Online Magazine of the Visual Narrative - ISSN 1780-678X
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Online Magazine of the Visual Narrative - ISSN 1780-678X |
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Issue 9. Performance |
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Performance and cognitive narratology |
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Author: Jeroen Versteele Abstract (E): The last couple of years, (dance-)theatre companies that make use of 'new media' in their shows, have grown numerous and increasingly successful. This article focuses on some fragments in such productions that combine a theatrical setting with references to cinema language. It tries to distinguish three different relationships formal theatrical and filmic conventions can have with one another, and it relies on procedures in cognitive narratology to explain the effect such hybrids have on their audience. Abstract (F): Ces dernières années, les compagnies de théâtre et de danse ont été de plus en plus nombreuses à se servir des nouveaux médias dans leurs spectacles. Le public s'est en général montré très favorable cette évolution. Le présent article propose une lecture de certains passages clé de ce genre de productions qui combinent mise en scène théâtrale et langage cinématographique. Il s'efforce de distinguer entre trois types de relations formelles possibles entre conventions théâtrales et conventions filmiques. Il s'appuie aussi sur la narratologie cognitive pour rendre compte des effets que ces formes hybrides ont sur le public. keywords: performativity, cognitive narratology, new media, contemporary dance |
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The last couple of years, (dance-)theatre companies that make use of 'new media' in their shows, have grown numerous and increasingly successful. In most cases, means as data projectors, camera's, television screens, video and sound play-back, computerized images and loads of references to cinema and popular culture are used. Some would hesitate to call these 'new media', waiting for shows that exploit the full digital possibilities of software programs such as Max/MSP. Although the discussion on the appropriate use of the term 'new media' is an important one, I deliberately choose not to mark a line between 'old' and 'new' media (or between the old and the new use of old media, respectively new media) in this text. My only goal here is (1) to separate some distinct manners in which contemporary (dance-)theatre and performance companies involve and refer to cinematic languages in their stage productions, and (2) to generate a ground for critical reflection. First of all, I want to sketch the simple theoretical background against which I will discuss some fragments and elements from shows which have been touring in Belgium and the rest of Europe over the past few years. The 'frame', as it was introduced by Marvin Minsky in 1975 and further developed by cognitive narratologists as David Herman, Catherine Emmott and many others, is a basic term in my approach of contemporary theatre in terms of narratology. I suppose that audiences of companies such as Damaged Goods, Big Art Group, Bruno Beltrão's Grupo de Rua de Niterói, Superamas, Fanny & Alexander and ro theater are perfectly aware of contemporary theatrical and cinematic conventions. In this article, I will especially focus thiss certain kind of frame-bounding foreknowledge that is, in my opinion, not only highly important but also critically underdeveloped: the knowledge of discipline-specific conventions that has been developed in its turn by 'intertextual framing'[1]. From their experience, the public will have sufficient knowledge of the obvious and often spectacular use of film projections or cameras on stage. They - we - all know how camera's and basic editing applications work, what sound-mix and dubbing is, what a computer interface looks like, etcetera. This knowledge of formal media conventions is a common background contemporary audiences share, one that has already been expanded for a long time in television formats such as makings of, and all types of reality shows that (somewhat falsely) help showing television and cinema as transparent media. To this foreknowledge of formal characteristics, we attach more qualitative values that have to do with what we know of the general contents of such formats and of specific subgenres of popular culture to which is referred: quiz shows and soap operas are sleazier formats than talk shows or documentaries. Unnecessary to say that sometimes huge quantities of bound foreknowledge can be activated by just mentioning some simple - formal or contextual - elements that characterise the frame in question. The tension between the activated frame and what is actually developed on stage can provoke meaning. The way in which this theoretical and highly general procedure is being applied in creations of companies such as the ones mentioned above, shows however that this can be done in very different manners, and that a critical discourse concerning these hybrid forms of performance grows highly necessary in order to develop a landscape in which artists, critics and audiences can create and communicate in a relevant, meaningful way.
Shelf life and BIG episode 2
Big Art Group is a New York based company, found by Cade Manson in order to "aggressively attack the boundaries of performance through experimentation with structure, medium, and process". And so he does, from 1999 onwards, with shows that initially burst with narrative topics of bad taste, vulgar story lines, exploitation, a grotesque use of escapist themes in literature and film, and an unconventional mix of media such as music, puppetry, dance and text. In its third production however, Shelf Life (2001), Big Art Group starts using 'Real-Time Film' on stage and thus sets an extreme example of how cinematic procedures can be performed in theatrical context. In Shelf Life, we watch a stage on which three stationary cameras are installed, and a three-segment shoulder-high screen running the length of the stage. The actors enter the stage, take their places behind the screen; their legs and feet, shoulders and head remain visible to us - and of course their images that are captured by the cameras and projected on the screen. The projected image is composed of what is captured by the three cameras, but the space between the cameras' range of vision, is of course not visible on screen. Enabled to witness what happens 'behind the screen' and looking at the result 'on screen', we can simply deduct how the yet coherent image on screen is created: when e.g. the camera at an actor's left is too far away to show an item in his left hand, the item is shown b y another actor who stands closer to the appropriate camera. In this manner, characters on screen often have merged bodies, possibly provided by an Asian woman's left arm, a white man's torso and a black man's right hand. Extreme close-ups that spread over the three parts of the screen as well as rapidly changing 'camera angles' (actually faked by the actors, rapidly changing their position before the fixed cameras) and panoramic views are being produced, often in a transparent and witty way. The whole performance is consequently built around this procedure which is performed to its perfection: fast, meticulously rehearsed, flawless. The story the performance tells is as typical for American mass media as the image language on the broad screen. Cliché-types such as the alluring babe Frankie and three obsessed admirers try to escape from their desperate lives, fuelled by jealousy, rage and egocentrism. Moreover, the actors act in a way which is extremely recognisable from such shows: with large expressions, marked intonation, self-assured as to save time and to avoid second takes. Their detailed and nuanced mimicry is easy for the camera to catch up and send to the projector that enlarges it, but is useless in a theatre context. At first view, the actors actually seem not to pay attention to the audience at all, but merely play their part before the three small cameras. In fact, Shelf Life shows bitterly little characteristics of the so-called interactive trend in contemporary theatre. The fourth wall is impenetrable, though it's demarcated by just a row of three cameras. In its turn, the audience is gasping at the screen on which the story unfolds, rather than at the actors behind it. Nevertheless, Shelf Life only gets its effect from its theatrical context. Big Art Group's radical choices in regard to their playing technique, their straightforward and consequent use of not only cameras, projectors and screen, but also of written signs that indicate the location a specific scene is taking place in (such as 'supermarket' or ' belt'), only work because because these are less obvious components of performance on a stage. To see just the video projection without any of the surrounding elements , would just be a dull experience. Apart from Big Art Group's favourite themes and the typical story material, it is mainly the transparent forgery which the projected images are being created and fused with, that offers this production its wit, its entertaining value, its meaning. This forgery is 'unmasked' ànd is then lifted to the level of parody by the clash of the actors' extensive appeal to the audience's foreknowledge of popular cinematic genres and formal conventions (how these things are made) on the one hand, and the actual theatrical situation in which the show is meant to take place on the other hand. In their production BIG episode 2 (2004), the French-Austrian collective Superamas is as straightforward as Big Art Group in their use of cinematic media on stage. But whereas Big Art Group gains its effect by superimposing its filmic language on a theatrical context without explicitly using the latter, the Superamas work with their theatrical environment more openly. At the same time, their references to cinema are even clearer than Big Art Group's, since they simply show a fragment out of e.g. Zoolander, a mainstream Hollywood picture with the comedian Ben Stiller. The actors then repeat the scene on stage, in a detailed, kitschy set. Not just once, but over and over again, each time slightly altering a tiny section in the dialogue or adding an unfitting segment, such as the erotic intervallum in which two actors start to hug and kiss. The dialogues we hear are those on the soundtrack of the movie itself, mimicked by the actors to perfection - over and over again. Each time the scene restarts on stage, the 'intratextual frame' (bound by the knowledge of what's already happened in this piece) is activated and slightly altered by the actors, thereby specifically making use of the theatrical effect of meticulously performed repetitions. As a result, the audience may experience the deconstruction of the scene in the Hollywood teen comedy, and moreover, they may have this scene mentally rebuilt as a multi-layered narrative whole in which different possible storylines and formal characteristics remain latent. This reading, in which the theatrical 'remediation' of a given filmic entity raises narrative and formal questions, is applicable on several scenes in BIG episode 2. For example, there is another scene which is repeated over and over as well. Only this time, we learn only after a while that the speech we hear, is play-backed and recorded on beforehand - on the TV screen, we can see the voice artists speak in their parts. Formal entities such as dialogues and scenes are broken apart and are shown as constructions with hidden levels, suppressed possibilities, endless circles of imitations and substitutes, only revealed after repeated remediation. Or how a mediated entity unravels when it gets re-mediated too much.
Proust , Telesquat, Requiem
As I have shown, Shelf Life and BIG episode 2 use filmic media conventions as a counterpart for their theatrical embedding, with which they contrast and provoke meaning. There are, however, other ways in which screens, projections and cinematic elements are used in contemporary stage performances. In Proust 3 (2004) for example, the third part of the Proust-series by ro theater and Guy Cassiers, the use of pre-recorded scenes with the actors on stage is intricate and worth examining in depth. Let me just mention one scene, in which Marcel chats with his noble Parisian friends of the Guermantes family. The stage on which the conversation takes place, is empty. But above it hangs a huge oval screen, on which a scene is projected with the same actors sitting on a picnic carpet, surrounded by grass and flowers. The actors 'on screen' don't talk, but just look at each other and make gestures as if they were mentally communicating. Their words are spoken by the actors on stage. In this manner, neither the theatrical nor the filmic conventions are superimposed upon the other; none of the two 'takes over' or comments on the other. On the contrary, the combination of these two media creates a new experience of a scene, one that makes use of the appropriate characteristics of theatrical, respectively cinematic conventions. It may seem a strange leap from Proust 3's use of film images to the way television screens are incorporated in the sets of the productions Telesquat (by the Brazilian hip-hop artist Bruno Beltrão, 2003) en Requiem (by the Italian company Fanny & Alexander, 2001). Nevertheless, I can see a parallel between how stage and screen are purposefully applied to reach a narrative effect in Proust 3, and the way in which actors in Telesquat and Requiem appear on television screens: not in an attempt to juxtapose their appearance with their theatrical, physical presence/absence, but to add an extra semiotic layer to the nevertheless coherent world they're creating; an extra dimension that allows for more (complex, spectacular, pop-cultural) possibilities for the fictional world to be drawn out. In Telesquat, a dance performance tackling several issues of linguistic philosophy, TV screens are installed in the left and right side-walls. The screens show what is captured by cameras, installed behind the scenes. The performers race about the stage and behind the scenes and appear on the screens. They even make diving movements before one camera (which transmits its image e.g. to the screen at the right side-wall) and pretend to fall down before another camera (which shows its image at the left): it is as if dancers are flying from the right screen to the left screen, but only virtually. At the same time however, other dancers are appearing on stage, running, only to take their colleague's places before the hidden cameras a few seconds later. What we get to see, is a muddle of differently mediated movements: some very physical and near, other forged by mediation. But yet theatrical and filmic means are combined to suggest a violent whirlpool of transportation, random and rapid movement, multiple presence. Totally different in atmosphere, but similar in the use of hidden cameras and revealing TV screens, is Requiem. This is a complex performance about which a lot is to say in very different prospects, but let me just briefly mention this one similarity. An actor repeatedly disappears in a hollow, rabbit pipe-like piece of the set, which has a screen in the audience's direction. On the screen, we can see the actor 'in the set', but the way in which he is shown and the special effects that are applied suggest these are recorded and altered. However, this performance also builds up a narrative frame with binding elements from theatrical as well as filmic elements, trying to compose a fictional world which is mediated by a mix of both mediums' conventions at the same time and on the same level.
ALIBI
The logical thread I'm trying to develop in this article, is focused upon the relation between theatrical and filmic references. Whereas I tried to make clear Shelf Life and BIG episode 2 were dominated by cinematic conventions, 'only' to be reflected / commented upon by theatrical means, the latter three performances (Proust 3, Telesquat and Requiem) are in my view more interested in creating a cross-mediatic, hetero-conventional world, each in its way. There is a third general way in which physical present and cinematically mediated elements can be integrated: one in which the presence of filmic references is not overwhelming and unaltered (as in Shelf Life and BIG episode 2), but adapted to fit into a new but above all specifically theatrical context. ALIBI, a dance theatre performance Meg Stuart created in Zürich with her company Damaged Goods, can be seen as a perfect example of this procedure. ALIBI is a grim analysis of several issues in contemporary society, such as egoism and loneliness in a capitalistic system living on urges for brief satisfaction, revenge, and control over one's body. The often violent scenes all take place in a huge, desolate set which reminds of a bunker, a prison, a cheap hotel, a dismantled sports hall. It is only on a second level, however, that most of the scenes - not too long, rather separate fragments with each time its own leading character(s) - turn out to be possible variants on mass TV programs. There is a tele-shopping program (only it doesn't sell fitness strips or water beds, but a young, totally manipulable woman), a quiz (on life and death), a sports show in which the hooligans turn out to be in the arena, etcetera. More obvious is an interpretation which merely observes the theatrical, very typical context of the scenes, but after a while you can't deny the references to, and complaints against, popular screen culture. In any case, even though ALIBI makes use of filmed images (life or recorded), projections and television sets, this filmic language is consequently adjusted to fit into Stuarts dismal, conceptual but above all theatrical and physical world of uncontrolled bodies and minds. [1] As used in Ian Reid, Narrative Exchanges, London, Routledge, 1992 (pp. 44-57) |
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