More on Theatrical Duality

The distance between the actor and the fictional character they are playing is addressed by Manfred Pfister in The Theory and Analysis Drama, in which he points out that one of the factors determining the ‘degree of theatrical illusion’ is ‘the style of acting employed - that is, to what extent the behaviour of the fictional figure is rounded off by the actor with realistic details, or, conversely, reduced to characteristic behavioural archetypes’ (23). To the end where the actor and the character merge, or the actor identifying themselves as the fictional character, is naturalist and realist acting, e.g. of the Stanislavsky school. Examples of the other end could be Greek tragedy, baroque opera which feature ‘gestural and mimetic conventions’ (ibid.), and Brecht’s epic theatre, where actors employ ‘gestus’, i.e. showing they are acting. Besides the acting style, Brecht’s characters often present themselves in the third-person perspective. For example, Mother Courage announces: ‘Here's Mother Courage and her wagon!/Hey Captain let them come and buy’ (quoted in Burns, Theatricality: 60). By using third-person perspective, the performer thus detaches themselves from the role of Mother Courage. (Third-person description by characters themselves is also not uncommon in traditional Chinese theatre. Yet I see it not so much as a ‘distancing’ or ‘epic’ technique like in Brechtian theatre, but as a conventional blending of the authorial voice with the character’s.)

 

Therefore, Pfister’s range of such actor-character distance can be visualised as follows:

 

Actor & fictional figure

Distance                                                                                                                            Identification

<--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------->

 the gestural and mimetic conventions                                         the naturalist style of acting                 

of Greek tragedy or baroque                                                 employed by the Stanislavsky school

Brechtian ‘gestus’

 

Other forms of theatre might situate in various positions between the two extremes. Or some plays, e.g. Five Easy Pieces as I argued in the previous entry, can demonstrate a variety of positions on this continuum within a single work.

Likewise, according to Pfister, the relationship between ‘the physical stage-area and the various fictional locales’ (22) works in the same way, i.e. the distance between the two can vary in different theatre pieces. In illusionist theatre, e.g. naturalist dramas, the stage is perceived as a fictional world, whereas in anti-illusionist theatre, e.g. Brecht’s works, the stage is nothing other than its physical self, for the mechanism of representation is exposed. In other words, the process of construction of the dramatic world is shown to the audience so that they are well aware of the duality of reality and fiction.

 

Stage & fictional locale

Stage as physical stage area                                                                         stage as fictional locale

(anti-illusionist)                                                                                                          (illusionist)

<---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------->

Brecht's epic theatre                                                                                           naturalist theatre

 

Similar ideas (though not exactly the same) can be found in Michael Kirby’s concept of ‘matrix’. When describing acting in happenings, Kirby claims such performance is ‘non-matrixed’, which is to say, not taking place within an imaginary or fictional dimension, as opposed to ‘matrixed’ performance in orthodox realist theatre (Happenings: 14-19). A few years later in the article ‘On Acting and Not-Acting’, Kirby upgrades the binary of matrixed and non-matrixed acting to a nuanced continuum from ‘not-acting’ or ‘non-matrixed performing’, ‘non-matrixed representation’, ‘received acting’, ‘simple acting’ to ‘complex acting’.

The categorisation is rather complicated and confusing. Yet there are three important points that are indicated in it: first, fictionality is the determining attribute of the matrix. Happenings claim to draw no boundaries from the current of everyday life. What it means is that these performances do not attempt to construct an alternative world to represent reality, but to present as part of reality. Second, theatrical fictionality is not a simple black-and-white, yes-or-no matter, but rather complex and variable. Some plays present the co-existence of the fictive dimension and reality as in Brechtian epic theatre, some containing an ambivalent relationship of the two such as in Luigi Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author. Or in Shakespeare’s theatre, characters can break the theatrical frame freely by asides and soliloquies rather than tyring to ‘immerse’ the audience in the make-believe universe like in naturalist dramas. Third, Kirby’s continuum actually implies two factors that constitute the theatrical fictionality: acting style of the performer, and the performance world constituted onstage (or outside stage or even theatre as in happenings), as is clearly explained by Pfister.

However, Kirby’s continuum is different from Pfister’s in a fundamental way. The former classifies various degrees of fictionality in different forms of theatre, whereas the latter is concerned with the distance between reality and fictional representation of theatre. In other words, Pfister’s analysis is based on the assumption that all theatres are fictional. What differs is the extent to which the construction of such fictiveness is displayed. Kirby, on the other hand, devises the continuum of matrix to address such new forms of theatre as happenings that emerged in the late 1950s and early 1960s where fictionality is stripped completely, as contrasting with the so-called orthodox theatre, or dramatic theatre in Hans-Thies Lehmann’s words. In his ground-breaking monograph Postdramatic Theatre, Lehmann indicates that fictiveness is one of the criterion of the text-dominant dramatic theatre, which is conventionally perceived as a ‘closed fictive cosmos’ (100), whist postdramatic theatre often disrupts such enclosure and distinguishes itself as ‘theatre of the real’ (103).

Kirby's spectrum of theatrical fictionality is echoed by Richard Schechner’s continuum of theatrical events. Only he calls it ‘purity’. According to him,  at the end of ‘pure’ art is orthodox theatre; the other end is life which situates ‘impure’ forms such as public events, demonstrations and Kaprow’s kind of happenings; in-between are ‘conventional’ environmental theatre and intermedia happenings (Environmental Theatre: xix).

It is not surprising that with the rise of happenings and happening-like experimental theatre, there was an increasing theoretical interest in the issue of theatrical duality and fictionality at the time. These continuums as well as Pfister’s provides us with useful models to look into the relationship between theatre and reality as presented in different types of performances. So how is this relationship addressed in contemporary theatre in a time, according to Matthew Causey in his book Theatre and Performance in Digital Culture, where fabrications are embedded in facts and hence it is ever more difficult to tell what the real is?

      

 

REFERENCE

 

Burns, Elizabeth. Theatricality: A Study of Convention in the Theatre and in Social Life. Longman, 1972.

Causey, Matthew. Theatre and Performance in Digital Culture: From Simulation to Embeddedness. Routledge, 2006.

Kirby, Michael. Happenings: An Illustrated Anthology. E. P. Dutton, 1966.

---. ‘On Acting and Not-Acting’. The Drama Review, vol. 16, no. 1, Mar. 1972, pp. 3–15.

Lehmann, Hans-Thies. Postdramatic Theatre. Translated by Karen Jürs-Munby, Routledge, 2006.

Pfister, Manfred. The Theory and Analysis of Drama. Reprint edition, Cambridge University Press, 1991.

Schechner, Richard. Environmental Theatre. Hawthorn, 1973 [1994].