Consciousness, Literature and the Arts
Archive
Volume 10 Number 2, August 2009
___________________________________________________________________
Nicholas Ridout, Stage Fright, Animals, and Other Theatrical Problems (Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006)
by
Bilkent University, Turkey
For my encounter with Nicolas Ridout’s book I am indebted to an unknown reviewer of my manuscript on fear through space (forthcoming), who suggested it as a reading, relevant in that it discusses a range of significant phenomena which accompany performance and entail anxiety with evocative theatrical detail. To trace the position from which I now set out this book review, I should state, that though not a ‘proper’ theatre person, I am deeply engaged with the problematic of theatre. I participate in the ‘Performance and consciousness’ working group to the IFTR since 2006 as an architect, whose academic interest is with the permanent potential borne by theatre space in reference to the range of functions theatre sustains at the ‘discreet’ level of the corporeal. [More specifically, I examine space-body relationships and experience in the context of performance in terms of the spatial logic underlying the principal theatre forms, its generic properties (such as exposure) articulated through distinct spatial mechanisms, and in view of clusters of ‘micro’ phenomena (structuring instances, processes, states, practices). These present aspects of consciousness, which generate in immediate engagement, proceed through the body as affective conditions, and register as productive modes of being – subtle, but legitimate components of the performative process.] To me Ridout’s book proved most informing and valuable not only regarding the particular ‘fear’ concerns of that article, but also for the perspective from which I deliberate theatre -- confirming the relevance of inquiry into seemingly secondary incidents, into the corporeal aspects of experience of theatre and the performer-audience encounter, as well as of anxiety, to the understanding of theatre and theatrical practices.
In more general terms, Ridout’s book is an insightful and inspiring text on theatre, and beyond, and hence is apt to address a broad readership along with the ‘theatre people’, practitioners and theoreticians alike. It evolves as an intricate and intense interweaving of several contexts: spanning the physical and the mental while critically engaging not only with the explicitly theatrical, but also with key texts on the problematic of our modern humanity -- features which render this book profound, and interesting regarding consciousness, consciousness studies, and modernity in general.
Ridout presents a rigorous theorization the theatrical apparatus as such. His starting point lies with a range of ‘problems’ associated with theatrical production, which are expressive of the ‘confusion’ and/or ‘conflation’ of feelings of attraction and repulsion, of compulsion and disappointment, with which modern theatre is approached and experienced as art form, and as institution. He sees this persistent distrust of both professionals and the public, to lie in the anxiety over mimesis, as well as in the excessive means of mediation and artificiality inherent to theatre. Drawing theatre criticism and philosophical thought around the concept of ‘theatricality’, Ridout scrutinizes such ‘problems’ in the context of theatre in modernity. Yet his aim is not to solve these problems. Rather, analyzing a range of otherwise rarely deliberated ‘failures’ as symptoms of such problems, he gradually builds up a compelling argument: it is precisely such ‘anomalies’ – i.e. those that disrupt the accustomed course of the performance event -- which both ‘undermine’ and ‘underpin’ the functioning of theatre as a mode of ethical and political communication (33). They are ‘vital’ to the theatrical encounter (14), and come forth as its most ‘theatrical’, and essential moments, the more disturbing -- the more constructive their affects.
Ridout’s argument is not only convincing, but also has a particular edge. It exceeds psychological and psychoanalytical interpretations customarily employed in theatre theory, by projecting the specificity of the theatrical situation onto the broader context of philosophical and sociological thought on subjectivity and modernity, giving special emphasis on Kleist and his influence on theatre theory and criticism (‘Über das Marionetten Theater’), and, on a broader plane, on Levinas’ conception of encounter (Totality and Infinity. An Essay on Exteriority).
Ridout approaches the corporeality of the theatrical situation in terms that cohere with Merleau-Ponty’s ‘embodied’ phenomenology, seeking understanding of a range of significant theatre phenomena as they generate through actual bodies in the course of performance, and, via affects, register in consciousness as ‘psychological events’. Yet he particularizes the contents of the conscious awareness that is attained thereby not only on the level of tangible occurrences associated with the performer-audience encounter and set within the problematic of the event, but also in connection to the broader social, economical and political factors of contemporary life, such as the pervasive division of work and leisure and consumerism, and their import for theatre. He investigates these as affects -- conditions of discomfort intrinsic to the experience of theatre, emphasizing especially those social, economic and political powers pertinent to capitalist growth, which shape the urban condition, and respectively urban mentality, as well as contemporary theatre. And it is, again, with regard to consciousness, that theatre, in generating such affects through the explicitly physical, offers a powerful tool to ‘bring to light’ certain rather concealed aspects of modern mentality, to stimulate a ‘becoming conscious’ of how our attitudes would be actually shaped in the socio-economic political circumstances of modernity.
Ridout reveals manifold levels on which such ‘theatrical’ potential could and/or is being actualized. His argument focuses on a range of anxieties that accompany theatrical production -- over the ‘body’, performance, perfection, representation – involving ample detail and reference not only to selected play-texts, but also to particular performances. This allows him to acknowledge the interpretative effort lying behind distinct techniques of staging and directorship, as well as the intellectual, emotional, and physical labor of the cast and/or company. While such anxieties are identified as ‘modern’ phenomena, characterizing the contemporary theatre situation through practices and attitudes determined by socio-economic circumstances, they tend to remain latent in the normal course of the performative event. It is thus, paradoxically, those awkward moments of slippage during a play when performance goes ‘wrong’ to breach codes and conventions, that present the utmost potential of theatre. At such instances, Ridout insists, these anxieties surface most powerfully, and, hence, can be openly confronted: the ‘discomforts’ pertinent to the practice of the performer in the phenomenon of ‘stage fright’, and the particular kinds of emotions in ‘embarrassment’ and ‘shame’ -- with regard to the audience. These moments, thus, register: not simply as an outcome of discursive operations and intellectual recognition of the closure of representation, but also, or rather foremost, because they are experienced as affects -- feelings that issue from within the very operation of theatre-as-event. They present theatre’s most authentic gift -- its ‘affective surplus’.
Following an introduction, which concisely outlines the major arguments, the book is structured in four parts, each focusing on a distinct ‘problematic’ aspect of theatre, building up a perspective on apparently ‘marginal’ events or ‘failures’ as ‘predicaments’:
part 1. Stage-fright: the predicament of the actor
part 2. Embarrassment: the predicament of the audience
part 3. The animal on stage
part 4. Mutual predicaments: corpsing, fiasco.
In Part 1. ‘Stage-fright: the predicament of the actor’ (pp. 35-69), Ridout depicts an explanatory framework, shedding light on various aspects of the anxiety integral to the profession of the actor. Exceeding interpretations that focus solely on the performative act, where this phenomenon is fore-grounded by the psychic strain over the role that the actor assumes, Ridout shows how effects of the theatre industry characterized by tough competitiveness, and socio-cultural conditions blurring distinctions amongst realms of existence, alters the context of professional practice. These render a professional consistent not with the bourgeois idea of an ‘artist’, but rather with that of a ‘worker’ (skill, repetitive work, wage), who is, furthermore, deprived of reciprocity in his relation with the consumer. The actor’s condition is discussed regarding diverse theatrical practices, juxtaposed with various phenomena that shape modern mentality and prepare a new situation for the profession. Thus indifference and alienation, necessary for the conduct of modern urban life, take a paradoxical twist as the actor is also obliged to study and empathize with others for the purpose of preparing for a role. More particularly theatrical impact is produced by the modern ideas on the unconscious, psychoanalysis becoming a technology of self-production: the actor is to ‘spontaneously’ reveal ‘subjects in process’ -- produced in the processes of representation. In this, exploiting in public one’s private psyche to ‘move’ entertainment consumers has become an expected, and frequently implemented practice. Especially in the conventions of naturalism, the actor becomes involved in representing the psychic fragmentation of modernity, while further complexities arise due to the resistance to theatre and theatricality as a value, where the performer is to enact ‘modern’ tensions between ‘realness’ and ‘theatricality’.
Part 2. ‘Embarrassment: the predicament of the audience’ (70-95), focuses on the experience of the theatrical situation and encounter form the angle of the audience. Discussing the status of direct address in different theatrical conventions, and exploring its effects especially in modernity, where claims to complicity with audience are based on a disjunction between actor and role, Ridout demonstrates how ‘embarrassment’ and ‘shame’ derive from the experience of face-to-face contact between actor and audience in an unexpected reciprocity of the actor’s gaze, and are enhanced by the ambiguities as to the nature of this contact. The parameters of these emotions are discussed in depth, drawing on various psychological and sociological frameworks, revealing how embarrassment -- arising from conditions of impeded action, perplexed thought, or confused behavior -- seeks to block out shame, which, being a painful emotion, derives from a consciousness of something dishonoring or ridiculous in one’s own conduct or circumstances. Yet Ridout, referring to Agamben among others, arrives at a ‘politics of shame’ as the fundamental sentiment of being a subject: both subjected and sovereign, where shame expresses both self-loss and self-possession. Coming forth as a physiological event, a bodily intuition of a political condition, a ‘bodily flush’ that is a self-witnessing, shame supports the insight that self-disclosure is essential to the self-recognition we enjoy, the ‘price’ of the moments embedded in the theatrical situation. This is accompanied by another recognition: that such moments of ‘mutual befuddlement’ are also of equal significance – as pleasure to be had from a compromised, fleeting, flesh and blood mutuality. It is such insights that ground Ridout’s critical engagement with Levinas’ ‘apolitical’ theory of encounter, to argue that along with the enjoyment and nourishment, which in Levinas’ thought constitute the ultimate event of being itself, there are difficulties and discomforts, some of which are revealed in the context of the theatrical encounter. Hence understanding of the complexities of the theatrical situation in modernity could be brought to bear on and inform theories of encounter with accounts of social and political detail.
In Part 3. ‘The animal on stage’ (96-128) Ridout takes up the issue of extreme ‘otherness’, that forces attention on the histories and politics of labor and exploitation with respect to the encounter. Used to address issues beyond their understanding, animals and children evoke the sense of ‘wrongness’ -- undermining the certainty in distinguishing ‘sign’ from ‘being’, but also putting into question the issue of ‘understanding’ that characterizes much of recent ethical philosophy. For the animal on stage, discussed by Ridout as ‘animal politics’, is apt to bring into view those historical moments of establishing dominion by means of division (human/animal, male/female), which Western theatre has attempted to conceal by keeping the animal off stage. Its origins are, Ridout argues, established in the institution of division of labor by an act of human will, which are also the acts of dominion in a violent history of superiority: the separation in language, the assumption of authorship (the tragic playwright) that marks the invention of intellectual labor as opposed to manual labor. In this the animal protagonist allows illuminating the reality of theatrical employment as involving a particular form of exploitation, especially because the exploitation of animal labor retains the power to affect.
In Part 4. ‘Mutual predicaments: corpsing and fiasco’ (129-160) Ridout interprets the persistence of intense pleasure in the events of theatre ‘undoing’ itself. Such moments generate ‘affecting surplus’ which does not belong to the order of representation, but to the pleasure of seeing through the illusion. He theorizes the ‘anomalous’ laughter as libidinal pleasure – special moments which are worth being specially designed for (‘Forced entertainment’ company). Taking laughter at these accidental moments as basis for a physiological or phenomenological project, he juxtaposes this project to theorizations of laughter -- which turn out addressing its causes (investigation of the comic, the humorous, or the funny), as well as to ‘carnival laughter’ -- that is at its proper time and place and opposes political power to signal the coming of community. Instead, signifying a rupture in representation – ‘corpsing’ being a genuine confusion between sign and thing, ‘fiasco’ being a ‘minor’ theatre, on the principle of auto-disintegration – this laughter arises in a struggle between the trivial and he serious, the dramatic and the merely theatrical; it is amoral, a-political, and it actualizes as a choked ‘leakage of the body’ in the smirk, or snigger that swallow themselves. It signals the abandoning of volition to the body – the mind being more witness to the struggle between powerful impulses, than it is referee or participant – abandoning of the self-consciousness as agent of discipline and control. It allows a mutual enjoyment that feeds, rather, on traces remnant from the Dionysian de-individualizing force – always in the undoing. Such collapse into helpless laughter for Ridout reveals not an unproblematic community, but a striking encounter with the other and the self, where enjoyment becomes the self-conscious and intentional enjoyment of one’s own enjoyment, including that of discomfort – a point from where an ethics and politics of face-to-face might be elaborated.
Theatre, Ridout concludes, that conceives itself as an apparatus for the production of affect by means of representation, brings about its most powerful affects at those moments when the ‘machinery’ appears to break down, while pleasure is derived from perceiving, thus, the operations of the machinery itself, rather than from whatever it is producing.