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beccaelizabethp121
One fundamental thing about the theatre is that we are brought into sustained and often deeply sensual relationships with a particular set of bodies. But which bodies? The bodies of the actors or the bodies of the characters? Think of the character's body and the body o fthe actor becomes somehow ghostly, indeed transparent. But the character's body is not, of course, itself there. The playing of roles on the stage renders the status of the body liminal - constantly unstable, on an edge. In the circulation between personator and personated, the body perpetually slips between presence and absence.
p122
Is the ghost in the fiction real or imagined? Who is doing the imagining? And how real is [the character who sees the ghost]? Who and what is actually 'there'?
...
[character] puts on a deception, here, alone - except of course for the audience. And in that split second, as the actor personates a social individual adopting a false persona, the audience suffers a further liminal moment. Who, precisely, is acting? [Author] slices together the instability of the stage body with the idea of the projected self as deception.
Even given suspense and emotional engagement, narrative drama tends to invite a sort of past-tense reception; it is as if the events were being recounted, told over, rather than happening in the present. This tension between present and past tense - being in the direct presence of something no longer there - together with the tension between presence and absence of the body just noted, have led several commentators to suggest that Western theatre is at a very fundamental level to do with life and death. According to this perspective, one of the deep reasons why we go to the tehatre is to experience a cycle of re-animation - the stage life that constantly disappears also constantly reappears. The experience compensates for real loss. And the corollary of course is that we learn to cope direcly with loss, to rehearse death - precisely by experiencing that infinite number of extinctions.
*** *** ***
be adds:
TV is a bit different. Theatre happens and then goes away. TV never goes away, it just goes into reruns. Plus you can't stop the signal. Nobody on TV ever really dies - they're still out there somewhere, echoing along at light speed.
... I feel vaguely like I just woke up and started watching the Matrix before breakfast.
Woah.
One fundamental thing about the theatre is that we are brought into sustained and often deeply sensual relationships with a particular set of bodies. But which bodies? The bodies of the actors or the bodies of the characters? Think of the character's body and the body o fthe actor becomes somehow ghostly, indeed transparent. But the character's body is not, of course, itself there. The playing of roles on the stage renders the status of the body liminal - constantly unstable, on an edge. In the circulation between personator and personated, the body perpetually slips between presence and absence.
p122
Is the ghost in the fiction real or imagined? Who is doing the imagining? And how real is [the character who sees the ghost]? Who and what is actually 'there'?
...
[character] puts on a deception, here, alone - except of course for the audience. And in that split second, as the actor personates a social individual adopting a false persona, the audience suffers a further liminal moment. Who, precisely, is acting? [Author] slices together the instability of the stage body with the idea of the projected self as deception.
Even given suspense and emotional engagement, narrative drama tends to invite a sort of past-tense reception; it is as if the events were being recounted, told over, rather than happening in the present. This tension between present and past tense - being in the direct presence of something no longer there - together with the tension between presence and absence of the body just noted, have led several commentators to suggest that Western theatre is at a very fundamental level to do with life and death. According to this perspective, one of the deep reasons why we go to the tehatre is to experience a cycle of re-animation - the stage life that constantly disappears also constantly reappears. The experience compensates for real loss. And the corollary of course is that we learn to cope direcly with loss, to rehearse death - precisely by experiencing that infinite number of extinctions.
*** *** ***
be adds:
TV is a bit different. Theatre happens and then goes away. TV never goes away, it just goes into reruns. Plus you can't stop the signal. Nobody on TV ever really dies - they're still out there somewhere, echoing along at light speed.
... I feel vaguely like I just woke up and started watching the Matrix before breakfast.
Woah.
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no subject
Date: 2007-02-15 11:43 am (UTC)Okay, I admit it: I don't understand any of that! :)
Fortunately I don't have to. ;-)
no subject
Date: 2007-02-15 01:13 pm (UTC)technically I don't have to understand just at the minute, seeing as I passed intro lit 1 already and intro lit 2 is about poems. but it's interesting.