic" (May 27, 2001) and another one "a dog with lipstick" (Sep 20, 2001).

A journalistic responsibility

Norén seems to feel that the media by its sheer presence may endanger one's artistic integrity. "I feel proud to have Dagens Nyheter (a Swedish daily) as my enemy. I don't want to see how a flattering cautiousness would creep into my language and into my understanding of the world" (Nov 2000).

This does not mean that Norén would categorically reject journalism as such and individual journalists. Someone from Dagens Nyheter sat in the rehearsals of The Seagull and offered his article for Norén to read prior to publication. "Actually I think it is wrong. One should not sanction something others write about one. A journalist should be free in his opinions and points of view. If he wishes to check facts it is naturally another thing. But for his points of view he should be responsible himself" (May 12, 2001).

Tired of theatre

According to Norén, one Swedish critic is tired and disgusted because she must see so much theatre, and to get a reaction out of her the stage grammar needs to become more and more brutal (Sept 22, 2002). I share her experience, which is all the more reason to turn to Norén's observations. I suppose many critics can also identify with Norén's self-description: "I am never calm, happy and relaxed. Not at the same time" (Aug 15, 2002).

The sentences are so open and beautiful that I am becoming a reluctant fan, and then this: "I have been sorrowful for the last two weeks, or more precisely, my entire life" (July 10, 2001). Be it self-pity or disarming frankness, nevertheless it is excellent writing.

About acting

Norén values no-nonsense acting. I want to have an actor who is not deformed by the skill of acting, he writes, someone who does not continuously observe himself and his position on the stage (Oct 31, 2000).

Norén offers an example of how not to act. Instead of respecting the memory of a recently deceased Swedish star actor, Norén blames the star for making his co-actors look bad. Not because he was so damn much better, Norén writes, but because he stole life from them. He stole their reaction by not reacting to them (Feb 7, 2004).

When directing, Norén says, I am interested only in what the actors don't know about themselves. "All else, the hidden, the injuries, the shortcomings, what must be compensated for, they have learnt to live with" (Feb 17, 2001).

When in the audience, Norén keeps his eyes on the actor who is being spoken to, not the one who is speaking (May 9, 2001).

Actors have a habit, which is perhaps intellectual laziness. They like to say that the actor must defend or even idealize his character to be able to play him, particularly when the character makes himself guilty of unforgivable crimes. Norén dismisses this, because actors don't usually go to that much trouble. "They often play themselves without any form of idealizing or even defending" (June 25, 2003).

The Royal Dramatic Theatre (Dramaten) is the most prestigious theatre in Sweden. Apparently the actors who have made it in Dramaten feel a social pressure to be coy about it. Norén is not amused: "I am sick and tired of spoiled actors who want nothing more than be with Dramaten, even though they brag how awful it is in there. How they long to get away from Dramaten, how they long after something meaningful. No one wants to be there, but they are there anyway. No one wants to be there, but it is extremely cool to be there" (March19, 2001).

About directing

Norén compares his own directing to playing a musical instrument. "I listened to Miles Davis and Sonny Stitt in concert at Olympia in 1960. One knows which phrase Sonny Stitt will play next. With Miles one does not. One knows it with most actors. But there are some who surprise me almost every time. I want those with whom I work now to surprise themselves. I want them to pay attention to things they don't know about themselves (Sept 18, 2003).

Norén does not value the fashionable way of directing. "Our era looks for directors who have a command of the visual, but totally lack knowledge of the actors' work. They are clever at making pictures and at throwing in music that others have created, but there is nothing behind all that" (Feb 18, 2003).

As a guest director in Berlin Norén is acutely aware that the local audiences have seen it all. He plans to have long silences within his the dialogue in his piece and warns himself: "The Berlin audience has seen it all, and if a pause is one second too long, they will say Now we know what this is all about" (June 19, 2001).

And the Berlin critics are very predictable. "The German critics become irritated if one describes problems with people in their own age and situation. They don't like to think about how they're doing. That is something they want to forget when they go to the theatre. They want to see how much more miserably and disgustingly others live (Dec 3, 2001).

About writing

Norén refrains from interpreting the characters from his own typewriter. "I try to write in such a way that the characters are just as mysterious and anonymous at the end of the play as they were at the beginning. Not because they are mysterious, irrational, incomprehensible – which they are – but because it is fundamentally impossible to gain knowledge or understanding about what a human being is and why she acts the way she does" (Nov 5, 2003).

“War” Over The Persians

Savas Patsalidis[1]

Author: Aeschylus. Direction: Dimiter Gotcheff. Stage Design and Costumes: Mark Lummert. Production: The National Theatre of Greece. Theatre Venue: Ancient Theatre of Epidaurus. Framework: The Hellenic Festival 2009.

Ever since its official opening some 56 years ago, the Festival held at the ancient theatre of Epidaurus has been the cause of numerous and quite often loud debates about its “proper” role: to whom should it cater and to what extent should the audience’s horizon of expectations be allowed to determine the kind of plays approved for production there? Should Epidaurus be open to all artistic trends and traditions (anything goes?) or should it be limited only to the revival of Greco-Roman theatre?

For the vast majority of theatregoers, Epidaurus is a “haunted” site, part of the collective memory and, as such, it has certain limits. It cannot be turned into a supermarket or a spectacular “shopping mall.” Nor, on the other hand, can it be switched into an exclusive, elitist site of innovations, which would be quite contrary to its original inception. When a theatre hosts a maximum of 11,500 viewers, it leaves not much room for experimentation, which by definition is anti-popular (or non-popular). Epidaurus, the argument goes, should be the meeting point of only outstanding Greco-Roman works—in other words, a meeting point of history and collective memory.

Lest

In similar fashion, Gotscheff on a bare stage with only a blueish wall at the back dismembered history to remember modern Iran/Persia and thus invite the sort of introspection on otherness, loss, theocracy, tyranny, citizenship and nationhood Aeschylus might have wished to encourage. He changed the all male chorus of the original with an all female chorus (seven in total) to show that women are those who suffer the most by the deeds of men—a reading that most critics turned down on the grounds that it could not be supported by the text, where the chorus (of wise old men) is not just a collective body that participates in the telling of the story or laments personal loss, but is also a collective body that participates in a game of power that excludes women. Also, virtually all disapproved of the director’s dramaturgical option to replace the Messenger by seven young actors in T-shirts, recalling Muslim rebels, and through them (and the female narrator) create a soundspace of words spoken as an independent unit (a technique inspired by Brecht and Heiner Müller) that slowed down the action’s tempo and re-inforced the play’s alienating effect (Sellars in his own production also attempted to create a similar effect by using an oud player). Their argument was that by veering off into territory almost alien to the text itself, the director stripped it bare of its inner rhythms and transformed it into a soulless, static mass. Some critics even went as far as to argue that Epidaurus is harmed by artists who, unaware of the history of performing the classics, show up with readings that are either obsolete, unfounded or too narcissistic to move a big crowd, let alone contribute to the ongoing dialogue between ancients and moderns.

Through the years, Gotscheff has repeatedly presented highly challenging and imaginative theatre and these reservations, sound as they are, at least some of them, do not erase the artistic value of his venture at Epidaurus. By re-inventing (and re-investing) the past in living memories, he showed how the interplay of history, memory and the present can take on many meanings and thus cause different reactions. Theatre has the ability to connect an audience with its present and its forbears; and I think Gotscheff’s reading deserves credit for trying to achieve just that without spoon-feeding its context to us; he deserves credit for provoking our imagination and personal associations; for trying to make us re-evaluate our position as audience members, to dig deeper into our own experiences, to remember and to relate. He deserves credit for exhibiting postmodernity’s inability to escape a history of wars and violence; in brief, for showing us once again that Aeschylus’ play is painfully contemporary even close to 25 centuries after its premiere.

As for the cast (a very talented group of mostly young people), they believed in their director’s thought-provoking vision and did their best to live up to it. They succeeded nobly.

[1] SAVAS PATSALIDIS is Professor of Theatre Theory and History at Aristotle University, Thessaloniki (Greece) and also a theatre reviewer. He is on the board of the Greek Association of Theatre Critics and is a member of the National Endowment for the Arts committee. He is the author of ten books on drama. His latest work is a two-volume study of American Theatre (University Studio Press).

Le plaisir de jouer avec virtuosité: Leichtes Spiel. Neun Personen einer Frau

Patrice Pavis[1]

Auteur: Botho Strauss. Dramaturgie: Rolf Schröder et Hans-Joachim Ruckhäberle. Mise en scène: Dieter Dorn. Scénographie et costumes: Jürgen Bosse. Théâtre: Residenztheater, Munich, 2009

Dans sa dernière pièce, créée au Residenztheater de Munich en mai 2009, Leichtes Spiel. Neun Personen einer Frau, Botho Strauss reste fidèle à son écriture. Il ose écrire « poétiquement », métaphoriquement, sans que le lecteur puisse facilement transposer les situations en une interprétation assurée. Le lecteur comme le metteur en scène ne devrait donc pas tenter de traduire cette série de symboles ou d’images en un discours lisible et rassurant. Grâce à cette légèreté et cette élégance du trait, Botho Strauss donne au metteur en scène et aux acteurs la possibilité de trouver des situations de jeu certes inspirées par le texte, mais aussi originales dans l’invention scénique.

Dans sa récente mise en scène, Dieter Dorn trouve les moyens de servir cette écriture en scènes autonomes, seulement reliées par la présence d’une femme, que l’on perçoit à chaque fois derrière un masque ou sous une facette différents. Il souligne ou établit une cohérence dans le fil thématique de l’âge, du vieillissement, de l’itinéraire d’une femme, la « spätes Mädchen », la vieille fille, qui, comme Strauss, contemple sa vie passée et son parcours depuis le « jardin d’Eden jusqu’à la pièce verte » (p.108), cette « green room » des acteurs juste avant l’entrée en scène. Du rouge au vert : de la passion éprouvée pour ces neuf femmes tout de rouge vêtues et qui réapparaissent avec un élément de costume rouge, à la préparation vers la scène. Tout finit en théâtre, nous dit la dernière femme : « ipse mihi theatrum » (p.107) et la vie est une suite d’entrées en scène, qu’il s’agisse des sept âges de l’homme selon Shakespeare, ou des huit tomes d’une œuvre que l’artiste en rouge, mélange de jeune fille et de vieux briscard de la scène, énumère une dernière fois ou bien encore des neuf femmes dont l’existence a filtré depuis le vert paradis jusque sur la scène du théâtre (p.108), et dont nous percevons l’essentiel.

[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), Doctor Honoris Causa from the University of Bratislava. His most recent publication is: La Mise en scène contemporaine, Armand Colin, 2007.