| Theater and Text. Valda Cakare (theatre critic, Latvia) |
What is a text? A combination of words in a definite sequence? A language fact, which is guaranteed the privilege (duty) to be exactly the way it is, and not different in any way? A place where multiple meanings meet under the common roof of printed or written signs? Speaking of the contemporary theater text, the two most often discussed questions are the following the question: about the place of the text in the performance hierarchy and about loyalty to the text. To the first question, the 20th century theater experience has given a unanimous answer: the text is by no means the dominant system of signs, but rather one of several inter-linked components in a performance. Cracks in the logocentric position appear as early as the end of the 19th century. Loss of confidence in the word as a carrier of truth and interest in the domain of the subconscious, which might be the real abode of the truth, resulted in the theater trying to push into the text to the background and even disengage itself from the domain of the word. Antonin Artaud, the father of the 20th century modern theater, rejected a theater built on the foundations of the text and psychology, moreover, he strove to create a new, physical theater language, based on multiple sign systems rather than words. Traditionally, dominance of a linguistic sign system has characterized the Latvian theater. The most outstanding of Latvian poets and dramatists, Rainis, during the while 1920's being the director of the National Theater, emphasized the priority of the play over the performance and categorically opposed those who "wish to raise the tool (the actor) to the position of the goal", which was exactly what the most brilliant personality among the Latvian directors, Eduards Smiļģis, used to do in his metaphoric theater inspired by symbolism and expressionism. The kind of a theater where the main strength is the spoken word continues to exist in the Latvian dramatic art at the end of the twentieth century. It is, however, surrounded by miscellaneous alternatives: the priority of the text is being questioned both by moving the text to the periphery of the sign system in a performance, as well as by ignoring it altogether. Experiments with animate and inanimate objects, visual and sound images, and the use of modern technologies as the main building materials of a performance are replaicing traditional theatrical aesthetical theories and practices. The second question regarding loyalty to the text- surfaces most often in relation to productions of classics. That isn't Shakespeare That isn't Ibsen Disagreements are and will be inevitable because a complete unanimatity as to the loyalities to be maintenand can never be reached. Opinions differ whether are should adhere to the author's ideas, aesthetic ptinciples or the performing tradition. In addition, the same text cannot be staged twice. One has to agree with Keir Elam, a British semiotic, who asserted that a play must be viewed not as a linguistic text, which is to be translated into a scenic language, but as a linguistic transcript of a scenic possibility. In other words, a dramatic text is a structure that's forever unfinished and unfinishable; a hint, which, upon engaging in a dialogue with the reality, is capable of creating an unlimited number of new models. Could not that penetrating throught be considered with a great deal of justification, as the main inspiration for the modern theater? |
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