Theatricality

Abstract

The objective of this article is to envisage the body in relation to the notion of theatricality, understood as the moment of tension or drama between the spectator and the performed representation. To perceive the body within the context of a dramatic structure of theatricality means to challenge prevailing theories that eliminate the moment of drama between the spectator and the performance. To justify this, I take Erika Fischer-Lichte's theory of the body as a point of departure. I will acknowledge that ‘[t]he physical articulations which are seen, heard, smelled, or sensed by other spectators or actors … generate perceptible behaviour patterns and actions’ (2008: 153). However, I will criticize the possibility of conceptualizing the perceptible in terms of the 'sheer presence of the body or materiality' that Fischer-Lichte's theory proposes by introducing the notion of oscillation. A critical view on oscillation is the return of drama in performance studies. Once every performance is conceived in relation to drama, we have to recognize that the body is discursively constructed through the performative practice of representing and, consequently, that it provides a dramatic moment of theatricality in relation to the spectator. As such, the performing body mobilizes the spectator to envisage different realities and contest dominant politics.

Notes

1 Performative event in Fischer-Lichte’s theory corresponds to the anthropological view on ritual as a performative event a la Richard Schechner. See Schechner (2003: 52:88).

2 In Fischer-Lichte’s theory, the meaning is associative, not an interpretation; it emerges without intention; and it is linguistically inexplicable and unmotivated. Meanings appear as memories or new meanings; they are not based on inter-subjectivity. See Fischer-Lichte (2008: 143).

3 The meaning of expressivity in Bondi and La Mantia implies the other, a sort of exteriority, such as language, practices and institutions. ‘This view informs my understanding of expressivity that, as such, differs from the meaning of expressivity proposed by performance scholar Bojana Cvejić, who connects it to Spinoza’s notion of adequation, which implies the thing in-itself, without relational aspect. See Cvejić (2015).

4 On the notion of ‘collective wills’ see Gramsci (2007: 164).

5 I have distinguished complying from contesting artistic forces in Petrović Lotina (2017).

6 I understand agonism in Chantal Mouffe’s terms as ‘adversarial agonism’. See Mouffe (2005a, 2005b).

7 On dramatism see Burke (1969).