Editorial

Maria Helena Serôdio

April is the cruelest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire.

T.S.Eliot, The Waste Land (‘The Burial of the Dead’)

Upon renewing our presence on the website with a second issue of Critical Stages―and differently from Eliot―we can only be happy with the coming of April since it also brings with it the evidence that the International Association of Theatre Critics is able to pursue one of its main goals: to highlight the need (and the importance) of critics and criticism in the field of theatre. But this claim is not to be held as a vain conceit: it only means that we assume this as a challenge and a responsibility, so that we shall do our best not to disappoint artists, readers and theatre audiences alike.

In professing this idea in the second issue of our journal, we also try to show how varied is (or should be) the approach to theatre. That is one of the reasons why we engage in dialogue with both playwrights (Athol Fugard and Gianina Carbunariu) and theatre practitioners (set-designer Dragos Buhagia, and theatre directors: Jin-Chaek Sohn, David Zinder and Stan Lai / Sheng-Chuan). And either framing the dialogue in a more formatted way or using a specific moment of their careers to hear their opinions, it is always a way of assembling “views” and “voices” of those who create art for the stage and make them readable by all those who visit us at this site.

Other ways of approaching theatre allow for elaborating on theatre criticism as Yun-Cheol Kim, Don Rubin, Temple Hauptfleisch and Mark Brown do in the section dedicated to “critics on criticism,” thus recalling proposals the first two presented at a Colloquium held last January in Vallabh Vidyanagar (India) where that subject was discussed.

Three other critical perspectives can also be identified in our approaches to theatre. One is reviewing current performances (as well as of books recently released), and we can boast of having reviews of performances created by artists coming from Canada, Finland, Iran, South Africa, France, Latvia, Romania, Israel and Germany, among others. And among the reviewers, we are happy to count on former President of the IATC―Georges Banu―with two major articles, as well as a ‘lesson’ on performance analysis Patrice Pavis uses to approach a dance performance.

The second perspective is based on theatre research, looking for either artistic identities (be they Creole theatre, the condition of Immigrants in the Portuguese theatre, or Purcărete’s artistic output) or spotting painful memories in plays and performances.

The third perspective we adopt here has to do with examining theatrical legacies: both Jean Genet’s theatre (being revived in a festival held in Korea―in March and April of this year―to commemorate the centenary of his birth) and Brazilian director Augusto Boal. In this latter case, we are proud to include a file with articles by leading researchers and artists of Brazil who have known, studied and worked with Boal, together with a portfolio of photos that show some of the many riches of the newly formed “Augusto Boal Archive” at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UNIRIO).

On the eve of granting the Thalia Prize to Richard Schechner in our forthcoming Congress in Yerevan (Armenia) to be held next June, we recall here the critic and essayist Jean-Pierre Sarrazac who received that same Prize in Sofia, two years ago, “for having influenced critical thinking about the art of theatre.” The speech he read in Sofia, as well as the “questionnaire” Randy Gener used to make his views more known to our readers form another section of this issue of Critical Stages. In the photos that are shown here we can see the emblem of the prize specially commissioned from the distinguished Romanian stage and artist-designer Dragos Buhagiar: a cane with a silver top, representing Thalia, the Greek muse of comedy.

My most sincere thanks go to all those who so generously contributed with their writings to this issue, thus sharing with us their knowledge and enthusiasm. And that is also extended to all the members of our Editorial Board who engaged with so many duties and concerns in order to have it all ready to release the issue in due time. It is, however, an immense joy to see how all those efforts come together in this issue, and how it proves that it is still possible―no matter how different we are in our ideas, sensibilities and ways of writing―to have a collective voice as theatre critics.

A last word of acknowledgement should be said in order to thank Yu-Jin Kim for Editorial Assistance, Myoung-Jae "Andrew" Yim for the Web design, and IATC President Yun-Cheol Kim who called into existence this journal and relied on me for its edition.

I could perhaps resume Eliot’s words of the epigraph quoted above not only to underline the singular metaphor of “lilacs” for the “pieces” that make up this issue (although not “out of the dead land,” rather the opposite living theatre …), but also for the “mixing of memory and desire” that is, to my mind, one of the main sources of our work as theatre critics.

Éditorial

Maria Helena Serôdio

Avril est le mois le plus cruel, car les lilas
Poussent sur la terre morte,
Mélangeant mémoire et désir

T.S. Eliot, La Terre vaine (« L’enterrement des morts »)

Il existe d’autres moyens d’aborder le théâtre, notamment en réfléchissant sur l’exercice de la critique comme le font Yun-Cheol Kim, Don Rubin, Temple Hauptfleisch et Mark Brown dans la section consacrée aux « critiques sur la critique », nous rappelant ainsi les exposés que les deux premiers ont livrés à un colloque qui s’est déroulé en janvier à Vallabh Vidyanagar (Inde), où ce sujet a été discuté.

On peut identifier trois autres perspectives critiques dans nos approches du théâtre. La première consiste à rendre compte de spectacles courants et d’ouvrages récemment parus. À cet égard, nous sommes fiers de publier des comptes rendus de spectacles venant entre autres du Canada, de Finlande, d’Iran, d’Afrique du Sud, de France, de Lettonie, de Roumanie, d’Israël et d’Allemagne. Et au nombre des chroniqueurs, nous sommes heureux de compter l’ancien président de l’AICT, Georges Banu, qui publie deux articles importants, ainsi qu’une « leçon » sur l’analyse de la représentation que Patrice Pavis utilise pour traiter d’un spectacle de danse.

La deuxième perspective se fonde sur la recherche théâtrale en matière d’identité artistique (qu’il s’agisse du théâtre créole, de la condition des immigrants dans le théâtre portugais ou de l’œuvre de Purcărete) ou appliquée à des souvenirs douloureux dans des représentations.

En troisième lieu, nous nous attachons à des legs : celui du théâtre de Jean Genet (ranimé dans un festival en Corée pour commémorer le centenaire de sa naissance, en mars et avril de cette année) et celui du metteur en scène brésilien Augusto Boal. Dans ce dernier cas, nous sommes fiers de publier une série d’articles de chercheurs et d’artistes brésiliens ayant étudié et travaillé avec Boal, illustrés de photos témoignant de la richesse des nouvelles « Archives Augusto Boal » à l’Université fédérale de Rio de Janeiro (UNIRIO).

Au moment d’accorder le prix Thalie à Richard Schechner, lors de notre prochain congrès à Erevan (Arménie), en juin 2010, nous revenons au critique et essayiste Jean-Pierre Sarrazac, qui a reçu ce prix à Sofia il y a deux ans, « pour avoir influencé la réflexion critique sur l’art du théâtre ». Le discours qu’il a livré à Sofia, ainsi que le « questionnaire » que Randy Gener utilise pour mieux faire connaître sa pensée à nos lecteurs, constituent une autre section de ce numéro de Scènes critiques/Critical Stages. Dans les photos qui les illustrent, on peut voir l’emblème de ce prix, conçu spécialement par le grand scénographe et sculpteur roumain Dragos Buhagiar : une canne à pommeau d’argent représentant Thalie, la muse grecque de la comédie.

Je tiens à adresser mes remerciements les plus sincères à tous ceux qui ont collaboré généreusement à ce numéro, partageant ainsi avec nous leurs connaissances et leur enthousiasme. Cela s’adresse aussi à tous les membres de notre comité éditorial qui n’ont pas ménagé leurs efforts pour que le numéro soit prêt à temps. C’est cependant pour moi une joie immense de voir réunies toutes ces énergies et de constater qu’il est encore possible – peu importe nos différences de pensée, de sensibilité, de style d’écriture – d’atteindre une voix collective en tant que critiques de théâtre.

Je dois un dernier mot de reconnaissance à Yu Jin Kim pour son assistance éditoriale, à Myoung-Jae « Andrew » Yim pour la conception Web et au président de l’AICT Yun-Cheol Kim, qui a fait naître cette revue et s’est fié à moi pour la concrétiser.

Je pourrais peut-être revenir sur l’épigraphe de Eliot qui paraît au début, en soulignant la singulière métaphore des « lilas » pour les « parties » qui constituent ce numéro (quoique pas sur de « la terre morte », mais au contraire, sur un théâtre vivant…), mais aussi pour ce « mélange de mémoire et de désir » qui m’apparaît comme une des sources principales de notre travail de critiques de théâtre.

Jean Pierre Sarrazac Before and After the Thalia Prize : Un Questionnaire de Proust

By Randy Gener[1]

French critic, director and playwright JEAN-PIERRE SARRAZAC received IATC’s THALIA PRIZE from Bulgaria’s Minister of Culture, Stefan Danailov, at the association’s 24th world congress in April 2008 in the Bulgarian capital city of Sofia.

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 second recipient of this prestigious international prize, Mr. Sarrazac won for the distinction of his critical writings about the theatre and their resonance beyond his native France. As far back as 1981, his key ground-breaking work L'Avenir du Théâtre (The Future of Theatre) sought to codify and challenge what we now call postmodern or post-dramatic theater.

Sarrazac’s 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[2].

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 Jean-Pierre Sarrazac?

Born in 1946, Jean-Pierre Sarrazac is a playwright, director, a professor of dramaturgy at Universite Paris III Sorbonne Nouvelle and a visiting professor of Université de Louvain-la-Neuve.

Since the 1970s, Sarrazac has conducted a strongly original study of contemporary dramatic writing. He has especially underlined its hybridity and defined the interactivity of forms and themes.

A pupil and faithful disciple of Bernard Dort and a close friend of Roland Barthes, Sarrarzac has worked as a playwright, dramaturge and director, notably in the Centre Dramatique National, Caen. From 1976–1981, he taught at the National Theatre School in Strasbourg. From 1983–1991, he was coordinator of the Ateliers de Formation et de Recherche, Comédie de Caen. From 1991–1993, he was literary and artistic adviser of Comédie de Reims.

Sarrazac has been director of the Institut d’Études Théâtrales in the University of Paris III-Censier and has written numerous theoretical works. On Dort’s recommendation, he became a member of the editorial board of Travail Théâtral. He subsequently edited l’Annuel du théâtre and is presently director of a series from Circé, which has published works by Gordon Craig, Peter Szondi, Stanislavski, Denis Guenon, among others.

Sarrazac has written 20 plays, including Lazare lui aussi rêvait d'eldorado (Lazarus also dreamed of “eldorado”), directed by Thierry Bosc, The Palace, 1976; La silhouette et l’effigie (The Silhouette and the Effigy), directed by the author, Comedie de Caen, 1982; L’enfant-roi (The Infant King), staged by Jean-Louis Hourdin, Open Theater, The Conservatory, 1984; Le marriage des morts (The Marriage of the Dead), directed by Jacques Lassalle, City Theater and TNS, 1986-87; La Passion du jardinier (The Gardener's Passion), staged by Pierre-Etienne Heymann, Maison des Arts de Créteil, 1989, many other productions of this play, the last in 2002-2003 by Olivier Perrier and Federated); Est-ce déjà le soir, esquisse pour un chœur européen (Is it already Evening, a Rough Sketch for an European Heart), directed by Christian Schiaretti, Festival d'Avignon, 1990; Harriet, directed by Claude Yersin, Nouveau Théâtre d'Angers — Théâtre Paris-Villette, 1993; Les inseparables (The Inseparable), directed by Guy Touraille, La Rose des Vents, Villeneuve d'Ascq, 1995); La fugitive (The Fugitive), directed by Jean-Yves Lazennec, Maxim-Gorki Theater in Petit-Quevilly, Theater 13, Paris, 1996; Vieillir m’amuse (Aging is fun!), directed by Fernando Mora Ramos, Cendrev Evora, 1998; Néo, trois panneaux d'apocalypse (Neo, three signs of the Apocalypse), directed by Gilles Chavassieux Theater Workshops Lyon, 1999; Mort d’un DJ (Death of a DJ), France-Culture, June 2000; Cantiga para já, Place de la Revolution (in collaboration with Christina Mirjol), Theater Gil Vicente Coimbra, Braga Theater Company, the National Dramatic Center of Galicia, in December 2003; Ajax/ retours (Ajax/return(s)2005; and La Boule d’or (The Golden Ball), 2007.

Several of these plays have been considered achievements of France-Culture, at the initiative of Lucien Attoun. They have been translated and staged in English, Italian, Galician, Spanish, Dutch, Romanian, Swedish and Portuguese.

In addition, Sarrazac has directed several plays, including L'Atelier driving Novarina Valere (Theater Amandiers Nanterre, 1974); Strindberg's Dream (Comedy of Caen, 1988); The Plowman from Bohemia by Von Saaz (Cendrev, Evora, Oporto National Theater, 1997); and his own play Cantiga para já, Revolution Square (Coimbra, 2003-2004).

Sarrazac’s essays have regularly addressed the function of criticism, especially for La Critique du théâtre. His writings have also appeared in such French and international journals as Esprit, Europe, Art Press, Le Monde, Diplomatique, New Series, Pausa, and others. His book of essays on theater and criticism include L'Avenir du drame (The Future of Drama), 1981; Théâtres intimes (Intimate Theatres), 1989; Théâtres du moi, théâtres du monde (Theatres Of Me, Theatres Of The World), 1995; Critique du théâtre. De l'utopie au désenchantement (Theater Criticism: From Utopia to Disenchantment),2000; and Jeux de rêves et autres detours (2004).

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. Jean-Pierre Sarrazac’s answers to a modified version of the original Proust Questionnaire.

RANDY GENER : En tant que récipiendaire du prix Thalie de l’AICT, vous avez reçu un bâton de marche. Ce bâton de marche vous a-t-il été utile ou pratique ? Où l’exposez-vous ?

JEAN-PIERRE SARRAZAC : Je pratique en effet la marche à pied, mais cette canne, qui m’a été offerte à Sofia, est ornée, en guise de pommeau, d’une magnifique et délicate sculpture. Je ne puis songer à un usage utilitaire d’un objet si précieux. Elle est donc suspendue, dans mon bureau, au-dessus de ma tête. Et je compte bien recevoir des coups de bâton — de la part de l’AICT — si je m’endors au travail.

Si on vous demandait de nommer un critique, vivant dans n'importe quelle partie du monde, qui a eu un impact mondial, qui choisiriez-vous ? Pourquoi ?

Carlo Ginzburg, le critique et théoricien italien, parce qu’il conjugue à merveille, dans ses écrits, la micro-histoire, la question du témoignage et l’esthétique. Peut-être est-ce lui qui, s’appuyant sur des propos du metteur en scène français Antoine Vitez, a le mieux compris la fameuse « distanciation » brechtienne ?

Laquelle de vos pièces originales considérez-vous votre œuvre la plus accomplie ? Pourquoi ?

Toujours une faiblesse pour la dernière. En l’occurrence La Boule d’or, où quatre personnages, qui ont vécu intensément les événements de mai 68 et leur suite, se retrouvent, quinquagénaires, dans un café du quartier latin — « La Boule d’or » — qui n’existe plus. Remontée dans le temps, éternelle recherche du temps passé, sous le regard d’une jeune femme qui, elle, est bien de son temps. J’ai l’impression que je ne suis jamais parvenu autant que dans cette pièce-là à marier réalisme et fantastique.

Il y a aussi une pièce plus ancienne, La Passion du jardinier, ou le dialogue en quatre saisons — printemps, été, automne, hiver — d’un jeune jardinier néo-nazi et de la vieille femme juive qu’il a assassinée (il avait sympathisé avec cette femme, avant qu’il ne découvre qu’elle était juive et survivante de la Shoah). Quand la pièce commence, la Vieille Dame, bien que déjà morte assassinée, est pleine de vitalité, alors que le Jardiner, enfermé dans sa prison, est une sorte de mort-vivant sans énergie. Cette pièce est, parmi la vingtaine de pièces que j’ai écrites à ce jour, la plus jouée en France et à l’étranger. J’aime l’énergie de cette Vieille Dame qui vient demander des explications et une réparation au Jardinier égaré dans ces idées antisémites dont on lui a farci le cerveau, devant un public constitué en assemblée.

Dans votre œuvre majeure, L'Avenir du drame (The Future Of Drama), vous avez cherché à codifier le genre de théâtre que nous appelons aujourd’hui postmoderne ou postdramatique (un théâtre qui s’appuie davantage sur le langage visuel et le mouvement que sur le texte bien ordonné des pièces traditionnelles du tournant du siècle dernier). Vous avez écrit que le drame du 20^e siècle s'est transformé en rhapsodie. Vous citez les pièces de Jean-Luc Lagarce et de Daniel Danis. Quel est le futur du théâtre au 21^e siècle ?

En fait, je récuse l’idée de théâtre postdramatique que je trouve trop simplificatrice. Nous avons encore et toujours besoin de drames. C’est-à-dire de représentations de la rencontre catastrophique avec l’autre, ne serait-ce que l’autre en nous-mêmes. Nous en avons besoin, afin d’essayer de mesurer cette catastrophe qu’est l’existence et de faire quelques gestes qui nous donneront l’illusion de nous en sortir.

La rhapsodie, la pulsion rhapsodique, c’est tout ce qui pousse le drame moderne et postmoderne vers plus d’irrégularité, vers des hybridations — avec l’épique, le lyrique ; avec d’autres arts tels que la danse, la vidéo, le cinéma — qui vont le rendre plus riche et plus libre. La rhapsodie — même chez des musiciens comme Malher ou Charles Ives — est la forme la plus libre, mais pas l’absence de forme. Des auteurs tels que Danis, Lagarce, Jon Fosse, ou votre compatriote Kushner sont très rhapsodiques et maintiennent la forme dramatique — l’esprit du drame — tout en lui donnant le plus de souplesse, de richesse, de contemporanéité.

Vos livres ont-ils précédé l’idée de théâtre postdramatique (Hans-Thies Lehmann) ?

Mon livre L'Avenir du drame a été écrit en 1979 et publié en 1981. Le livre remarquable de Hans-Thies Lehman est de 1999. Il y a entre ces deux livres quelques convergences indiscutables et des divergences non moins évidentes.

Avez-vous une nouvelle théorie du théâtre ?

Je viens d’achever un nouveau livre, Poétique du drame moderne, qui propose en effet une théorie je crois nouvelle de la mutation de la forme dramatique qui s’est produite à partir des années 1880 et qui se poursuit aujourd’hui. Ce livre devrait. (…. Devrait quoi…. ???? Je propose d’enlever cette dernière phrase.)

Vous inquiétez-vous du fait que les lecteurs anglophones de critiques de théâtre ne vous connaissent pas ? Est-ce que vos livres seront éventuellement traduits en anglais ?

Je regrette infiniment que mon travail d’auteur et de critique ne soit pas connu dans le monde anglophone. Mais sans doute ai-je ma part de responsabilité dans cet état de fait, dans la mesure où j’ai surtout travaillé en Europe, dans le monde méditerranéen ou en Amérique latine. Je suis un Latin, incontestablement, mais très attiré par l’art et les cultures anglo-saxons et nordiques.

Que faites-vous en ce moment (Écriture ? Enseignement ? Mise en scène ? Planification ?)

En ce moment, je crois bien que je suis en train d’incuber, telle une mauvaise grippe, une nouvelle pièce de théâtre, où il sera entre autres question de l’histoire coloniale de la France. Mais le travail visible concerne un livre théorique : une Poétique du drame moderne, des années 1880 à aujourd’hui, que je suis en train d’achever, qui se présentera comme un livre d’environ 300 pages, fourmillant d’exemples. Une sorte de réponse, cinquante ans après, à la Théorie du drame moderne de Peter Szondi.

Quelles leçons avez-vous apprises en tant qu’auteur et critique que vous aimeriez transmettre aux futurs auteurs et critiques d’aujourd’hui ?

Le critique ne doit pas être celui qui amplifie les modes et l’auteur, celui qui s’accroche à une mode. Modernité doit toujours se conjuguer avec tradition. Se dire qu’on est aussi le contemporain d’auteurs du passé et que ces auteurs du passé sont nos contemporains. « Shakespeare, notre contemporain », disait déjà Jan Kott… Quand j’écris une pièce et que j’ai l’impression de me perdre, ne pas chercher à arranger les choses ; plutôt les aggraver. Préserver sa singularité comme auteur, comme dramaturge. Développer au contraire sa pluralité, sa propre polyphonie, bref son ouverture aux voix des autres, dans l’activité critique et théorique.

Avec l'apparition de l'Internet, le monde de l’édition est en danger. Pour certains esprits, publier est faire l’expérience de la plus importante révolution depuis Gutenberg. La critique est-elle morte à l'âge numérique ?

Au contraire, la critique se démultiplie par la voie de l’Internet. Mais il y a bien sûr un écueil : que la blogosphère ne se laisse pas dévorer par l’egosphère, la nombrilosphère… Pour ce qui est du livre, j’y suis très attaché, y compris aux livres de mon enfance où il fallait découper les pages. Récemment un jeune acheteur a rapporté à un bouquiniste un livre qui avait un défaut : « Regardez Monsieur, les pages ne sont même pas découpées ! ». En signe de protestation préventive contre la disparition du livre sur papier, je suis disposé à mettre le feu à mon ordinateur (ce qui lui est déjà arrivé).

Quelle pièce de théâtre ou spectacle avez-vous vu récemment dont vous aimeriez faire l’éloge ou la critique et pourquoi ?

J’ai vu à la fin de la saison dernière une magnifique Cerisaie de Tchekhov mise en scène pas Alain Françon, au Théâtre national de la Colline. Mise en scène très au présent, mais citant dans chacun de ses moments la création de la pièce par Stanislavski. Le contraire d’une attitude muséographique. Une magnifique dialectique entre le début du 20^e siècle et celui du 21^e. Une admirable polyphonie, où chaque personnage, chaque acteur devient, à un moment donné, le protagoniste de la pièce, la personne à la fois la plus importante et la plus dérisoire au monde. Et c’est Firs, le vieux serviteur, qui a le mot — ou, plutôt, le silence — de la fin : on l’oublie dans la Cerisaie abandonnée et il se couche dans le vestibule pour mourir… Ce soir-là, Firs était admirablement joué par Jean-Paul Roussillon, grand acteur issu de la Comédie-Française, mort cet été.

La qualité que vous appréciez le plus chez l’homme ?

Sa capacité à céder, voire à capituler devant une femme.

La qualité que vous appréciez le plus chez la femme ?

Qu’elle se sente libre face à un homme.

Qu’appréciez-vous le plus chez vos amis ?

Fidélité, disponibilité et franc-parler.

Quel trait déplorez-vous le plus en vous ?

Ma susceptibilité (en voie d’amélioration, disent-ils, avec l’âge).

Quel trait déplorez-vous le plus chez les autres ?

Leur esprit vexatoire (mais j’y suis de moins en moins sensible…)

Vous avez été critique, dramaturge, directeur de recherche et professeur. Quelle profession préférez-vous ?

Je n’ai pas à ce sujet de réponse définitive : tantôt, dramaturge ; tantôt pédagogue et chercheur. J’ai des phases alternées. Mais Bernard Dort, qui fut, avec Roland Barthes, un des mes deux maîtres, disait que j’étais surtout un essayiste. Essayiste en écrivant un ouvrage critique, mais aussi en écrivant mes pièces.

Estimez-vous que l'écriture critique devrait être constructive ou destructive ?

Constructive, évidemment. Mais chacun sait que dans notre univers saturé de vestiges inutiles et de ruines, il faut parfois détruire pour pouvoir mieux construire. Et il devient parfois nécessaire de faire tomber un prétendu mur porteur.

Si vous aviez à critiquer la critique de théâtre d'aujourd'hui (soit aux États-Unis, en Grande-Bretagne, en France ou au niveau international), que reprocheriez-vous à la façon dont la critique se pratique ?

La critique dramatique n’est plus assez descriptive. Elle passe trop vite au jugement (souvent non argumenté), à l’évaluation, voire (Cf question précédente) à la démolition. Relire les feuilletons théâtraux du 19^e siècle, si riches, si circonstanciés. Mais il faut bien reconnaître que c’est aussi une question de place : en France et dans quelques autres pays de ma connaissance, les critiques ne disposent plus de la place nécessaire pour développer suffisamment leur point de vue.

Qu’est-ce qui est bien dans la façon dont la critique se pratique ?

Je dirais que la critique est aussi un métier qui s’apprend. À l’exception d’une chose, qui ne s’apprend pas vraiment : l’amour du théâtre. La critique, ou l’art d’aimer… À l’Institut d’Études théâtrales de la Sorbonne, où je suis professeur, nous pouvons former, parmi bien d’autres professions du théâtre, des critiques. Mais tout semble se passer comme si la plupart des critiques en exercice avaient oublié ce qu’ils ont appris chez nous. Ou, tout simplement, oublié de venir chez nous !

La théorie critique est-elle morte ? Si elle ne l’est pas, devrait-elle mourir ?

Non, la théorie critique est nécessaire, mais elle ne doit pas chercher à intimider l’art. Je n’aime pas trop la théorie critique donneuse de leçons, comme chez Lukacs et, quelquefois, chez Adorno. La théorie critique a intérêt à se souvenir qu’elle est seconde par rapport à la création artistique. Elle peut même quelquefois — comme dans le cas de Walter Benjamin, de Roland Barthes — devenir art elle-même. Ou, en tout cas, pour reprendre une parole de Maurice Blanchot, être « en souci de l’art ».

Quel est votre meilleur souvenir du moment où vous avez gagné le prix de Thalie de l’AICT?

Le moment où j’ai remercié. Je savais que certains critiques, notamment américains, n’étaient pas absolument ravis de m’avoir comme lauréat. Or, je les ai remerciés avec autant de chaleur que ceux dont j’étais certain qu’ils avaient voté pour moi. Un moment d’unanimité, en quelque sorte.

À votre esprit, quel serait le plus grand des malheurs ?

De n’avoir pas d’esprit.

Dans quel pays aimeriez-vous vivre ?

Un pays en paix, mais pas pour autant aveugle à ces guerres qui s’étendent partout.

Quelle est votre couleur préférée ?

Le Rouge. Sans connotation ni politique ni tauromachique.

Quelle est votre fleur préférée ?

Le coquelicot. Parce qu’il est rouge. Et parce qu’il y a une chanson de Mouloudji, chère à mon cœur, qui parle de « petit coquelicot ».

Quel est votre animal préféré ?

La chèvre. Ma grand-mère lotoise en avait six, qui lui donnaient un excellent fromage de chèvre, le « cabécou », aujourd’hui renommé « Rocamadour » par l’esprit mercantile.

Quels sont vos auteurs préférés ?

Kafka, Hermann Melville, Thomas Hardy, Strindberg, Valle-Inclan, Simenon, Beckett, Russel Banks, Philip Roth, Jon Fosse.

Quels sont vos metteurs en scène préférés ?

Antoine Vitez, Otomar Krejca, Gruber, Jacques Lassalle, Mathias Langhoff, Ostermeier.

Quels sont vos poètes préférés ?

Jules Laforgue, Thomas Hardy, Paul Celan, Claude Bonnefoy.

Quel est votre héros de fiction préféré ?

Les Pieds nickelés, les trois à la fois.

Quelles sont vos héroïnes de fiction préférées ?

Tess d’Uberville.

Quels sont vos compositeurs préférés ?

Beethoven, Brahms, Malher, Ives, Bartok, Coltrane, Albert Ayler…

Quels sont vos peintres préférés ?

Goya, Fernand Léger, Fautrier, Hamershoi, Gauvin.

Qui sont vos héros dans la vie réelle ?

Mes parents, mais ils n’auraient pas aimé que je les traite de « héros ». Cela m’aurait trop éloigné d’eux.

Quelles sont vos héroïnes de l'histoire préférées ?

Rosa Luxemburg. La sœur de Shakespeare.

Quelle personne vivante admirez-vous le plus ?

Tout un peuple américain — ou du moins une bonne partie — qui vient de voter pour Obama.

Quelle personne vivante dédaignez-vous le plus ?

Le dédain n’est pas un sentiment que je cultive. Mais, quelquefois, la nuit, dans mes rêves, Obama est élu à l’unanimité président de la République Française. Quelle confusion !

Quel critique de théâtre dédaignez-vous le plus ?

Il y a en a un. Lui le sait. C’est bien suffisant. Et, puis je réitère : je ne pratique pas le dédain. Je le remercie donc comme les autres (voir question « Quel est votre meilleur souvenir du moment où vous avez gagné le prix de Thalie de l'AICT »)

Quel critique de théâtre admirez-vous le plus ?

Celui qui m’a formé : Bernard Dort. Jean-Pierre Léonardini est un critique de théâtre français dont j’apprécie le talent et l’honnêteté.

Quel événement dans l'histoire du théâtre admirez-vous le plus ?

L’entrée en scène, chaque soir. Voilà l’événement dont on ne se lasse pas, où qu’on soit, où qu’on joue.

Quelle réforme admirez-vous le plus ?

La suppression du Souffleur, qui était vraiment logé trop à l’étroit !

Quel don naturel aimeriez-vous le plus posséder ?

Le don des langues étrangères.

Comment aimeriez-vous mourir ?

Provisoirement.

Quel est votre état d'esprit actuel ?

Serein. Je suis en congé pour recherche de l’Université, c’est-à-dire que j’écris, ici, dans ma maison près de Rocamadour, pays du cabécou (voir question « Quel est votre animal préféré ? »).

Pour quels défauts avez-vous le plus d’indulgence ?

Comme tout le monde : les miens et ceux des gens que j’aime (je ne suis pas spécialement fier de cette réponse).

Quelle est votre plus grande crainte ?

Ne pas en venir à bout.

Quelle est votre plus grande extravagance ?

Remercier mes ennemis sans arrière-pensée (voir réponse aux questions « Quel est votre meilleur souvenir du moment où vous avez gagné le prix Thalie de l'AICT » et « Quel critique de théâtre dédaignez-vous le plus ? »)

Quelle est votre position sexuelle préférée ?

Comme dans l’écriture, rien d’acrobatique.

Quelle vertu croyez-vous être la plus surestimée ?

La vertu.

Quel talent aimeriez-vous le plus posséder ?

Danser. Chanter. Bref, être une sorte de Fred Astaire.

Quel est votre plus grand regret ?

Un petit être trop tôt disparu.

Si vous pourriez rappeler quelque chose que vous auriez dit ou écrit, qu’est-ce que ce serait ?)

Hier soir, j’ai dit à un de mes amis metteurs en scène, Jacques Lassalle, que j’aimais son travail. Hier, dans la nuit, alors que nous roulions entre la maison du Tarn des Lassalle et notre maison du Lot, j’ai dit à mon épouse, Christina Mirjol, que j’aimais tous ses livres. Hier, j’ai entendu mon ami Jean-Noël me dire sur mon répondeur qu’ils aimeraient, lui et sa famille, rentrés à Paris, être encore ici avec nous dans le Lot (je lui ai répondu silencieusement qu’ils étaient toujours les bienvenus). Hier j’ai eu mon fils Martin au téléphone, qui m’a parlé du dernier concert d’Ornette Coleman à la Villette à Paris et du prochain d’Archie Shepp. Je lui ai dit qu’il avait bien de la chance. Que j’aurais aimé que nous partagions ce bonheur avec lui.

Quel est le plus grand amour de votre vie ?

À votre avis ?

Que considérez-vous votre plus grand accomplissement ?

Poursuivre.

Quel est votre rêve de bonheur ?

Continuer.

Quelle est votre devise ?

« La (fin de) partie reprend » (merci Beckett).

Si vous ne pourriez voir qu’un seul spectacle, lequel choisiriez vous ?

Le Songe de Strindberg.

Quel est l'un des attributs les plus importants qu'il faut pour être un bon critique ?

Aimer… La critique, c’est l’art d’aimer. Quelquefois, hélas, le critique de théâtre aime mieux la critique que le théâtre. Un certain narcissisme du critique peut constituer un obstacle à un bon exercice de la critique.

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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 appears in numerous scholarly books, including the encyclopedia Cambridge Guide to the American Theater (Cambridge University Press); and The American Theatre Reader (Theatre Communications Group), edited by the staff of American Theatre magazine, for which he serves as the senior editor. He is the 2009 winner of the George Jean Nathan Award, the highest accolade for dramatic criticism in the United States.

Randy wishes to thank the playwright Chantal Bilodeau for her help with this interview.

[2] See the interview this important set-designer gave to Critical Stages in the section “Theatre Views” of this issue.

Discours de Sofia: Remise du Prix Thalie [1]

Jean-Pierre Sarrazac

Pour moi, tout a vraiment commencé au début des années soixante-dix avec Travail théâtral, revue fondée par Denis Bablet, Emile Copfermann, Françoise Kourilsky et par Bernard Dort – Bernard Dort, qui fut mon maître et à qui je veux aujourd’hui rendre hommage. Dans les tous premiers numéros, je me suis à vrai dire contenté d’apprendre le métier en rendant compte de quelques spectacles, notamment deux mises en scène de Homme pour Homme signées respectivement par Bernard Sobel et par Jacques Rosner et Andromaque de Racine montée par un Antoine Vitez non encore célèbre. C’est seulement à partir de 1974 que j’ai entrevu ce qui pourrait être mon apport spécifique à la revue – et ce qui allait, sans que je m’en doute à l’époque, engager tout le reste d’un parcours en équilibre instable entre théâtre et université, réflexion et pratique.

Je venais de mettre en scène L’Atelier volant, la première pièce de Valère Novarina – œuvre d’ailleurs publiée dans le numéro 5 de Tt – et je finissais d’écrire ma propre première pièce, Lazare lui aussi rêvait d’Eldorado. Faisant le constat du peu de place alors accordé aux écritures dramatiques contemporaines non seulement au sein de notre revue mais plus largement dans le théâtre français, je décidai d’essayer de remédier à cette carence, du moins à l’échelle de la revue. L’enquête était, dans ces années-là, un des maîtres-mots de ce qu’on appelait « pratique théorique ». Je menai donc une enquête auprès de quelques auteurs français dont j’estimais le travail et publiai, dans deux numéros double de la revue, des entretiens avec des dramaturges tels que Georges Michel, André Benedetto, Jean-Paul Wenzel, Michel Deutsch, Jacques Lassalle, Michel Vinaver, les uns en train d’émerger, d’autres – c’est le cas, à l’époque, de Vinaver – pour le moins isolés après une première reconnaissance dans les années cinquante ou soixante.

J’accompagnai ces entretiens d’une réflexion personnelle sur la question du « détour ». Des différents détours que prenaient les dramaturgies des années soixante-dix pour rendre compte au théâtre, sur un mode résolument non illusionniste, non imitatif, du monde dans lequel nous vivions. Une interrogation sur la crise de la mimèsis que je n’ai depuis jamais cessé de poursuivre : comment aborder sur la scène l’ « actualité vivante », l’ici et maintenant, comment faire un théâtre « en situation » sans céder au pseudo-réalisme, au réalisme illusionniste d’un « théâtre-réalité » (comme on parle d’une télé-réalité…). Détour par l’Histoire et/ou par le mythe à la façon de Gatti et de Benedetto, détour par le quotidien des dramaturgies des années soixante-dix tel que le pratiquèrent Kroetz en Allemagne et Michel Deutsch en France, recours à la parabole – à différents types de paraboles, la brechtienne, la claudélienne, la kafkaïenne –, drames itinérants de Ibsen à Koltès en passant par les expressionnistes et leur Stationendrama, jeux de rêve et théâtre onirique de Hauptmann et Strindberg à Adamov et Jon Fosse, dialogue des morts à la manière de Sartre ou à celle de Heiner Müller, etc. Je n’en finissais pas (je n’en finis toujours pas) de dresser l’inventaire – véritable alternative à la poétique des genres – des détours du théâtre moderne et contemporain et d’approfondir une problématique que résume bien cette formule du philosophe Ernst Bloch appliquée à un théâtre qui prétend rendre compte du monde dans lequel nous vivons : les « détours apparaissent comme les seuls raccourcis possibles ».

Mais j’évoquais mon effort au sein de Travail théâtral en faveur des dramaturgies contemporaines. Cet effort, je l’ai poursuivi jusqu’à la disparition de la revue en 1980 et je lui ai donné un prolongement universitaire, avec ma thèse soutenue en 1979, qui a donné lieu à un livre en 1981, L’Avenir du drame. Dans sa préface, Bernard Dort, écrit que j’ai, dans cet ouvrage, «  construit un objet singulier… une sorte de dramaturgie-fiction d’aujourd’hui ». Et il est vrai que j’ai toujours glissé une part de fictionnement dans mes essais, et une part de réflexion, voir d’  « essayisme » à la Musil – ou à la Kundera – dans mes fictions. L’Avenir du drame s’est voulu le relevé de ce qui était en train d’émerger dans le théâtre français de l’époque, un « journal de création à plusieurs voix, où tantôt j’écrirais moi-même sur les auteurs, tantôt je recueillerais leurs propres réflexions, laissant alors Benedetto interpeller Planchon, Vinaver interroger Gatti et le Théâtre de l’Aquarium, auteur collectif, questionner Deutsch ou Wenzel ». « Il s’agissait moins, précisais-je dans mon avant-propos, de tenir un discours unifiant sur les dramaturgies contemporaines que d’imaginer le dispositif polyphonique qui permette leur confrontation ». De cette double utopie critique consistant à rendre compte à la fois d’un art en train de se faire – à l’opposé de ce que Bergson appelle le « tout fait » – et à instaurer un véritable dialogisme entre les auteurs et leurs textes, je pense que tous mes travaux postérieurs portent la marque. En exergue de L’Avenir du drame, j’avais placé cet aphorisme de Mikhaïl Bakhtine selon lequel « Seul ce qui est soi-même en train de se constituer peut comprendre le phénomène du devenir ». Ma passion critique – si j’ose dire – tient dans ces trois mots : « comprendre le devenir ». Essayer – je suis avant tout un essayiste – de comprendre le devenir. A cette fin, je me suis vite rendu compte que je ne pouvais me contenter d’étudier le contemporain, qu’il me fallait relier ce qui, sous mes yeux, était « en train de se constituer » – avec la plus longue durée, avec le moderne. D’où ma plongée aux origines de notre modernité théâtrale : les grands dramaturges qui ont bouleversé la forme dramatique au tournant du XX° siècle, Ibsen, Strindberg, Maeterlinck, Tchekhov ; mais aussi – car il n’était pas question pour moi d’oublier le plateau de théâtre et le devenir-scénique des pièces –, les débuts de la mise en scène moderne, en particulier le Théâtre-Libre et Antoine, dont je me suis employé à montrer que l’œuvre allait bien au-delà de la légende de l’ancien employé du gaz un peu fruste (en vérité un grand artiste ; ses films témoignent pour lui).

A partir de Théâtres intimes, ouvrage publié dans la collection dirigée chez Actes Sud par Georges Banu, mes recherches et mes livres vont désormais remonter systématiquement sur cette crise de la forme dramatique dont Peter Szondi s’est fait, dans les années cinquante, le théoricien. Ouvrage fondamental, La Théorie du drame moderne a fait et fait encore l’objet, de ma part et de celle des membres du groupe de recherche que je dirige à l’université, d’une lecture approfondie. Ma dette est grande envers le théoricien allemand d’origine hongroise. Avant même de le lire, je partageais avec lui la conviction que le sens est dans la forme et que, s’il convient d’aborder les œuvres artistiques non point de façon atemporelle mais sous un angle socio-historique, il ne saurait être question de les considérer comme de simples documents et en fonction de leur seul contenu. Des analyses aussi rigoureuses que subtiles de Peter Szondi, je retiens principalement le fait qu’à partir des années 1880 – avec Ibsen, Strindberg, Tchekhov puis Pirandello – nous passons à une forme dramatique au second degré – métadrame, en quelque sorte – où les grandes catégories dramatiques d’action, de personnage, de dialogue se trouvent mises en cause et déconstruites : l’action cède le pas à la narration ; la relation interpersonnelle à la relation intrapersonnelle, intrasubjective, voire intrapsychique ; le dialogue au présent à un montage de monologues ou de soliloques en grande partie voués à la remémoration, à la reviviscence, au ressassement du passé.

Plutôt que d’étendre la notion szondienne de « crise du drame » à tout le XX° siècle – une crise sans fin est-elle encore une crise ? –, je décidai de faire jouer en miroir les dramaturgies de la fin du XX° siècle et du tournant du XXI° – de Beckett à Duras, Bernhard, Fosse…– avec celle de la fin du XIX° siècle et du tournant du XX°. Plus précisément, mon intention était d’essayer de repérer, sur la longue durée, et de définir ce nouveau paradigme du drame – d’un drame largement déconstruit – qui commence de s’imposer avec Ibsen et Strindberg et qui continue de se manifester dans les œuvres immédiatement contemporaines.

J’appelle drame-de-la-vie ce nouveau paradigme de la forme dramatique qui change radicalement la mesure du drame, c’est-à-dire à la fois son étendue et son rythme interne. D’Aristote à Hegel, la forme dramatique est pensée selon un triple principe d’ordre, d’unité et de complétude que résume bien l’idée de progression dramatique : un commencement, un milieu, une fin, le tout formant le continuum dramatique. A partir des années 1880, nous constatons une dilatation extrême de la forme dramatique, qui embrasse non plus une « journée fatale », selon la formule de Sophocle, mais tout le cours d’une vie – et qui l’embrasse sur le mode de la rétrospection plus que sur celui de la progression. Par ailleurs, le continuum devient discontinuum : à la concaténation des actions succède l’espacement des tableaux (comme, par exemple, chez le Strindberg d’après Inferno ou chez Tchekhov) ; l’œuvre se fragmente et le statique empiète sur le dynamique. Un certain désordre, une certaine démesure s’emparent de l’architecture du texte et, partant, de celle de la représentation. Comme un appel à plus de liberté ou d’irrégularité. Cette irrégularité si douloureuse à l’esprit français. Et cependant si nécessaire, si nous voulons échapper aux belles symétries et aux formalismes qui ne cessent de nous menacer.

Ce phénomène caractéristique du nouveau paradigme drame-de-la-vie, je l’ai qualifié dès L’Avenir du drame de pulsion rhapsodique. La rhapsodie se définit elle-même comme la forme la plus libre, ce qui ne signifie pas l’absence de forme. Nous constatons depuis plus d’un siècle la fin de la dialectique hégélienne du dramatique comme synthèse du lyrique et de l’épique. Dans les pièces nouvelles, les parties épiques, lyriques, dramatiques, voire argumentatives (quand le dialogue dramatique se fait philosophique) s’autonomisent, se jouxtent et se mettent en tension. Et l’hybridation ne se limite pas à ces grands modes d’expression, elle est aussi transgénérique, le farcesque basculant soudain dans le tragique, ou l’inverse (je pense notamment au théâtre de Werner Schwab). L’esprit rhapsodique coud ensemble – rhaptein, en grec ancien, signifie coudre –, avec des coutures bien visibles, ces éléments a priori disparates. Et le dialogue dramatique porte lui-même les stigmates de ce dépiècement, la voix du rhapsode (du narrateur) s’immisçant parmi celles des personnages…

Les exemples abondent de la mise en œuvre de la pulsion rhapsodique dans le répertoire moderne et contemporain. J’aurais pu m’arrêter entre cent sur le cas de Heiner Müller. Je citerai celui de Tony Kushner. Gérard Wacjman, qui a signé le texte français de l’œuvre, pointe nettement le caractère de drame-de-la-vie et de rhapsodie du très beau Angels in America : « Il y a tout et n’importe quoi dans Angels in America. De Shakespeare aux Marx Brothers, de Brecht à All that Jazz, des Mormons aux mords-moi-le-nœud, du Ciel à la merde, du tragique au carnavalesque, de la comédie à l’épopée… Comme si Tony Kushner avait abattu les cloisons du théâtre. Un théâtre melting pot ? ». « Angels, conclut-il, est à l’image de la vie. Du désordre de la vie. De nos propres vies».

Aujourd’hui la pulsion rhapsodique, qui procède par incessants débordements, s’exerce bien au-delà même du texte dramatique. Nous assistons à d’autres croisements, d’autres hybridations du théâtre avec la danse, avec la vidéo – ou encore du texte dramatique écrit et de la performance… Ce n’est pas la première fois que nous voyons s’effectuer de tels métissages où le théâtre – et la forme dramatique – se ressourcent et se revivifient à l’extérieur d’eux-mêmes. On pourra citer les expériences de théâtre épique de Piscator, menée avec des romanciers tel que Alfred Döblin, qui ont intégré la technologie moderne et le cinéma à l’univers théâtral, mais aussi, plus près de nous, ce « théâtre-récit » initié à la fin des années soixante-dix et dans les années quatre-vingt par Antoine Vitez. Assez récemment, Hans Thies Lehmann a consacré un livre talentueux à la notion de postdramatique. Lorsqu’il analyse certains spectacles – que je taxerais pour ma part de paradramatiques – de Robert Wilson ou de Jan Lauwers, Lehmann est très convaincant. Emporte moins mon adhésion, en revanche, l’annexion d’auteurs comme Duras, Koltès, Handke au postdramatique ainsi que le discours sous-jacent selon lequel – toujours le « dépassement », toujours la litanie des « post» et des « néo-»! » – le dramatique serait désormais obsolète, sans plus de pertinence et de prise sur le monde dans lequel nous vivons. Ce que je récuse, c’est la conception de Lehmann, déjà largement illustrée par Adorno, selon laquelle le drame serait mort, Beckett en ayant pratiqué l’autopsie dans Fin de partie. Ce qui est obsolète, c’est la pensée hégélienne du dramatique. C’est l’ancien paradigme du drame. Ce qui est (encore) vivant devant nous, c’est le nouveau paradigme du drame, ce drame-de-la-vie qui est encore du drama. Encore de l’action. Même si cette action est très souvent fragmentée, sporadique, minimale. Ce type d’action moderne dont Nietzsche a eu, dans un fragment posthume de Naissance de la tragédie, la parfaite intuition : « Conception du ‘‘drame’’ en tant qu’‘‘action’’. Cette conception est dans sa racine très naïve : le monde et l’habitude de l’œil décident ici. Mais qu’est-ce qui finalement – si l’on y réfléchit de façon plus spirituelle – n’est pas action ? Le sentiment qui se déclare, la compréhension de soi – ne sont-ils pas des actions ? Faut-il toujours être supplicié et mis à mort ? ».

Avec les années 1880 – Ibsen, Strindberg, plus encore Tchekhov ou Pirandello – nous sommes entrés dans l’ère – qui se poursuit aujourd’hui, sous notre regard de spectateurs – Beckett, Duras, Bernhard, Vinaver, Fosse, Lagarce… – de l’infradramatique.

*

Lorsque j’ai abordé la question de l’intime au théâtre, je l’ai fait à la fois comme essayiste et comme auteur dramatique. J’évoquais au début de ce discours, la part d’utopie qui sous-tend toute ma pratique, qu’elle soit pratique de la réflexion ou de la création. Il existe dans ma démarche un autre élément utopique dont je ne vous ai pas encore fait confidence, mais dont j’ai fait état autrefois dans un entretien avec Jean-Pierre Han. Mettre en tension Strindberg et Brecht (ici, un salut chaleureux à Eric Bentley, le précédent – et premier – lauréat du Prix Thalie). Je veux dire l’intime et le politique. L’intime, qui n’est pas l’intimisme, qui n’est pas le privé ; qui est la relation la plus serrée, la plus forte avec l’Autre, avec ce qui nous est étranger. Et donc avec le politique... Inscrire au théâtre la subjectivité dans le mouvement d’une société. Rendre compte à la fois des gestus brechtiens, c’est-à-dire des comportements socialisés des personnages, et des raptus, des actes manqués – ô combien significatifs – d’êtres en proie aux tourments de leur vie psychique. C’est le cheminement de nombreux auteurs que j’ai pu étudier, notamment Arthur Adamov ou Franz Xaver Kroetz. Mais c’est aussi, au fil de la vingtaine de pièces que j’ai pu écrire à ce jour, ma propre tentative d’écrivain de théâtre.

Héraclite note que ceux qui veillent ont en commun un monde unique, tandis que chaque dormeur se porte vers le monde qui lui est propre. Je fais théâtre de cette aventure nocturne, mais en m’efforçant de ramener un peu des clartés du jour dans la nécessaire obscurité de la nuit. Dramaturge de la parabole et/ ou du jeu de rêve, en tout cas du détour, le monde diurne – celui de l’exploitation de l’homme par l’homme, du racisme et de l’antisémitisme, celui où les vieillards crèvent de leur isolement et où chacun se noie dans la solitude et l’indifférence commune, ce monde-là ne laisse pas de me hanter… De me hanter, justement, et de prendre sous ma plume des allures fantomatique. Lorsque j’écris et fais jouer, il y a une vingtaine d’années, une pièce, La Passion du jardinier, sur un fait divers, l’assassinat d’une vieille dame d’origine juive par un jeune jardinier antisémite, je la traite comme un dialogue des morts en quatre saisons : la vieille dame déjà morte, revenant, fringante, pour obliger son meurtrier, le jardinier devenu dans sa prison une sorte de mort-vivant, à rendre compte de son acte devant les spectateurs. S’il m’arrive, de mettre en scène, dans Les Inséparables, deux vieillards en attente improbable du retour du Fils prodigue et, plus certaine, de la mort, leur relation est essentiellement onirique, au point qu’on ne tarde pas à se demander s’ils sont véritablement deux ou un seul dédoublé. Je suis la courbe des contes et des vieilles paraboles pour mieux épouser les possibles archétypaux de l’existence.

Le principe qui guide mon écriture est un principe d’incertitude. Toujours un peut-être vient s’insinuer parmi les faits, les personnages, les choses tangibles qui peuplent mes pièces. Mon travail d’écriture n’est qu’une longue et très incertaine tentative de retour vers le réel. Je pense d’ailleurs que ce motif du retour est profondément inscrit, et à plus d’un titre, dans la trame des écritures contemporaines (du Retour de Pinter, pièce qui, en son temps, m’a marqué, au Pays lointain de Jean-Luc Lagarce). Car plus encore qu’un thème, le retour est un schème, la forme même du drame de la vie dans sa version rétrospective : retour, depuis le seuil de la mort, sur le parcours d’une existence, retour sur une catastrophe déjà accomplie. Si j’y songe, mes deux dernières pièces encore inédites, Ajax/retour(s) et La Boule d’or ont été écrites sous le signe du retour ! Ajax/retour(s) jusque dans son titre… Dans cette pièce, je retrace les tentatives de réintégrer sa propre maison, d’être reconnu par sa femme, de retrouver son fils d’un petit « héros » local (cela pourrait se passer en ex-Yougoslavie, au Rwanda, au Moyen Orient), d’une sorte de champion de village qui s’est égaré dans les guerres ethniques, les viols et les massacres. Mais Ajax n’est pas Ulysse. Il ne s’agit donc pas de dérouler l’histoire finalement heureuse d’un retour, mais de mettre en scène l’aporie tragique de l’impossible retour. De l’impossible reconnaissance du petit Ajax par la Jeune femme, cette anti-Pénélope, qui ne lui ouvre les portes de sa maison que pour le confronter au paysage d’une dévastation sans retour. La Boule d’or, c’est le nom d’un café parisien depuis vingt ans disparu où se réunissaient autour de 1968 quelques poignées d’apprentis « révolutionnaires » . Dans la pièce, qui se déroule à la fin des années quatre-vingt dix, une de ces communautés dispersées ne se reforme un instant, grâce à l’Internet et à d’autres moyens plus ou moins télépathiques, que pour faire l’inventaire de ce qui s’est perdu, est toujours en train de se perdre, mais pourrait peut-être encore être ressaisi…

Les personnages de mes pièces sont à vrai dire très peu « agissants ». Plutôt témoins d’eux-mêmes, de leurs propres vies. Et je pense qu’il en va de même pour une grande partie des écritures dramatiques modernes et contemporaines, celles du moins qui correspondent au nouveau paradigme de la forme dramatique, que j’appelle drame-de-la-vie. Personnages passifs, réflexifs plus qu’actifs. Dans cette figure du personnage-témoin se rejoignent curieusement les poétiques a priori diamétralement opposées d’Artaud et de Brecht. « Je suis témoin, le seul témoin de moi-même », lit-on dans le Pèse-nerfs. Et c’est dans L’Achat du cuivre que Brecht érige le témoignage sur une « scène de la rue » (un banal accident de la circulation) comme « modèle-type » du théâtre épique. Nous avons là les deux versants, le subjectif et l’objectif, des dramaturgies modernes et contemporaines. Sur le versant objectif, le drame comme Procès, dans la grande voie ouverte par Eschyle et par Les Euménides. Sur l’autre versant, le subjectif – et si l’on se souvient que témoin et martyr ont la même étymologie et que le martyr est un témoin – , le drame comme Passion, c’est-à-dire itinéraire de souffrance – « la Passion de l’homme », selon Mallarmé. Les deux aspects, l’artaudien et le brechtien, le subjectif et l’objectif, Procès et Passion, ne cessent évidemment pas de se combiner dans les pièces que nous lisons comme dans celles que nous écrivons.

Ce dont il s’agit principalement de témoigner, c’est du non-humain, voire de l’inhumain, de l’humain. La dimension de témoignage de l’écriture dramatique procède du charnier de la guerre de 1914-1918 et du silence assourdissant qui a suivi. D’ Auschwitz et de Hiroshima et de la sidération qui a suivi. Mais comment le théâtre pourrait-il témoigner à la hauteur de la Catastrophe dont notre « bref XX° siècle » a fait le lit ?… Adorno, qui ne voit d’autre réplique théâtrale possible au génocide que l’extinction du drame, et bien d’autres penseurs après lui ont proclamé leur scepticisme. L’histoire nous dira si l’écriture dramatique peut relever ce défi. Dans le cortège de violences et d’actes de barbarie qui défile aujourd’hui sur nos scènes, on trouvera peut-être néanmoins quelques premiers éléments de réponse. S’il existe une violence nocive, violence purement imitative, qui n’a d’autre but que de procurer des sensations, des émotions et, en définitive, des traumatismes au spectateur ; il en est une autre – je pense notamment à certaines pièces de Kroetz, de Bond ou de Sarah Kane – qui se veut réflexive, qui prend de la distance et qui fait l’objet d’une médiation, celle-là même du témoignage : toujours « la Passion de l’Homme ». J’ai cité tout à l’heure cette belle pièce, Angels in America, où un ange de l’Apocalypse plane au-dessus du continent américain, nouvelle Thèbes contaminée par la peste du Sida, et vient se poser là où ce monde est le plus corrompu et le plus en souffrance. J’ajouterai simplement qu’Angels in America, avec son étrange douceur, n’est pas une simple pièce de plus ou de moins sur les ravages du sida. Si le rétrovirus y est présent, c’est aussi pour la rétrospection, pour le rappel de toutes ces catastrophes et ces violences inexpiables qui ont marqué le terrible XX° siècle. Car que cherchons nous, auteurs de théâtre, sinon à répondre à la destruction de l’humanité par cette plongée horrifique – ce témoignage – dans le non-humain de l’humain ?

*

A soixante-deux ans, je me dis que mon parcours n’est sans doute pas fini, qu’il me reste encore quelques pièces et quelque essais critiques à écrire. Je ne recevrai donc pas cette distinction prestigieuse, le Prix Thalie, comme une consécration, mais bien comme un encouragement, un très, très puissant encouragement. Pour cette marque de confiance et pour l’honneur que vous me faites, je vous remercie de tout cœur. Je vais rentrer à Paris, retrouver mes collègues et mes étudiants – en particulier ceux qui constituent le Groupe de recherche que je dirige à la Sorbonne – en savourant cet honneur auquel je tiens à les associer.

Cependant, l’admirateur de Strindberg que je suis ne parviendra certainement pas à surmonter tous ses doutes et toutes ses fragilités – il essaiera simplement de les rendre plus productifs. Dans le second volet du Chemin de Damas, une des œuvres d’August Strindberg auxquelles je suis le plus attaché, le protagoniste, nommé L’inconnu, pense avoir réussi, dans ses travaux d’alchimie, – ou d’hyperchimie – à fabriquer de l’or et se voit offrir, dans une auberge, un banquet où il doit recevoir les honneurs d’une société savante. Mais les choses ne tardent pas à se gâter. Les valets retirent les plats appétissants qu’ils avaient un peu plus tôt amenés ainsi que la vaisselle en or et les nappes brodées. Bientôt les applaudissements cèdent la place aux sifflets. Et L’Inconnu, qui n’a pas de quoi payer le repas, se retrouve en prison…

Je vais garder un œil sur la vaisselle – je veux dire sur ce magnifique objet, cette canne à l’effigie de Thalie…

Je vous remercie de votre attention.

---

[1] Lit au 17 avril 2009, et adressé au Ministre de la Culture de la Bulgarie, au Président de l’Association internationale des critiques de théâtre, aux membres du jury du Prix Thalie, aux membres de l’AICT et à Jean-Pierre Han.

Lady Anne’s Blog: Some Initial Thoughts on the Evolution of Theatrical Commentary in South Africa [1]

Temple Hauptfleisch[2]

[the Theatre] ... was opened for the first time a few days ago – a very pretty one indeed. We felt ourselves obliged to go and to pay a sum for our box, else we should have been call’d stingy and ill-humoured. The scenes were well done, some of them by young Cockburn…. It opened with an address to Apollo, spoken by Dr Somers, and wrote by Mrs Somers. It was too fine for anyone to understand it, and seem’d rather an index to pretty learning than to any conversation which Apollo could have liked to listen to – however the scene was good and all was new. The piece was a dull one, the first part of Henry the 4^th. The Doctor thought he shone in Falstaff, we did not agree with him. (Lady Anne Barnard, Cape Town, 1801)

In her diary entry, considered by many to be the first formal and extant “review” in South African theatre, the influential socialite and hostess of Cape Town society described her (reluctant) attendance of the opening performance in the newly built African Theatre at the start of the nineteenth century. Today she might have used an internet blog and written something much less circumspect.

So much of what one talks about in the field of the humanities, and specifically so in arts criticism, is highly dependent on its use in a particular context and epoch. For example, the very notions of drama and theatre―even ideas about performance (and indeed criticism and scholarship), are at best slippery in post-Apartheid South Africa and the surrounding regions.

Over the course of the first 300 years after the arrival of the first Europeans on these shores in the seventeenth century, the political history of the region basically brought over, imposed and entrenched a particular way of looking at and thinking about the new continent. An effect was to overshadow local traditions and cultural practices and devalue them. It was only during the twentieth century, and more particularly its second half, that cultural expressions and practices of the indigenous peoples, and the values underlying them, were slowly recognized. Then writings about them became more than marginal commentaries on what appeared to be radical, oppositional, esoteric, or possibly even eccentric. Today of course indigenous forms have become a much more serious field area of study and contemplation and, for most of us today, experimentation and exploration with the forgotten forms and traditions have become major driving forces in the arts. Yet, the process of reinterpreting the original histories has only begun and obviously still has far to go, as formerly hidden aspects of the history are unearthed, re-evaluated and integrated into the new thinking. This change has naturally been heavily influenced by the arrival of a spate of new paradigms for thinking about African and South African history in itself, especially during the transitional period (1987-1994).[3]

A necessary, wider and more flexible concept of theatre would include the products of and oral/kinetic, or “performance” culture, as David Coplan (1985) so aptly termed it. Today we tend to accept that theatre history, and particularly in the non-Western contexts, needs to be a study of the history of performance, rather than a literary study of (printed) texts―and this is particularly true of contemporary theatre in Southern Africa. However, colonial thinking had long favoured a focus on the text and thus tended to exclude a wide, comprehensive world of theatre, performance and what Wilmar Sauter (2007) has termed “theatrical playing,” in the region.

Like so much of the early history of mankind, the history of this period in Southern Africa is still extremely tentative, and based on much theorizing and speculation. This also applies to ideas about the social life of indigenous communities and the function of art within them, which no doubt were as varied as the social, economic and political conditions. There are certain indications however of a widely spread material culture in the region, notably represented by San rock-art, and the pottery, beadwork and other artifacts of the Nguni, Sotho and other peoples. The salient point is that creative tendencies seem to have been integrated into communal life, and not separate entities with an own discrete existence outside of their communal function. Also, following the argument of Mudimbe (1988), one has to bear in mind that none of this history is static; it is as changing, as evolutionary, as open to the impact of social, cultural, economic and political pressures as any period to follow, as any period about which we have more information. So, though one may speak of general tendencies, there must have been vast and constantly shifting differences between forms, themes, occasions and the like.

While there are many who may believe that indigenous practices changed as a result of white arrival, and that the reverse traffic is more recent―post 1994 in the eyes of some―I have come to believe this is a slightly parochial point of view―blinkered precisely by the kind of thinking discussed here. In the 1960s Guy Butler had already remarked that “The English are being Afrikanerized, the Afrikaners Anglicized, Africans Westernized and the whole lot Africanized.”[4]

Actually the evolution of the Afrikaans language and Cape cuisine alone are testimony of a far more pervasive and interactive hybridization taking place, from the very first contacts between Africans and Europeans. And I certainly believe it happened in performance as well. It was simply not noticed, that is all.

But the more important factor, from a Western point of view, is that we are dealing with a set of oral cultures, where no orthography or any tradition of written history existed. We know less about the performance art in this period than about any other form, quite simply because of the ephemeral nature of the theatre as form and because no demonstrable examples have survived unmediated. Nor are there documented (written) critical responses available. Nevertheless, the few fragment we do have, plus the later records provided by incidental travelers and scribes from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries, do allow certain deductions concerning the kind of performance activities which existed in these societies―if not their origins, their functions and/or their meaning within specific historic societies.

The oldest known performances in the region are the shamanistic dances among the San, recorded in certain San rock art paintings – some of them up to 25 000 years old, some dating back to the nineteenth century. Remnants of these dances still occur today in the Kalahari among the descendants of the San. In a similar vein the arrival of that later crystallized out as the Zulu, Xhosa, Sotho and other peoples brought a rich heritage of social, religious and military performance and ritual to the region. These performance events, including wedding ceremonies, initiation ceremonies, harvest festivals and the like, informed the daily lives of these peoples and seem to have been communal actions of a purposeful nature and participative in format, very formally structured and containing a strong mimetic content. Remarkable to us today is the sheer scale on which some of these events took place, involving large groups of dancers and thousands of spectators, and stretching over a period of days.[5]

While there is strong evidence that the performances themselves, being of a purposeful nature and participative in format, often offering social, cultural, ethical and political comment, there is little evidence that there was ever a structured system of critical commentary on performances. The participative work of course was not “seen” by outsiders, hence not “criticised” and thus not recorded in any way. Also, while one has little doubt that performers and performers needed and received comment, even where there was an audience present, the feedback would have been informal, oral or gestural, one-on-one perhaps – and certainly not recorded for posterity.

From the foregoing it is clear that it really only becomes possible to discuss critical commentary in the region when we reach the time of European settlement and the known history of written criticism, about which there have been substantially more records.

While the odd descriptions appeared earlier, the formal arrival of the critical comment came in the 1800s, when first newspapers began to appear in Grahamstown and Cape Town, and the first formal theatre was being built. Early newspapers include Fairbairn and Pringle’s South African Journal (1824), New Organ (1826) and South African Commercial Advertiser, and they certainly contained commentary on the arts. However, as mentioned above, the popular version is that the first critic was Anne Barnard, wife of the colonial secretary at the Cape of Good Hope, who, interestingly enough, commented in her diaries on the performances of the soldier-amateurs of the Garrison, but also on the Dutch amateurs of the town. And it was thus natural that she would be one of the first to comment on theatre in Cape Town’s new theatre.

However, the first well-known critic in the formal sense was a British immigrant, William Layton Sammons, (1801-1882) an author, journalist, columnist and editor best known by his nom-de-plume Sam Sly. His weekly review - Sam Sly's African Journal – was founded to promote culture and entertainment in general in the Cape. Gradually, as the various mining towns (Kimberley and Johannesburg in particular) and ports (Port Elizabeth and Durban) developed, this form of journalism and accompanying critical practice spread to all the major metropolitan centres. Some examples of early reviews tended to be little more than notices and announcements (i.e. advertising and reports), or commentary on social events (gossip or “news”, including comment on audiences), but by the 1860s more substantive reviews (comments about technical and theatrical matters, such as texts, performers and productions themselves) began to appear and gradually became more frequent, more incisive and more influential. These reviews also often contained some kind of evaluation of the experience. This was not yet what we would consider formal criticism today (i.e. in depth discussion of the merits of play, performance and so on, with reference to a wider cultural, political and social sphere), but the theatre reviewer had arrived and people like Peter Plymmer, Frederick York St Leger and later Vere Sent were feared for their attacks on poor acting and production values and their opinions were respected.

As can be gathered, the basic format and philosophy behind the writing was borrowed directly from British practice and the colonial versions thereof and was to last well into the first half of the 20^th century.

The evolution from report to review accompanied the enormous increase in theatrical activity as well, as more and more companies and artistes – traveling through the various British colonies - visited the country, many settling down here. Among them strong personalities from England and Australia, such as Sefton Parry (1857 – 1862), Disney Roebuck (1873 – 1885), the Wheeler brothers (Ben and Frank, 1886 – 1910), Luscombe Searelle (1887 – 1896), the Holloway Company (1886 - 1899), and particularly Leonard Rayne (1905 – 1925).

By 1920s these twin forces meant that there were increasing numbers of critics of substance, for by now a fully fledged professional theatre system had evolved in English dominated by actor/directors as Rayne and actor/writer Stephen Black, while the newspaper business also flourished. The influences in this case were interesting―they were largely based on the British model brought to the country through the British education system, as we have seen, as well as the many British journalists who over the years settled in South Africa, to work with SA papers―including Thomas William Mackenzie (The Friend in Bloemfontein), Hedley A Chilvers, Joseph Langley Levy (Sunday Times, Johannesburg, 1910 - 1940).

In the 19th century however, another tradition had also been surfacing among the descendants of the 17th and 18th century Dutch settlers. Regular debating and cultural clubs (“Rederykerskamers”), the basis of a performance tradition, were slowly evolving in the Dutch/Afrikaans tradition. In contrast to the primarily entertainment objectives of the English language theatre and media, growing Afrikaans cultural nationalist was establishing a literary and cultural context for the new, emerging language of Afrikaans. This meant more rigorous demands of cultural purpose being placed on arts and literature. Thus, part of the conscious drive to promote the cause of Afrikaans and Afrikaner nationalism―utilising the educational system and the emergence of a powerful press and publishing industry―was also a desire to establish an own indigenous cultural, literary and theatrical tradition, one devoted to the nationalist cause.

As far as theatre is concerned, the last aim initially came into being via the wide-spread amateur movement, a direct descendent of the earlier Dutch organizations, with more and more farces and melodramas being written for performance by schools and societies. But there was also a more serious side to the movement, which slowly evolved in educational centres such as Stellenbosch, Bloemfontein and Pretoria, spearheaded – not always effectively – by the literary heavyweights of the language struggle, such as novelist D.F. Malherbe and poet Eugene Marais.

However a even more significant thrust towards a fully fledged Afrikaans theatre came with the arrival in South Africa of a number of Dutch and Flemish performers, in particular a superb Dutch actor-manager named Paul de Groot, who brought professionalism and in-service training in Afrikaans to a host of versatile and creative performers. In 1925, the year Afrikaans was formally declared an official language of the country, De Groot himself went on to found the first professional Afrikaans theatre company, with two energetic amateurs, Hendrik and Mathilde Hanekom, following suit and taking to the road with a number of farces they wrote themselves. This coincided with the emergence of a second generation of playwrights, much more serious individuals who sought to emulate the European theatre and actually set the tone and style of Afrikaans theatre for the next three decades or more.

In this context we meet up with the first Afrikaans critics of note and become particularly aware of two dominant strains in theatre reviewing and criticism that would dominate a large part of the mid-century: the pragmatic, journalistic writing in English newspapers on the one hand, and the international, often more erudite writing by better educated cultural figures in Afrikaans newspapers. Unlike their English-speaking counterparts, who did not come from an intellectual tradition (few had tertiary education till the 1970s), a number of the Dutch (and later Afrikaans) critics were university trained individuals who had gone to Holland and Germany for their post-graduate work, usually in philology, philosophy or literature. As a result they tended to be influenced by a more Germanic and Dutch tradition, as well as an European view of theatre and the arts, and adopted a far more intellectual approach to their craft. More importantly, in contrast to the primarily entertainment focus of the English-language theatre, the second group of performers were part of the growing Afrikaans cultural nationalism. This became particularly noticeable in the reviews of the first half of the twentieth century, when the Afrikaans community was trying to establish a formal literature and artistic identity, as noted above.

A good case in point was one of the most prominent of later critics and arts editors, W.E.G. Louw, who claimed to have seen over 1 000 European performances during his frequent visits to the continent, and he would draw on those experiences when writing about South African plays. Similarly erudite critics of the time included Frederik Rompel, F.E.J Malherbe, G. Cronje, Ignatius Mocke, H.A. Mulder, E.C. Pienaar and A.M. van Schoor. They became the harbingers of the new language, its literature, and its associated performances―thus helping to shape and promote Afrikaans as a fully fledged cultural tool.

And this tradition would remain for a very long time, for once the drama departments were established in the 1960s, and the formal training in what came to be known as theatre studies began, a number of similarly trained people would become the leading figures, entrenching this tradition till late in the 1970s. It is from these academic sources that, increasingly, the more prominent English-speaking critics would also come. Thus it appears that the Afrikaans approach even to the evolving field of theatre studies included a strong interest in the role of text focused critic, researcher and historian at the start – perhaps because the departments were largely founded and/or partially led by academics or journalists rather than practitioners, and these were people who came from the Dutch/Belgian/German world of formal drama study. The most influential of these were Geoff Cronje, F.C. L Bosman at University of Pretoria (with leading actress and director Anna Neethling-Pohl as the practical voice), playwright Gerhard Beukes and critic Louw Odendaal at University of the Orange Free State (Bloemfontein) and Fred Le Roux following the Belgian actor-director Fred Engelen as head at University of Stellenbosch.

However the 1930’s also saw the first stirrings of another cultural awakening, a formal theatre interest among the various urban blacks―under the influence of missionary schools and the university of Fort Hare―and the significant appearance of writer, practitioner and teacher H.I. E Dhlomo. Others writing at the time include W. Mbali and Walter Nhlapo (who both worked for Bantu World 1930s-1940s). However, the Eurocentric training supplied by the missionary schools and the University College at Fort Hare or the University of South Africa remained largely text bound, as indeed it did at most other (“white”) institutions till the mid 1970s. And more alarmingly, for much of the century “criticism” remained tied to the study of the nine indigenous African (Bantu) languages, and therefore was immensely literary in approach (analysis of plot, characters and so on, and moral issues in the plays)―again premised on the British or European model. Unfortunately the legacy of this approach is still immensely powerful when one looks at theses and critical writings on African theatre texts―not only in South Africa, but across the continent of Africa.

By 1950s this mix of influences was well entrenched, but was still largely European in style, although now increasingly affected by the exciting “new journalism” from the USA and the winds of political and cultural change sweeping though Africa. It is from a mix of these factors that some of the more powerful critics, writing for the daily and weekly newspapers, now emerged. These writers not only had substantial space and influence, but increasingly had academic training and something to write about in the flourishing professional and state-funded theatre of the country. They wrote in either English or Afrikaans, (or in some cases, both languages) and at times with great authority and impact. Names such as Oliver Walker, Phyllis Konya, W.E.G. Louw, Merwe Scholtz, Lewis Sowden, Percy Baneshik and Terry Herbst soon became familiar and considered formidable in arts circles. By the sixties a number of younger, even more politicised, critics would join them – including André P. Brink, Wilhelm Grütter, Philippa Breytenbach, Owen Williams, Johan van Rooyen, Michael Callenborne, Fiona Chisolm, Raeford Daniel, Michael Venables, William Pretorius, Derek Wilson, Cas van Rensburg and Rykie van Reenen.

By and large these were professional critics, who not only responded to the arts, but in many ways shaped and influenced their direction. However, again there is possibly a rather important distinction to be made: In the golden years of the printed media critics in England, the USA and Europe tended to be seen as “professional” in that writing criticism was their full-time occupation: few of them were actually fulltime newspaper employees. In South Africa we only had a few such examples, some Afrikaans artists/critics (such as WEG Louw and André P. Brink) perhaps falling into this category of professionals. Most of the other critics however, were fulltime professional journalists, entertainment reporters and interviewers, covering the generality of the arts and entertainment, as well as writing reviews. They multi-tasked, with reviewing being only one of their tasks. Their “professionalism” thus lay not so much in the nature of their employment, but in the rigour they brought to their reviewing practice.

It was in this time that a new brand of black journalism began to make its appearance. Often termed the Drum-magazine generation (after the most famous of the new magazines to appear), these young writers and activists found a vibrant and dangerous world to report on in the so-called “freehold” areas of Sophiatown and District Six, places where all races could still mix and black citizens could own urban property, and in the multitude of performances, poetry readings and theatrical events occurring there. Writers such as Ezekiel Mphahlele, Lewis Nkosi, Nathaniel (Nat) Nasaka, William (Bloke) Modisane, Arthur Maimane, Bob Leshoai, Elliot Makhaya, Joseph Latakgomo, Aggrey Klaaste, T. Leshoai, Victor Metsoamere, Sipho Sepamla began with journals like Drum and later S’ketsh, and then moved on. Some into exile, some on to the daily and weekly papers, like the Ilanga Lase Natal, Post, Sunday Post, World, Weekend World and The Sowetan - even the Rand Daily Mail, the Weekly Mail - writing about township culture and the cultural struggle. Some went on to become significant literary and academic figures, others faded away or moved elsewhere. But their influence on the shape of the arts in the long run was enormous. What was intriguing has been their attempts to create an own style, strongly based on American new journalistic principles, but also a little more aware of the African performance traditions that gradually invaded and have come to dominate theatre performances, particularly musical and dance works.

With them, far more that with the formal (white) critics of the commercial newspapers and media, art truly became a weapon in the ongoing struggle for freedom and recognition. At the same time many artists were beginning to reject the aesthetic considerations of Western theatre, in favour of a much more crude and visceral form of confrontational theatre of immediate response.

Somehow, out of this mix of cultural traditions would come what some may call the “pre-post-colonial” theatre critic―someone initially schooled by the writers of the heyday of big professional theatre companies (1960-1980), but also immersed in the day-to-day rough-and tumble of the Apartheid/anti-Apartheid real-politik. Such critics were well equipped and able to respond to the major wave of experimentation and energy that washed over the country in the 1970s and early 1980s. The fact is that the appearance of the so-called “alternative” (political) theatre spaces and processes (the Space Theatre, the Market Theatre), and the concomitant emergence of a substantive body of work by black playwrights, directors and performers,―as well as the many workshopped plays making their way into the theatres―left many of the older critics dumbfounded and floundering. With the immense range of styles, traditions and forms on offer―drawing on many traditions, including 1960s experimental workshop processes and a variety of African performance forms―they at times found that their “traditional” training was totally inappropriate for dealing with works such as We Shall Sing for the Fatherland, The Island, Woza Albert, The Hungry Earth, Sophiatown, etc. Indeed there was a built-in antipathy to the new work among many established critics. For example, Robert Greig recalls it being referred to as “junior theatre” by a prominent editor (an adjective that was apparently even applied to the first work done by Athol Fugard) and few dared to travel into Soweto and other areas to review the work.[6]

What made the situation worse in many ways for the traditionally trained critic was the surprising impact the cultural boycott (instituted in 1966) would have on the way the arts would develop in the country. For one of the most positive effects of the boycott was that it (inadvertently) enforced a focus on local writing and the production of local plays―thus ironically liberating many of the new (English) writers and performers from the competition with renowned international writers and the pressure to conform to dramatic models evolved in Europe and America. This in turn saw an increasing number of university-trained actors, directors and theatre writers emerging from the “liberal” anti-Apartheid atmosphere of the 1970s, with a growing sense of that the state arts councils were tainted. This then led to the establishment of the many alternative theatres where - because of Fugard, Simon and Mshengu’s work in the 70s - the notion of the workshop theatre and experimental plays became central to, even emblematic of, so-called “struggle theatre”. And, as we now know, from these theatres would gradually emerge a number of totally new, specifically South African theatrical forms and conventions, forms that―as I have mentioned―would challenge and stretch the new critics in a multitude of ways over the next few decades.

By the 1980s the competent critic found that he/she was again being challenged by a new phenomenon: the arts festival. The arrival of the Grahamstown Festival (National Arts Festival) in 1976, Kampustoneel (Campus Theatre) in 1981 and a rash of later festivals from 1990 onwards (notably a string of Afrikaans language festivals in Oudtshoorn, Stellenbosch, Bloemfontein, Potchefstroom and Cape Town), tested the critic’s ability to adapt to the new even more. There was just so much, of such varying and alarmingly diverse quality and style on offer, it left one dizzy. It is this festival circuit which became the real training ground (and challenge) to the most outstanding critics of the alarmingly unfocussed yet exciting pre- and post-apartheid periods (about 1984-1998). Among them are such outstanding individuals as Adrienne Sichel, John Mitshikiza, Kaiser Ngwenya, Barry Ronge, Barry Hough, Paul Boekkooi, Robert Greig, and Gabriel Bothma, writers able to “read” the radical new local work in performance and respond to it as South Africans. And by the 1990s a new generation of professional critics has emerged. It is schooled in a new and evolving South African theatrical system represented in some 40 festivals that constitute a theatre season. These exhibit a proliferation of performance styles reflecting new spaces, techniques and issues. The newer critics thus have a much greater awareness of and freedom to write about the multi-cultural and lingual context represented by a changed

These then are some of the origins and key influences in critical debate now. However, it may be important to end by making a few comments about the technical aspects of the system, for these too has played a dominant role in shaping the kind of critic we have today.

For much of the twentieth century South African criticism was primarily a media and economy driven system, governed by the growing influence of newspapers and radio (and to a smaller extent later, TV), with a limitation on space and time. Over the years there have been many attempts to try to have an alternative, more substantive, system of review, for example by founding arts journals or magazines (e.g. Helikon, Scenaria, Theatre SA, S’ketsh, Teaterforum, Critical Arts, South African Theatre Journal.) Few of them have actually been able to sustain any kind of longer term review response to the industry or to place the substantial reviews they hoped. This is because: (a) they were not financially viable (with a remarkable exception in Julius Eichbaum’s Scenaria, funded out of his own pocket), (b) South African runs of plays are too short (average a week or two) to have the luxury of time that someone writing in London, New York, or Paris might have and (c) most critics are really general journalists or part-timers used as reviewers. Nevertheless some of these reviews did offer us alternative reviews of less formal work in the townships and banned venues, notably in journals such as Drum Magazine and S’ketsh.

Today (post 2000) this situation has become far worse, since there is now no real focus or system to theatre and performance anymore―it is largely driven by a relentless circuit of festivals (many of them with anything but cultural intentions) and large-scale (imported and local) popular musicals and dance shows (Phantom of the Opera, Cats, The Lion King, Zulu, African Footprint, etc.) Some of the best critical writing in journals now tends to describe and analyse trends (e.g. about nature of the festivals themselves as cultural events), rather than review individual presentations, since this kind of summary review would have a better chance of publication (and does not necessarily require in depth knowledge of theatre even). Thus it appears the old English tradition of generalists, rather than critics, may be reasserting itself.

There is perhaps some cause for concern amid this flood of work on offer, when one considers the kind of people who are now at times called upon to help out as additional reviewers, particularly for festival productions. The evolution of an almost overwhelming festival culture, and its need for instant “notices”―has thus lead to the return of the amateur critic, the “public opinion poll” and the student reviewer as solutions to the desperate need to respond to the enormous growth in number of performances (see festival newspapers such as CUE, and Krit, as well as the many free newspapers, town and suburban newspapers, etc, which all have to respond to local work.).

An additional concern lately has been the advent of the digital media as a major force. For instance, the internet has made self-expression in public media generally available. Print media, the previous vehicles of informed opinion, have to compete more for advertising revenue and reflect advertisers’ target market―the young and affluent or potentially affluent. The ultimate effects of both have been to establish cyber platforms for self-expression and to erode newspapers as sites for informed judgement. Theatre has tended to be recast as entertainment; the critical role replaced by entertaining readers. The theatre has been upstaged. Here and abroad certain genres of arts no longer have space reserved for them in newspapers. Space formerly reserved for other genres―fine arts or dance―has diminished.

By eliminating the critic who, being a specialist, was costly to employ, newspapers have saved money and replaced critics with entertainment guides. This approach has the advantages reducing newspapers’ overheads, rendering employees more easily replaceable and assuring commercial advertisers that they have the advertisers’ interests at heart. While this new development is certainly not all bad―the internet has much to offer as a source of information and an “information highway,” and I think we will debating this for a while to come―but I fear that, perhaps, among the casualties of the sudden rush to embrace the digital revolution may well be have been those qualities associated with criticism at its best: independence and informed dissent.[7]

Bibliography

AMPKA, Awam .1999. “Drama in South Africa and tropes of postcoloniality” In: Contemporary Theatre Review, Volume 9, Issue 3 1999 , pages 1 – 18.

BOSMAN, F.C.L. .1928. Drama en Toneel in Suid-Afrika, Deel I ["Drama and Theatre in South Africa. Part I"]: 1652-1855. Amsterdam/Pretoria: J.H. de Bussy.

________ .1980. Drama en Toneel in Suid-Afrika , Deel II ["Drama and Theatre in South Africa. Part II"]: 1856-1916. Pretoria: J.L van Schaik.

CARPENTER, Charles A. .1986. Modern Drama Scholarship and Criticism 1966-1980: An International Bibliography. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

________ .1997. Modern Drama Scholarship and Criticism, 1981–1990: An International Bibliography. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

COPLAN, David B. .1985. In Township Tonight! South Africa's Black City Music and Theatre. Johannesburg: Ravan Press/London: Longman.

DAVIS, G. and FUCHS, A. (eds) .1996. Theatre and Change in South Africa. Amsterdam: Overseas Publishers Association.

DHLOMO, H.I.E. .1985. Collected Works. Edited by Nick Visser and Tim Couzens. Johannesburg: Ravan.

ELSOM, John .1985. “The Social Role of the Critic”, In: Contemporary Review; May 1985, Vol. 246 Issue 1432, p259-263.

FLETCHER, Jill .1994. The Story of the African Theatre 1780-1930. Cape Town: Vlaeberg.

GRAY, Stephen .1979. Southern African Literature: An Introduction. London: David Philip.

GUNNER, Liz (Ed.) .1994. Politics and Performance: Theatre, Poetry and Song in South Africa. Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press.

HAUPTFLEISCH, Temple .1997. Theatre and Society in South Africa: Reflections in a Fractured Mirror. Pretoria: J.L. van Schaik.

JOUBERT, Gideon J. 1973. Rigtings en figure in die toneelkritiek van Suid-Afrika, 1963-1972 [“Directions and personalities in the theatre criticism of South Africa”]. Unpublished D.Litt. thesis, University of Pretoria.

KANNEMEYER, J.C. 1988. Die Afrikaanse Literatuur 1652-1987. [“The Afrikaans Literature 1652-1987”] Pretoria: Human en Rousseau.

KRUGER, Loren .1999. The Drama of South Africa: Plays, Pageants and Publics Since 1910. London and New York: Routledge.

LARLHAM, Peter .1985. Black Theater, Dance, and Ritual in South Africa. Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press.

MUDIMBE, V.Y. 1988. The invention of Africa :gnosis, philosophy and the order of knowledge. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

PETERSON, Bhekizizwe .1995). “ ‘A rain a fall but the dirt is tough’ Scholarship on African Theatre in South Africa” in Journal of Southern African Studies, December 1995, Vol. 21, Issue 4.

RETIEF, P.J.B. 1966. Toneelkritiek en die Nasionale Toneelorganisasie (1947-1961). ‘n Ondersoek na die aard en bestaan van kritiek rakende die verhoogaanbieding van die drama. [“Theatre criticism and the National Theatre Organisation (1947-1961). A study of the nature and existence of criticism regarding the staging of drama.”] Unpublished MA thesis, University of the Orange Free State , 1966.

SAUTER, Wilmar .2007. “Festivals as Theatrical Events: Building Theories” in: Temple Hauptfleisch et al, Festivalising! Theatrical Events, Politics and Culture. Amsterdam: Rodopi Press.

TUCKER, Percy .1997. Just the Ticket. My 50 Years in Show Business. Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press.

ZEEMAN, Estelle .1970. Toneelkritiek in Johannesburg in 1969. [“Theatre criticism in Johannesburg in 1969”] Unpublished MA thesis, University of Pretoria.

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[1] I would like to thank Robert Greig for his valuable advice, many subtle suggestions and editorial insight when editing this article for me.

[2] Temple Hauptfleisch teaches Drama at the University of Stellenbosch. He was Head of the Centre for SA Theatre Research (CESAT – 1979-1987), Chair of the University of Stellenbosch Drama Department (1995-2005) and director of the Centre for Theatre and Performance Studies at Stellenbosch (1994-2009). Founder-editor of the South African Theatre Journal (1987-) and a member of the editorial boards of Critical Stages (the IATC e-journal), African Performance Review and the book series of “Themes in Theatre – Collective Approaches to Theatre and Performance” (Rodopi Press, New York/Amsterdam). He has produced more than eighty works on the history of South African theatre, research methodology and the sociology of theatre, the latest being Festivalising! Theatrical Events, Politics and Culture (co-edited with Shulamith Lev-Aladgem et al.). His current project is the Companion to South African Theatre.

[3] Vide for example the writings of V.Y. Mudimbe (The invention of Africa: Gnosis, Philosophy and the Order of Knowledge, 1988; The Idea of Africa, 1994) and others.

[4] Guy Butler said this at a conference 1960 – and quoted himself in his essay “On Being Present where you Are: Some Observations on South African poetry 1930-1960” (Poetry South Africa: Selected Papers from Poetry ’74, AD Donker, 1975)

[5] Vast as this history is, the fact is we know precious little about it compared to what we know of say Afrikaans theatre of the 1920s-1940s or the British touring companies of the 1860s-1890s. And one reason is the existence of a history of critical writing. The other is our attitudes about the Other or foreign cultural uses and products. See for example the work of Peter Larlham (1985) and David Coplan (1985) in this regard.

[6] E-mail correspondence with Temple Hauptfleisch, Stellenbosch 16 February 2010.

[7] For this closing discussion of the impact of the digital media I am once more greatly indebted to comments made by Robert Greig (16 February, 2010), as well as some of the initial research undertaken by Hugo Theart for his masters’ thesis at the University of Stellenbosch.

Too Important To Be Left to Amateurs

Don Rubin[1]

Abstract / Resumé

In the following paper─presented at the final Plenary Session of the Gujarat conference on theatre criticism in India in January 2010─Canadian critic Don Rubin establishes a taxonomy of criticism while arguing that expertise and judgment will always be essential elements of the higher forms.

Dans cet article─présenté à la dernière séance plénière du colloque du Gujarat sur la critique de théâtre en Inde, en janvier 2010─, le critique canadien Don Rubin développe une taxonomie de la critique, soulignant que l'expertise et le bon jugement constitueront toujours des éléments essentiels de cet exercice.

The subject this week has been public theatrical commentary. By which I mean criticism at its most sophisticated level; reviewing at its most widely-known and recognised professional level; reportage and personal opinion at its most basic level.

As our discussions and debates have evolved over the last few days, it has become clear I think that there is some confusion about these differing levels of theatrical response, how they work, how they interact and overlap, how they contribute to popular discourse, to artistic discourse and to public and social discourse.

Underlying much of this has been the question of expertise and judgement, two notions currently in intellectual disfavour. But even intellectual fads disappear and I am confident these views too will fade in the not too distant future. So the question remains for us: how much expertise is needed to even enter this field of theatre criticism. Can anyone do it? Indeed, is expertise needed at all? How innocent─or perhaps how guilty─need one be to claim a public voice?

I am reminded here of a story I heard recently about a famous Canadian novelist. Some of you may know her name and her work, Margaret Atwood. She is probably Canada’s foremost literary voice and one of our most ironic and sarcastic voices when she is provoked. As the story goes, she was invited to be the keynote speaker at some major international gathering. At a dinner for guests and sponsors, she was seated at the head table with a group of people who had put much of the money in to sponsor the event. She found herself across from a man in his fifties who told her that he was a brain surgeon and that he admired her books greatly. He went on to tell her that when he retired in a few years, he was going to write a novel himself. I feel I have much to say, he told her. Atwood, without missing a beat, said that she too was thinking of retiring soon. The doctor asked her what she was planning to do in her retirement.

“I’m planning on practicing brain surgery,” she told him.

“But you know nothing about medicine,” he sputtered.

“And you know nothing about writing novels. Why do you believe you can work in my field without training and experience any more than I can work in yours?

We don’t have any record of the brain surgeon’s reply.

What I am trying to say here is that we all know how many people there are in the world who believe passionately that simply because they breathe the same air as artists and writers, and perhaps only because they have opinions on everything from the quality of food in Gujarat to whether they think India can beat Bangaldesh in cricket that they somehow possess the necessary skills to be public commentators on the arts.

The distinguished Korean scholar Yun-Cheol Kim, President of the International Association of Theatre Critics, said this week that he sought a state of innocence whenever he entered the theatre as critic. If some hardened newspaper editor had been in the audience, no doubt they would have said something to the effect that this is why they seek people whose only qualification for such a job is that they are both innocent and supremely average. That is, they want to have the so-called man or woman in the street as their public voice.

They would be profoundly wrong in their understanding of what Professor Kim really meant. The word he used was “innocent,” not “ignorant.” He said “open to experience,” not “without experience.” And therein lies all the difference. It was Michel Vais from Montreal who quickly added to Kim’s statement, “you must be very experienced as a theatregoer to create a state of innocence for yourself as a theatre critic.”

I am sure that a doctor whose mind is clear, whose mind is open to each new patient, who is innocent─medically speaking─performs far better surgery than one who walks into the operating theatre determined to excise some particular part of someone’s brain without first looking closely at what the patient’s problem really is.

Which leads, I think, to that old and probably by now quite tired question about objectivity and subjectivity. Let’s stay with the medical comparison. Is a brain surgeon really objective when approaching a patient? Would you want them to be? Or would you─like me─want your brain surgeon to bring with him or her every bit of personal experience they could muster? Would you not want them to weigh the benefits of what they do at that moment with the long-term effects of their actions? Yes, they could cut out everything in the way of the problem area in two minutes but when that part of the brain is gone perhaps the patient will no longer be able to walk or talk.

Don’t you want a doctor who makes decisions based on a very personal understanding of what quality of life really is. Certainly if you want to define objectivity as not drinking before performing surgery so one can actually see the patient anesthetized on the table then I am obviously all for objectivity. But if objectivity means leaving one’s own humanity at the door and one’s values in the washroom then I say “thank you but no.” I prefer judgements to be made at that moment with humanity rather than by some pre-established notion of intellectual framing. You can keep objectivity. Indeed, I don’t believe that it even exists except as some sort of theoretical pretense.

But let’s move on to publication of experience, the act of re-viewing, seeing again in another form. When that same brain surgeon decides to share her information with the world─when the critic starts to write─to what audience should the writing be addressed, how technical can it or should it be. I am assuming that if the brain surgeon were writing for other brain surgeons─scholars for scholars─technical language would be absolutely appropriate. But if the writing is not aimed at brain surgeons but say others in the general health field or at those who might be looking for understanding or experience─theatre professionals or more general audiences─then it is obvious that the language must change from technical and/or theoretical jargon to genuine communication allowing that communication does not have to be monosyllabic and dull.

We have─let us say it proudly in the field of human communication─progressed beyond grunts. Some of us have even progressed beyond simply saying good or bad about particular experiences whether we are eating biryani or watching a boxing match. Indeed, it was Brecht who said that the arts would be much better off when audiences─and by extension theatre commentators─had as much expertise and sophistication as people who attend sports events. Understand his point well: it’s an important one. Sporting enthusiasts are called fans because they are fanatics. That is, they know far more about their subject than most so-called theatre enthusiasts. Let’s at least strive in our theatre commentaries, said Brecht, to at least reach the level of sports writing and those who attend such activities. Would we really send someone to cover a football game who has only seen a handful of matches and knows little about the sport? I think not. Imagine saying to a sports reporter, tell us what the crowd thought. Don’t include anything that might show us you are expert in this field. Try to show how average you are when you write.

Indeed, should the response of an audience even be part of what is written? Is it included in sports reporting? Certainly not. And if I knew a commentator was swayed by or even modestly influenced by audience responses, I would make sure that my whole family was seated around them and I would instruct them all to applaud wildly throughout the show, to laugh, to cry and so on.

Certainly the only real way to know what an audience thought of something is to take a survey and that is quite another thing. “The audience loved it” is a totally meaningless statement in this context, as is a totally qualified statement such as “many in the audience seated near me seemed to be enjoying themselves for certain periods in act two although others seemed to have no visible reaction at all which could mean they were bored or sleeping.”

Let me move toward the end of these random remarks by saying that I think we all learned much this week not only about theatre criticism in India over the last 2500 years but also about Indian theatre in its many traditional and modern forms including my favourite, creative copulation. The performances we saw certainly gave those of us from abroad important insight into the richness that is Indian theatre and the uniqueness that is Indian classical and folk theatre, truly unique forms that exist nowhere else in the world in quite this way, forms which must continue to be treasured and protected. We learned as well that western forms too─whether high or low tech, whether political or escapist, whether literary or post-dramatic─are also clearly alive and battling for recognition in India as they are all over the world. Some of these forms─as many papers we heard suggested─are making real connections with urban audiences while others are as still as exotic in rural communities as Gujarati folk theatre might be to media-mad teenyboppers in Bangalore or Boston.

Which leads me to something that was not spoken of so much this week─theatre and the internet, theatre criticism and the web, the mad, mad world of personal blogging. Is this the future for theatre criticism? Certainly I don’t know. What I can say with some certainty is that even if it is the future, I continue to have no doubt that there will always be a place─even there─for expertise, for experience and for people who have the ability to communicate effectively. These are the cornerstones of almost any field in contemporary knowledge-based societies.

Hopefully by now we have agreed that just as we would not wish to have theatre critics perform brain surgery without expertise or experience, so too do we not want brain surgeons─or any other well-meaning amateur─doing our imagination-rooted work. Art is too important a field to be left to the hands of those who really do not know.

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[1] Don Rubin is the founding director of the Graduate Program in Theatre Studies at Toronto's York University and former Chair of its Department of Theatre. He is the Editor of Routledge's six-volume World Encyclopaedia of Contemporary Theatre and founding editor of the quarterly journal Canadian Theatre Review.

Three Questions I Keep Asking Myself in Practicing Criticism

Yun-Cheol Kim[1] (President, IATC)

Abstract / Resumé

In the following paper―presented as keynote speech at the Gujarat conference on theatre criticism in India in January 2010―Korean critic and President of the IATC reflects on his philosophy of theatre criticism.

Dans cet article – qui fut une conférence principale au colloque du Gujarat sur la critique de théâtre en Inde, en janvier 2010 –, le critique coréen et président de l'AICT réfléchit sur sa conception de la critique.

Theatre criticism is usually directed towards those local readers who want to be advised as to what to see and what not, and this is even more so with journalistic criticism than with academic criticism. This consumer-guide approach to criticism, however, is not very relevant in countries like Korea, where most of the reviews are published posthumously, and then by academic-critics like myself. This is why I am more concerned, in my reviews of domestic productions, about writing the history of production aesthetics than about guiding consumers, more about reading than about judging the performances, and more about educating than about entertaining readers.

Criticism is serious work. It is both the end game of theatrical signification and the beginning of a theatrical debate. Journalist critics exert their power to resuscitate dying productions or, from time to time, to close them much ahead of their schedules. Academic critics record the aesthetic history of ephemeral performances with their scientific analyses and relevant readings. Some critics, whether journalistic or academic, feel more pleasure in their power to kill than in shouldering their social responsibility, while other critics are the other way around. Some critics make it their primary goal to entertain their readers, while others seek to serve the art of theatre and its makers. Some critics foreground their value judgments, while others try to make their judgments invisible.

When I think about the function of theatre criticism, I cannot disagree with Michael Billington, who says that “Criticism… is not the last word: simply part of a permanent debate about the nature of the ideal theatre.” (Billington, 1993: xi.) I have always attempted to be faithful to this function of theatre criticism and tried to invite both readers and theatre artists to this debate. I also agree with Charles Spencer, who believes that a critic’s “only loyalty should be to his readers.”[2] The only difference between him and me is that I include theatre artists in the reader category. Arguably, theatre artists are the most fervent and concentrated readers of the reviews of their works. Moreover, how can we exclude theatre artists from that “permanent debate about the nature of the ideal theatre,” when we know it is they who actually make the theatre?

It is true that the theatre has always been in crisis, but never been dead. It is also true, however, that the theatre has never been this critically deadly. The most popular nomenclature for today’s theatre is “postdramatic theatre,” which was first used by the German critic, Hans-Thies Lehmann. To put it simply, or simplistically, it means theatre in which drama is absent or dead. The current crisis of the theatre largely derives from the fact that we have not succeeded in finding or inventing new or alternative theatricalities to replace this absence or death of drama. Critics often say that good theatre makes good criticism. That truism is a luxury that today’s critics cannot enjoy. We have to ask ourselves what theatre critics can and should do when the theatre is not good. I know it is neither fashionable nor right in this era of postmodern relativism to judge a show in black-or-white terms, as good or bad. But to be honest, we cannot help but conclude our experience of a theatrical performance with our inner judgment in terms of “good” or “bad,” can we? As Irving Wardle says, “[the human] appetite for judgment” is almost “as basic as the need for food.” (Wardle 1992: 6). To be politically correct, we may have to say “the theatre that we like” and “the theatre that we dislike,” instead of “good theatre” and “bad theatre.”

It is rather easy to practice criticism when the theatre is good. Your own enthusiasm for the performance will be interesting enough to attract the attention of all three bodies concerned in theatrical communication: theatergoers, general readers, and theatre artists. All you need to do is justify your enthusiasm by means of lively descriptions, scientific analyses, and verifiable evaluations. The difficulty arises when the theatre is not good. It then becomes our critics’ double assignment to verify scientifically why the theatre is not good on the one hand, and still to write an interesting review of the show so that it may attract the attention of all those three concerned bodies on the other hand. A theatre review, rave or negative, should always be interesting in the sense that it claims its moral values of fairness and honesty, its educational value of giving readers insights into the nature of the theatre, its social value of making the theatre matter in society, and finally, its own artistic values of substance and style.

I aim high in my work as a theatre critic. I do want to transcend the critical “blindness to fresh experience” (Wardle 1992: 11), by keeping myself open to new ideas, forms, styles and practices. I do want to serve the theatre art by discovering its new theatricalities and reading their relevance to our times. I do want to serve the art of theatre criticism by expanding my professional horizons and keeping my integrity intact under any circumstances. I do want to serve the theatre artists and general readers by motivating that “permanent debate about the nature of the ideal theatre” with my intellect. Whenever I finish the draft of a theatre review, I ask myself three basic questions and check myself to see whether I am not betraying my own definition of “good criticism.” My final review text is usually the end product of reflecting on and editing my own answers to the following questions:

Question 1: Have I seen the performance in the best physical condition?

Maichael Billington says that critics are rather born than educated. He is right in terms of the temperamental qualities required of critics: innate shyness, preference to belong to the watchers rather than to the watched (Billington: ix). I add one more that I think is the most crucial temperamental quality for a theatre critic: his/her ability to enjoy solitude. This is the quality that guarantees a critic’s fairness, and his courage to be honest. Of course there are exceptional critics who enjoy socializing with practitioners and still remain faithful to their professional ethics. However, exceptions are exceptions. Critics are human, and they share with other humans weaknesses as well as strengths. When they develop good friendships or camaraderie with practitioners, it is difficult for them to remain fair in evaluating their friends’ achievements; they will be more likely to perpetrate ‘constructive criticism’ even when the artists do not deserve it. This is why I never accept an invitation to a private meeting with the artists after a performance. Theatre critics are voluntary loners working in a gregarious art form. In fact, there are two additional obvious qualities for critics to cultivate throughout their careers: sensitivity in the areas of both production and perceptual aesthetics, and openness even to forms and styles they do not have a natural affinity for. These two should become second nature to them if they want to avoid what Patrice Pavis has called, that “ultimately reductive, albeit elegant, [critical] impressionism” (Pavis 2006: 3).

Even if you are an ideal, born critic with all of the qualities above, however, you need to see the performances in the best physical condition in order to implement those qualities in your reviews. Through experience I know that the slogan “healthy minds, healthy bodies” applies to theatre criticism, too. I am living an overloaded life just like you, teaching full-time at the university level, serving on several national and international juries and still seeing 150 or so shows each year. This is why I always look tired. Our physical condition affects our mental receptivity enormously. When you are tired, it becomes a little bit more difficult to concentrate. Your mind does not function as well as when your body is fresh. In the worst case, when you are exhausted, you may fall, without noticing it, into a state of blind hostility towards what you are watching. All our efforts to write a good review may end up futile because of our unprofessional/unhealthy physical condition. Whenever I go to see a performance to review it, therefore, I make it a rule to have as much rest as possible before arriving at the theatre. Even on my way to the theatre, I give up that pleasure of reading in the subway and close my eyes to protect them from getting tired. In order to stay alert throughout the performance, I do not drink before a show. And I can assure you that the wine or beer that you drink after a show is much more delicious and refreshing than the one you take before the show. I, too, fall asleep from time to time during a performance when I am extremely tired, or when the show is extremely boring. In that case, I do not review the show. If I have to review it, I see it again. Of course this is a luxury that journalist critics cannot enjoy, whose deadline is much more harrowing than that for academic critics. I believe that the work of theatre makers should be respected no matter how great or ignoble their achievements, and that critics should watch the theatre in the best physical condition as a sign of respect, not only for the integrity of their own job but for the artists’ work, as well.

Question 2: Have I Generated Social Interest in the Theatre Arts?

I firmly believe that the most important function of theatre criticism is—and should be--to generate interest in the theatre arts in society. Eric Bentley has reiterated over and over again that the most important thing for a good theatre critic is intelligence—a point he made most recently in his interview for the inaugural issue of Critical Stages, the IATC Webjournal (www.criticalstages.org). This intelligence, I believe, is most needed when the critic attempts to read the relevance of a performance to society, to the spectators’ everyday life. This is a very challenging assignment for theatre critics—challenging because in today’s theatre the connection between drama and theatre is becoming ever more irrelevant, and the boundaries between artistic genres are blurring. But we need to remember that every theatre work is a comment on society. It may be true that much of contemporary theatre employs new theatricality that denies logocentric communication. Nonetheless, theatre critics should be well-informed enough to read the relevance of a show to society. Michael Billington’s political reading of Harold Pinter’s absurdist plays is a good example of this. This social relevance interests people in the theatre arts. I confess that my usual answer to this Question 2—have I generated social interest in the theatre arts?—is ‘No.’ Of course it is quite disappointing to be disappointed in my own achievement. Fortunately, however, I am a diehard hope-er, and this frequent ‘No’ simply motivates me to work harder and harder.

Question 3: Have I Created an Interesting Review?

Criticism should also be interesting in order to generate interest in this time of difficult theatre: interesting enough to stimulate a reader’s intellectual curiosity about the relationship between theatre and life, interesting enough to provoke thinking about the nature of the theatre and, most importantly, interesting enough to motivate people to go to theatre. This is why I find yet another “most important” qualification for today’s critics in their faculty to reach beyond conventional criticism, and to bring to bear a philosophical dimension on the production aesthetics, to carry on eschatological or other creative discourse in plain and humorous language. If we can further combine philosophical thought with scientific analysis, we will certainly be able to capture the public’s interest in today’s theatre, which may seem so remote from, and irrelevant to, their reality. And the appropriate form of this ‘new’ criticism may be closer to an essay, some much more leisurely form for delving into thoughts about life and theatre. I wouldn’t mind being called “an essayist,” not “a critic.”

Let me close with one more confession concerning this last question—one to which I can only once-in-a-long-while answer ‘Yes.’ More frequently than not, I find my draft of a review to be either intellectual or humorous, in spite of my wish for it to be both intellectual and humorous at the same time. But again, I don’t usually get disappointed with my own disappointing achievements. For critics, getting disappointed is not professional. To stay hopeful is. Thank you.

Works Cited

BILLINGTON, Michael .1993. One Night Stands. London: NHB.PAVIS, Patrice .2006. Analyzing Performance. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

WARDLE, Irving .1992. Theatre Criticism. London: Routledge.

Daily Telegraph, November 2.

Critical Stages: the IATC Webjournal. www.criticalstages.org

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[1] Yun-Cheol Kim 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] Charles Spencer responds to the draft of the IATC code of practice in his column in Daily Telegraph, November 2.

A Journal that Fills a Void

Steve Capra[1] (New York)

The first issue of Critical Stages, The International Association of Theatre Critics’ webjournal, appeared in the last quarter of last year. It’s rare that a new journal fills a void, as this one does, and it’s very welcome.

From the Publisher’s Opening Words, a sort of manifesto, the journal is substantive. Yun-Cheol Kim’s statement, not universally accepted, that “the most important function of theatre criticism is—and should remain—to generate interest in the theatre arts in society” is well taken. His four points of “interesting writing,” while debatable, address the issues squarely. He makes a particularly important point, also debated, that critics should connect our theatre experience to our daily lives.

The interviews, the reviews, the discussions of our iconic influences―these all reflect an erudite and articulate critical community. Indeed, Robert Greig’s review is close to a model of analysis. Naturally, the material paints a more sanguine portrait of world theatre than it deserves. As our publisher rightly notes, “The theatre is in a real crisis.”

The unique contribution of the issue lies in its first and final sections: “Theatrical Commentary and Professing Theatre Criticism” (it’s unclear why the sections are separate). It’s here that Critical Stages addresses its mission most directly, and we find discussions of criticism per se, material that contextualizes our work. It somehow validates us. We’re particularly pleased to read reports from the IATC seminar in Toronto, which designed a plan to record the history of public theatrical commentary.

Critical Stages reflects implicitly some perennial concerns:

Are our standards common among us, or are they individual?

Peter Szaffko tells us:

“Personal experiences, of course, cannot be left out or ignored but they form a very delicate segment of criticism.”

Yet in the next article, Michael Handelzalts implies that our individuality is crucial:

“They are usually referred to in the plural―"the critics." But they are individuals, each one with his or her unique skills, tastes, work ethics and moral and artistic compass.”

What is our relationship to the public? Do we share their standards? Do they listen to us?

Michael Handlezaltz and Matti Linnavuori suggest that our profession itself distances us from the audience:

Handelzalts: “In many instances the audience is seeing for the first time a play that the critic has already seen many times. The theatregoers do not necessarily seek, nor can they appreciate, a ‘new and daring reading of the play.’"

Linnavuori: “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. I share her experience, which is all the more reason to turn to Norén's observations.”

Kim, in his examination of Korean criticism, glances at our effect on the public: “Korean theatre commentaries during the period of Japanese rule … 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 is a small step to the next question: what is our relationship with the theatre and its artists? What effect―if any―do we have?

In interviews with Yun-Taek Lee and Marta Carreiras, Bang-Ock Kim and Rita Martins, respectively, ask: “During your career, have you received a particularly insightful piece of criticism?” The answers received are not particularly helpful, and we’d like to see the question expanded.

More revealing is the passage in Rita Martins’ interview with playwright José Maria Vieira Mendes, in which the latter tells us:

“I have a difficult relationship with the critics because I often (if not always) feel that they speak a language that isn’t mine.” And he refers to criticism as a form of “reading” which is not compatible with my (our) way of “writing.”

In his historical review of Japanese criticism, Manabu Noda writes:

“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?”

After a discussion, he concludes 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.”

Here, at least, is one example of criticism having an effect on art.

The current question, of course, is what the future of criticism will be. It’s often discussed, imbedded in larger discussions of the seismic events in the publishing industry. Critical Stages is wise not to dwell on it in its premier issue. Naturally, Kim alludes to it in his foreword, and Ian Herbert’s comments (reporting on the IATC’s meeting in Toronto):

“Rumbling away under all our fascinating and varied discussion was the question which most exercises today's critics, wherever they may be practicing and at whatever level: for how much longer will we be able to find the space to continue the tradition of comment and commentary that goes back so far?”

Critical Stages is very handsome, with beautiful and revealing photos complementing the text. However, the sectioning of the magazine is arbitrary, and, the web structure of the document―i.e., the formatting and linking―is confusing. There are better online periodical templates than this one, with its clumsy menu.

We are a community of writers, and as Critical Stages evolves, we’re eager to see its editorial policies further codified. The Special Issue (presumably meaning Special Section) was a set of interviews called Theatre Legacy. What sections will be constant? What will future Special Sections be? It is perhaps our responsibility to suggest these, as it is to ensure diversity.

Reviews in this issue were chosen “that would be important for international critics and scholars to know about.” We’d like to see the criterion discussed in the text of the pieces.

And we want to participate! We’re delighted to see that we’ll be able to comment on the material and create genuine discussions.

We have no doubt that the magazine’s French content is as engaging as its English language material.

Our thanks to our Kim, to Maria Helena Serôdio, and to contributors. The world theatre community is looking forward to future issues of Critical Stages, as are we.

Chinese Shakespeares: Two Centuries of Cultural Exchange
By Alexander C.Y. Huang,
New York: Columbia University Press, 2009. 350 pp.

Lissa Tyler Renaud[1]

Does Shakespeare “belong” to the British, or to all the English-speaking countries? Or to the West? Or to the world? Generally, to those who answer “yes” to the first of these questions, Shakespeare’s art is essentially an art of language, and his plays cannot be fully appreciated without a full, flexible command of English. To those who think of Shakespeare as Western, Shakespeare’s plays express a particular cultural perspective, without which they lose all but their most superficial meaning. Even to those who think Shakespeare can have significance throughout the world, it may come as a surprise that his work has a long and dramatic history in Asia.

Alexander C. Y. Huang’s excellent new book, Chinese Shakespeares, tells the story of Shakespeare in Asia—a story which began virtually during Shakespeare’s lifetime—with an emphasis on Mandarin-speaking China and Taiwan, while also making reference to Cantonese-speaking China and Hong Kong, as well as to other countries whose fates are inextricably linked to the Chinese world, such as Korea and Japan. In this setting, Huang brings to the fore the complex concerns that necessarily emerge in any serious consideration of the intersection of Shakespeare and China.

“All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players”—some would say these famous words from As You Like It are among the most beautiful in the English language. The sequence of liquid sounds, for example—l, l, n, l, m, n, n, m, n, m, l—flirt with the tip of the tongue and the lips, and explode with irony on the hard, spitting initial p and the closing, teeth-gnashing z of the word “players.” This delicious movement of sounds in the mouth is animated by an inner pulse created by the perfect alternation of stressed and unstressed syllables. Some say such lines in Shakespeare are to be spoken in rhythm with the human heartbeat. Shakespeare not only gave the English language over 1600 words and countless expressions, but also gave listeners sounds, rhythms and images of such richness that they routinely captivate the reverent and the skeptical alike.

So how is the native English-speaker to appreciate these same lines, stripped of their mouth-feel and pulse, used to open a 1931 Chinese silent film based loosely on Two Gentlemen of Verona (A Spray of Plum Blossom)?

All the world is a stage.
And men and women merely players.

Huang sets about answering the question of what can make these wooden lines take flight, providing historical and social context for understanding the entirely different aesthetics offered by Chinese Shakespeare. His methodical explication introduces us to Shakespeare as his work has been variously employed for both liberal and conservative social transformation; as it has been read during various periods of political revolution or upheaval; as it has engendered narratives about cultural specificity and universality; as it has served the Asian countries to communicate not only with the rest of the world, but with one another. Huang also gives us the perspective that fixed ideas of China are nothing but highly inaccurate constructs--that instead there are many Chinas to be found in different historical periods, with different ideologies and geocultures, as well as in Taiwan since 1949, in Hong Kong and in the Chinese diaspora. His book, then, works meticulously to give us these more dimensional views of Shakespeare and China in the first place, and then to show the results of their multiple synergies. In the process, Shakespeare becomes “Shakespeare,” and China becomes “China.”

Huang’s concern is that discourse on Shakespeare and Asia has gotten bogged down in observations about the incompatibility of their aesthetics, which produce foreseeable counter-observations about their universality. He suggests “the development of a theoretical model for global Shakespeare,” and his method is derived from cultural and performance theories. His first chapter takes on the notions of “authentic” Shakespeare and cultural ownership. The next chapter describes the Shakespeare-inspired works made in China in the 19^th century based on the Lambs’ prose versions, Tales of Shakespeare—that is, before an actual translation of any play text of Shakespeare’s had been done.

Chapter 3 shows how translation of the plays brought with them moralistic and allegorical readings in the name of cultural reform, and attitudes towards the plays that were hard to shake off. Chapter 4 focuses on the new women’s movement of the 1930s and 1940s, and the resulting “cosmopolitan” interpretations of Shakespeare’s female characters on stage and in film. Chapter 5 looks at the larger meanings of Hamlet as performed in a Confucian temple and in a forced labor camp, and of an ostensibly apolitical Soviet-Chinese Much Ado. Chapter 6 treats the contributions that Chinese opera has made to international Shakespeare, while underlining the part that worldwide market forces have played in forming profoundly misleading impressions in the West that Chinese theatre is far more visual than verbal. Chapter 7 analyzes important, more recent productions in which a Chinese auteur director has seen a Shakespeare play through an intensely personal lens—for example, Lear in a Buddhist frame, or as a one-man show—part of a current of adventurous, experimental Shakespeare-inspired productions in Asia.

The epilogue looks at the postmodern and the post-dramatic, along with the tangle of cultural threads that knot around Chinese productions that aren’t “Chinese” enough for Western audiences, but are too Westernized for home. The text is followed by ten pages of detailed chronological charts and thorough end materials.

It should be noted that this admirable work is theory, not theatre. Those who are used to thinking of Shakespeare as a man of the theatre will encounter him here in the theorist’s language of “Othering” and “interstitial space.” Practitioners who know the plays from the inside may puzzle over the “epistemological distance” between Lear and Cordelia (p. 14), or the passing statement that Beatrice forces Benedick to choose between male friendship and female love (p. 156). Actors might be surprised to see Stanislavsky’s notion of interior “subtext” referred to with regards to revolution and nationalism (p. 26). Nevertheless, Huang writes dazzlingly in his own context, states his theoretical intentions clearly and defends them forcefully. Still, his topic is so interesting, and he handles it so interestingly that, selfishly, one can hope his future writings will be in language rather less diligently academic so as to be enjoyed by, and to benefit, many outside his immediate field.

Today, with phrases such as “global market,” “cultural product” and “aesthetic commodity” looming over theatre debates, the intercultural matters addressed in Huang’s Chinese Shakespeares are surely relevant everywhere. Countries are now importing shows they used to export: productions of Faust, Godot, Medea, Salesman, Seagull and Tartuffe roam the globe, performed as a matter of course by companies that do not share the heritage of the playwright or his original audiences, with texts that have more or less proximity to their originals. As this trend continues to increase, Huang’s new book will no doubt serve all of us as a model for inquiry.

(This review first appeared in Gramma (issue 18, 2010), a journal of theory and criticism, published in Greece. It is reprinted here with permission.)

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[1] Lissa Tyler Renaud, a master teacher of acting and voice at InterArts Training in California, has taught throughout the U.S. and at major theatre institutions of South Korea, India, Taiwan and Singapore. A recipient of Ford Foundation and National Science Foundations grants, among others, she is an award-winning actress and is recognized as a director and alignment practitioner. She publishes and lectures widely on the European avant-garde. Her co-edited volume, The Politics of American Actor Training, is newly out from Routledge, 2009.

Encyclopédie mondiale des arts de la marionnette
Ed. Henryk Jurkowski et Thieri Foulc
Montpellier: Éditions l'Entretemps, 2009, 862 pp.

Irène Sadowska-Guillon[1]

Il s'agit d'une première encyclopédie mondiale des arts de la marionnette, une étude gigantesque et fouillée des traditions, des styles, des techniques, du travail de création, couvrant le champ extrêmement vaste des formes de la marionnette depuis la simple cuillère en bois à qui on donne des yeux jusqu'à la plus raffinée des sculptures de Paul Klee ou au robots marionnettes commandés à distance de Zaven Paré dans Le théâtre des oreilles.

Depuis ses origines rituelles la marionnette ne cesse de conquérir de nouveaux territoires artistiques, se réinventant sous des formes et dans des expressions toujours nouvelles, sa capacité d'appropriation des inventions technologiques les plus sophistiquées et des nouveaux moyens semble inépuisable, illimitée.

Le projet de l'Encyclopédie initiée en 1978 par l'UNIMA (Union Internationale de la Marionnette) a été mis en œuvre en 1994 sous la direction d'Henryk Jurkowski de Pologne, historien, chercheur, professeur à l'École Supérieure de Théâtre à Varsovie et à l'École Nationale Supérieure des Arts de la Marionnette; et Thieri Foulc de la France, professionnel de l'édition, qui ont réuni une équipe de chercheurs, d'historiens, de spécialistes des traditions populaires, des gens des musées, des artistes et des professionnels de la marionnette de tous les continents, ainsi que les traducteurs. Leur travail a abouti à cette gigantesque compilation des arts propres au théâtre de la marionnette défini comme l'art de donner vie à l'inanimé.

Le corps principal de l'Encyclopédie propose plus de 1000 articles classés dans l'ordre alphabétique. L'ensemble de sa matière étant structuré selon les critères géo-culturels des grandes aires: Afrique, Amérique latine, Amérique du Nord, Asie, Europe, Océanie.

Des entrées par pays forment la colonne vertébrale de l'ouvrage. Le texte retrace l'histoire des traditions de chaque pays et décrit la situation contemporaine : enjeux artistiques, publics, festivals, musées, institutions, marionnettistes, leur organisation professionnelle, leur formation. De nombreuses notes plus brèves sont consacrées à des compagnies et à des artistes de tous les pays qui ont marqué l'histoire de la marionnette ou qui, pour les contemporains, ont innové dans leur art et bénéficient d'une large reconnaissance internationale.

Une série de notes est consacrée à des artistes d'autres disciplines dont l'apport au champ de la marionnette a été considérable : les écrivains (Maeterlinck, Garcia Lorca...), des artistes plasticiens (Paul Klee, Alexander Calder, Enrico Baj), à des savants comme Hans Richard Purschke, Henryk Jurkowski, ou encore à des musées, des institutions, des organismes ayant joué ou jouant un rôle clé dans le monde de la marionnette.

Le répertoire de la marionnette est décrit soit par le biais des articles consacrés aux personnages récurrents traditionnels (Pulcinella, Guignol, Karagöz turc, Roi des singes chinois, etc.) ou modernes (Père Ubu) soit sous des entrées qui sont des titres d'œuvres comme La tentation de saint Antoine, etc.

Les articles transversaux, parfois sous forme d'essais, offrent des approches synthétiques par exemple sur l'espace et le lieu scénique, sur la manipulation, sur la voix, sur les esthétiques de la marionnette en Orient et en Occident. D'autres articles sont consacrés à des genres, à des techniques et à des termes spéciaux. Les théâtres fixes, les compagnies, les institutions, les musées, les écoles sont classés sous le nom de la ville où ils sont situés.

De nombreux renvois facilitent la recherche.

De très belles photos de marionnettes du monde entier, de spectacles et du travail de création illustrent abondamment cet ouvrage, suivi de plusieurs annexes extrêmement soignées.

Ainsi: répertoire des collections et des musées dans le monde entier

- École Supérieure de la Marionnette en France et à l'étranger

- répertoire des festivals dans le monde entier

- énorme bibliographie générale

- bibliographie sélective comprenant ouvrages généraux, ouvrages de référence, essais d'histoire générale et particulière des marionnettes populaires et contemporaines en Occident et en Orient, relations des marionnettes avec d'autres arts

- sites Internet clefs

- programmateurs spécialisés en France

- liste des articles thématiques

- liste des noms d'organismes faisant l'objet d'un article

- index des noms des personnes.

Un ouvrage d'une exceptionnelle qualité à la fois quant au traitement de la matière extrêmement riche, à sa présentation esthétique et, ce qui n'est pas non négligeable, à sa structure logique et au système de repérage. Il faut saluer le travail colossal des rédacteurs et de l'éditeur de cet ouvrage qui, proposant une description encyclopédique, historique, culturelle et technique de la marionnette dans le monde, sous une forme accessible, s'adresse à un public avisé, intéressé par le sujet, et non seulement aux seuls spécialistes. Un livre à s'offrir sans hésitation ou à se faire offrir, ou à offrir aux proches ou aux amis comme cadeau "durable" et source de connaissance d'un art que nous aimons tous, pour les fêtes de fin d'année.

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[1] Irène Sadowska Guillon est critique dramatique et essayiste, spécialisée dans le théâtre contemporain et Présidente de « Hispanité Explorations » Echanges Franco Hispaniques des Dramaturgies Contemporaines.