On Theatre Language

This concise little beauty from Alison Croggon at Theatre Notes http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com/

...

I think personally that theatre and poetry have a lot to say to one another (people forget for example that Ibsen's first plays, Brand and Peer Gynt, were in verse, and that feeds into his later plays foundationally - his naturalism has a strong poetic). And just as there are many kinds of theatre, there are many kinds of poetry, which express different relationships to and consciousnesses of language. There's a point where I resile against categorisation, it's in the end fairly meaningless, but nevertheless it can be useful to make distinctions between different kinds of practice... For example, JH Prynne, one of the giants of innovative English poetry, has a particular critique of language that he brings to his work that refuses easy meaning, part ofa thought critique of capitalism, while Kamau Brathwaite, a Caribbean poet, has an entirely different idea about language to do with colonialism. Australian poets like MTC Cronin and John Kinsella have their own takes on language which express their own constellation of concerns. These approaches operate at the level of syntax and diction and vocabulary, ie, at the nuts and bolts of language, and they forcibly inject other kinds of vocabulary and structure into literary written English, question the ways in which we assume knowledge, release new and surprising expressivities into written (and spoken) language, and so on and so on. Poets are always trying to find ways of saying things that language otherwise refuses to express. That's why the "cutting edge" (to coin a phrase) of creative language use is usually with the poets.

Theatrical language is different, as I keep saying, from poetry, and on the whole inherently more conservative. But a lot of interesting theatrical writing does press against the borders of poetry. Someone like LaBute interests me minimally because this consciousness doesn't enter his practice; someone like Pinter is totally alive to the poetry - in a very precise sense - of dramatic language. Sarah Kane and Howard Barker also. (Barker is himself quite a fine poet).

Speaking completely generally, this shift towards consciously poetic idioms in the theatre is an aspect of something that has been called the "post-dramatic stage" (I'm not sure I agree with the term, really, since I think it's more a redefinition of drama) - here's the Oz's John McCallum briefly talking about it in relation to Australian theatre:

"Artistically what has been exciting is the renewed emphasis on physical theatre, contemporary performance and non-realistic, often extravagantly theatrical, work -- and this has at last begun to creep into the mainstream. This new, post-dramatic theatre (American writer Richard Schechner coined the term in the 1970s and it has recently been theorised by the German critic Hans-Thies Lehmann) thrives on real actions and events in the performance space and direct dialogue with its audiences, not oblique representations, based in hackneyed conventions, of a fictional world outside it, usually far off and in another country.

"Shakespeare parodied such conventions in the play the rustics perform in A Midsummer Night's Dream: "All that I have to say is that this lanthorn is the moon; I the man in the moon; this thorn-bush my thorn-bush; and this dog my dog," says the actor, frustrated by the nitpicking mockery of the smooth-talking noble lovers lolling comfortably in each other's arms; those who wouldn't know a good story if it got up and bit them. By being frank, the rustics finally win them over, and that is what the theatre is trying to do now.

"The old model of worthy productions of classic plays and "sensitively" directed realistic productions of new ones will continue, but the best work now is that which transforms the classics and the conventions, or which uses new media and new forms to deal with urgent problems."

In the UK, you can look at what's happening at London's National Theatre (Katie Mitchell's controversial productions of The Waves and Attempts on Her Life) which is causing all sorts of fuss over there. Or the work of Chris Goode, who is making what many people say is among the most interesting theatre in the UK, and whom I met first as a poet.

I think the interesting explorations happening in Melbourne at present constitute a small and potent sub-set of this wider shift. To be honest, what's happening here is exciting by any standards. Some projects will work, some won't, that's the deal with new work, but we're watching theatrical language evolving.

8:35 AM, August 30, 2007

and my response..

Wow...this is a seriously brilliant and concise little blogpost Alison and covers about three continents in as many paragraphs! It puts its finger on one of the common misunderstandings; the difference between 'theatrical language' (i.e. the spoken word on the stage) and, for want of a more elegant term, theatre's language (i.e. the mise en scene, the dramaturgy, the actor's body, the architecture, lighting, sound....). As long as we treat theatre as an adjunct to the literary disciplines we'll keep finding it a pale and reactionary art form, obsessed with logocentrism. Many pieces in Australia become 'recitations'; live bodies memorising and regurgitating 'literature'. Not in itself dull or vapid but not really utilising the various grammars of theatre's language.

This comparison/analogy with poetic practice is very useful, partly because it's so counter-intuitive. The writing of poetry is the act of isolated creation par example (well nearly always); the single creative mind constructing meaning, observing and fashioning language on their own, and (perf poetry aside) read by another mind in isolation. The transaction between artist and consumer is relatively classical, unsullied. But the business of creating/ fashioning theatre's language is constantly subject to intervention; collaboration, discussion, 'takes', 'readings', anxious tension between design and word etc etc. Theatre's language isn't a voice, it's voices, sometimes in sync, sometimes out of sync, on the one stage. But we still persist in demanding/treating theatre as if it's 'writing', a la poetry.

Hmm...and who are our JH Prynnes, in the Australian theatre?