what is theatre
Theatre is especially distinguished by the “materiality of communication”. Theatre does not produce a tangible produced object. The oeuvre is the action on stage.. The constrains of time and positioning of the public are determined by the choice of the artists and above all by the the place of performance. The spectator is in a collective situation, generally seated and immobile and in darkness.
The esthetic act (the performing) as well as the act of perception (the theatre going) take place as a real doing in the here and now. Theatre means collectively spent time and shared space in which the performing and the spectating take place whereby the emission and reception of signs and signals take place simultaneously. The performance turns the behavior onstage and in the auditorium into a joint text a text even if there is no spoken dialogue on stage or between actors and audience. The situation forms a whole made up of evident and hidden communicative process wherefore the adequate description of theatre is bound to the reading of this total text.
Norms of theatre have been modified over the ages. For centuries a paradigm has dominated European theatre that distinguishes it from non-European theatre traditions. Theatre in Europe amounted to the “making present” (Vergegenwärtigung) on stage through mimetic dramatic play. The term “dramatic theatre” can be used to characterize the core of European theatre traditions in modern times whereby a certain conglomeration of motifs is inherent. In the theatre of modern times, the staging largely consisted of the declamation and illustration of written drama.. The “text” in the sense of at least the imagination of a comprehensible narrative and/or mental totality was determining. Dramatic theatre was the formation of illusion and wanted to construct a fictive cosmos on stage..
The principles of narration and figuration and the order of a story are disappearing in the contemporary no longer dramatic "theatre text".
A concept that may illuminate what is happening here is Elfriede Jelinek’s idea of juxtaposed “language surfaces” (Sprachflächen) in place of dialogue. This form is directed against the "speaking figures", which would suggest a mimetic illusion. The metaphor of language surfaces corresponds to the turning point of painting in modernity when instead of the illusion of three-dimensional space, what is being staged is the pictures plane-ness, its 2-dimensinional reality, and the reality of colors as an autonomous quality.
Parameters
Live
Event
Product of preparation and rehearsal
Representation/ Showing doing
Fleeting – only grab able in the here and now
Experience - Joint text between performer and spectator
Embodiment –presence, processes, relations and happenings
Three-dimensional
Back to Research