The Invention of "Theatricality": Rereading Bernard Dort and Roland Barthes

Abstract

At the opening of Gordon Craig's The Art Of The Theater (1912), the Stage-Director, who has just shown the Playgoer around the theater in order to give him an idea of the "machine" ("general construction, together with the stage, the machinery for manipulating the scenes, the apparatus for lighting, and the hundred other things" [137]), invites his guest to "rest here in the auditorium and talk a while of the theater and of its art..."(137). This lesson merits attention: one should never address any of the questions pertaining to theatrical aesthetics without having first faced the stage itself, even if only mentally. Prior to developing critical thinking about theater, it is necessary to take note, once more, of the fact that this confined, flat area, in spite of its being destined to become the pedestal of an entire world, appears absolutely deserted when not in use. In the past, the red curtain spared the audience the sight of this void; it was only drawn back in order to let through mirages formerly devised back stage. Now purely functional, the "iron curtain" seems to set the spectators and the artists apart, at the outset of a performance, only to endow the absolute, gaping void of the modern stage with greater power. Behind the velvet curtain, our elders were able to conceive of the munificence and plenitude of a theater founded upon illusion. Nowadays, as soon as the curtain rises, we become aware of the inadequacy of the set and scenography, given that these can never quite fill the void of the stage nor fulfill the audience's expectations. The stage, even when particularly burdened, remains utterly empty—and possibly more so in this case. It is precisely this emptiness—this non-representativeness that the stage seems bound to exhibit to the audience.