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Vectors of Participation in Contemporary Theatre and Performance

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 September 2012

SRUTI BALA
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Abstract

This article explores the notion of participation in contemporary theatre and performance on two levels, namely how participation is shaped within performance, and how performance participates in the public sphere. Using recent examples from Sudan, Russia and Lebanon/Netherlands, I investigate how the political premises underlying the call for participation are reimagined aesthetically, and, conversely, how artistic strategies of shaping audience participation render visible the failures and possibilities of people's participation in the public sphere. The connection between these two dimensions of participation is made by engaging the concepts of ‘representation’, ‘collectivity’ and ‘theatricality’, which I call ‘vectors of participation’. I discuss how the artistic representation of an idea is complementary to political representation, how the demand for collective participation in the public sphere transforms into collective creation in the artistic sphere, and how theatricality in spectatorship is linked to the political call to bear witness.

Type
Articles
Information
Theatre Research International , Volume 37 , Issue 3 , October 2012 , pp. 236 - 248
Copyright
Copyright © International Federation for Theatre Research 2012

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References

NOTES

1 A rights-based view is argued in Benhabib, Seyla, Shapiro, Ian and Petranovic, Danilo, eds., Identities, Affiliations, and Allegiances (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. An identity-based argument is presented in Delanty, Gerard, Community (London: Routledge, 2010)Google Scholar.

2 The theorization of participation in terms of means and ends frequently appears in disciplines such as development studies. See Mohan, Giles and Stokke, Kristian, ‘Participatory Development and Empowerment: The Dangers of Localism’, Third World Quarterly, 21, 2 (2000), pp. 247–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Two recent issues of the journal Performance Research, ‘Participation and Synchronization’, 16, 3 (2011), ed. Kai van Eikels and Bettina Brandl-Risi, and ‘On Participation’, 16, 4, (2011), ed. Laura Cull and Caroline Gritzner, discuss this disciplinary divide to some extent, focusing on participation with reference to synchronization and philosophy, respectively.

4 Jackson, Shannon, Social Works: Performing Art, Supporting Publics (London: Routledge, 2011)Google Scholar; Bishop, Claire, ed., Participation (London: Whitechapel, 2006)Google Scholar are two of the recent texts that specifically invoke the concept of participation with reference to what is termed a ‘social turn’ in the arts.

5 Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty, ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’, in Nelson, Cary and Grossberg, Lawrence, eds., Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1988), pp. 271–313CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 “Sie können sich nicht vertreten, sie müssen vertreten werden.” Marx, Karl, ‘Der achtzehnte Brumaire des Louis Bonaparte (1852)’, in Marx, Karl and Engels, Friedrich, eds., Werke 8 (Berlin: Karl Dietz Verlag, 1960), p. 198Google Scholar.

7 Spivak, ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’, p. 277.

8 This information was provided to me by Mieke Kolk, one of the curators of the festival, and jury member at the Al-Bugaa Theatre Festival, where the play was originally awarded a prize. See also curatorial introduction on www.artsafrica.org/othersudan/index.html, last accessed 1 May 2012.

9 The episode is based on the Christian allegory The Seven Sleepers of Ephesus. See Tottoli, Roberto, ‘Men of the Cave’, in McAuliffe, Jane Dammen, ed., Encyclopaedia of the Qur’ān (Georgetown: Brill, 2011), p. 374Google Scholar.

10 Marjolijn van Heemstra. ‘Sudanese Theatre on Violence and Responsibility: An Interview with Theatre Director Walid Al Alphy’, October 2009, http://krachtvancultuur.nl/en/current/2009/october/people-cave, last accessed 1 May 2012.

11 Elzain, Intisar S., ‘Archaeology in Performance: The Retrieval of Rituals’, in Kolk, Mieke, ed., Rituals and Ceremonies in Sudan: From Cultural Heritage to Theatre, Khartoum International Conference Proceedings, Intercultural Theatre: East Meets West Series, No 3 (Amsterdam: Institute for Theatre Studies, 2006), pp. 48–53Google Scholar.

12 Agamben, Giorgio, The Coming Community (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993), p. 50Google Scholar.

13 The phrase ‘Chto Delat?’ is borrowed from the title of a 1902 text by Lenin, Vladimir, What Is to Be Done? Burning Questions of Our Movement (New York: International Publishers, 1969)Google Scholar, itself a reference to a novel by the same name by Nikolay Chernishevsky from 1862, widely read as part of the school curriculum in Russia. See Vilensky, Dmitry and Raunig, Gerald, ‘An Issue of Organisation: Chto Delat?’, Afterall, 19 (Autumn–Winter 2008),Google Scholarwww.afterall.org/journal/issue.19/issue.organisation.chto.delat, last accessed 1 May 2012.

14 The terminology for this type of work is admittedly still evolving, while its experimental thrust makes it hard to describe generically. I have, therefore, borrowed the term video-film from dance studies.

15 Ilić, Nataša, ‘On Chto Delat's Songspiels’, Transversal, 3 (2011)Google Scholar, special issue: Art/Knowledge: Overlaps and Neighboring Zones, http://eipcp.net/transversal/0311/ilic/en, last accessed 1 May 2012.

16 Chto Delat?, The Tower: A Songspiel, 2010, http://vimeo.com/12130035, last accessed 1 May 2012.

17 See http://vimeo.com/12130035, 00.00–02.32 min., last accessed 1 May 2012.

18 This was highlighted in the curatorial statement by Sheikh, Simon, ‘Vectors of the Possible’, in BAK (Basis voor actuele kunst) Utrecht, ed., Press Release, Utrecht, 2010Google Scholar.

19 There are in Chto Delat's work several cross-references to the historical legacy of the Russian avant-garde. The stage setting and sequence of scenes is reminiscent of Sergei Eisenstein's 1925 film Strike; the emphasis on the work ethic amongst the people is a reference to the socialist hero Alexey Stakhanov. See their newspaper Chto Delat?, ‘Debates on the Avant-Garde’, 17 (August 2007), www.chtodelat.org/images/pdfs/17_vanguard.pdf, last accessed 1 May 2012.

20 The Brechtian concept of gestus is best translated as a combination of gist and gesture, a single compact physical act that encompasses a social attitude and position.

21 Chto Delat?, special issue, ‘Make Film Politically: Contemporary Film-Making and the Soviet Avant-Garde’ (September 2007), www.chtodelat.org/images/pdfs/si_makefilm.pdf, last accessed 1 May 2012.

22 See artistic statement at http://chtodelat.org, last accessed 1 May 2012.

23 See Chubarov, Igor, ‘Productionism: Art of the Revolution or Design for the Proletariat?’ in Chto Delat?, 1–25 (March 2009)Google Scholar, www.chtodelat.org/images/pdfs/25_use-value.pdf, p. 5, last accessed 1 May 2012.

24 Cvejić, Bojana, ‘Collectivity? You mean collaboration,’ Republicart, 1 (2005)Google Scholar, www.republicart.net/disc/aap/cvejic01_en.htm, last accessed 1 May 2012.

25 Amit, Vered and Rapport, Nigel, eds., The Trouble with Community: Anthropological Reflections on Movement, Identity and Collectivity (London: Pluto, 2002)Google Scholar.

26 A detailed description of the set-up of the performance/reading is provided at http://linaissa.blogspot.com/p/description-of-projects.html, last accessed 1 May 2012.

27 This particular use of the term is discussed in Burns, Elizabeth, Theatricality: A Study of Convention in the Theatre and in Social Life (London: Longman, 1972), p. 13Google Scholar; and Christopher Balme, ‘Metaphors of Spectacle: Theatricality, Perception and Performative Encounters in the Pacific’, Metaphorik (2001), www.metaphorik.de/aufsaetze/balme-theatricality.htm, last accessed 1 May 2012.

28 This example from an essay by Søren Kierkegaard (The Christian Discourses and The Crisis and a Crisis in the Life of an Actress, ed. V. Howard and E. H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997 [1908]), p. 413) is cited in Davis, Tracy C. and Postlewait, Thomas, eds., Theatricality and Civil Society Theatricality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 129–30Google Scholar.

29 In a study on the ‘participation of gazes’ in contemporary performance, Adam Czirak argues that spectatorship is a multisensorial act that is vital to human communication. See Czirak, Adam, Partizipation der Blicke: Szenerien des Sehens und Gesehenwerdens in Theater und Performance (Bielefeld: transcript, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

30 This new politics of looking is one of the central points of critique offered by Rancière, Jacques in his essay The Emancipated Spectator, trans. Elliott, Gregory (London: Verso Books, 2011), pp. 1–24Google Scholar.