Staging the Liminal

Abstract

Abstract Chapter 3 implements the notion of liminality (the experience or condition of the betwixt and between) in an analysis of character and diegetic space in Jarry’s Ubu roi and Maeterlinck’s one-acts. Both playwrights’ characters are uncanny schematizations of the human form that blur the distinctions between subject and object, human and non-human, animate and inanimate. I examine the uncanny as a category of liminality, invoking Victor Turner, Antonin Artaud, the ‘uncanny valley’ theory of Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori, and the fin-de-siècle cult of the marionette. Both playwrights also refuse to localize dramatic space, to transform it into a specific Somewhere by means of consistent diegetic framing. Deliberately eschewing any geographical or historical consistency in his use of proper names and toponyms, Jarry foregrounds the liminal character of his ‘Poland’ by mixing and matching names, accents, and costumes from various periods and locales. Maeterlinck, meanwhile, underscores the neither-here-nor-there-ness or indeterminacy of the dramatic situations in L’Intruse, Intérieur, and Les Aveugles.