insightlmu RESEARCH T H E W O R L D S A S T A G E?

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1 insightlmu RESEARCH Issue INTERDISCIPLINARY INSIGHTS THE QUESTIONS WERE PUT BY MAXIMILIAN G. BURKHART ALL T H E W O R L D S A S T A G E? Theatre studies is reinventing itself. In an interview he gave to Insights, Professor Jürgen Schläder insisted that the discipline is the real home of media studies. For him, theatre is the only truly three-dimensional art form, and the boundaries between drama, music theatre, dance, performance art, film and digital media are becoming less distinct. He and his colleagues at the LMUexcellent-sponsored research center Sound and Movement identify the combination and confrontation of sound and movement as the defining characteristic of innovative and experimental theatre today. Insights: Like Art History, Theatre Studies has the reputation of being something for the cultured daughters of the well-to-do: interesting and edifying, but of no real use whatever. Why should anyone study the subject? Jürgen Schläder: Because the discipline has changed radically. Theatre Studies, like Art History, began as a historical science. But this emphasis has shifted. With the rapid expansion of experimental approaches to theatre over the past 20 years, the theory and aesthetics of theatre now overshadow the historical component. One must remember that the subject initially developed within a context in which theatre was seen primarily as enacted literature. Thanks to the growing prominence of the director especially here in Germany the practice of theatre has become an art form with its own history, its own aesthetic values and its own theoretical foundation. Its immediacy means that theatre is always a contemporary art. Even the stuffiest production that slavishly follows old-fashioned modes of staging is contemporary. That s why theatre studies can bring us closer to modern realities than branches of scholarship that focus on other artistic genres. Something new is happening in theatre. We no longer consider it from a purely historical viewpoint, as many spectators have realized. Insights: So theory has become a central concern of theatre studies. What kinds of theoretical approaches have been developed, and how are they changing the nature of the discipline? 01

2 Schläder: We now focus more on constructing theoretical models of the theatrical performance itself, and this involves making use of insights from many areas of cultural studies. The whole spectrum of discourse and deconstructionist theories has been very fruitful in theatre studies, because discourses in the theatre occur in three modes: speech, movement and setting. The spectator must take in the information conveyed in all these modes at once, and then relate them to one another. This becomes a very complex task, if you are not told how you should relate these levels to each other, in other words, when you are left to choose between multiple interpretations left in the typically postmodern state of ambivalence. Insights: But these are questions in which Lessing and, after him, the early Romantics were intensely interested. So, what s new? Schläder: We approach these issues by focusing on the momentary event itself, rather than on the process of translating a text into a specific set of meanings. Nowadays, multivalency is a given. Earlier dramatists worked synthetically, relating disparate elements to each other. In the 19th century, a single character was the focus of attention. By means of demeanour, costume, gesture, speech, movement in stage space, this central character projected a synthesized illusion of a living reality. With the reform of theatrical practice in the early 20th century, the various components involved in staging a theatrical event became more differentiated and diverse and they have since become even more distinct. Contemporary theatre is much less concerned with creating a convincing illusion than was Lessing or Schiller or even a dramatist of the late 19th century. Ours is a theatre that is more interested in exploring the material possibilities of the medium itself. Each of the various modes of expression tends towards a life of its own, and it is the responsibility of the spectator, rather than the director, to put the pieces of the puzzle together. When Richard Wagner conceived and staged The Ring of the Nibelungs, the audience was left in no doubt what to make of the production. When a contemporary director brings Wagner s Ring to the stage today, it is not at all clear what the take-home message is meant to be. You have a choice of interpretations. What you think of such a production, at whatever level and from whatever angle, depends on your prior knowledge of the piece, your cultural horizons and your own range of experience. The modern spectator is therefore faced with a far greater challenge. Insights: That sounds like what Friedrich Nietzsche attacked as the intellectual abstractions of Socratism in The Birth of Tragedy. Does this entire theoretical superstructure not rob drama of its instinctual, emotional what Nietzsche calls its Dionysian quality? Are we on the way to a purely Apollonian, theoretical theatre? Schläder: No, certainly not. The problem is that we convert representation into configurations of events and instead of semantic structures we focus on modes of presentation, but also on emergent effects unforeseen and overwhelming emotional reactions. The problem is that such emergences cannot be dissociated from the purely subjective and uniquely 02

3 When Richard Wagner conceived and staged The Ring of the Nibelungs, the audience was left in no doubt what to make of the production, says Jürgen Schläder. When a contemporary director brings Wagner s Ring to the stage today, it is not at all clear what the take-home message is meant to be. You have a choice of interpretations. The picture shows The Ring of the Nibelung II, choreography: Johann Kresnik, scenery: Gottfried Helnwein, performed at the Opera Bonn, Source: helnwein.de personal realm, and simply translated into a scientific discourse. If that were possible, we would have a different sort of theatre. We cannot treat such emergences as arbitrarily interchangeable parameters that can be plugged into a scientific theory; therefore they cannot be planned in the context of a staging concept. We must acknowledge the primacy of the Dionysian element. Insights: If emergent experience cannot be objectivized and subsumed into a theoretical model, does this not make a farce of the claim of theatre studies to be scientific? Schläder: One must be careful about what kinds of statements one can legitimately make about an art form. Of course there are always ways of complementing the purely cognitive perception of a theatrical spectacle with the emotional experience it produces. It is a perfectly respectable scientific procedure to present different possible interpretations side by side, provided each has been tested and found to be logically plausible and compatible with the observations. We no longer seek a single irrefutable model. The scientific merit of the endeavour lies in the production of a catalogue of explanatory possibilities. Insights: Your LMUexcellent-sponsored project is entitled Sound and Movement. Why did you choose this name? Schläder: The contemporary theatre productions are characterized by a blurring of the boundaries between genres drama, music theatre, dance, performance art, film and digital media are becoming less and less distinct. All the scholars involved in our project would argue that the defining characteristic of contemporary experimental theatre is the interaction of sound and movement. And sound need not mean music. This represents a very significant paradigm change. Up until the mid 1980s, every theatre production, whether or not it was explicitly based on a text, provided a text-based channel of communication with the audience. These days, the text it may be there or not may be enunciated or projected onto the scenery. The text, like many other traditional components of theatrical performance, has been reduced to insignificance. What has replaced the text is the interplay of the performers actions with noises or musical processes that emotionally underline or formally structure the performance. Sound and Movement in combination, this interrelation, is the central common feature of experimental theatre today. 03

4 Insights: Theatre studies then takes on the status of a media science? Schläder: That is precisely my own view! Nowhere can one better study the interplay between different media than in the theatre. Nowhere can we observe at closer quarters how they act on one another. I always say that theatre is the only three-dimensional art form. It is at once real and unreal, because it takes place immediately in front of us and is at the same time fictional or virtual, if you will. Insights: Young people today spend much of their time in cyberspace, where they have access to fictional worlds that invite them to experience and exploit a whole range of media simultaneously. In the theatre on the other hand, the spectator is forced into the role of passive consumer. Can theatre offer the same kind of openness, or will the new media ultimately make it obsolete? Schläder: That depends on what one expects from theatre. If one regards the theatre solely as a place of entertainment, then I would, with certain reservations, agree that its days are numbered. But then every virtual reality inevitably has a theatrical quality. Each projects an illusion of three-dimensional space, which the protagonist is invited to enter. But you are not really in that other world, you need an avatar to act for you there. It is possible to create virtual environments so convincingly that there is essentially nothing that betrays their illusory nature. But I firmly believe that nobody is merely a collection of emotionally determined, almost automatic, mechanical responses. People have an intrinsic capacity to reflect on what they are doing. Theatre is constantly breaking the bounds of the illusions it works to establish, and the spectator is constantly being challenged to recognize these as such, and to grasp their implications. The interactive relationship between theatrical illusion and spectator is not a matter of provoking him to act in the fictional world presented to him, but to reflect on the meanings it suggests, and the insights that emerge from these reflections. This is above all a cultural process. Insights: What exactly is avant-garde theatre today? Can you give us a concrete example? Schläder: At the Salzburger Festival in 2009, Katie Mitchell staged a new production of Luigi Nono s Al gran sole carico d amore ( In the Bright Sun Laden with Love ), which was really something entirely new! This azione scenica deals with the fates of five women who were caught up in five of the revolutions that have punctuated modern history. Each of these characters has her own stage space, but there are also several camera teams, a huge orchestra and a large chorus on stage. And the audience can follow on a screen an edited version of what the cameras are recording on stage edited live. In other words, the spectators are watching a film that is not a film. It is not a film because it is not a finished cut, it is put together anew at every performance. The audience is attending a stage production that is not a stage production, because the action on stage simply provides the setting for the film. And all of this is emotionally amplified by the contributions of the orchestra and chorus. The real author of this piece is the film editor, the cutter. This is theatre as we have never seen it before. The fascinating thing is that traditional forms of presentation 04

5 lose their conventional functions or take on new ones, but and this is the crucial point none of them can work without the others. This instantaneous variability of modes of perception is only made possible by the wizardry of technology. Julia Wieninger and Laura Sundermann in Al gran sole carico d amore from Luigi Nono, staged by Katie Mitchel, Salzburg Festival Source: Stephen Cummiskey Insights: A realization of that dream of the Baroque: all the world s a stage! Schläder: Exactly! But it is not just a Baroque theme. Ever since Plato s Parable of the Cave, we have been engaged in an endless and endlessly inconclusive debate on the question of whether there is a greater, eternal reality beyond the reach of our senses, which we can at best briefly intuit. Or is reality only there when we take notice of it? Insights: Are modern approaches to theatre production not also marked by a trend towards what one might define as pornographic overspecification? Theatre now puts everything, literally everything, onto the stage. In modern productions, everything is revealed, exposed. Nothing is left to the spectator s imagination. Why should that be considered revolutionary? Schläder: An interpretation that makes use of technologically generated effects produces multifarious images. And the diversity of these images creates what may be called an inner substance. Everywhere you look, you see something else. And the idea that you will be able to take in everything set before you is a pipedream. But every time you attend such a production, you experience a different performance. And that is a very considerable gain, because the dramatic construct realized on stage mirrors the three-dimensional plasticity of real life. Insights: Is all this not asking too much of an audience? Surely they are looking for clear and simple messages. Does postmodern theatre really work or does it just leave the public behind? Schläder: At present it certainly fails to reach large sections of the public. But art has always had to counter the accusation that its supposed innovations are banal. The spectator must learn how to approach it. We too have had to go through a learning process. Insights: But isn t there a danger here? If we follow Nietzsche s lead, and we dispense with the ethical dimension of theatre and its claim to relate to everyday reality, do we not reach a state of anything goes? How can postmodern theatre avoid this trap? On the one hand, it risks drifting into arbitrariness, on the other that of degenerating into instrumentalization. 05

6 Schläder: Raising the admonitory finger would, without question, be the worst option. Scholars of the theatre have not done a very good job of making their insights accessible to the theatre-going public. However, people who are interested in the arts are actually grateful for assistance and orientation in how to approach artistic productions that they are unable to grasp on first encounter. But at present there is no agreed catalogue of criteria, no handbook for the aesthetic assessment of theatre. We have yet to find satisfactory answers to the problems raised by the fact that the degree of multivalence of the material has increased so much, and that so many modes of expression are now being exploited for dramatic purposes. This is something that is truly modern, and modernity poses a severe challenge to all of us. For more information on the research project Sound and Movement, please have a look at our ScienceCast on itunes U. ScienceCasts present unusual insights into the world of science. In these short videos, some of the most renowned academics at LMU present fascinating aspects of their research in a readily understandable way. Prof. Dr. Jürgen Schläder has been Professor of Theatre Studies (Music Theatre) at LMU since He is Director of the interdisciplinary research center Sound and Movement, which is supported by the High Potential Fund, a program established by the institutional strategy LMUexcellent to promote novel research projects and methods. profdrjschlaeder@gmx.de 06