towards a new concept of signification
 |
9303-SIG
Extending the Significative Potential
of Music in the Theatre:
towards a new concept of signification
by Zachar Laskewicz
Thesis Supervisor: Doctor David Moody
This thesis is presented as partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Honours degree of Bachelor of Arts in Theatre and Drama Studies at Murdoch University, September 1993.
Declaration by candidate: This thesis represents my own account of research and contains work which has not previously been submitted for a degree at any university.
Extending the Significative Potential
of Music in the Theatre:
towards a new concept of signification
by Zachar Laskewicz
Abstract
This thesis concerns, in short, a rejection of the traditional adoption of language in Western theatre, and through this the creation of the model for a new theatre based on contrasting attitudes to language use and function. Musical experience, as defined by non-Western cultural groups, will play a very important role in this new form. The first chapter entitled " Definitions - the role of performance in culture" begins by attempting to define 'musical' communication. The Western based definition of music as essentially sound-based and 'abstract' experience is one which differs from other cultures who see music as a more complete synthesis of sound movement and action. The restricting labels cast on musical experience in Western culture are extended into our definition of 'art' which sets a small and elite group away from the rest of society, resulting in individual artistic expression that presents a personal and 'inner' picture of an individual rather than communicating on a wide range scale with everyone. These definitions result in restricting labels such as 'dancer' and 'actor' which simply do not exist in other cultural groups, where the 'artistic' experience (involving any number of performance based or graphic representation forms) has significance for all the participants and observers. This significative role of performance in culture becomes more clearly defined through the factors of culture which give that entity expression: language.
Language is defined as a large scale multifaceted meaning bearing structure that acts to interface man between himself and a perception of his surroundings (both physical and temporal), and through this definition human 'culture' is defined itself as a 'language'. In other words, the wide array of differing 'language' systems that work together to provide meaning to a given society could also be defined as the 'culture' of that group. Forms of 'artistic' representation/expression also fall into this definition of language/culture, and human ritual behaviour, involving a synthesis of these systems into particularly complicated and often ambiguous meaning-bearing structures, plays an important role in communicating essentially 'uncommunicatable' information. Music is revealed as a particularly important element of ritual or 'mythical' communication that transmits information that cannot be transmitted through other modes of social interaction. Theatre, originating in such ritual traditions, can also be defined as a complex meaning-bearing vehicle which can have direct significance to the cultural group involved, having the possibility of involving a wide range of communication systems simultaneously. The origin of our theatre is steeped in similar ritual traditions, although through the passing of time and the gradual rejection of a reliance on 'primitive' ritual impulses we have inherited a theatre tradition, sitting clearly apart from a musical tradition, that can to a large extent no longer help to give structure and meaning to the unexplainable. The function of this paper, therefore, is to suggest a new form for a performance system, one where a musical discourse plays an important significative role, helping to structure a complex meaning-bearing vehicle involving simultaneously the adoption of other communicative systems.
The second chapter entitled " Demonstrations - extending communication possibilities" involves a more detailed discussion of performance forms in different cultures and the alternative conceptions of musical and theatrical experience that are presented, contrasting particularly with traditional Western thought. Firstly a concept of performance is presented where 'imitation' of everyday life (inherent in Western theatre) is largely non-existent, but where a new 'performance language' is created that involves the combination of different elements (words, actions, gestures and sounds) to provide a more complete aesthetic experience that communicates further than a theatre based simply on the expression of a 'dramatic' text. These performance forms can be related directly to ritual traditions that act to communicate to all the involved parties (both observers and performers) in a uniting cultural experience. This experience unique to performance is extended into an alternative definition of 'meaning', through contrasting definitions of what can be defined as a 'meaningful' and what is 'meaningless' or nonsense. Performance systems are presented in which a discourse is adopted made up 'language' elements of that have no definable 'meaning' as Western logocentricism would posit. These performance systems, growing directly from ritual traditions and often used still in a ritual function, act to assist in defining the undefinable, and would certainly not be considered by the participants as 'meaningless'. Theoretical and practical examples are presented from Indian, Chinese, and Balinese performances (to name a few).
In Western theatre one type of reality is represented based on a logical and coherent perception of reality, expressed though the use of dramatic texts that mostly involve verbal interaction between distinctly human entities. Music plays in our theatre an especially subordinate role, acting merely to support the dramatic text and this logical coherence. The third chapter is an analysis of a new music-theatre composition entitled Het Loket , bringing into question the conservatism of the Western dramatic text by presenting contrasting conceptions of communication in the theatre in order to assist the subversive function of the composition itself. The last chapter is an analysis of another music-theatre composition adopting a new theatre model based on the direct adoption of musical structures into a meaning-bearing performance entity, one that provides 'meaning' but in a way contrasting to how 'meaning' is defined in Western culture. In the composition Zaum , adopting essential 'meaningless' texts from the Russian futurists, a journey is taken though many different expressions of a 'meaningless' language in a theatrical discourse - and the conclusion is that a musical discourse has the possibility of bringing a level of experience that goes beyond 'meaning' as defined in Western society, a unique experience that is at once meaningful but indescribable through the use of verbal language. As demonstrated through the Zaum composition, through a fragmentation and rethinking of already existing language systems, complex new meaning bearing theatre compositions can be created where the significative systems involved work together to create new 'meaning' within the structure of the composition itself.
THE
SIGNIFICATIVE
POTENTIAL
OF MUSIC
IN THE
THEATRE:
towards a new concept
of signification
dissertation
by
Zachār
Laskewicz
The Significative
Potential
LANGUAGE
TEXT
MUSIC
THEATRE
of Music in the
Theatre
Zachar Laskewicz
Chapter 1.
"We are discovering that stage
space need not be spatial but that sound can be a stage and music can be a
dramatic event and scenery can be text.[1] "
- Jindrich Honzl
In order to demonstrate the
scope of this paper, it is first important to pose a number of questions
relating to the areas that will be explored:
What is theatre?
Can theatre communicate?
What is text?
Is text language?
Can text communicate?
Does theatre have to
communicate through text?
What is music?
Is music a language?
Is music text?
Can we communicate through
music?
Can we discover this
communicative form in the theatre?
Is music theatre?
The questions are broad and
perhaps unanswerable, certainly now in the beginning of our explorations. The intention here, however, is to
demonstrate the breadth of field that one must undertake in order to be able to
consider these entities side-by-side, as forces that have the possibility of
communicating through one another. My
intention in this paper is to find points of connection between between text,
music and theatre; more particularly to explore the significative potential of
'music' in the theatre, and these questions have been asked merely to set the
stage for the sort of areas I will be discussing. By examining various attitudes to these terms
that have existed through history, I will demonstrate contrasting ways in which
the terms can be rethought, contrasting particularly with Western logocentric
notions of text and communication, and music as an 'abstract' communicative
form. The ultimate purpose is to create
a new communicative system that involves the use of fundamental points of union
between text, movement and music in the theatre.
It is first important to
determine the relationship between music and language, to determine first if
music can signify, if it has the potential to transfer meaning. To what extent is music a language, what
radically distinguishes it from verbal language? According to Kristeva the similarities
between the two systems are considerable.
Verbal language and music are both realized by utilising the same
receptive organs. They both have writing
systems that indicate their entities and their relations. But while the two signifying systems are
organised according to the principle of the difference of their components
(particularly sound differences), the fundamental function of verbal language is the communicative
function, and while it transmits a meaning, music is a departure from the
principle of communication. It does
transmit a 'message' between a subject and an addressee, but it is hard to say
that it communicates a precise meaning.
In fact, according to Stravinsky music is "powerless to express anything
at all: A feeling, an attitude, a
psychological state, a phenomenon of nature."[2] Discussing the notion of
'musical communication' is certainly problematic, considering the degree to
which it is based on cultural conventions.
In Western culture we define music as an 'abstract' communicative form,
one that knows no form outside itself.
It is my personal contention however that this attitude is unique to
Western formal music based on conventions inherited from the classical
era. In this paper we will hopefully
extend the notion of music considerably by analysing attitudes to music in
other cultures. Before opening the argument into too many arenas, I would like
to point out that according to older (in fact ancient) theoretical attitudes,
music was never meant to be abstract and was used freely in combination with
other mediums as a means of expression and communication. This discussion, particularly collision
between Western and Eastern thought, will form the basis for this paper.
In Western culture, music is
seen as the antithesis of literary forms involving the use of language, and
this certainly includes theatre.
According to Roland Barthes this notion of 'antithesis' is a privileged
figure of our culture, a notion that "regulates our whole morality of
discourse,"[3] being clearly demonstrated by our tendency to
make certain distinctions, 'art' and 'life' being the first in an almost
unending list: 'intelligence' and
'creativity', 'artist' and 'layman', 'music' and 'literature' even 'good' and
'evil'. A clear distinction certainly
exists between notions of 'composition' in music and in the theatre. However, I would like to point out that
creation in the theatre is not nearly so different to musical composition as is
generally considered. According to
Elizabeth Burns, drama is in fact not a mirror of action: "It is a
composition." Dramatists 'compose' words,
gestures and deeds to form a play.[4] Traditional drama, then, is not in fact a
glimpse of real life situations, it is 'composed' behaviour that is set before
an audience according to a set of strictly determined cultural constraints.
This is a strong point of connection between musical and theatrical
communication in Western culture. It is
my contention that the compositional possibilities in the theatre go far beyond
the representation of interaction between recognisable human entities. Antonin Artaud himself was questioning these
notions more than seventy years ago:
When discussing the difficulty of character definition and narration of
logical thought through a language of gestures, postures, dance and music, he
asked, "but whoever said theatre was made to define a character, to resolve
conflicts of a human, emotional order, of a present-day, psychological
nature..."[5]
It is important now to make
some theoretical distinctions about how it is possible to communicate in the
theatre. As we will demonstrate,
communicative possibilities are actually highly open, but depend largely on the
ability of the present audience to understand the conventions involved. A 'convention' is simply a mutual
understanding about the meaning of action, which includes gestures and
speech. Such an agreement is clearly
essential if people are to understand each other's actions, gestures and words,
and certainly extends inescapably into social life. We are however more aware of them in the
theatre because of the presence of "composed behaviour"; it is when we suspect
that behaviour is being composed according to a grammar of rhetorical and
authenticating conventions that we regard it as theatrical.[6] The performance of all forms
of music (whether it is part of a primitive African rite or a tie and tails
classical performance) is also bounded by such conventions. These conventions are preserved and
propagated through social education and culture.
In terms of semiotics,
'theatre' is taken to refer to the complex phenomena associated with the
performer-audience transaction, with the production and communication of
meaning in the performance itself and the systems underlying it.[7] The transmitters of signification become the
bodies and voices of the actors together with their accessories (costumes,
properties, etc.), then elements of the set, electric lamps, musical
instruments, tape recorders, film projectors, and so on. The signals transmitted by these bodies -
movements, sounds, electrical impulses - are selected and arranged
syntactically according to a wide range of signification systems and travel
through any number of the physical channels available for human communication,
from light and sound waves to olfactory and tactile means.[8] Possibilities for the
adoption of different communicative forms in the theatre, as has been
demonstrated, are great.
In any case, an important
distinction that faces the researcher in theatre and drama, particularly
semiotics, is that involved with the textual material: That produced in the
theatre and that composed for the theatre.
They will be from here on in referred to as the 'performance text' and
the 'dramatic text' respectively. The
dramatic text is the form in which dramatic performances are most commonly
communicated in Western society; involving the use of text that is strictly
demarcated to the meaning of the words, and sometimes (prevalent in absurdist
drama) in the difficulty of making oneself understood through language. All other possibilities of performance are
considered beyond the level of the author, and is labelled 'interpretation' by
the directors and actors, who must grapple to interpret a series of strung
together morphemes and present it as a cogent meaningful whole. Performances based on this rather amorphous
interpretation of previously written text is certainly problematic. Artaud was perhaps one of the first
theoreticians of the theatre who was to question the dominance of the dramatic
text: He pointed out that "the power of
words to create their own music according to the way they are pronounced" is
"already a subordinate aspect to the dramatists and one to which he no longer
pays attention in creating his plays."[9] The notion of the performance text, however,
opens theatre up into the world of performances whose genesis grows not from
such an incomplete medium as the dramatic text, but a myriad array of other
forms. This method of analysis has
surfaced a number of times in twentieth century thought, and is now considered
a standard form in performance theory.
For example, Otakar Zich, a writer in the
"For me the
question we are faced with is of allowing theatre to rediscover its true
language, a spatial language, a language of gestures, a language of cries and
onomatopoeia, an acoustic language,
where all the objective elements will end up as either visual or aural signs,
but which have as much intellectual weight and palpable meaning as the language
of words. [...] And we must find a way of marking, like on a
musical stave, with a notation of a new kind everything that will be composed."[11]
It is clear then that the
performance text opens communication into the realm of semiosis and away from
the purely linguistic. Artaud, who
dreamed of recording this performance in a new language "similar to musical
notation" has demonstrated to us directly the possibility for the adoption of
musical communication in the theatre. As
already mentioned, notation is one similarity between music and language, and
this opens the possibility for the exploration of the musical score as a
performance text, where theatrical elements are freely adopted and notated in a
musical form. In the composition of new
music, a composer is free to design his own notation, or at least freer than a
playwright who is restricted in the confines of the dramatic text. This questioning of the musical notation
media has been an important element of my own work: When the composition is exploring a different
element of music as a communicative form, it is exploring also language as
music, and this has resulted in the invention of new types of notation that
fragment the traditions of the strictly culturally determined media,the
intention being to create an entirely new way of writing performance
texts. This has been an important
element in recent music-theatre pieces, and the compositions that have adopted
Indonesian musical forms and instruments requiring an entirely new attitude to
notation because of the contrasting nature of this music.
Unfortunately, because of the
restricted nature of Western conventions, the complete possibilities of the
performance text are not adopted in the theatre. Here every theatrical element has a more or
less immutable place, allowing little scope for variation or violation of the
strictly demarcated divisions. As a
result the performance text is presented as an already produced and bounded
object which the spectator observes, rather than constructs, from his permanent
lookout point.[12] In the case of the theatre, the
communicative forms involved function merely to reinforce the dramatic text; a
gesture or a movement underlies or follows a vocalisation so that the meaning
of the sentence is brought into dramatic life. This is equally, if not more
true, for forms of Western music-theatre, particularly opera where the
'libretto' (the opera text) is realised in a theatrical sense for its meaning
(always some kind of rolling narrative).
What renders opera still more absurd is the distinction that exists
between the 'librettist' and the 'composer'.
The composition of the music is based on certain strict conventions that
result in singing styles that simply cannot be understood and the adoption of
abstract music forms that have mostly no connection with the subject matter.[13]
This is demonstrative of that
Western tendency to make distinctions, resulting in many different artistic
communities who are specialised in one particular skill. As such, we go to a music concert, the
ballet, opera or even an exhibition of painting or sculpture in order to admire
the skill of a particular artist.
According to Eugenio Barba, this tendency in our culture to make these
distinctions "reveals a profound wound, a void with no tradition, which continuously
risks drawing the actor towards a denial of the body and the dancer towards
virtuosity." To an oriental performer, a
distinction for example between dance and theatre seems absurd, as it would
have seemed absurd to European performers in other historical periods, to a
jester or a comedian from the sixteenth century, for example.[14]
To begin our historical
perspective, we can go directly back to the Ancient Greeks, whose philosophical
and scientific writings still play an important role in our societies and
educational systems: We feel that we
have inherited a great deal from their culture.
This is certainly true of the theatre, and studies of the Ancient Greek
dramatic texts and the existing theoretical works plays an important role in
theatrical education. In truth, by
example of our own theatrical traditions, we have no conception of how the
Greeks saw their theatre, and in particular their attitude to music, which is
certainly alien to that prevalent in Western musical culture. In ancient
The fragmented nature of
feudal Medieval Europe supported a
number of different performance traditions in addition to the theatre
that had evolved from the church. Groups
of performing artists travelled from kingdom to kingdom, singing, dancing,
acting; performing theatre, telling stories, and singing songs. Distinction between different performance
genres still certainly did not exist for these performers who were, however,
largely outcasts of society. Even in the
courts of the elite in society, however, it was expected that one would have
the ability to write poetry, set it to music, and then be able to perform it,
as well as being skilled in a number of other arts. These attitudes were most likely influential
for the creation of more distinct theatre forms such as the 'Commedia
dell'Arte', street theatre where the performers sang, danced and recited. The process of making performances was based
on collective devising of the story, the text and movement composition, and
concentrated on the contribution and the particular conventions of each
character, of each mask. However the
essential ingredients were dance and acrobatics, an 'energetic language' of
action and movement. So the actor not
only had to speak, sing and play at least one musical instrument, but also had
to be a dancer and acrobat.[17] These performance forms that
created no distinction between dance, circus and acting, forms where texts were
freely declaimed musically or through pantomime, were totally standard. This was not to last, as will be demonstrated
in the remaining part of this paper.
The Catholic church was to
play an important role in the historical calender for the development of
language, music and theatre, a role that would largely involve power,
domination and restriction reflected by the strict Catholic moral code. People that lived in the middle ages had a
fundamental conception of melody as movement of the voice, and they had an
understanding of a continuity between melody and speech, demonstrated by the
practice of referring to the performance of the sacred chant as "speaking," as
well as "singing."[18] This was to gradually change: According to
Harry Partch, it is possible to ascribe the 'independence' of music to the
beginning of the Christian era: "It
became a language in itself" made up of 'motives', 'subjects', 'phrases',
'questions', 'responses', and 'periods', a language that for the first time had
no meaning outside the musical form:
From the early days in the history of the Western church, the chants
were sung in Latin, a language that none but the learned clergy understood. This could be interpreted as a bid for power
on the part of the church, rather than an opportunity to communicate with the
divine through music. The Christian era
"sowed the seeds" which "choked out" the vitality of words, and the Christians
heard only "praises to the only God, which they knew were praises to the only
God, but which they heard in a 'timeless' language they did not understand, and
so required no alert and intuitive attentiveness on their part- only simple
passivity."[19] The Mass therefore with its use of
closed musical communication provided
only one option: Devotion and quiet
passivity.
What occurred, however, in the
development of this music is particularly interesting, presenting a dual stream
that is particularly significant for our discussion. In both cases, the tendency was to elaborate
the music and the text, elaboration that became eventually intricately
complicated. On the one hand, the
musical element developed away from the text.
This occurred over hundreds of years, and by the fourteenth century the
melodies were so transformed that the texts had been totally abandoned. The music was adopted in both high and
popular culture in various different forms.
These forms were influential for the development of the music that we
know today.
More interesting than what happened
in the development of the music was what developed through the elaboration of
the textual element. Possibly as a
reaction against the dominance of a Latin text that had little communicative
significance, texts became added to the chants.
This process was known as 'troping', and as melody was not
differentiated from the declamation of words, resulted also in melodic
elaboration. Troping was in essence an
elaboration of the chant melody which would result in the improportionate
lengthening of a single note, and the insertion of another text/melody which
could in effect comment upon the original chant. The ninth century saw the introduction of
'dramatic tropes'. These tropes had
originated a century earlier as standard musical embellishments of the liturgy,
sung antiphonally by cantors and congregation.
Eventually, parts were distributed to identifiable characters, and the
parts of the church became representative for places where the biblical episode
was set. It was now recognisable as a
dramatic performance. The most highly
developed of these tropes, the Easter 'Quem quaeritis in sepulchro', usually
took place in the chancel where a sepulchre was installed on the north side. The choir represented the assembly place of
the disciples from which Mary and Peter and John set out on their journey to
the empty tomb.[20] These tropes made something new happen
between the performers and the spectators, something where the audience were
not required to sit and be lulled into passivity by soothing music, but where
they could directly take part in a performance that had the possibility of
communicating something cogent, a new relationship between performers and
spectators. The church soon recognized
the danger of such communication and banished these performances from the mass
forever. This theatre existed for a time
on the side of the church, and eventually developed from there into the
'fairground booth' theatre of the round which we remember today. The very act of banishing the theatre from
the church, allowing only the abstract musical communication of the Latin texts
to remain, is an important schism that puts the first link into the chain when
trying to explain the current state of affairs in Western culture.
Unfortunately Commedia
dell'Arte and other comparable forms that had grown naturally from the
ancient understanding of the relationship between text and music, were to prove
not so durable as forms that were introduced during the artistic 'flowering' of
Europe, connected more with the elite in society; those that had the wealth and
could afford to support extravagant new artistic ventures. The sudden economic boost and the flourishing
trade that emerged was accompanied by a new interest in art. When the wealthy families began to support
artistic ventures, it became highly fashionable, and the world of the artist
became suddenly lucrative. Despite the
many wonderful things that happened for the artistic world in Renaissance
Italy, it is during this time that than attitude to art became popular, an
attitude which understood that art was a highly specialised field for only
certain talented individuals who were recognized as specialists in a certain
field. This extreme specialisation
certainly had an economic factor: Your work first had to please your benefactor
before any one else, and a great deal of 'art' catered for the decadent tastes
of the incredibly wealthy. This extended
to many art forms beyond those related to the visual arts: For the first time the label of an 'author'
(of a particular kind of literature) and a 'composer' (of only music) became
recognized.
We can particularly thank
Renaissance Italy for the opera tradition:
Opera arose out of the attempts of a group of artists and scholars to
recreate Greek drama, which was believed at the time to have been sung and not
spoken. This misdirected nostalgia has
resulted in the conservative traditions of opera that we have inherited
today. At the same time architects, with
a similar misdirected nostalgia, designed theatres that were based on ancient
Greek models. This resulted in the well
known and discussed 'proscenium arch' theatre, which soon became the standard
model for theatres around
Opera in
Initially opera grew from a
desire to drive towards a unity and cohesion in music and drama, seen in the
'ultimate' form in the Gesamtkunstwerk
of Richard Wagner, who said over his work "We have to recognize Speech
itself as the indispensable basis of a perfect Artistic expression." Wagner, in essence, was reacting against the
Italian opera tradition that had preceded him, but although his theory is
admirable in the least for its breadth of scope, the means in which he tried to
achieve them provided no possibility for real success: Prescribing the symphony orchestra as an
accompaniment to the subtle drama of spoken words is a situation which goes the
limit in human contradictions.[21] Further than that, the Gesamtkunstwerk theory indirectly claims that there is no
specific, unitary dramatic material but that there are diverse materials which
must be kept apart and treated side by side, which is in effect not in fact a
fusion, but a more specialised recognition of distinctions. Gesamtkunstwerk has been widely questioned by artists and
theoreticians throughout the twentieth century, particularly from the schools
of theatrical thought. Kandinsky, in the
creation of his revolutionary stage work Der Gelbe Klang ('The Yellow
Sound') denounced Gesamtkunstwerk
to the extent that it only served to unify by external means.[22] According to Jindrich Honzl of the
The Western definition of
'art' as something separate to life has evolved from a tendency in Western
culture to search for a higher state of expression that is something quite
distinct from life, another 'state of nostalgia' trying to recapture the
Platonic conception of perfect beauty.
According to Antonin Artaud the "mental weakness of the West" is where
man has confused art and aesthetics: "to believe that one can have painting
used only as painting, dancing as a plastic form alone, as if one wanted to cut
art off from everything, to sever links with mystical attitudes..."[25] These very particularly Western notions of
expression through 'artistic' or 'elevated' means simply do not exist in many
ancient cultures, where defining categories are not necessary because
expression through some creative means is an essential part of existence and is
designed to have appeal to all elements of society; here there simply exists no
word for 'art'. A clear demonstrative
example is the Balinese culture: Dr.
David George in his article on Balinese Ritual Theatre[26] , discusses the intimate
relationship between the complex religious rituals and the the theatre forms
(integration of dance, design , music); they are one and the same.
The existence of music as an
autonomous category has grown specifically in Western culture, and it was
brought to an extreme state at the turn of the century by the 'serialists' who
through serial form were seeking to find the ultimate solution for the
expression of an 'abstract' music - totally detached from reality as we know
it. To make the music value free, and to
present it as a 'universal' human communicative mode, a music was formed in
which no foundation for structure could be found except within the music
itself, free from any reference to function or expression. This is represented also in the performance
of 'formal' music with the musicians dressed in a strict black and white
uniform in order to make their visual presence as standardised as
possible. However, just as there are
cultures with no word for art, there are certainly ethnic-based cultures where
it is simply impossible to find something like 'abstract' music, just as not
all languages recognise the word 'music'.
In contrast to the extreme
abstractness of Western music, we are of course left in the theatre with what
at face value presents the opposite:
Theatre based on the interaction between human characters, naturalism,
where the words are discovered only for their semantic meaning and where we are
required to come to the better understanding of particularly human
processes. Roland Barthes asks us to
consider the Western theatre of the last centuries while he is discussing the
Japanese form of puppet theatre, Bunraku: "Its function is essentially to reveal
what is reputed to be secret ('feelings', 'situations', 'conflicts') while
concealing the very artifice of the process of revelation (machinery painting,
make-up sources of light). The Italian
stage is the space of this deceit, everything there taking place in a room
surreptitiously thrown open, surprised, spied on and realised by a hidden
spectator."[27] He is discussing here the distinction
between the 'inner' and the 'outer' in Western theatre, representative of the
same 'separation' tendency that can extend to all levels of the theatre: Writer/director, music/libretto,
musician/actor even character/actor.
It is now certainly clear
which sort of cultural traditions we are grappling against, but the question is
with a such a grim state what are the possibilities for the future? By examining in more detail forms of theatre
adopting alternative communicative systems it will be hopefully possible to
find some solutions, or rather find ways to subvert this distinctive tendency
prevalent in Western Contemporary art by finding finding new means to allow
different forms to dynamically intermingle.
Chapter 2.
"In the theatre, a line is a
sound, a movement is music and the gesture which emerges from a sound is like a
key word in a sentence."[28]
- Antonin Artaud
We will be exploring in this
section communicative systems in theatre forms that contrast with Western
theatre. As discussed in the first
chapter, the theatre is a medium which has enormous potential for 'artistic' communication,
because of the possibility of the use of a wide range of different
significative layers. According to the
folklorist Petr Bogatyrev, formerly a member of the Russian formalist circle
who undertook to chart the elementary principles of theatrical semiosis, the
stage "radically transforms all objects and bodies defined within it, bestowing
upon them an overriding signifying power which they lack - or which at least is
less evident - in their normal social functions."[29] Grotowski in talking of his theatre stripped
down of unnecessary 'plastic' elements, also discusses the ability of the actor
to transform "the floor into a sea, the table into a confessional, a piece of
iron into an animate partner."[30] Bogatyrev goes on to point out the
relationship between this 'transformation' in the theatre and in religious
rituals.[31] This 'transformability' of the sign in the
theatre, and the intimate relationship between the theatre and a deeper
significance that transcends language, are factors that unite all the theatre
forms that will be discussed in this chapter, whether it be a chair into a
mountain in the Chinese theatre or the transformation of a Balinese dancer into
a mythical figure during a liminal moment of the performance. This transformability immediately opens up
the significative potential and the spoken word is included in a complex matrix
of other communicative forms.
To begin it is time to return
to the ancient Greeks in order to set the basis for further discussion. As mentioned, the origin of music for the
Greeks was certainly based in speech intonations, and the greatest privilege of
music was to enhance drama. According to
Harry Partch[32] this is a common factor among all the early
people to whom we ascribe civilisation, which includes the Chinese. The Chinese, like the Greeks, felt no
hesitation in setting spoken words to music, or in writing on their pictures,
or in putting vivid paint on their sculpture.
For them the idea of 'purity' and 'independence' in music and art simply
did not exist. This is equally true of
the Chinese theatre, where the performers sing, act, declaim texts, dance and
perform intricate significative gestures.
More interesting than that, the language in the Chinese theatre has
special factors that set it aside from ordinary speech. The composition of Chinese plays is not in
most cases dramatic in the Western sense; it generally lacks the tension
reflectable in dramatic dialogue.
Chinese drama is a structure made up of verse, prose, and music, and the
dramatic text itself is of little significance from a literary point of view;
performance is paramount.[33] Analysing the Chinese theatre by its
dramatic text could only lead to a misunderstanding, and it is now generally
accepted that the text forms only the basis of a complicated structure made up
of a wide range of significative systems connected with both acoustic and
visual factors. Contemporary Chinese
theatre has strong ties with its ancient counterpart, something which sets it
aside from the Greeks. It is actually
possible for us to analyse the performance text directly, not like with ancient
Greek theatre where we are forced to use the very incomplete form of the
dramatic text, explaining the many misdirected attempts to rediscover this
theatre as an expression of nostalgia.
Japanese drama was originally
an offshoot of the Chinese, although it had subsequently a highly individual
and independent existence. Noh
('accomplishment', the drama of accomplished grace), which stemmed in the
fourteenth century, from the Japanese social-religious culture, was an amalgam
and refinement of epic recital, the dance, and the popular sports. Obviously, then, music occupied
approximately the same place among the Japanese of this period as it had in
ancient
Bharatanatyam, an ancient form of
Indian classical dance-theatre, also provides us with examples of multilevelled
communicative possibilities. Indian
scholars trace Bharatanatyam back not only to the ancient text on
theatre Natyasastra which describes dance poses, but also century old
temple sculptings that show these poses.
Bharatanatyam stands for the basic elements of this old/new dance
Bha = Bhara or feelings; Ra = Rasa, or the aesthetic flavour; Ta = Tala, or
rhythm; Natyam means dance.[38] The text below, used in Bharatanatyam
as an incantory prayer to Shiva (the lord of dance), demonstrates an extended
notion of performance communication. A
series of gestures performed through the hand and the body represent the
abstract, unearthly concepts within the prayer, and the text itself is read in
old Sanskrit. Like in the declamation of
Ancient Greek text, the words were envisaged as melody and thus can be
expressed through the meaning of the words, the movements, and the music. Below is a translation:
We bow to the satvika Shiva
Whose angika is the body
Whose vachika is the entire language
Whose aharya is the moon and the stars[39]
This prayer actually engages
principles of performance on four levels, the integration of angika,
vachika, aharya and satvika. We are
familiar with the first two levels: Angika
is the use of the body to experience and communicate, and vachika is
the use of the voice whether in dialogue or on musical instruments. Here the fundamental concept of speech as
melody is clearly demonstrated. However,
aharya is the use of costumes and make-up and satvika is the use
of feelings, intelligence and intellect, both suggesting an integration of
extended concepts of communication. The
performers in another famous Indian dance-theatre form, Kathakali,
communicate vocally through nonsense sounds, which is accompanied
simultaneously by a number of other semiotic codes: Dance, make-up and hand gestures.[40]
The Chinese theatre is
characterised by the multi-dimensional significative potential of any object
that may be used on stage. An object may
appear on set either in reality or in representation; a real object may be
substituted on the set by a symbol if this symbol is able to transfer the
object's own signs to itself. Some
objects used on stage in the Chinese theatre have, however, particularly exceptional traits in relation
to the actors and the set. These are
'object signs', able to represent all aspects of the scene alone and unaided.
The most important of these are a table and a chair that are almost never
absent from the Chinese stage. If the
table and the chair are standing in the
usual manner, then the set is an interior.
On the other hand, a chair placed side on the ground or on its back
signifies an embankment or earth work; overturned it signifies a hill or a
mountain; standing on the table, it signifies a city tower.[41] This demonstrates a full exploration of the
'transformability' of objects on the stage,
possibilities that are particularly alien to Western culture.
Another factor sets these
theatre forms aside from what is recognised in the Western world: the dual nature of any sign in the theatre,
having both a communicative and an aesthetic function. This is certainly present in the Chinese
theatre where the present shape of any routine, gesture or movement has been
affected by the attempt to devise a simple and comprehensible sign and to bring
out the aesthetic function. The
conventional action signs, in fact, never aim at an imitation of reality. They naturally take this as their starting
point, but in most cases they are
constructed so as to divorce themselves from realism as much as
possible. Karel Brusak, in his article
on signs in the Chinese theatre, offers us an example:
"The player suggests the
action of drinking tea by raising an imaginary cup to his lips, but in order to
avoid being realistic, masks the hand executing the gesture with a special
movement."
An action sign thus owes its
final form to a "tension between the aesthetic function and other functions,
communicative." This also opens the significative forms into the realm of music: There are many circumstances in the Chinese
theatre where music must act as a sign (to express anger, hatred, horror,
surprise, anxiety, love, joy, drunkenness, flight and so on) because its
realistic representation is forbidden to the Chinese actor on aesthetic
grounds.[42] This tendency for the development of such an
aesthetic emphasis is common also in other forms, Indian performance in particular: They have even precise words to define the
difference. Lokadharmi stands for behaviour (dharmi) in daily life
(loka); Natyadharmi stands for
behaviour in dance (natya).[43]
Indian performance theory in
relation to these distinctions is actually quite advanced, and a more detailed
discussion of some of these elements points out the problematic nature of the
Western theatre. In the Natyasastra (introduced
during our discussion of Bharatanatyam ) a theory of predicted audience
response is presented which then traces the response back through the
mechanisms and instruments that serve to arouse and produce it. To this extent it is similar in theory and
methodology to its Western equivalent, Aristotle's Poetics, the significant difference
being that in the latter no attempt was made to make any clear distinction
between aesthetic responses and those derived from real life. Sanskrit theory,
in contradistinction, recognized from the beginning that there is a basic,
fundamental difference between emotions experienced and used in real life and
those experienced vicariously, aesthetically.
Instead, therefore, of attempting in vain to educate its audiences
morally, Sanskrit theory concentrated on analysing the peculiar nature of the
aesthetic emotions, and did so by radically distinguishing two kinds, calling
the everyday emotions 'bhava' and their aesthetic equivalents 'rasa';[44] notions now accepted as
standard in Indian performance. In Western culture using the theatre purely as
a means to explore everyday human emotions and encounters seems to be a refusal to accept the fact that anything
performed in the theatre is something essentially different to everyday
experiences, resulting in the creation of 'false' performances that adopt the a
small selection of communicative forms.
The use in Indian performance
of the 'language of gestures' is perhaps the most extreme expression of this
dual function between aesthetic and communicative modes. In Sanskrit, hasta (hand, forearm) and mudra
(seal) refer to hand gestures whose use dates back to sacred performances
during the time of the Vedas (around 1500 B.C.) when the gestures were used by
the priests while they repeated mantras, the religious formulae. There was also a traditionally fixed list of
six mudras which represented Buddha's gestures and corresponded to moments in
his life.[45] Although it is clear that gesturality is a
communication system that transmits a message, and that can consequently be
considered a language, it is nevertheless still difficult to clarify certain
elements as in vocal languages which are easily fragmented into minimal units.[46] The mudra characteristic which is perhaps
the most interesting from the point of view of aesthetic function is that used
in relationship to the two principle categories into which all Indian
dance-theatre forms are subdivided: Interpretative
dance ('nritya'), where the mudras have a communicative function, that is,
they have literal word meaning;[47] Pure dance ('nritta'), which is always
included in every dance performance, where the mudras have a purely decorative
value and are used as 'pure sound'.[48]
In Western society we can also
understand exactly what is meant by this 'pure sound' possibility of
communication through hand gestures. In the last ten years, theatre for the
deaf has begun to be performed. This theatre
is fascinating for those spectators who do not understand the sign language
alphabet because of the pure dynamics of hands speaking in silence, just as we
are fascinated by the Indian mudras without understanding what they mean.[49] In fact, theatre that communicates in this
way has been highly influential to many Western theatre theoreticians and
performers, even though they had not understood it at a directly interpretable
level; they managed to find meaning in its emotional and dramatic projection. Noted examples of this are of course Antonin
Artaud whose work changed irrecoverably after seeing Balinese ritual dance
performances; he found in this performance a new way to discover communication
through gesture, but in a language that had no translatable 'meaning', that
found no recourse in the use of words.
Grotowski had been more than simply influenced by performances, having
studied both in
These forms that adopt
gestural communication in their use of 'pure sound' move surely into the realm
of music, communication without a definite translation that nonetheless
communicates strongly and deeply. As
demonstrated it is no doubt that the property of gestural practice is the
privileged realm of religion, sacred dance, and ritual. Here the gesture is a primordial act of
signification, where the signification is engendered in a form that can not be
transferable to language.[50] One could say that music succeeds in
communicating where language fails, communicating things that simply cannot be
said in words. Therefore music has not
the possibility to communicate some particularity, it simply communicates. Roland Barthes talks of a meaning that
"exceeds psychology, anecdote, function, exceeds meaning", where the the given
entity is in the process of signification without actually signifying,
"signification before it coalesces, nascent, floating." He chooses a word for this phenomenon,
'significance', because it is in the field of the signifier (and not of
signification). This meaning can be seen
as "the passage from language to significance and the founding act of the
filmic itself."[51] This attitude to signification is perhaps the
closest connection with forms of musical communication, and can help to explain
the possibility of 'significance' through forms in the theatre where the
'language' (often non-vocal) can not be 'understood' (literally translated).
Forms that can communicate
with foreign people through the realm of 'significance' have been explored, but
it is important now to consider in more detail those forms that communicate
even with the local audience in an 'untranslatable language'. Petr Bogatyrev,
in his theoretical writings, discusses a folk song performed in an unknown language
with an 'unmotivated ritual function', usually having a magical function.[52] A direct example is the performance of music
on the
This type of communication is
naturally not restricted to the folk song, and extends directly into the
theatre. In the Chinese theatre, a sort
of 'aria' is sung in an archaic almost incomprehensible form of language: thus
certain features are signalled by music alone.[54] The performers in Kathakali speak in a
strange 'language of the gods' called Alarcha, a language of yells,
shrieks, grunts and eerie noises intended to approximate the language of
another universe far removed from human words.[55] Kebiyar Dudik, a relatively new dance form in
The concept of rhythm provides
another 'musical' communicative code certainly without translatable 'meaning'
in the traditional sense, that must be considered because of its use to
structure performances. Vsevelod
Meyerhold had a surprising insight into the adoption of rhythm in the theatre:
"Music, which determines the tempo of every occurrence on the stage, dictates a
rhythm which has nothing in common with everyday existence. [...] The essence of stage rhythm is the antithesis
of real, everyday life." This concept of
rhythm is adopted in many Eastern performance forms as a structural element: In
Japanese, the expression of 'jo-ha-kju' describes the three phases into which
every action that is performed by an actor or dancer is divided. In classical Japanese theatre, the
'jo-ha-kju' rhythmic phrase has not only to do with the actor's or dancer's
actions, but is also part of all the various levels of organisation of the
performance: It is applied to gesture,
to the music, to each version of each play performed, and ultimately determines
the rhythm of the entire performance day.[57] In Indonesian and Indian performances there
is a a strong numerical relationship between the performance texts and the
music. Antonin Artaud talks of the
intimate relationship between the "booming, pounding, musical rhythm" and where
the sounds "are like natural conclusions of gestures with the same attributes."[58] This is particularly evident in Indian
classical dance where the rhythmic nature of the language dictates both to the
musicians and the dancers. A 'language'
of rhythms has evolved in these forms so that a particular dance can be
actually 'spoken' as well as danced and played.
Below is a rhythmic section from an Indian dance text:
ta-ki-ta
ta-ka-di-mi
ta-ka
ta-ki-ta
ta-ka-di-mi
ta-ka
ta-ka-di-mi
ta-ka
dhay-khi-ta-thay
tha-ki-ta
ta-ki-ta-too-na
ta-thom-ta
dha-dha-tha-dhi-ghe-na-thom![59]
We will finish this discussion
by looking briefly at Balinese ritual theatre, not only for its adoption of a
number of contrasting communicative systems simultaneously, but more for its
almost complete adoption of 'abstract' forms, in other words forms that can not
be translated into interpretable language:
A signifying process without ultimate signification, a constant process
of 'significance'. Performance in
"Those actors with their
asymmetrical robes look like like moving hieroglyphs. [...]
These mental signs have an exact meaning that only strikes one
intuitively but violently enough to make translations into logical, discursive
language useless. [...] Balinese theatre offers us an outstanding
production that suppresses any likelihood of recourse to words to clarify the
most abstract subjects; it has invented a language to be spatially developed,
but have no meaning outside it. In the
Balinese theatre one sense a state prior to language, able to select its own
language; music, gestures, moves and words."[61]
In order to understand the
power of these language forms, an insight into Balinese culture is essential;
critical study of Balinese dance has revealed that they are not merely
beautiful abstractions or captivating ancient narratives whose language has
been forgotten. According to Marcia Siegel, who was analysing the Balinese
Legong dance, Balinese performances are in fact "dramatisations of liminal
events: separation/individuation, illness and recovery, the recognition of
spirits, and the traversal between the here-and-now and the place where the spirits
reside." Liminality then is an essential
part of Balinese performance, resulting in the recourse to 'abstract'
communicative systems. The idea of
blurred boundaries is intrinsic to liminality,
a state where you temporarily lose the distinction between two entities,
two individuals, two time frames. In
Through the realisation of the
problematic nature of certain Western notions, such as 'abstract' music and
'art', it is possible to gain an insight into Eastern theatre. Through the realisation of certain concepts
unique to particular Eastern cultures, it possible to paint an entirely new
picture of text, music, and its possibilities for communication in the
theatre. Through these realisations I
believe that it is possible to create a new theatre that can communicate with
this new language, a language without 'meaning' in the traditional sense, but
meaning that is extended through the musical structures, and texts that through
the very nature of the sounds help to structure the theatre in a new way. These will be performance texts that can
exist simultaneously as music and movement, that have the possibility to
communicate not on one level alone, but a number of different levels
simultaneously. I will demonstrate in
the last two chapters of this paper possibilities for the adoption of such a
language by analysing two new music-theatre compositions.
Chapter 3.
"Traditions in the creative
arts are suspect. For they exist on the
patrimony of standardisation, which means degeneration... The extent to which an individual can resist
being blindly led by tradition is a good measure of his vitality."[63]
-
Harry Partch
Analysis One:
an anti opera
Het Loket is a composition
project produced for performance in the New Music Week 1993 Ghent (
It is important first to
discuss the creative process that went into this work before an analysis of the
forms involved can be undertaken. For
the production of the chamber opera the composers were required to use texts
from a selection of short plays by a French absurdist playwright - Jean
Tardieu, and adopt it is as a libretto for a short 'absurd' chamber opera. Le Préposé ('the teller') was chosen
for the composition in question because of the broader potential of some of the
themes involved. Otherwise the text was
considered extremely unsatisfactory for presentation in the theatre, involved
with metaphorical language and narrative that would certainly seem outdated
because of the strong existential nature of the thematic material. A client approaches a teller behind which a
railway attendant sits, and asks for information concerning the next
train. Through a series of wordy
encounters where the client has extreme difficulty in asking questions just as
the attendant seems completely unable or unwilling to answer, we discover that
the client is actually seeking answers to very impossible questions about the
nature of his life and existence. The
two indulge in probing word games that explore the superficiality of spoken
language and further frustrate the client leading him to question his own
identity and finally to his destruction.
The emphasis is on the difficulty in communication, and the difficulty
that we have in expressing ourselves and the 'indefinable concepts' that
construct our psyche through words: He
finally leaves, questions unanswered and a terrible car-crash is heard. Evidently he didn't make it to the train.
Immediate comparisons were
found between some of the central themes of Le Préposé and another
'narrative' of a considerably contrasting nature. This was a cassette recording made in a park
in
Other elements on the
recording were also influential, particularly the attempt of a Westerner to
imitate the sound of the Chinese language, which introduced some ideas about
performing in a 'nonsense' language:
Imitation of the songs, echoing the vocal characteristics of the Chinese
language, but obviously with no significative potential other than realisation
of a sound quality, was an interesting contrast with the Chinese girl trying to
learn the song, both involving forms of communication that are not simply
word-based. Another interesting element
was some of the Chinese language spoken by the older Chinese man before he
begins teaching the song, language with deliberate musical qualities
characteristic of the Chinese theatre.
The exact nature of the influences and how they were adopted into the
composition will be discussed further on.
In any case, the contradiction presented by the possibility of combining
elements of Western opera, an elite form for the selected few in Western
society, with the 'Chinese Opera', which is an ancient system adopting
simultaneously various different communicative systems so that there is
something for everyone in the audience to appreciate (comparatively non-elite),
was too exciting to ignore. This
resulted in the creation of Het Loket (a Dutch translation of 'Le
Préposé'), a music-theatre piece where two actors simultaneously perform the
client and the attendant from
the Tardieu play and the teacher and the student from the Chinese
recording.
The question is, of course,
how could the opera element be interpolated into an already complicated
narrative structure. This was where the
idea for an anti-opera became clearly manifest.
On top of the two realities that already existed within the composition,
the third discourse would be that of the opera singers and the musicians. The problems inherent in the operatic form
could be demonstrated by having the opera singers play a role in attempting to define
the already existing narratives through language forms: One of the singers adopting gestural signs,
and the other vocal sounds, but gestures and vocal sounds with no semantic
basis. The story of the student and the
teacher is acted out central stage through musical interaction, and the opera
singers interrupt the performance in order to 'explain' it to the audience, but
because of the 'untranslatable' nature of their discourse they are unable to
provide any basis for communication.
This sets up an interesting ambiguity where the music speaks for itself
despite all the efforts of the opera singers to confuse matters terribly. In any case, it can be seen that the third
discourse of the opera singers is important in bringing out some of the the
important themes from Le Préposé where the near impossibility of vocal
communication is presented. This is also
the intention of combining the discourses, whose collision provides ambiguities
and points of confusion designed to make us question language as a central
communicative form as it exists in Western theatre. The deliberate inclusion of a comic element
into this composition is designed also to create a contrasting discourse that
communicates through all the realities (especially the opera singers who appear
the most absurd), allowing other elements to communicate subliminally.
Interactions between these
different discourses in the composition and the significance of their collision
in pointing out essential problems inherent in the Western musical frame will
be elaborated, but it is important to see them in relation to the complete
structure of the composition. Het
Loket is divided into four sections, (i) Overture, (ii) Introduction, (iii)
Exposition, and (iv) Conclusion. These
titles allude both to structuring divisions ('movements') in music and also the
four act structure of theatre, although the four sections flow together forming
an uninterrupted performance.
Overture: The lighting rises from darkness and the five
players positioned in a semi-circle around a central performing area are seen
as almost caricatures of musicians:
Instruments in position ready to play, faces with serious expressions
but exquisitely motionless. Central
stage is a large barrier (the teller) that sits in between two chairs. Next to each of the chairs is an absurd
object: Tea pots with multi-coloured tubes emerging.[66] After a certain time of waiting, the first
musical sound bursts forward: The
audience hears the sound of a violin and sees the violinist play with exaggerated
performance gestures. After another time
bracket accompanied by deathly motionlessness,the double bass is heard and the
double bass gestures as if performing. The percussion player then moves to play
the gong with a large and strong gesture, but approximately when contact is
made with the centre of the instrument, a loud and brash Asian instrument is
heard (
Introduction: When the overture has faded out, the
instrumentalists suddenly turn to the singers, clapping wildly. The violin player actually gets up and
delivers an imaginary rose to the female opera singer who smells it and tosses
it over her shoulder, smiling. The
singers then go through a process of 'introducing' the instruments to the
audience. The male singer stays at the
front of the stage, and sings a short recititative in distinctly operatic
style, but with a text consisting of only vowels. The female singer who had already walked over
to the double bass player and 'introduced' him gesturally, now makes imitative
sounds of the instrument accompanied by gestures as if she is playing. This brings the double-bass player to life,
resulting in a short improvised imitation of the singer. It continues in the same form with the French
horn and then the clarinet, presenting caricatures of the instruments: Their performance style, followed by their
actual sound. However, when it comes to
the violin, the flow that has already been set up between the opera singers and
the instruments is changed. The singer
moves to the violin, and does the introductory gesture, but instead of
imitating the sound, she picks an imaginary rose from the pocket of the violin
player, and smells it. The violin, who
is gesturing, ready to play, all of a sudden moves out of playing position and
takes it back, appearing a little upset or angry. Apparently confused by the action of the
violin, the female singer appears to have forgotten the last performer, and
looks around to find out who that is. After another operatic recitative, the
male opera singer gestures towards the percussion player, and realizing
suddenly who she has forgotten, she rushes over towards him. This time there is an interaction between the
percussion player and the singer, who tries to demonstrate the different
percussion instruments. The Introduction
is ended by the percussion player who plays loud notes on the
Exposition: The actors walk on stage. The actor representing the 'older man' comes
on stage first: He enters stage left,
and sits in a predetermined position centre stage on one side of the
teller. The other actor representing the
'younger girl' enters timidly some seconds later. A short performance takes place through the
teller, where the desperation of the client is represented. No vocal sounds are made, but the client attempts to communicate with the attendant
who apparently is unable to acknowledge the other and mimes a number of
clerical duties. The performers outside
this reality stay totally silent and motionless until the percussion player
plays a loud note on the Peking opera gong, cueing the actors to freeze and the
opera singers to come back to life; the male singer performing a ridiculous
imitation of peking opera singing (with high falsetto and long sliding notes)
using a nonsense vowel text, and the female performing distinct symbolic
actions. Then the sound of a large gong
from the percussion player cues the actors to start performing as if they are
the Chinese teacher and student. The
singers have stepped back to watch this performance. The actors pick up the strange objects
sitting on the stage, which are revealed to be instruments. The actual music is played by the
instrumentalists who are surrounding the central ensemble; their role is obviously essential to the
development in this section. The music
itself is influenced by the Chinese recording, and is characteristic of heterophonic
music common in many forms of ancient music, where a simple melody is
elaborated into a totally new form.[67] It begins with a complete recitation of the
complex heterophonic melody, gestured by the 'teacher' (by blowing in the spout
of the teapot), but played by the violin, and is answered by the 'student', but
played by the clarinet. The student evidently can not play the melody and
appears confused, so the teacher plays a short example, and when the student
still can't make the connection, the teacher plays his melody a little simpler,
and then a little simpler again. The
student gradually is able to perform the melody slowly. Another raucous Chinese gong causes a sudden
reversal of realities: The actors go
back to performing the action of the Le Préposé, but this time a little
slower and more stylised, while the nonsense Chinese text and gestures comes
back into play with the opera singers.
After a short recitation of the 'text', it returns again to the Chinese
pantomime, and gradually the student learns the entire melody. Also other instruments start joining the
performance, first a double bass drone and then long notes from the French
horn. The whole scenario is gradually
reaching a 'musical' point of resolution.
The performance swings between the discourse of the Chinese performance
and the opera singers/Préposé
discourse a number of times still, but the fourth division begins with a
very short Chinese-like nonsense text that leads again into the full ensemble,
but this time with the falsetto male voice actually singing a simple melody
with the nonsense texts. The gestures of
the female have also become stylised into a strict but melodious pattern that
repeats with the same rhythm as the other singer, and the actors are performing
a series of stylised movements taken from the Préposé discourse. All performers are now playing together,
forming a harmonious whole reminiscent of the gamelan music of
Conclusion: The opera singers are still remaining to do
what always seems to happen to the heroes and heroines at the end of an opera
performance: Die. All the other
performers have left, except for
the attendant who is sitting
behind his desk shifting through papers.
The singers appear shocked by the car crash, and attempt to narrate the
story of the death: The female singer
sings in typical bel canto style, highly dramatic songs of pain that result in
her own death, and then the male singer, performing gestures of death in an
effort to describe her 'song', also dies.
The attendant finishes classifying his papers, totally oblivious
to all that has gone on, and walks off stage. This is the end of the
performance.
The realisation of Het
Loket is involved with certain characteristics of theatre forms discussed
in the second chapter of this paper, and it is necessary now to talk in more
detail about these elements. The
'transformability' of signs in the theatre is a particularly important factor
introduced by folklorist Petr Bogatyrev.
A characteristic of folk theatre that sets it aside from Western theatre
is that "neither the spectator nor the actor should have the sensation of a
complete transformation." According to
Bogatyrev, in the folk theatre actors "deliberately disguise themselves as
various animals in such a way that the spectators will easily recognise that
they see before them not a real horse, goat or bear, but only an actor dressed
as such."[68] This is also a characteristic of certain
forms of Eastern theatre where a distance exists between the characters and the
actors portraying them. In these theatre
forms, the actors are people who remain actors no matter which character they
play, as for example in Japanese Noh, where the conventions don't expect you to
believe that the actor actually 'transforms' into a character from a medieval
Japanese story. The actor is in fact
deliberately distanced from his role by a mask in which the face of the actor
is visible, reminding you always of his presence. As such, the mediums of communication can be
abstract and non-linear, and one actor can play many different characters in
the same play, presenting entirely different channels to Western theatre where
you are actually expected to believe that an actor, for the time of the
performance, will 'become' another person for a brief space of time. In Het Loket the actors are not
restricted to a single role, being required to perform alternately in two
narratives (that from Le Préposé and the Chinese teacher/student
narrative), requiring two contrasting forms of presentation: In the Chinese teacher/student narrative, the
actors are required to perform as if it is a pantomime; communicating through
exaggerated actions without vocal sounds; although one of the characters is a
'young girl' and the other is an 'older man' these roles are not required to be
played by actors fitting this description, they must merely act as such in a
very exaggerated pantomime style. The Préposé
discourse requires also a voiceless pantomime, but one that through the use of
silence expresses the unutterable
difficulty of communication.
Bogatyrev's 'transformability'
extends from objects and actors adopted in the performance to the performance
space itself. This is demonstrated
clearly in certain non-institutionalised performance forms where fixed-feature
space was either nonexistent, as in the medieval mystery cycles, or secondary
to semi-fixed and informal space, as in the medieval theatre-in-the-round,
where actors descended into the plateau to form an acting area. Medieval drama took place in the street, in
the market place or in the hall of a lord's house, not in a theatre intended
for such performance. Thus at the very
beginning one finds dramatists having to deal with the problem of 'defining'
the play as a play; of separating it from the current of ordinary living by
what amounts to a proclamation: "A ceremonially composed pronouncement
introducing this special sort of event and calling for silent, or at least
sympathetic attention for its interruption of the flow of the audience's own
lives."[69] Fifteenth century morality plays started
with an introduction, often provided by an intermediary who established the
characters as fictions that the actors would interpret. Petr Bogatyrev describes similar spatial
transformations at work in the Russian peasant theatre, where again the acting
area is defined by the performers themselves:
"The participants
in the performance approach the house in which, for example, a feast is taking
place. They open the door and first the
horse enters the izba [acting area] and lashes those present; everybody
present gets up onto the benches and so the izba is clear for dramatic
action."[70]
This device of presentation or
'induction' has persisted in the theatre, so as to renew deeper significance
connecting the ambiguous relationship between the play-word and the world
outside the theatre. A specific example
of this is a music theatre composition by Sir Harrison Birtwistle called Down
by the Greenwood Side, a piece exploring, among other things, the induction
conventions of medieval theatre.[71]
This theatrical 'induction'
technique has certainly been significant in contemporary theatre, being
undoubtedly an influence to Brecht in his use of the 'gestus of showing' - as
when the actor stands aside in order to comment upon what is happening, or a
rendering of the representational means opaque through a range of devices such
as freezes, slow-motion effects and unexpected changes in lighting, where the
specified elements were brought to the foreground or 'framed'. Much of the experimental theatre of the 1960s
and 1970s was devoted to the development of techniques for framing and
estranging the signifying process.[72] Many such 'inductional' techniques have been
adopted in Het Loket, processes whose intentions are to bring into the
foreground certain elements of the performance in order to question the musical
frame. For example, the 'Overture' that
begins the composition begins with the instrumentalists seeming to perform
short musical passages, but in fact are only performing gestures as the music
is on tape. The very nature of the
musical frame is brought into the question when the sounds on tape do not
correspond to instruments performing the gestures. This is doubly demonstrated when the sound of
a real orchestral opera overture gradually overtakes the live instrumental
performance and the performers move from desperately searching for the sound to
performing expressionless head movements.
This is to highlight the restriction of the musical frame, where the
performance dialogue is considerably restricted to only certain gestures
connected with the performance of music, as well as to provide a contrast with
the opera singers who will soon enter the performance space. The opera singers themselves adopt a number
of 'induction' techniques, the purpose being firstly to parody problems
inherent in the musical/operatic frame and secondly to present a wordless
pantomime in which the instrumentalists are one by one introduced to the
audience.
Other characteristics of folk
theatre are adopted in Het Loket, particularly relating to the use of
the performance space. Firstly, the
simplicity of the scenic element, which is practically nonexistent, is both a
move against the extravagance of opera and an attempt to recapture something
from the simplicity of folk-theatre where its inherent 'transformability'
provides new communicative possibilities.
This is based on the simple premise that a performance space is always a
performance space, and there is little point in going to a lot of trouble and
expense to try and convince the audience otherwise, whether it is a drawing
room in an English mansion or a small patch of African jungle or the bottom of
the sea. A combination of music, movement and text along with simple objects (a
chair representing a mountain, as in the Chinese theatre) allows the audience
to form their own image of the space: "The Naturalistic Theatre denies that the
spectator has the ability to finish a painting in his imagination, or to dream
as he does when listening to music. and
yet the spectator possesses such an ability."[73] This is the central premise of Grotowski's
'Poor' theatre.
Connections with folk theatre
forms are further demonstrated by the integration of the musical element, both
physically by their direct use in the performance space, dynamically
interacting with the performance; and symbolically, where the music is not
merely commenting on or accompanying the action. The physical element is demonstrated by the
formation of the instrumentalists into a ring surrounding the performance area
and thus 'defining' it, recalling induction techniques of folk theatre and
directly representative of Balinese ritual theatre performances where the
gamelan surrounds the dancers.
Symbolically the musicians become vehicles for the narrative when the
musical discourse plays a structuring role.
This symbolic element is extended by the intimate relationship between
the music structures and the performance text, recalling Balinese, Indian and
Japanese performances where there is a
strong numerical relationship between the performance texts and the music. The use of stylised gestures, recalling the
Sanskrit performance theory, is also pointing out that 'reality' in the theatre
is something essentially different to the reality of everyday existence.
All these possibilities
involve, in one way or another, the questioning or highlighting of the
theatrical/musical frame. The theatrical
frame is in effect the product of a set of transactional conventions governing
the participants' expectations and their understanding of the kinds of
realities involved in the performance, highlighting a relationship between the
audience and the performers. The degree to which the theatrical frame can be
accepted is defined in theatrical terminology as 'theatrical competence', and this
notion will play a role in analysing the composition. The theatrical competence of any particular
audience depends naturally on the society that produced it, usually the same
society that produced the theatre performance itself. It is on the basis of certain understandings
that the performers in the Western theatre are able to interact on stage
apparently oblivious to the audience, just as the spectators themselves find no
difficulty in identifying which elements belong to the representation and which
to the excluded theatrical context, and so do not expect to impinge directly on
the interaction. This of course explains
the difficulties that often arise when people from one culture experience
theatre from another, where the theatrical competence is considerably
different, often reflected directly in the relationship between the audience
and the performers. The function of Het
Loket is directly involved with this questioning of the theatrical
competence of a Western audience: The
entirely different and contrasting narrative forms set up a situation where the
audience must become 'competent' by forming their own understanding of how the
piece is communicating, forming a new basis for the transmission of meaning in
the theatre. The performance of Het
Loket is therefore a learning process, directly represented in the
student/teacher discourse where a clearly non-standard narrative form is
presented.
The concept of 'theatrical
competence' relates to another important theoretical distinction in the theatre
that classifies different 'dramatic worlds' or discourses that exist in any
performance; these 'worlds' are different realities that exist in the theatre
between the audience and the performers.
Western theatre generally recognises the existence of two such 'worlds',
that of the performers, "a spatio-temporal elsewhere represented as though
actually present for the audience"[74], and that of the audience
whose function is to appreciate the performance in silence. Although the audience is capable of seeing into
the world of the performers, the performers are certainly not permitted to
consider the world of the audience as a hypothetical alternative to their
own. Although various playwrights have
attempted to bend these conventions, Samuel Beckett, Peter Handke, Pirandello
and Tom Stoppard to name a few, these distinctions are taboo and performances
that attempt to step beyond these boundaries are considered merely amusing
jokes. In forms of folk theatre, these
distinctions do not always exist, and the audience is not nearly so sensitive
if the frames are broken because they are deliberately set up to appear false.
Bogatyrev in his analysis of folk theatre said that "the actors draw the
spectators into the play, often directly provoking them, laughing at them and
their environment."[75]
A theatre performance from
(i) The discourse of the
'performer'; the world that is made up of the interaction between the
personalities of the actors before they have taken on alternate roles. The musicians are particularly important
members that remain constant during the entire performance and can interact
between all the different worlds.
(ii) The discourse of the
'performing'; the world in which the central dramatic action takes place.
(iii) The world of the
audience.
The performance itself is
structured by interactions between these discourses. It is important first to give a summary of
events within the performance:
The Unknown Theatre of Khamza
"On one night I went to my
beloved"
- a comedy
Onto an empty stage, set up with plain tree branches,
comes a jolly troop of actors. Dancing,
singing, joking. They are accompanied by
the musicians and heavily veiled dancers.
While they direct their singing and dancing towards the audience, the
actors hang the decor up: Four coloured
curtains making a makeshift stage. After
it is hanged up the curtain opens, and we are witness to a simple story about
masters and servants: The man of the house wants to slip away and asks his
servant to take his place in bed for the night so his wife will not
suspect. But that same night the wife of
the house has just the same idea, and asks her servant is she will take her
place. In the place of the masters, the
servants amuse themselves. Like often in
Eastern theatre, the women's roles are played by men, which certainly gives a
comic effect. The musicians sit next to
the scene and continually interrupt the action in order to illustrate the
events through music. But after an hour
the party is over. The theatre is again
packed away and the performers move off stage.[78]
The interaction between the
different 'worlds' was particularly interesting. The performance communicated first through
the 'performer' discourse, where members of the
cast were presented busying themselves preparing for a theatre event,
which included setting up the 'stage' itself, and then becoming the 'actors'
within this 'play within a play' (a form adopted so convincingly by Brecht in The
Caucasian Chalk Circle). In a short
time, a simple construction was built before the audience, now hiding the
actors as they changed costumes and positioned set pieces. Before the curtain was opened, the musicians
glanced in to see what the actors were doing, and the audience was offered a
glimpse of a liminal moment: An actor
revealed changing into the costume of a woman. Caught in this state of half
preparation, he was still able to recognise the world of the actors and even
the audience, and rushed in a desperate state to close the curtain again. When the curtain was finally opened and the
musicians had taken their place, the 'performing' discourse was revealed. Interaction mostly took place between the
musicians and the 'performing' discourse, where the musicians observed and
commented on the action, and the characters in the 'performing' discourse
reacted. However, it was sometimes
difficult to determine from which world the actor was communicating with the
musicians: For example if the actor reacted to a criticism from the musicians
as to his acting ability, it is most likely that he was communicating from the
'performer' discourse, but if the actor asked the musician to play dance music
to celebrate the letter she (he) has received from her (his) lover, then she
(he) was communicating from the 'performing' discourse. The musicians and the actors in the
'performing' discourse also related directly to the world of the audience,
sometimes asking advice, sometimes simply directing narrative deliberately in
their direction, acknowledging their existence.
This interaction is fascinating, and one must not be deceived by the
simplicity of the dramatic text: The
performance text reveals this theatre to be an intricate communicative vehicle
where the theatrical nature of the performance is highlighted by the
exploration of the theatrical frame. The
end of the performance was also interesting.
The slapstick theatre became resolved, and the curtain was closed,
followed by a closing song from the musicians.
The actors emerged from backstage and bowed, and then the actor (dressed
as a woman) went up to the audience and begun speaking, communicating from the
'performing' discourse, provocatively stroking the head of a man in the front
row. Then the actor took off the wig and
entered the 'performer' discourse again.
Het Loket is also based on
extended interaction between the dramatic worlds. Here exists the discourse of the
musicians and the singers, the world of
the Préposé discourse, the world of the Chinese teacher/student
discourse, and of course the world of the audience. The performance begins in the discourse of
the musicians, a very limited world in which the musicians exist purely to
perform; they are dead silent and expressionless until music is played and are
mostly unable to interact independently with any other world in the performance
unless it is through the production of music.
This is the musical frame. When
the singers enter, the musicians are allowed to recognise their existence, and
applaud vehemently. The world of the
musicians is only allowed to react to the world of the singers if the singers
so desire it[79], as demonstrated when the
female singer 'brings the instruments to life' by first imitating their sound
and then introducing them to the world of the audience. The singers are always the intermediary
between the other worlds, like the musicians in the performance from
Many elements adopted in this
composition are without 'translatable' meaning, signifying the adoption of
musical communication modes. In HetLoket,
compositional impetus grew from a notion of an 'enhanced language' unique to
the theatre, common in Eastern performance forms. According to Karel Brusak of the
"Theatre speech was
formed by an artificial mixing of various dialects. [...] The declaiming of individual
words is founded on a strictly adhered to system of four tones which prevents
possible errors in comprehension and also serves to heighten the musicality of
the speech."[81]
The nonsense language of the
male singer alludes to Chinese text declamation in its use of sliding tones and
a falsetto voice, but because this
language is without 'meaning' it is not possible for the 'sounds' of the speech
to enhance an interpretation.[82] Signification occurs in a considerably
different way, working in a larger system of gestures, acts and sounds. By not
providing the opera singers with the communicative forms or narratives that are
necessary for resolution, in fact forcing them to perform in alien forms
(movement, gesture and alternative singing styles), the musical operatic frame
is explicitly framed and the strict elitist conventions of opera are
questioned. The gestures of the female
singer have significance in this regard:
By relating to events that have already happened and will happen in the
performance (e.g the smelling of a flower recalls the Introduction, the beating
of a gong foresees the end of the short declamation, and the suicide gestures
foresee the end of the performance) the gestures are particularly ambiguous,
exaggerating the fact that they are using 'untranslatable' languages. This method of signification is used in order
to not restrict the interpretable possibilities, extending in this case from
the questioning of the musical frame to the questioning of language as a valid
form of communication. The use of nonsense language to radically alienate the
signifier from its meaning-function and to demonstrate the opacity of spoken
languagel looks back to the work of Alfred Jarry and Ilya Zdanevich.[83]
This form of signification
where a number of different levels work together with the explicit purpose of
communicating 'meaning' is present also in the discourse of the teacher and the
student, but this time the nature of the message is not at all ambiguous
(despite being without vocal sound): The
music works directly with the action to create the dialogue. This recalls the
function of the music in the folk theatre form
The final point of
significance is the score itself which uses a combination of theatrical and
musical notation in order to create a new type of performance text, a notion
discussed in the first two chapters of this text. The exact intricacies in the notating of
music-theatre compositions is certainly beyond the realm of this discussion,
but it is enough to say that in order to create such a 'text' new notation
methods were necessary; methods that literally deconstructed the traditional
forms of a music 'score' and a dramatic 'play'.
Examples from the score are included at the end of this document.
In Het Loket the
deliberate collision and interaction of different realities are presented in
order to extend the communicative possibilities. The central element in the composition is of
course 'the teller' itself ('het loket', 'le préposé'), symbolic of the
distance that exists between people in the process of communicating, and the
teller more specifically represents that barrier that cannot be overcome in
order to discover true understanding:
Language. This devastating truth
is revealed when the apparent harmony between all the discourses is ruptured by
the traffic noises, bringing the composition to its conclusion. The teller remains the central, pervasive
image, and becomes representative for all the restricting Western traditions
that this composition is standing against, beginning superficially with the
opera and ending with the more devastating restrictions of an almost purely
language based culture: "Modern society
believes itself to be ushering in a civilisation of the image, but what it
actually establishes overall, is a civilisation of speech."[84]
It is clear that Het Loket
is more than simply a composition that points out the negative aspects of
opera, and is extended through the use of alternative communicative
systems. It is also quite clear that by
combining the contrasting narratives and performance discourses, the Western
theatre and opera forms are deliberately distanced in order to exaggerate these
contrasts and find new forms of representation.
Chapter 4.
"It is not new objects
which should be used in art, but a new and fantastic light should be thrown
upon the old ones.
- Alexei Kruchenykh
Analysis two:
ZAUM>ZACHAR LHWKEVIC ZAUM
The Russian
Futurist Connection
Zaum is the name for a
music-theatre composition involving an entirely new attitude to language
introduced during a little understood period of history close by the turn of
the century: Russian Futurism. This composition takes the futurist theory
and extends it through various contrasting theoretical concepts, some already
encountered in this paper. The intention
is to create a theatrical composition based on a new attitude to language, but
this time to entirely escape from the the bonds of Western conventions by creating a communicative form that is
unique to the theatre. This is the first
attempt to completely explore the possibilities of discovering text through music and of music
communicating through text, the ultimate
aim being to present various levels of ambiguity that can providing many
possible ways for 'meaning' to be rendered in the theatre.
Russian futurism had a totally
contrasting set of influences to other movements in art primarily because of
the isolated position of
A group of artists recognised
for the extremity of their experimental work, became known as the
'cubo-futurists'. The name of this
composition is taken from one the primary theoretical innovations introduced by
members of this group: Zaumni Yazyk (abbreviated zaum), meaning 'trans-sense
language.' This is basically a form of
poetic communication that redefined language itself, but not in terms of
'meaning' in the translatable sense:
According to the futurists, poetry using language restricted by strict
referential meaning and grammatical structures was no longer a valid form of
artistic communication. Poetry was extended to include non-referential sounds
that could nevertheless be enjoyed 'by themselves,' an attitude that had
previously been confined to music. These
linguistic innovations certainly extended beyond merely the meaningless
stringing together of Russian sounds and into areas of communication that had
rarely been seriously considered. This included the theatre: Alexei Kruchenykh (1886-1969), one of the
primary theoreticians of zaum language, said that he saw zaum as the only
possibility for use in the new theatre and cinema. Russian futurist theatre was taken to its
extreme by Ilya Zdanevich (1894-1975), who was later to become part of the Dada
movement. He wrote a series of five
plays entirely in nonsense language, and simultaneously extended the sound
possibilities of the medium and broke the language barrier by writing them
entirely in phonetics (even the title and the stage directions). According to Jindrich Honzl, a member of the
This 'multi-media' sensibility
which is characteristic of the Russian futurist movement has immediate
relevance to my own work in redefining traditionally accepted mediums in order
to create new possibilities in performance.
The intention of the composition is to rediscover the theory of zaum
language, and through this to dynamically present through performance an array
of gradually transforming musical, theatrical and visual elements; a collage of
sound, movement and action that can be interpreted on a number of different
levels. In this 'rediscovery' of the
work of the Russian futurists,the poetry of three of the leading Russian
futurist poets who were the primary supporters of zaum have been
integrated: Velimir
Khlebnikov(1885-1922), Alexei Kruchenykh and Vasily Kamensky (1884-1961). Each had their own individual attitude to the
use of zaum, presenting contrasting but equally valid concepts which resulted
in the production of different poetic styles.
Velimir Khlebnikov was a
dreamer and had a truly unusual vision;
his poetry deals with language as an infinitely redefinable medium, and
historical fact on a constantly occurring time continuum. In his poetry, he yearned for the past and
antiquity, and was almost religiously devoted to the East. For Khlebnikov, poetry was not an end in
itself or a 'realistic' description of reality, but a means of exploration and
discovery of language and new forms: "He
showed us aspects of language whose existence we did not even suspect."[86] Knowing the power of the word as manifested
in charms and incantations, Khlebnikov dreamed of taming this power and of
turning transrational language into a rational one, but with a difference. Unlike the languages we use, this one would
be a universal language of pure concepts clearly expressed by speech sounds.
Kruchenykh and Khlebnikov were the first poets to adopt zaum as a creative
medium, and they shared a close working relationship and friendship.
Alexei Kruchenykh was to
become the primary supporter and theoretician of zaum, which he saw as a
leading mode of expression because he believed that "trans-sense language was
demanded by the confused character of contemporary life and served as an
antidote to the paralysis of common language."[87] This was a reaction against the obsession
with meaning, reason, psychology and philosophy presented by the conservative
literary traditions. The absurdity of
Kruchenykh's most experimental works was a very specific behaviour; it was
different from the seemingly absurd with a hidden message, different even from
the surreal type of subconscious associations.
This absurdity was a pointless, mindless, stubbornly senseless,
irresolvable condition meant only to reveal new and previously invisible realms
of the psyche.[88] Although Kruchenykh's zaum
seems to be taking an extremist stance on language deconstruction, on closer
examination an interesting duality is presented: Kornei Chukovsky, a literary critic,
commented on the primeval nature of this poetry. He said that trans-sense language was not a
'language', but a "pre-language, pre-cultural, pre-historical, when there was
no discourse, conversation, only cries and screams." The strange irony of the situation was that
in their passion for the future, the futurists had "selected for their poetry
the most ancient of the very ancient languages."[89]
Vasily Kamensky presented an
alternative emphasis through his use of
zaum: After postulating the 'musical'
orientation of the word, Kamensky asserted the poet's right to his own unique
understanding and vision of poetic beauty so as to discover new poetic
paths. A Russian futurist critic wrote
that "perhaps none has felt the sound as an aim in itself, as a unique joy as
Vasily Kamensky."[90]
The theatrical work of Ilya
Zdanevich will also play a role in this theoretical analysis because of his
creation of a particularly unique theatre.
His major contribution to Russian futurism took the form of a series of
five plays called 'Aslaablichya.'[91] Zdanevich named the genre vertep thus emphasising its primitivistic
nature. Vertep was a form of
puppet folk theatre of Ukrainian origin, which mixed episodes from the Bible
with comic scenes of everyday life. In
the tradition of folk theatre the figure of the Master begins each play with a
short talk to the audience, providing hints as to the possible meaning;
simultaneously 'inducing' and defining the performance space. The text itself is not Russian, but zaum, and
it is perhaps the most consistent and large scale use of zaum in Russian
futurist literature. The spoken element
is further enhanced by the fact that every word, including stage directions and
the title, is given in phonetic transcription,[92] significant in relation to
the possibilities of the creation of a new performance text. Also significant is Zdanevich's exploration
of folk-theatre forms that communicate through expressive means considerably
beyond simply the use of language.[93]
The Russian futurists in their
adoption of zaum language certainly caught more than a glimpse of what was to
become the obsession of Antonin Artaud:
The creation of a new language unique to the theatre, where the word is
broken from its strict meaning and discovered in a completely new form. From his famous volume of theoretical essays The
Theatre and its Double a clear image of this language can be found:
"The language of
theatre is, in effect, the language of the stage, which is dynamic and
objective. It is the sum of everything
which can be put on a stage in terms of objects, shapes, attitudes, and
meanings. But only to the extent where
all these elements arrange themselves in the process and are cut off from their
immediate meaning, and endeavour, indeed, to create a true language based on the
sign, rather than based on the word.
That is where the notion of symbolism based on the changing of meanings
comes in. Things will be stripped of
their immediate meaning and will be given a new one."[94]
The final zaum composition
will be a full scale three-movement work for five performers and tape. The tape part will be for electronic sounds
as well as recordings of the performers themselves, reflecting a connecting
series of parallel structures that unite the three movements. The zaum texts form the structural basis for
the composition, uniting both the gestural, the vocal and the musical
communicative forms. The emphasis is on
creating a performance form that will produce no 'logical' expectations as to
narrative through the adoption of musical structures, but will still allow
various forms of theatrical and musical communication to be presented in forms
that can flow between one another. The
intention is to create interesting and exciting contrasts through projecting
these systems together, giving the performance freedom to work on a number of
different levels simultaneously, presenting many possible interpretations as to
the actual 'narrative' or 'narratives' at play.
As the texts adopted are firstly in Russian, and secondly have no interpretable
meaning anyway, the freedom attained is through assigning new meanings to these
vocal sounds: The intention of course is
to use this ambiguity between text, language and meaning as the vehicle to
create other communicative forms. During
the course of the composition various ensemble pieces will form and unform on
stage, sometimes simultaneously, sometimes solo, in order to present different
aspects of zaum communication.
Choreographed movement and interaction between the tape and the live
performance will play an important role.
The composition has no 'set';
place and absence of place are simultaneously created and destroyed by the
performers who move within a central performance area. Lighting and sounds (other than from the
performers themselves) also play a role in creating the space in which the
performers move. Costume design is
relatively simple: The performers are
called on to wear a standard dress suit that is a little too large, preferably
each player with a different coloured suit. The performers should also be wearing the same
type of hat, united both by colour and form.
The costumes are not changed completely during the work, but at
different times the composition calls for certain elements of the costume to be
removed or reworked in some way - particularly the hat and the jacket. The purpose of this costume is first to
standardise the performers into a form that will allow them to be used during
the composition as an 'instrument' for the development, but at the same time
will not be alien to the audience and provide some ambiguity when these
'standard' costumes are used by performers making very 'non-standard' gestures
and sounds, as well as actually 'using' these costumes for contrasting
functions within the work. The multi-functionary
nature of these costumes deliberately stretches the economy of means in the
theatre, adopting the 'transformational' possibilities available for objects
and entities on the stage. This is a
reaction against the tradition of realistic dramatic representation which
severely limits this mobility of the sign-relationship: In the Western theatre we generally expect
the object being signified to be represented by a vehicle that has the direct
characteristics of that object. This is
not the case, however, in the Oriental theatre where far more semantic scope is
permitted to each stage item: The multi-levelled adoption of costumes in Zaum
recalls the role of objects in the Chinese theatre. It is also reminiscent of Grotowski's 'poor'
theatre where a rich semantic structure is produced by a small stock of
vehicles.[95]
In the composition, the
initial broader structural emphasis is on a gradual transferal from
'meaningful' to 'meaningless' texts. I am using the these terms carefully and
in the sense that Western thought recognises 'meaningless': An entity, be it an object or a concept, that
can not be translated into a recognisable language form. In truth there is actually nothing in this
composition without 'meaning' or 'purpose', but the emphasis is on the movement
from texts that adopt forms that appear to be in some form communicating
through narrative means - telling stories and
performing pantomimes in the form of a ritual; through the questioning
of language itself expressed through the creation of a new 'meta-language'
defined completely through movement; to a section based on the exploration of
the semiotic possibilities of movement in musical performance. This divides the composition into three major
divisions relating to the work of a specific cubo-futurist poet, and each of
these movements will be described in detail in relation to the communication
forms adopted.
ZAUM-1:
Khlebnikov
The first movement presents an
exploration of Khlebnikov's attitude to zaum
poetry. Khlebnikov had an extended
attitude to language as a communicative form, believing strongly in the almost
'magical' power of vocal sounds both to signify and even affect the world in a
way beyond signification. This certainly
connects with an ancient attitude to language, and one adopted in many Eastern
theatre forms. According to Julia
Kristeva the work of Khlebnikov "threaded through metaphor and metonymy a
network of phonemes or phonic groups charged with instinctual drives and
meaning, constituting what for the author was a numerical code, a ciphering,
underlying the verbal sign."[96] Characteristic of Khlebnikov's work is an
attempt to construct a language of hieroglyphs from abstract concepts,
sometimes called the 'stellar' or 'universal' language. Here the Khlebnikovian zaum attains its
highest point of rarefaction, and only conventionally can one speak of its
possible decipherment.[97] Antonin Artaud's concept of stage language
is certainly significant here, an attitude where signification freely
germinates from a variety of different sources:
Gestures will be equivalent to
signs, signs to words. The spoken word,
when psychological circumstances permit, will be performed in an incantory
way.[...] Movements, poses, bodies of
characters will form or dissolve like hieroglyphs. This language will spread from one organ to
another, establishing analogies, unforeseen associations between series of
objects, series of sound, series of intonations.[98]
This movement will adopt a
flowing structure that will present different ways of interpreting these
attitudes to language, particularly by extending the vocal sound into
movement. Through a combination of the
performance of ritual like movements and sounds, and narrative based
'story-telling' forms where short scenes are enacted through lingual, visual
and musical means without the use of a 'translatable' language, some sense of
'meaning' that goes beyond the words themselves will hopefully be
discovered: These linguistic structures
are adopted as part of the musical and gestural form, adopting a connection
between gesture and sound, sound and colour.
The structures within the work are 'musical' and not related to a
literal translation of the texts used, but are connected more with the relationship
between music and ritual, as discussed in chapter two in relation to certain
forms of Eastern theatre, existing in a liminal world somewhere between here
and beyond, the distance between a sound and its signification; dwelling in the
realm of 'significance'. The movement
begins with a strong internal rhythm uniting the movements, gestures, vocal
sounds and music, and also the relationship between the performers on the stage
and the objects which they use. This internal rhythm gradually falls away as
the communication forms adopted by the performers become more complicated and
the action of the players seems to become independent of this internal
rhythm.
ZAUM-2:
Kruchenykh
Kruchenykh played a
particularly significant role with regard to the theory and use of zaum
language. He thought that the conservative literary traditions placed serious
limitations on poetic imagination, invention, verbal play and spontaneous
intuition. Kruchenykh suggested that the
'emptier' the poetic imagination, the more creative and fruitful the poetic
result: The penetration of the mysteries beyond the rational world.[99] These anarchic attitudes to language form
the basis for the second movement, and the emphasis however is on the rejection
of the idea of any 'sense' or 'meaning' in the Western sense in order for some
kind of signification to occur.
This is presented by a
constant transformation between 'theatrical' and 'musical' form, or more
correctly, contrasting performance situations that allude to theatrical
'meaning' (by adopting gesture-signs that have some meaning other than as part
of the performance) and totally 'meaningless' gestures/sounds: The composition begins with performers
adopting potentially 'meaningful' gestures which forms into an amusing musical
form, just as the composition ends after a musical vocal composition develops
into a performance that alludes to Russian 'slapstick' theatre. The purpose is to explore points of ambiguity
between 'musical' and 'theatrical' communication. The central section uses fragmented gestures
adopted from the first movement, and the movements themselves become directly
representative of vocal sound from tape:
A new 'performance' language is in fact created before the eyes of the
audience.
Lighting emerges on the
central ensemble, who stand side-by-side centre stage close by the audience,
staring blankly as if entirely disinterested in the performance event. It begins first with the performers using
certain gestures seemingly at random:
Coughing, checking watch, clearing throat, sighing etc. The intention is for it to appear that the
performers are in fact waiting for something to happen. This soon forms into simple musical
structures, where the same series of gestures are no longer performed randomly
but form part of a simple rhythmic structure rendering the movements quite
absurd. This is a deliberate use of
traditionally 'out of frame' activity to highlight the performance mode. Given the conventional basis of the frame,
great importance attaches to the audience's willingness to 'disattend' certain
events that are not actually part of the performance, such as audience
activity. In this performance the
audience are directly confronted with this 'out of frame' activity, material
that is both non-musical and non-theatrical, but which is obviously impossible
to 'disattend' because the performers have already been recognised as such and
are standing in the centre of the stage.[100] This is comparable to an Italian futurist
performance called Luce!('lights!') where the audience is confronted
with a dark performance hall where nothing appears to happen, and then are
induced by cast members planted in the audience to call for the lights to be
brought up. When the lights finally
return, the performance is over.
Non-standard material was also readily adopted in Russian futurist
performance.
The tape part emerges from
beneath the sound of the live performance ensemble with whispered
conversational vocal sounds that appear to come from nowhere, and a sudden loud
sibilant sound (Shh!) stills the ensemble who were previously performing the
absurd rhythmic gestures. Five voices
can be heard on tape speaking in a language that sounds a little like
Russian. These five voices on are
designed to be recordings of the same five performers performing on the podium,
so that the performers must actually listen for their own voice.
The text that is used on the
recording is taken from a Kruchenykh zaum poem that alludes to Russian, but has
actually no translation into any language; the poem was fragmented and a
conversational vocabulary formed from this source material. The first reaction from the performance
ensemble is to be seemingly shocked, causing them to look in all directions to
see exactly from where the sound emerged.
A number of whispered sounds on the tape lead to a shouted command which
brings the ensemble to attention. Then
another vocal command is uttered, this sound becomes a name for one of the
performers and causes him to move to a certain position and face in a certain
direction. This happens a number of
times until all the performers are named and positioned in specified places
around the performance space. Then
simple syllabic vocal sounds[101] becomes represented on the stage by simple
movements from the performers (the raising of an arm, turning of the head
etc.); the voices appear to be commanding the performers to move. The same vocal sound comes to represent the
same movement for a certain performer, and a number of the vocal sounds are
shared by all the performers. In other
words, a 'semiotic code' is created on the stage, where the audience is
deliberately directed into recognising
an entirely new, be it limited,
'stage language.' Ambiguity is presented
by the contrast between the indexical nature of the voices on tape who appear
to be 'commanding' the performers to move, and the symbolic nature of the
language itself. This is theoretically provocative, questioning theatre forms
which use always the same form of preset language conventions to communicate in
the theatre. As well as questioning this
particular theatrical frame, it also brings up the 'theatre competence'
introduced in chapter three, where the very nature of the performance forces
the audience to become again competent through the use of a completely new
language/performance form.
Back to a description of the
composition: The vocal/movement sounds
on tape become more frequent until finally all the performers are moving in
reaction to the cassette. A point of
development is reached where 'movement words' are formed by the syllabic Russian
fragments, and each performer has a specific 'word' which he must perform. After the voices have stopped and the
ensemble on the stage is still, the names of the performers are called and one
by one they move into specified positions surrounding the performance
space. The lighting fades out, and the
sound of voices in whispered conversation can be heard from the cassette. This develops gradually into a musical
structure, and finally the vocal composition reaches its climax resulting in
the lights being brought up suddenly, spotlighting two performers centre stage
performing an absurd action; presenting an almost slow motion fragment of
Russian 'slapstick' theatre. A number
of different fragments are presented by the same two performers, separated by
changing the colour of the lighting to differentiate the small sections, and
the players still surrounding the performance space read sections from a
complete zaum poem by Kruchenykh. This
slapstick ending is deliberately reminiscent of the nonsense folk-like zaum
theatre of Zdanevich. A final text also
from Kruchenykh is adopted by the performers on stage in multiple languages
when the short pantomime is over, beginning with one player, and then spreading
to the others: "Lets put an end to this ridiculous vaudeville." When all the
players are saying the phrase as if trying to convince one another of the
urgency, a loud sound from the tape ('nyet') results in the performers stopping
and then performing a simultaneous gesture (a finger to the lips to indicate
quietness), after which the performance space is quickly brought into darkness.
ZAUM-3
Kamensky
Vasily Kamensky (1884-1961)
was a major part of the early futurist activity, and soon after a brief
retirement, he rejoined the group at a time when it definitely had switched
from the impressionism of the old days to new, avant-garde techniques. Kamensky not only welcomed the change, but
wanted to proceed even further in this direction. Following the premises of Russian
cubo-futurism, he attempted to break down language and reconstruct it in a
totally new form. He became interested
in the phonic instrumentation, and in particular with the possibilities offered
by onomatopoeic procedures: Here a
melodic line came increasingly to prevail. The structure of the third movement,
in adopting some of the attitudes to language characteristic of Kamensky, uses
the structures and rhythms behind text to structure the musical development
within the composition, reminiscent of Indian dance 'spoken' through the
rhythmic nature of the words: Musical structures continually result in the
formation of the text just as the reciting of the text results in the creation of musical
structures. However, the emphasis in
this section is to explore more completely the role that 'movement' plays in
the creation of music; the natural physicality of movement expressed through
playing an instrument or conducting.
These 'instrument-based' movements will be discovered in a highly
stylised form, reminiscent again of the aesthetic/communicative function so
common in Eastern performances, but more particularly relating to a relatively
new form of Balinese dance that has used the 'physicality' of
instrument-playing to structure the dance:
"The originator of Kebiyar
Dudik had great musical knowledge, and one of his specialities was playing
the 'trompong' while he danced, he moved with great dexterity along the scales
of the upside down brown bowls."[102]
According to Purnomo Widagdo,
a dancer trained in this form in
Godfried-Willem Raes, a
Belgian composer, bases his musical performance theory also as an expression of
movement, represented particularly in his work for 'invisible instruments' A
Book of Moves: "We are not searching for methods to support movement, but
rather for methods that movement uses as a direct instrument for the expressive
handling of sound. [...] The movement
becomes instrumental for the sound."[103] In this composition the movements of the
performer are picked up by specialised electronic sensors and translated into
information that can be used by a computer; in effect the performer by moving
produces sounds. 'Invisible instruments'
are positioned at specified position in space.
The possibilities for the expression of music through movement are
explored in a wide variety of different forms in this composition divided into
sixteen different parts. This includes a
representation of the conducting process, and a parody of solo percussion
literature from the serial and post-serial period, the player jumping from one
instrument to the other.[104] These two movements are certainly effective
in exploring the physical aspect of instrument playing and conducting,
demonstrating the essential physicality of music playing and from that an
exploration of the semiotic possibilities.
These theories and attitudes
will be adopted primarily by using the performers on stage as tools both to
express the relationship between sound and movement, and in particularly the
possibilities for interfacing text with these notions of music. The movement begins with a 'phantom' ensemble
that forms on stage where the existence of strange musical instruments is suggested by the stylised
movements of the performers. The sounds
themselves are heard from a recording, and are actually unusual vocal sounds of
the same five performers. After this
complete ensemble piece, a number of events occur on stage involving
interaction between text, sound and movement, where rhythmic texts are recited
forming the musical structures (reflected both through music on tape and
movements by the performers), and more particularly the expression of a number
of different 'rhythmic/movement' levels occurring in the same time-span, as
represented in Indonesian music. Here
the combination of different rhythmic levels are represented through the
movements of the performers, contrasting with Western music where a master
rhythm controls the gestures of all performers.
As can be demonstrated in the
work of the Russian futurists, the ultra-modern tends to link up with the archaic;
an eternal contradiction of the avant-garde, where contemporary attitudes feed
back to an ancient primeval tongue.
Kruchenykh himself wrote poetry consisting entirely of vowels, which can
compare to the Egyptian priests who chose a name composed of vowels for the
gods in the most solemn of religious ceremonies.[105] The classical tradition
obliterated this type of 'Asian' invention and it has fallen to the avant-garde
to rediscover and appropriate it: "We
have charged the word with forces and energies which made it possible us to
rediscover the evangelical concept of the 'word' as a magical complex of
images"[106] wrote the dadaist Hugo Ball; "we must
withdraw into the deepest alchemy of words, reserving to poetry its most sacred
ground." This programme would have
appealed to Velimir Khlebnikov who wanted to create a mythical 'pan-slavonic'
language "whose shoots must grow through the thicknesses of modern Russian."[107] Perhaps the greatest tribute left by the
Russian futurists was zaum. Zaum looked
like the outer limit of poetry, where sounds can create meaning but are not
subordinated to it. The two major
proponents of zaum, Khlebnikov and Kruchenykh, certainly shared a vision for
new ways of dealing with language, even if their methods were decidedly different. In both cases, the 'absurdity' of zaum had a
purpose and was never completely anarchic:
For Khlebnikov that purpose was connected with new ways of harnessing
language as a means of communication, whereas Kruchenykh totally abandoned
rational interpretation wanting to connect on a level that went beyond rational
processes and deep into the psyche. Even
Kamensky was to develop the concept of zaum through his interest in the musical
nature of nonsense verse. For the
Russian futurists this was "an appeal to a higher sense, one that is implicit
only in the form of the work itself. The
spatial temporal universe, one that is stable and pervasive."[108] This interpretation of
Russian futurism as a transcendent movement is comparable to Zen Buddhism,
which treats alogical language as the key to enlightenment and a complete
understanding of the world. This also
connects back to the 'ritual' significance forms adopted by Eastern
performances, where untranslatable vocal and gestural languages are adopted to
communicate concepts essentially alien to language. My intention in the zaum composition is to
explore this connection between the ancient and the contemporary by adopting
certain attitudes to performance and linguistic theory in the 'musical'
structure.
Now that we are at the end of
our discussion it is time to refer back to the questions that begun this
analytical survey. The most important
personal discovery for me relates most to the recognition of music as a distinctly
significative form, despite Western traditions that want us to understand that
it is 'abstract'. I have also come to
the understanding that if music is to be discovered in the theatre in a form
that is more cogent than simply an expressive accompaniment to meaning-based
language, it must have independent significative potential and play some role
in the significative process. Through
this understanding I believe that it is possible to create an entirely new
theatre. Below is a list of elements that must be adopted in order to create
such a theatre:
(i) Creation of a new language
adopting elements of other communicative forms,especially non-vocal.
(ii) Adoption and exploitation of an ambiguity
between musical development and the aural/semantic structure of language.
(iii) Exploration of the power of gestural
communication; representing a duality between aesthetic and communicative
functions.
(iv) Extension of the performance text through an
exploration of new forms of notation.
(v) Exploration of the possibilities of
expressing a 'text' through purely musical means.
(vi) Exploring the 'significance' of music that
can communicate beyond language.
[1] Jindrich Honzl, "Dynamics of the Sign in the
Theatre," Semiotics of Art (MIT Press 1976).
[2] Julia Kristeva, Language: The Unknown (Columbia
University Press 1989): 22 - Semiotics.
[3] Roland Barthes, "A Lesson in Writing", Image, Music, Text (
[4] Elizabeth Burns, Theatricality (Harper and Row
Publishers 1973): 4. Conventions of Performance.
[5] Antonin Artaud,"To André Gide", Artaud on Theatre(ed.)Claude
Schumacher (Methuen Drama London 1989):
4. The NRF Project
[6] Elizabeth Burns, Theatricality (Harper and Row
Publishers 1973): 4. Conventions of Performance.
[7] Keir
[8] Keir
[9] Antonin Artaud,"Mise en scene and Metaphysics" Artaud
on Theatre: 5. TheTheatre and its double.
[10] Kier
[11] Antonin Artaud, Artaud on Theatre: 4. The NRF
Project.
[12] Kier
[13] An obvious example is Verdi's Aida, which is
set in Ancient Egypt but expresses itself through the classical Italian opera
form.
[14] Eugenio Barba, The Secret Art of the Performer
(Routledge London 1991): Introduction.
[15] Harry Partch (1901-1976) was an important American
composer, instrument maker and performer specialising in music-theatre.
Harry Partch, Genesis of a Music (Da Capo Press 1979): Chapter 1.
[16] Kier
[17] Nicola Savarese , "Nostalgia or the passion for a
return", The Secret Art of the Performer, (Routledge London 1991).
[18] Leo Treitler, "
[19] Harry Partch, Genesis of a Music (Da Capo
Press 1979): Chapter 1.
[20] Elizabeth Burns, Theatricality (Harper and Row
1973): 3. From Ritual to Drama.
[21] Harry Partch, Genesis of a Music (Da Capo
Press 1979): Chaper 1.
[22] Kandinsky and Schoenberg, Letters, Pictures and
Documents (Faber and Faber Ltd 1984).
[23] Jindrich Honzl, "Dynamics of the Sign in the
Theatre", Semiotics in Art: (MIT Press 1976).
[24] Jerzy Grotowski, Towards a Poor Theatre Drama
Praxis H106 Course Reader 1990.
[25] Antonin Artaud, "Oriental and Western Theatre", Artaud
on Theatre: 5. The Theatre and its Double.
[26] David George, Balinese Ritual Theatre, Popular
theatre course reader H292 (
[27] Roland Barthes, "Lesson in Writing", Image, Music,
Text, (ed.) Stephen Heath (Fontana Paperbacks London 1977).
[28] Antonin Artaud, "Theatre and the Gods", Artaud on
Theatre:5. The Theatre and its Double.
[29] Kier
[30] Jerzy Grotowski, Towards a Poor Theatre Drama
Praxis H106 Course Reader 1990.
[31] "We also find transformation similar to the basic
theatrical element in the carrying out of many practices, customs and folk
ceremonies that have a dominant magical or religious function. Furthermore, transformation in such
activities is not restricted to the interhuman type, but also transformation
into animals or even into material objects." Petr Bogatyrev, "Semiotics in the
Fok Theatre", Semiotics of Art (MIT Press 1976).
[32] Harry Partch, Genesis of a Music, (Da Capo
Press 1979): Chapter 1.
[33] Karel Brusak, "Signs in the Chinese Theatre", Semiotics
in Art: (MIT Press 1976).
[34] Harry Partch, Genesis of a Music (Da Capo
Press 1976): Chapter 1.
[35] Kabuki was an offshoot from Noh around 1600 in a
reaction to the increasingly esoteric nature of the Noh performances.
[36] Eugenio Barba, A
Dictionary of Theatre Anthropology,(Routledge London 1991):
Introduction.
[37] Roland Barthes, "Lesson in Writing", Image, Music,
Text.
[38] Nicola Savarese, "Nostalgia or the passion for a
return", A Dictionary of Theatre Anthropology (Routledge London 1991).
[39] This poem in Sanskrit, the movements, and the
translation were provided by Rakini, a dancer who studied Bharatnatyam
in
[40] Bharata, Kathakali Performance Reading H200
Murdoch University: 32 Mudras-The language of the hands.
[41] Karel Brusak, "Signs in the Chinese Theatre", Semiotics
in Art: (MIT Press 1976).
[42] Karel Brusak, "Signs in the Chinese Theatre", Semiotics
in Art: (MIT Press 1976).
[43] Eugenio Barba, A
Dictionary of Theatre Anthropology (Routledge London 1991):
Introduction.
[44] Bharata, Kathakali
Performance Reading H200
[45] Eugenio Barba, A
Dictionary of Theatre Anthropology (Routledge London 1991): Hands.
[46] Julia Kristeva, Language: The Unknown
(Columbia University Press 1989): 22-Semiotics.
[47] "Mudra communication in Kathakali, through the use of
gestures simultaneoulsy in right and left hand, results in a vocabulary of 576
words." Bharata, Kathakali,Performance
Reading H200
[48] Eugenio Barba, A
Dictionary of Theatre Anthropology (Routledge London 1991): Hands.
[49] Eugenio Barba, A
Dictionary of Theatre Anthropology (Routledge London 1991): Hands.
[50] Julia Kristeva, Language: The Unknown
(Columbia University Press 1989): 22-Semiotics.
[51] Roland Barthes, "The Third Meaning", Image, Music,
Text.
[52] Petr Bogatyrev, "Folk Song from a functional point of
view", Semiotics in Art: (MIT Press 1976.)
[53] Festival Music from
[54] Karel Brusak, "Signs in the Chinese Theatre" Semiotics
in Art: (MIT Press 1976).
[55] Bharata, Kathakali Performance Reading H200
[56] Thanks to Purnomo Widagdo, a Javanese dancer of Kebiyar
Dudik.
[57] Eugenio Barba, A
Dictionary of Theatre Anthropology,(Routledge London 1991): Rhythm.
[58] Antonin Artaud, "On the Balinese Theatre" Artaud
on Theatre:5. The Theatre and its Double.
[59] Thanks again to Rakini, the Indiandancer.
[60] Dr. David George, "Balinese Ritual Theatre: An
Introduction",Popular Theatre Course Reader H292.
[61] Antonin Artaud, "On the Balinese Theatre", Artaud
on Theatre:5. The Theatre and its Double.
[62] Kandinsky and Schoenberg, Letter, Pictures and
Documents (Faber and Faber Ltd 1984).
[63] Harry Partch, Genesis of a Music, (Da Capo
Press 1979): Author's Preface.
[64] "Week van de Hedendaagse Muziek" has occured yearly
since 1986.
[65] This recording was made by Moniek Darge during the
tour of her performance duo through
[66] Designed especially for the production, these will
later be revealed as musical instruments in the Chinese teacher/student
pantomime discourse.
[67] The melody in its simplest form was transcribed by
the composer from the chinese recording.
[68] Petr Bogatyrev, "Forms and Functions of Folk
Theatre", Semiotics of Art (MIT Press 1976).
[69] Elizabeth Burns, Theatricality, (Harper and
Row 1973): 5. Rhetorical Conventions.
[70] Kier
[71] Down by the
[72] "A particularly successful exponent has been the
American director-playwright Richard Foreman, whose use of visual and aural
'framing devices' constitues a recognizable stylistic feature of his
productions - that is, his inclusion of 'anything that punctuates, frames,
emphasizes, or brings into the foreground a particular word, object, action or
position." Kier
[73] Vsevelod Meyerhold, "The Theatre Theatrical", H106
Drama Praxis Course Reader 1990.
[74] Kier
[75] Petr Bogatyrev , "Forms and Functions of folk
theatre", Semiotics of Art: (MIT Press 1976).
[76] The unknown theatre of Khamza was witnessed in 'De Singel', a performance venue in Antwerpen (
[77] Taken from the programme notes provided by the festival.
Translated from Dutch into English by Z. Laskewicz.
[78] Translated from the programme by Z. Laskewicz.
[79] There are moments however when the musicians are able
to assert their independence, for example the violin player taking back the
flower.
[80] Down by the
[81] Karel Brusak, "Signs in the Chinese Theatre",Semiotics
of Art (MIT Press 1976): 3. Acoustic Signs.
[82] The 'nonsense' language adopted by the male singer is
actually made up of vowel sounds taken from Tardieu's play. This element of the composition was completed by Moniek Darge.
[83] The work of Zdanevich, a Russian futurist who was
later to become a dadaist, will be introduced inthe next chapter.
[84] Roland Barthes, "A Lesson in Writing",Image Music Text (ed.) Stephen Heath (
[85] Jindrich Honzl, "Dynamics of the Sign in the
Theatre", Semiotics of Art (MIT Press 1976).
[86] Osip Brik, "On Khlebnikov", The Ardis anthology of
Russian Futurism (Ardis Lakeland Press 1980)
[87] Vahan D. Barooshian, Russian Cubo-futurism
(mouton
[88] Charlotte Douglas, "Views from the
[89] Kornej Chokovsky, Futuristy (Peterburg 1922).
[90] Vahan D. Barooshian, Russian Cubo-Futurism
(Mouton
[91] Relating to the image of a donkey.
[92] Vladimir Markov, Russian Futurism (MacGibbon
and Kee Ltd. 1968): Chapter 7.
[93] Demonstrative of these communication possibilities,
in the performance of The Unknown Theatre of Khamza , it was certainly
still possible to understand the performance without the available simultaneous
translation.
[94] Antonin Artaud , "Theatre and Poetry", Artaud and
Theatre (ed.) Claude Schumacher (Methuen Drama London 1989): 5. The Theatre
and its Double.
[95]Kier
[96] Julia Kristeva, Desire in Language (CUP New
York 1980): 1. The Ethics of Linguistics.
[97]
[98] Antonin Artaud , "To André Gide", Artaud and
Theatre (ed.) Claude Schumacher (Methuen Drama London 1989): 5. The NRF
Project.
[99] Vahan D. Barooshian, Russian Cubo-Futurism
(Ardis Lakeland Press 1980): pg. 83.
[100] It is interesting to note however that the audience
during the first performance interacted with the
performance by performing similar gestures and sounds,
brought about being confronted by the same behaviour on stage.
[101] These vocal sounds are taken from freely from another
Kruchenykh poem and the Russian language itself.
[102] Taken from a document provided by Purnomo Widagdo,
describing the history of the dance.
[103] Taken from Godfried's still unpublished theoetical
and technical work about his composition A Book of Moves.
[104] The movements are 'Lead' and 'Beat' respectively.
[105]
[106] Annabelle Melzer, Latest Rage the Big Drum,
(UMI Resesarch Press 1980).
[107]
[108] Charlotte Douglas, "View from the
Š May 2008 Nachtschimmen
Music-Theatre-Language Night Shades,
Ghent (Belgium)*
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Major Writings
