Unsettling Representation: Monuments, Theatre, and Relational Space

Abstract

This article explores the ways in which theatrical techniques might intervene in the representational operations of monuments. As illustrated by the controversy surrounding nearly every aspect of the memorial to the destroyed World Trade Center, monumentality implies a finality of meaning and an unavailability of monumental spaces to open and fluctuating meanings. Henri Lefebvre's distinction between ‘representations of space’ and ‘representational space’ suggests a method for unsettling or rewriting these meanings, which Joanne Tompkins develops as an analytical tool in her consideration of contemporary Australian theatre. However, Tinderbox Theatre Company's production of convictions in a decommissioned courthouse in Belfast demonstrates that theatrical representations may have the effect of displacing previous spatial practices, but they also have their own authorizing norms and associated codes of meaning and behaviour. Using Doreen Massey's concept of ‘relational space’ to augment Lefebvre's categories, a set of criteria can be articulated for counter-monumental theatre that is attentive to the politics of openness and closure. And While London Burns, a downloadable audio tour of the financial centre of London produced by John Jordan and PLATFORM, is used as an example of a theatrical event which creates relational spaces that intervene within the normative mechanisms both of corporate organization of urban space and of dramatic narrative. Concluding by co-opting Wren's Monument, And While London Burns asks its participants to rethink identity in spatial terms, and the author argues that this spatial awareness in turn necessitates an awareness of relationality which is relevant to both theatre and politics.