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Postmodern techniques
A postmodern theatrical production might make use of some or all of the
following techniques:
1. The accepted norms of seeing and representing the world are
challenged and disregarded, while experimental theatrical
perceptions and representations are created.
2. A pastiche of different textualities and media forms is used,
including the simultaneous use of multiple art or media forms, and
there is the 'theft' of a heterogeneous group of artistic forms.
3. The narrative needs not be complete but can be broken, paradoxical
and imagistic. There is a movement away from linearity to
multiplicity (to inter-related webs of stories), where acts and scenes
give way to a series of peripatetic dramatic moments.
4. Characters are fragmented, forming a collection of contrasting and
parallel shards stemming from a central idea, theme or traditional
character.
5. Each new performance of a theatrical pieces is a new Gestalt, a
unique spectacle, with no intent on methodically repeating a play.
6. The audience is integral to the shared meaning making of the
performance process and its members are included in the dialogue
of the play.
7. There is a rejection of the notions of "High" and "Low" art. The
production exists only in the viewer's mind as what the viewer
interprets - nothing more and nothing less.
8. The rehearsal process in a theatrical production is driven more by
shared meaning-making and improvisation, rather than the scripted
text.
9. The play steps back from reality to create its own self-conscious
atmosphere. This is sometimes referred to as meta-theatre
While these techniques are often found in postmodern productions they
are never part of a centralised movement or style. Rather, they are tools
for authentic introspection, questioning and representation of human
experience.
in
Derrida's
Artaud
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the history of spoken language" (Artaud 25). The stage needs "its own
concrete language," and Artaud insists that "[t]o make metaphysics out of
spoken language is to make language convey what it does not normally
convey"
(Artaud
32).
The concatenation of metaphysics, concrete language, the search for
originary moments in the mind, and the situating of experience within the
body, suggests that Artaud is striving for a metaphysics of presence on the
stage. This notion is supported by Jon Erickson in "The Language of
Presence: Sound Poetry and Artaud." He argues that Artaud seeks a
language of presence through a type of sound-text "which operates
through a denial of signification toward an ideal of the unification of
expression and indication" (Erickson 279). Erickson outlines the
assumptions upon which the search for such a language of presence must
be
based.
First of all, behind this language of presence is the tacit assumption that it
is the original, adamic tongue, an ursprache that names an object or being
in its essence, which means that the signifier is one with the signified and
their relationship is not arbitrarily fixed. Secondly, because of the primal
nature of this language, it can be construed as a universal language,
whose true nature arises primarily from exclamation and emotional
intonations. Thirdly, this emotive, intonational language is seen as being
more true for the human condition than signifying language because its
expression is that of the body, active and reactive, not distracted by any
cognitive split. And finally, this language should be incantatory,
summoning forth the power of presence within every fiber and organ and
nerve of the human being, uniting the spiritual with the physical, tapping
into dormant and primal creative energies, and emanating outward to
connect
with
the
listener.
.
.
.
(Erickson
280)
Erickson refers to Derrida's characterization of this language as the object
of a "'nostalgia for presence,' a concern about origin, about a type of
Golden Age myth that has persisted, often unrecognized, to this day"
(Erickson 283). The second part of the title of Derrida's article indicates
the significance of this illusive quest in which Artaud is engaged - the
quest for the "closure of representation." Derrida affirms, "[t]he theater of
cruelty is not a representation. It is life itself, in the extent to which life is
unrepresentable. Life is the nonrepresentable origin of representation"
(Derrida 234). The classical theatre which Artaud disparages has, through
its dialogue and text-bound performance, been constantly engaged in the
representation of real life which the audience has come to expect. For
Derrida, Artaud breaks with the notion of the mimetic. While the cathartic
experience is still a useful characterization of the audience's response to
the new theatre, the rest of Aristole's aesthetics must be transcended. Art
does not imitate life, art is equal to life, and even superior to life, since
Artaud insists that the performance of an act on stage makes it universal,
whereas the performance of the same act "in the world" occurs once and
uniquely.
As previously mentioned in relation to Nietzsche, the problem here is to
have done with the judgement of God, to cast God off the stage. The
reason that theatre has been representational has been its reliance on the
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creative genius whose authority permits the action to occur. Just as the
Logos of God has initiated the activity of humanity in the world, the Logos
of the playwright has initiated the activity on the stage. The related
injustices of tyranny, hierarchy, mimesis and the alienation of labour
involved in the theatrical act all contribute to the representational form,
and for Artaud, the fundamental removal of the primordial meaning
of theatre. Crime is at the head of the list of appropriate topics for
theatrical display because, according to Derrida, "there is always a murder
at the origin of cruelty, of the necessity named cruelty. And first of all, a
parricide" (Derrida 239). It is in removing the author, that one removes
God and frees the stage from the tyranny and alienation.
The stage is theological for as long as it is dominated by speech, by a will
to speech, by the layout of a primary logos which does not belong to the
theatrical site and governs it from a distance. The stage is theological for
as long as its structure, following the entirety of tradition, comports the
following elements: an author-creator who, absent and from afar, is armed
with a text and keeps watch over, assembles, regulates the time or the
meaning of representation, letting this latter represent him as concerns
what is called the content of his thoughts, his intentions, his ideas. He lets
representation represent him through representatives, directors or actors,
enslaved interpreters who represent characters who, primarily through
what they say, more or less directly represent the thought of the "creator."
(Derrida 235)
For Artaud, the tyrannical author is as diabolical as the God whom he so
delighted in reviling. The prompter, or souffleur, according to Derrida, is
the "hidden but indispensable center of representative structure - which
ensures the movement of representation" (Derrida 235-6). All the agents
of the theatre, playwright, director, actor, prompter, audience,
unconsciously conspire to continue this dependency and this inauthenticity
of the production. The significance of the souffleur is paramount in
Derrida's other article on Artaud in Writing and Difference. In "La Parole
souffle," Derrida plays on the various meanings of souffle and its
derivations to indicate Artaud's sense of the words/breath/spirit/life being
stolen from him by God, author/creators and prompters. As Allen Thiher
puts it, "[f]or Artaud it is the ultimate theatrical author, the author of
creation, who is the great metaphysical thief. God is Artaud's personal
enemy. God is the proper name of that which disappropriates us of our
proper name" (Thiher 505). This disappropriation, theft, or alienation is
what Artaud experienced vividly in what we conveniently designate as
madness.
As
Thiher
claims,
. . . Artaud lived the separation of speech and language as what Derrida
calls la parole soufle - speech that is at once stolen and prompted,
offered by the theatrical prompter as the word of the missing author on
the stage of metaphysical representation. It is in this sense that Artaud
could not overcome his sense of impouvoir, for he could not be an
authentic speaking subject if his speech were already determined for him
by an absent logos, an absent speaker, an absent author. By its very
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