Aberystwyth Bound!

Relaxing with friends in Aberystwyth

I have begun my new job as research assistant to the head of the Theatre, Film and Television Studies department at the University of Aberystwyth. The department has a massive student population and what appears to be a very active research culture focused around the CPR (Centre for Performance Research), which is like a state of the art bond villain style command centre for performance research. The centre has a staggering collection of material, especially Kantorian - which is nice. The post is part of a studentship within the department where I will be teaching undergraduate students as well as starting my practice based PhD. The rapid move from MA to PhD has proven very beneficial as I feel as if my MA research can just continue in the same direction. For the first few months I will be reading around the areas outlined in my proposal to try and define the focus of the theory and continue preparations for The Galapagos Man’s trip to the National Review of Live Art in February. I have put my current PhD proposal below:

Performing the Object/Avoiding the Subject: The Object as Postdramatic Gesture.

The question of an OBJECT
An object in theatre is almost always a prop.
There is something offensive in this name for the OBJECT.
A HUMAN and an OBJECT. Two extreme poles.
Almost enemies. If not enemies, they are strangers.
A human desires to know the object, “touch” it,
appropriate it.
There must be a very close, almost biological symbiosis between an
actor and an object.
They cannot be separated.

Tadeusz Kantor, from The Eighth Insegnamento (1988), 1993:240.



Hans-Thies Lehmann’s Postdramatic Theatre (1999) seeks to define a language that articulates the relationship between conventional dramatic models and the ‘no longer dramatic’ forms of avant-garde theatre that have emerged since the 1970s. Lehmann’s study considers these forms by analysing aspects of their central aesthetics, aspects of space, time, body and text. Significantly he only suggests at the role of the object. The utilisation of the object as part of postdramatic aesthetics is introduced only through a wider investigation of the theatre of Taduez Kantor. This is perhaps due to Lehmann’s primary focus on the mediatised image, framing his reading of postdramatic aesthetics through the emergence of media within performance and how contemporary postdramatic theatre has become characterised by it.

Taking Lehmann’s study as a point of departure this PhD seeks to attend to the notion of how the object, outside of virtual manipulation, has the potential of being used as part of a postdramatic form. It will consider how an object might be performed as a postdramatic gesture through its materiality and how it is appropriated within the theatre. It will therefore frame the object as a visceral and tactile ‘thing’ that is physically and not virtually present in performance.

Mapping the territory: Subject/Object relations.

Central to understanding and subsequently defining what makes an object perform or become part of a postdramatic gesture is how it attends on the question (and tensions) of the subject/object relationship within that theatre. The aim is to build an argument towards a theatre of objects, a theatre that defines for itself what objectification is and how it impacts upon how it is performed. Therefore, the theoretical study of the PhD will predominantly focus on how subject/object relationships are defined and played out in postdramatic forms.

Lehmann’s allusion to the object within the theatre of Taduez Kantor will be central to this argument. It will address what Lehmann defines as “Stasis/Ghosts” (2006:58) presence with Kantor’s work, looking in detail at the Metaphysical presence of the object, and the psychological effect of uncanny doubling within his theatre.

Kantor’s theatre of objects seeks to redefine the subject-object relationship. Through redefining the sacred, Kantor’s theatre shifts towards how an objective transcendental presence (represented through the objects) becomes integrated with the subjective presence of the actors and Kantor himself. It can be argued that this form side step’s the subjective principles of modernity and moves towards a postmodern notion of what Guignon defines as “de-centring the subject” (2005:107) where there exists a “rethinking [of] humans as polycentric, fluid, contextual subjectivities, selves with limited powers of autonomous choice” (2005:107).

Therefore Kantor’s work will be framed within the historical and critical contexts of how the thinking around the subject/object relationship in performance has reached this position. The areas that concern this contextualising are:

- Premodern worldview of the object: The sacred object, the use of the object in rituals and early performance (ceremonial use of the object).

- The sovereignty of the subject in modernity. Modernist initiatives into reframing the theatrical object: Edward Gordon Craig, Theatre of the Bauhaus.

- Postmodern attitudes towards the subject, specifically anti-humanist discourses: the challenge of subjectivity.


The theatre of objects is therefore not just a theatre that contains objects or a theatre that objectifies its participants. A theatre of objects interrogates the very notion of the human subject through its form rather than its content. It is a theatre that operates beyond the conventional models of performance, models that only seek to confirm existing notions of how the subject-object relationships work. It is through the puppet and performing object, theatrical forms that speak uniquely to these questions, that a theatre of objects can exist and thrive. If such forms have a future we must look to ways of reinventing them, like Kantor. Only then can such forms attend to the issues of an increasingly fragmented and paradoxical cultural landscape in which theatre operates.

All aspects of theory will revolve around how appropriate they are to postdramatic theory. Therefore strands of these contexts can be drawn out and expanded upon and will form the basis for practical experimentation. These contexts need to be more clearly focused but this can only be achieved when further work has been done around each area.


Methodology

Once the theoretical contexts are more clearly focused, strands will be drawn out to explore practically.

The decision to challenge the virtual by arguing towards the utilisation of the visceral, sensory, and metaphysical dimension of the object has been driven by my own practice and experimentation as the director of a theatre company. Therefore the PhD will be practice lead, practically exploring how objects might be framed, manipulated, and integrated with performers and spaces to attend to the questions posed by the theoretical study. I will continue to take the role of director, leading a series of projects with performers, puppeteers, and designers, conducting workshops and devised performances that play out the concerns of the research. I have already formed established relationships within my company with a number of practitioners and artists and I will also be seeking to forge new relationships with undergraduate and postgraduate students who have appropriate research interests. These projects will be devised to address specific aspects of my research questions and adapted to the resources and situation of the department in which it is undertaken. Due to the nature of the research, the practice is concerned with using simple technology, reframing forms such as conventional puppetry and the use of domestic and found objects. The workshops and performances will then be documented appropriately (Journals, seminars, DVDs etc) and presented in support of a written thesis.


References

Guignon, Charles, On Being Authentic. London: Routledge, 2004.

Kantor, Tadeusz, A Journey Through Other Spaces. Essays and Manifestos 1944-1990. Edited and translated by Michael Kobialka. London: University of California Press, 1993.

Lehmann, Hans-Thies, Postdramatic Theatre. London: Routledge, 2006.