Carlson gets on The French Stage

The French Stage  chronicles an idiosyncratic period - effectively the nineteenth century - in the history of Parisian theatre. With major events on either side of the century - the revolution of 1789 and the First World War in 1914 - ignored and existing only as ghosts within Carlson's study, the context of the events he discusses is sadly limited to the immediate chronology of the period.

Beginning in 1800, Carlson deals with the theatre during Bonaparte's reign as emperor. Lacking a study of the revolution's impact on the arts, the stories of censorship and imperial interference in the programming of the state theatres are isolated, and the huge impact of Bonaparte's defeat is subsumed within broad discussion of the shift from neo-classicism towards romanticism. 

Identifying a tension between Bonaparte's taste for the neo-classical (and his banning of any plays that could be considered political pg12) and the rise of melodrama, Carlson sketches the influence of the emperor in terms of taste and legislation. He ignores the political reasons why Bonaparte might have had a predilection for the neo-classical.

The neo-classical model - new plays in the style of the Greek tragedies, with emphasis on the supposed Aristotlean rules - was the favoured mode for the kings of the ancien regime. Bonaparte was making a clear identification with the pre-revolutionary aesthetics, and establishing his lineage as a monarch. 

In the second chapter, Carlson describes the blossoming of the romantic movement on the stage in France. He carefully notes that romanticism had a currency across the arts - and a more lasting presence in other nations, such as Germany, and in other forms. Relating it to the arrival of English companies in the late 1820s - long enough after the British victory over Bonaparte for enmity to have dissolved - he recognises that the romantic fashion was competing with the more melodramatic fare of the boulevard theatres (set in opposition to the state theatres) and that a growing 'realism' in set design and script - and the interest in both historical accuracy and contemporary subject matter - led to the triumph of the 'well-made play'.

Again, Carlson's limited historical period ensures that his analysis is limited. He ascribes romanticism to the inspiration of Rosseau, and mentions Diderot only once (a revival of one play). He does not spot the influence of Diderot's writing on the growth of the dram, a style that evolves into the social dramas which come to dominate Parisian theatre after 1850, and are the subject of his third chapter.

The final chapter takes on 'realism' (which seems akin to the 'naturalism' of Ibsen et al) and symbolism. This 'realism' pays special attention to historical accuracy - and much of the critical debate at the time, Carlson explains, was around the scenography as much as the script. The clear through-line from melodrama, via romanticism into the dram and the well-made play - now emerges as 'realism', but Carlson does not draw on Diderot to clarify the ideas behind this process. 

The book is a remarkable cataloguing of information - it is almost an almanac of Paris' performance schedule through the century, and references the critical writing of the period, with an interest in how performers shaped the public reception of plays - this concludes with an almost actor-manager model by the end of the century, as Sarah Bernhardt rose to celebrity. 

It also exposes the subtle changes in the relationship between national and commercial theatre, with attention paid to individual theatres, both state supported and the commercial boulevard. 

Reviewing My Own Past. I am an idiot.

Within an academic context, Radical Subjectivity is a problematic methodology. Having coined the term to describe a range of diverse strategies within my own popular criticism, I adapted its definition to suit any approaches I'd later use within The Vile Blog. 

In one memorably incoherent article, I attempted to discuss semiotics by evoking a couple of productions that I had seen (Slope and Tomorrow) and Honzl, a Czech theorist I must have found in one of my trawls of Marvin Carlson's writing. Although, on first reading, I can't imagine why I thought publishing an article like this on a blog that is supposedly dedicated to 'populist' critique was a good idea, it does represent some aspects of radical subjectivity's style.

First of all, there is the awkward juxtaposition of academic and popular criticism. The focus of the article is Honzl's analysis of theatre semiotics - he observes that any object, placed in a theatrical performance, can take on a variety of meanings. However, the references to Untitled Project's Slope and Vanishing Point's Tomorrow allude to contemporary performances (in 2014) and the process of reviewing. 

The two forms are shoved together shamelessly, with Slope and Tomorrow providing examples of Honzl's semiotic analysis. This suggests both a historical context for the two productions, and updates Honzl into a contemporary context.

The framing of the article also insists on a contemporary context: both the first paragraph and the last (a circular structure, doubtlessly influenced by theatrical performances - such as Robert Softley's Purposeless Movements which ends with the same lines at the beginning and end of the show) discuss the then-relevant threat by Anonymous to publish material that would shame Iggy Azalea. 

This reference, of course, dates the article. 

Then there is the repeated use of humour, often misplaced. This supposedly lessens the seriousness of the material but also reveals the personality of the author (confused and childish, most likely). 

Elsewhere, I place my methodology within a tradition of reader response theory. 

What is Visual Theatre? (Please, stop it)

Definitions are a right pain in the hoop. Every year, when I attend manipulate, I work hard to try to explain visual theatre, and fail. My favourite attempt to make the distinction between dance and physical theatre - as part of a conversation that was trying to resolve the problem - is not mine: a practitioner grandly announced that it was simple. "One is abstract," he said, and paused. "The other isn't." 

is this a theatrical space?

Sadly, he didn't tell me which was which. Other intellectual quests for clarity (including 'what is art?') had met with similar failure. So, this year, I am going to go backwards. I'll look at the various performances from manipulate, see what they share, and conclude that visual theatre is simply 'theatre that gets programmed at manipulate'.

Before diving into the maelstrom, a few notes on how awkward definitions can be. 'Mighty Marvin' Carlson, the remarkably busy American academic is usually a good source for quotations, and in his book about Performance (2004), he explores the rise of performance art, mostly in the USA, and ties together some key themes.

On page 110, he notes that performance art features 'an interest in developing the expressive qualities of the body, especially in opposition to logical and discursive thought and speech.'

I'll be damned if this doesn't describe the choreography of Editta Braun, who presented Close Up on the first night of the festival. Her dancers didn't even face the audience, becoming strange creatures of multiple limbs and hunched spines. 

how about this?

He goes on to list a variety of 'body artists' - from Yves Klein and his writhing naked women in paint, to Nitsch and the Aktionists' 'Dionysian rituals'. And if Akhe's Gobo. Digital Glossary lacks Dionysian abandon, I'll happily buy Carlson a pint. In 1975, a panel discussion about performance art added that the space for performance 'is more often like a workspace than a formal theatrical setting'. Again, Gobo's stage looked like an abandoned laboratory, as Russia's answer to The Chuckle Brothers moved between props and scenery for a series of wild routines.

dance - or physical theatre?

It's not that Carlson fails to describe performance art, it's that his descriptions fit elegantly with the aesthetics of manipulate. I'll use his book to suggest that there is some kind of genealogy of visual theatre, even as I am aware that he intended no such comparison. But that a description of one art-form can be so easily applied to another brings me back to the problem of definitions. Where they are supposed to supply boundaries to limit considerations of art, they usually just make it worse...

History Repeats Itself in Architecture

Although there's plenty to dislike in Loki's analysis of The Glasgow Effect (not least his description of an monolithic establishment that secretly undermines working class culture: there's actually a series of different elites that compete to do that), he makes a salient point about the way that building is used to destroy communities.

...common land is handed to private developers, regardless of what locals think and public spaces are locked up at weekends due to funding cuts while suburban Scotland frequents the swanky shopping village now perched on the periphery of these criminally under-resourced communities.

These shopping districts, super-imposed on the receding cultural landscape, are hailed as the solution to poverty and are always given new names which subtly disown the heritage, history and people of the local area – who now work there for peanuts.

Passionately expressed, Loki's description, sadly, is a contemporary take on an ancient narrative. Architecture and public building projects have been used by dominant cultures to establish their power throughout history. In his TV show about the Romans, comedy evil genius Boris Johnson described how the empire would build a forum in occupied cities, a reminder both of their power and practical skills (he memorably compares them to modern shopping malls). Marvin Carlson comments that while democratic fifth century Athens was a maze of narrow streets, the subsequent Hellenistic monarchies liked 'sweeping avenues', an enthusiasm shared by the French absolute monarchy a millennium and a half later.

For the entry of Charles VI into Paris in 1380 the streets and squares were hung with so many tapestries that they resembled temples, and from many artificial fountains, milk, water and wine flowed... not only decorative and allegorical purposes but, as Konigsen observed, also functioned 'to superimpose on the actual city a idealized path, while removing the lived space'. (Places of Performance, pg 22).

The appearance of perspective in painting during the Renaissance led to it being adopted by the Medici as a symbol of their 'egocentric ordering of knowledge' - Henri II entered Lyon in 1548 with parts of the city screened off by paintings that hid the medieval town behind trompe d'oeil, as if making explicit how the 'new' perspective replaces the old. The development of baroque urban planning took notes from the scenography of the theatre, a reminder that the landscape, especially in cities, is more closely connected to art than to simple functionality.

Loki's argument that the rage against Ellie Harrison is based on a disconnect between the art establishment and the working classes attempts to load social grievances onto a specific instance. The architecture of Glasgow, however, is a far more comprehensive example of the disconnect between bodies that control public funding and the people who live in the city. 

The massive motorway through the city centre? The M74? The Tesco Expresses on the street-corners, those out-of-town shopping centres? Or, to take an example presented by one of Loki's mates, the way in which Dublin has become a consumerism dystopia. All of these are more explicit, more obvious and more oppressive expressions of capitalism's power.

Critiquing these would also have the added bonus of not encouraging a baying mob hurling misogynistic abuse at a single artist.

Long and Involved and Incomplete

The challenge of performance art - or live art, or contemporary theatre practice or whatever name it gives itself this week - is the same to both the enthusiast and the sceptic: what the hell was that? RoseLee Goldberg, one of the first writers to grapple with its history, offers a definition that is pretty much her hands thrown in the air: a 'permissive, open-ended medium with endless variables, executed by artists impatient with the limitations of more established art forms.'

"Something is not avant-garde unless it is provocative and a challenge. This is certainly what the general public in America believe. The last performance to confirm this golden rule was that of Anne Bean and the Kipper Kids. Bodies painted in the most obscene fashion: vulgarity in every form, savage cries, nauseous smells: songs taken to the level of paroxysm, and guttural sounds were the clue to this show, which broke every record at the box office and has achieved a large following."
The Avant Garde Savaged by Anne Bean, translated article from Playmen, May 1979
Goldberg gets cited in Marvin Carlson's Performance: a critical introduction. I guess the point is that any attempt to define 'live art' is going to run into trouble, either by being too vague (live art is art that happens live, huh?) or too prescriptive (does it have to be by impatient artists?).

"Live Art is the radical, vital and creative force behind some of the UK's most exciting, innovative and important artists, and home live art, as a company of creative producers, is privileged to be part of the sector's development." - Home Live Art
My irritation at performance art - and I speak as a believer - is that it too readily falls into this Western European  idea of 'the artist' as a being distinct from the general run of the species. That can be through the mystification of the creative process (all that banter about 'the genius' of Shakespeare or Pina Bausch), or the professionalisation of an artist class (a degree does not entitle a graduate to a life pass as an 'artist'). Since whatever phrase is used - performance or live - includes the word art, it runs headlong into the basic problem common  to dance, music, whatever: is there a quality, a vital spark that makes something art rather than anthropology, craft or scientific experiment?

What is live art? Well, at its most fundamental, Live Art is when an artist chooses to make work directly in front of the audience in space and time. So instead of making an object, or an environment (a painting for example) and leaving it for the audience to encounter in their own time, Live Art comes into being at the actual moment of encounter between artist and spectator. Or at least even if they are not physically present, the artist sets up a situation in which the audience experience the work in a particular space and time, and the notion of ‘presence’ is key to the concerns of the work.
Here's where Carlson, and the other books littering my floor, come in handy. The field of performance studies, which overlaps with but is not the same as theatre studies, offers an examination of many different social activities as 'performance.' Admittedly, they are frequently written in a jargon heavy style (why use the word 'theatrical' when 'performativity' can mean the same thing and give the essay a pseudo-sociological flavour?).

But they break down the idea that 'art' is something that only happens in a sacred space,and that the gap between theatre (let's pretend for grown-ups) and life is huge. It does for the idea that anybody who participates in any social event, or indulges a solitary vice, doesn't like theatre. They are constantly performing.

Live art, an artistic discipline that "defies all definition", is experiencing a remarkable renewal, it is, however, still little known to the world at large. To bridge this gap and strengthen the position of new forms of live art in Europe, eight cultural structures have come together as partners in a five-year European project entitled A space for live art. Through each partner’s programming and the different forms of exchange – co- productions, dissemination, residences, international symposia – the diversity of the artistic approaches will be highlighted. Meetings on theory and practice, the constitution of a critical corpus written by professionals and documentation of projects in sound and/or images will strengthen the reflexive and documentary aspect of live art. There will also be room for mediation and transmission, through an infiltration of the public area and a teaching strand, in particular in art schools where young talent will be encouraged.
Performance artists have often been happy to collect the catch-phrases of performance studies, without recognising that it undermines their right to claim special privileges as 'artists.' Falling back on the idea of training, they reduce the status of artist to the same as accountant: have the relevant qualifications been passed? And I flutter in doubt between ideas of 'genius' defining the artist  - I might accept this, on the condition that the full meaning of genius, which includes an almost supernatural quality, is respected - and a rejection that the artist is a status which is anything more than the product of particular attention to a skill.

The National Review of Live Art (NRLA) Archive is primarily a video archive that holds footage of performances from the prestigious NRLA festival. The footage covers the period from 1986 (when the festival was first documented on film) to 2010 when the festival closed. As well as the recordings of performances, there are also tapes of installations, discussions, and interviews with participating artists.
What made me think that the theories of Jerzy Grotowski would make an interesting blog post? I'm struggling with his essay Towards a Poor Theatre and I am only on the first paragraph.

Jerzy Grotowski was a revolutionary in theatre because he caused a rethink of what theatre actually was and its purpose in contemporary culture. One of his central ideas was the notion of the 'poor' theatre. By this he meant a theatre in which the fundamental concern was the work of the actor with the audience, not the sets, costumes, lighting or special effects. In his view these were just trappings and, while they may enhance the experience of theatre, were unnecessary to the central core the meaning that theatre should generate.

Mind you, Jerzy has a nice anger: he's getting annoyed by people asking about the 'origins' of his 'experimental' theatre. He's not experimental, he says. He's just trying to work out what the relationship between audience and actor might be.

 'Poor' meant the stripping away of all that was unnecessary and leaving a 'stripped' and vulnerable actor. Applying this principle in his 'laboratory' in Poland, Jerzy Grotowski jettisoned all costume and staging and preferred to work with all black sets and actors in plain black rehearsal costumes, at least in the rehearsal process. He made the actors go through rigorous exercises so that they had full control over their bodies. 

I keep moving through the article with my usual inattention to the whole and preoccupation with detail - the detail that backs up this week's obsession. For the record, it's 'dialectic,' the shifting word that I translate as conversation, in which two parties aim for a higher truth through comparing their parts of the puzzle. As usual, that's not a good translation. As usual, I've found my phrase: Jerzy saying that he likes Stanislavki's approach to acting because of 'his dialectical relationship to his own earlier work.'

What was important to Jerzy Grotowski was what the actor could do with his or her body and voice without aids and with only the visceral experience with the audience. In this sense he overturned the traditions of exotic costumes and stunning staging that had driven much European theatre from the 19th century. This is not to say that in public theatrical performances he completely disregarded lights and sets, but these were secondary and tended to complement the already existing excellence of the actors. Indeed he wrote:

After discounting every other model he can think of as definitive, without saying their processes are useless or that he doesn't borrow bits from here and there, Jerzy explains the essence of  his approach: 'without the least trace of egotism or self-enjoyment... the actor makes a gift of himself... the body vanishes, burns and the spectator sees only a series of visible impulses.'

By gradually eliminating whatever proved superfluous, we found that theatre can exist without make-up, without autonomic costume and scenography, without a separate performance area (stage), without lighting and sound effects, etc. (Jerzy Grotowski, Towards a Poor Theatre. Simon & Schuster, 1968, p.19)

That's all very zen, breaking down the division between reactions in the actor's mind and the actions of the body, making the actor a sort of perfect expression of their internal state. While Grotowski is heralded as part of the avant-garde (a status he probably dismisses in the first paragraph), there is something ancient and spiritual in his process. It's exactly the opposite of what Noel Coward and his gang thought up, that acting was a series of physical tricks (can't cry? blink three times or get out the onion).

I get lost in the next bit, where he talks about the spiritual process, but my attention gets called back when he says 'we compose... the dialectics of humour behaviour.' I'm less than half-way through the article, but I have my bone to chew. 'A sign, not a common gesture, is the elementary integer of expression  for us.'

That's enough for me. If Grotowski's process has anything in it, he is basing it on something that is intrinsic to theatre... that is,  if his training for actors is going to work, it has to connect with some quality within the theatre. A sign suggests that theatre is a sign system (well, yeah), that it  is a symbolic drama that strips away the common-place, guarded actions of real life (whatever that is) and replaces them with movements that express their meaning perfectly.
Sure, I'm busking now, but here's how I think this works. If, in daily life, a ghost turns up, the emotional experience of seeing the  ghost (I'm thinking  terror, but it might be delight, depending on the situation), social codes and upbringing transform that emotion into a mediated expression.On stage, the actor's sign represents an unmediated emotional response - something authentic.

So when I bump into a spirit the next time I am  in a haunted house, my exclamation 'I think I've shat myself' is merely a conditioned response - and a  bid for a cheap laugh in a macabre situation. When Hamlet sees his father on the battlements, the Grotowski-trained actor does something that is more expressive - possibly symbolic of an inner state.

So what? I'm poking around at the importance of theatre as 'a lie that tells the truth,'  trying to find a solution for the problem that, in the society of the spectacle, theatre is just another distraction. This might help - it might not. It might help the reading of a performance.

It strikes me that Grotowski is putting  the actor at the front of the theatrical experience - not the script, but the embodied person doing (or pretending to do) stuff. It's another step towards devised theatre (dropping the script as template), a move towards 'physical' theatre. And another inconclusive blog post, presented by The Vile Arts.

C Carr's collection of essays On Edge covers the art scene of America in the 1980s and 1990s, particularly focussing on the performance art scenes: she covers the emerging cross-border experiments of Guillermo Gomez-Pena and the Kipper Kids unique slapstick vaudeville. Throughout the collection, Carr identifies the rawness and brutality of the performances, echoing the dynamism of the No Wave scene in New York, with bands like Sonic Youth and Swans adding a punishing volume and art-school aesthetics to the British punk template. Indeed, two artists she reviews, Diamanda Galas and Lydia Lunch, have their roots in No Wave.

While the rage of the 1980s precludes much of the playful joy of the happenings of the 1960s -

Religious Ramble: Theatrical Thoughts

At the end of Performance: A Critical Introduction, Marvin Carlson considers the audience, partially as a plea not to dissolve the study of theatre into a broader analysis of performance in daily life. He approvingly quotes Margaret Wilkerson's assertion that 'theatre provides an opportunity for a community to come together and reflect upon itself,' finding that the theatrical event has always been about 'shaping' community - and the fancy-dan live art that I love is particularly aware of this function.

This frees up theatrical criticism from being purely about the art as performed and created, and to consider it as part of a culture's ability to reflect upon itself. In other words, like Tynan said, all theatre has a political dimension. At the least, it brings people together, and suggests a shared interest in certain ideas and activities. The Big Idea, of communitas, becomes crucial: does theatre build communities?

Although I am not wild about using the term, this lends theatre - and festivals, and the better buskers on
Sauchiehall Street - a religious quality. Unfortunately, this word is loaded. It suggests that performance performs a spiritual and possibly hierarchical function (in a world where religion is often criticised as anti-scientific, or obsessed with power and control), while implying that the Great Religions of the World are just a bunch of guys playing dress-up. Being a smart-ass, I'm talking about the etymology of religion, from the Latin: meaning 'rebinding.' Theatre is religious in so far as it connects together a community, both to itself and the wider cosmos.

Putting aside the image of the artistic director of Puppet Animation Scotland wearing a Pope's hat, its seems that this definition perfectly suits manipulate. Although the festival lasts for longer than a Sunday Mass (and I hear some priests are popular because they get through it in under an hour), it does draw together a diverse community with a shared interest in 'visual theatre.' And given the chance, visual theatre could generate as much explanatory literature as the concept of anatman.

Again, I'm not mad about calling theatre 'ritual,' but I'll admit it is ceremonial. There are expected responses (turning up on time, not playing the bongo drums during the speeches, applauding or booing at the end). The 'ceremonies' of manipulate draw attention to certain ideas but, like sermons, revolve around an over-arching theme.

The mixture of international and Scottish work also fits into the religious format. Torn is shown the day after Duda Paiva's Bestiares. The continuity between what happens in Edinburgh and in Europe is highlighted. And by seeing visual theatre from other countries and cultures, a new light is shone onto the local production.