Monthly Archives: October 2014

The Postdramatic

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This week we examined Postdramatic theatre and its components.  A notion suggested by German Hans-Thies Lehmann as a ‘comprehensive and accessible theory articulating the relationship between drama and the ‘no longer dramatic’ forms of theatre that have emerged since the 1970s’ (2006, p. 1).  What is important to establish straight away is that the “post” in Postdramatic should not be read as “after”, but rather “beyond”, as the theory continues to entertain the relationship with drama as it moves in a new direction.  A direction away from the binary categorisation of theatre work being produced as either strict “new writing” or something seen as contemporary experimental performance.  The Postdramatic is not so rigid.  The Postdramatic is essentially a study of the numerous, and to some extent infinite, ways in which the relationship between theatre and drama can be reconfigured.

So for example, the dramatic tradition in theatre requires a performance to meet certain motifs through its evening’s duration so that the audience can recognise the medium of theatre.  These motifs or logos, among others, would consist of moments of:

  • Action & Plot – A clear narrative.
  • Catharsis – The brining about of a collective & reciprocal feeling or emotion from the audience, in response to what is shown on stage.
  • The primacy of the text – The staging consists of what has been constituted by an author.
  • The constructive of a fictive cosmos – The ability for the audience to enter the world of the play.

‘The Postdramatic does not reject these events; it converses with them to find what good drama is.  Lehmann is not interested in ‘the stage as a vehicle for the dramatic text’ (Bolton, 2014) he is more interested in re-communicating the theatrical conditions of perception.  It ceases to become about copying what is on stage, and about creating a valid piece of independent art, through reassessing the aesthetics, the semiotics, the form and the structure of the text.  Lehmann wished to deflect the idea of the text assuming the role of master of theatre.

It is this dissolution of the logocentric hierarchy, the removal of text as the most important building-block of theatre, which in my eyes forms the basis of the Postdramatic manifesto.

Tim Crouch, one theatre maker who seemed to be creating Postdramatic theatre may perhaps (in Lehmann’s terms) actually have created the opposite.  While what Crouch does on stage is indeed relative to the post dramatic, he does realign theatrical conventions, but he fails to distance himself from the logocentric hierarchy.  Text plays a dominant role in his performances.  In An Oak Tree (2005) he has a member of the audience join him on stage with a script.  In Commonwealth (2012) the entire performance sees crouch stood in front of a music stand reading from a script.  He partners his text with his own unique stance of staging theatre to enhance and amplify the dramatic journey for the audience to reach a shared experience at the conclusion, a catharsis.

Herein is where the argument lies: some may consider Tim Crouch a Postdramatic artist because of the ways he is able to reinvent his audiences’ experience, but the form of his performance very much meets the logos of dramatic convention.   

 

 

 

Works Cited

Bolton, Jacqueline (2014) ‘Week Five: The Postdramatic’ [Lecture] Current Issues in Drama, Theatre and Performance. University of Lincoln.  22nd October.

Lehmann, Hans-Thies (2006) Postdramatic Theatre, Translated from German by K. Jürs-Munby, London: Routledge.

The Audience & Liveness

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This week we looked at the role of the audience in our seminar discussion, in particular their experience of live performance or what is also regarded as liveness.  It is this sense of liveness that separates the theatre environment from television of film.  Liveness is consumed; it is the unique selling point for theatre.

Edinburgh based company, The Audience Business, a company well rehearsed in liveness as a commodity, launched an advertising campaign called You’ll Love It Live (2000).  The campaign consisted of “a press launch, PR stunts and series of posters, including one carrying the slogan ‘Experience the thrill of a live performance.’ Aiming to increase awareness of the live arts among casual and infrequent audiences” (Reason, 2004).  This was an illustration of how live performance is marketed with liveness as is overriding pull factor.

This study highlights the importance of liveness as a factor for creating art.  The example given is that theatre is the best example of this, as it has ‘live actors on stage in front of a live audience’ (Jellicoe, 1967, p, 67).  When you look however at theatre that is recorded and then played to a live audience, such as the National Theatre Live streams to cinema venues around the country, you lose the liveness.  This is because the audience is unable to experience the performance in the same space as the audience.  Theatre doesn’t conventionally perform to camera, it performs to a live audience and the camera cannot pick up every detail expressed on stage that the human eye can.

Therefore some means of exhibiting theatre, what is considered the purest form of live performance, falls under a separate category:  What I will refer to as ‘false liveness’.  This is a term which relates to methods such as NT live stream casts to cinemas, to music artists who use lip-synch technology, rather than their own voice, in what they are selling as a live performance, or in TV sit-coms which have a track they can edit into scenes of applause and laughter, to fabricate a live recording of a performance.

The concept of liveness as a commodity, which may at first sound unappealing because of its capitalist connotations, still is worth consideration.  Theatre is enjoyed because of the live experience; we are able to watch art that has not been synthetically modified.  This debate ties into a previous blog post of mine about the Posthuman, only now our art is also becoming a cyborg of both human input and computer input.

 

Works Cited

Jellicoe, Ann (1967) Some Unconscious Influences in the Theatre. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Reason, Matthew (2004) ‘Theatre Audiences and Perceptions of ‘Liveness’ in Performance’, Particip@ions, Vol. 1 (2).

Lincoln Noir

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In an attempt to practise our study of the Posthuman synthesis of reality and digital reality we have begun the project Lincoln Noir.  We were inspired by the performance art group Blast Theory, in particular their project Can You See Me Now? (2001).  This project combined the real world, the virtual on-line world through the use of a video game and the digital world through the use of GPS tracking devices:

 Can You See Me Now? takes the fabric of the city and makes our location within it central to the game play. The physical city is overlaid with a virtual city to explore ideas of absence and presence. By sharing the same ‘space’, the players online and runners on the street enter into a relationship that is adversarial, playful and, ultimately, filled with pathos.

( http://www.blasttheory.co.uk/projects/can-you-see-me-now )

This performance exists on three layers of reality.  We sought out to do the same with Lincoln Noir.  For this performance we have the city of Lincoln as our stage.  The performers, armed with smartphones examine the city assuming the role of a film noir style detective, tweeting any suspicious photos, statements or observations made using the hashtag #lincolnnoir.  These tweets are watched as a continuous, refreshing feed back in an internal location, such as a studio by the audience.  You may notice that on the right hand side of this blog’s homepage is that very same Twitter feed, allowing you to see the performance over the internet  (For some versions of WordPress this twitter feed appears on the LEFT side of your screen, at the very BOTTOM & may require you to click “find tweets” to view).  With this performance we create something that also exists on three layers of reality.  The material reality (Lincoln, as seen by those role-playing detectives), The digital reality (Those able to follow the feed over the internet) and the virtual reality (Those situated inside the audience room).  The performance itself has no end, and has no limit as to who can join in at least one of the realities on which the performance is conveyed, anyone can tweet with the hashtag and follow the posts on-line.  This is a Posthuman experience.

Posthuman

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This week we looked at the notion of Posthuman and its performance attributes.  This is the coming together of man and machine, a synthesis of what we recognise as reality and as virtual reality.  It is “the emergent relationship between the human and the machine as creating a hybrid subjectivity that is continuously moving between the material realm of bodily agency and the informational realm of digitality” (Klich, 2011, p. 189).  The Posthuman perspective relies heavily on technology, however it should be seen as a denial of humanity, more as an evolution of humanity.  Technology is not a new phenomenon that has come about with the discovery of the internet and nanotechnology, so in no means should the Posthuman view be considered solely a current issue.  When the wheel was discovered man utilised that technology to its potential.  Our relationship to technology evolves.

We have reached a point now perhaps where Posthuman is becoming more obvious with the first steps towards biotic advances: men becoming cyborgs, part human, part machine.

What can be seen here is a synthetic arm being controlled by a human mind.  It is an enhancement of technology just like the wheel was.  A weakness in our bio-chemical composition was identified and through research a solution has been found.  You may ask what this has to do with art?

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Performance artist Stelarc, whose works often examine the use of robotics, attached hooks to his flesh and suspended himself in the air in a series of performances since the 1970s.  His performances ranged from suspension inside a studio to being hung between two skyscrapers.  Here Stelarc displays the body as both object and subject, observing the materiality of the body.  It was to explore the limits of the flesh using machines to attach the hooks directly onto it.

Stelarc Ear

Similarly, Stelarc later developed an ear in a laboratory, which he then had surgically attached to his forearm.  This ear was to be fitted with microphone and Bluetooth technology so that, through digital means, it was able to function as a third ear.  The argument here to those who state it as “offensive and distressing” (BBC, 2007) is that it serves as an extension of living.  In theory it is no different from having access to information around the world from the Smartphone in your pocket or a GPS system in your car connecting you to a satellite in space.

Therefore if all art, time being irrelevant, is to be taken as a reflection of its context, and as we have established technology is not a modern issue, then performances that exercise the ever dynamic relationship between research and the human should not be scrutinised, regardless of how radical they may initially seem.  “The Posthuman exits simultaneously as both body (material entity) and digital information” (Klich, 2011, p. 192), our dependence on social media, our alternate aliases we live out in virtual realities make us all Posthuman beings.

 

Works Cited:

BBC Health (2007) Performer Gets Third Ear for Art [online] Available at  <http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7039821.stm > Accessed [08/10/2014]

Klich, Rosemary (2011) Multimedia Performance, London: Macmillan.  pp. 178-203