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Tuesday, 07 October 2008 Maskwork. Faces becoming the reflections of screens: Digital and neon light reflected off the flesh, drawing off the blood. Following on the masks of Greek theatre, the contemporary theatrical face itself reflects another manufactured persona already, imposed by video, film, the Internet. A form of cold death, imitation of imitation and Baudrillard's hyperreality. Theatre now abjures the mask; the human face itself reflecting the sun's light or the dark of the night is a mask sufficient. Monday, 06 October 2008 Body of words, body of text. The dramatist writes with regard to
his words as fleshed in space, not inked on paper, which opens the play of
physical signifiers and signifieds in language and in the performing body.
He speaks tyrant and victim, beggar and emperor, woman and man, which he
finds within himself. He unleashes the possibilities of flesh and its
representations, all of its organs and sensations free for the exchange
with those of an auditor in the dark. Flesh, blood, hand, eye, phallus,
womb: the physical evidences of gender and engendering themselves freed
for imagination. They are traded and exchanged through the writing body,
the speaking body, the hearing and watching body, representations caught,
caressed and tossed back again. Symbology made flesh. Words that
penetrate, and welcome penetration, and exchange visions, world
constructs, perceiving selves and ecstasy. (This is far beyond youth,
chronological and psychological, especially beyond the blind adolescent
self- The highest artifice, the disciplined theatre. Torturous distance separating physical selves. But not for that reason any the less real, indeed far from surreal (especially the closed surreality of the deadly, final interpretation of a dream, which the art of theatre most assuredly rejects), perhaps more real for their attempted expression ... Thursday, 25 September 2008 Primer. All live performance is a passing away of time and the body: this dying is the primer, the medium, upon which all theatrical and performative activity is imposed; in its wake nothing, mere memory that fades and dies away as well. It is at the heart of all live performance; in common with the performer the audience is passing away also, decaying, bodies experiencing the curse of time together. But then: what does one say, what does one imagine, what does one see (anew), what sounds does one make and can be heard, what stain upon the silence, what other kind of life emerges. Something towards ecstasy, in common, and recognition, in common, and a new way of looking at the world in common, new avenues of imagination, perception and possibility. A drama that attracts those who share those elective affinities. Theatre's only conceivable relevance and vitality lie in this acceptance and revelation ... |