the absenting of the actor

Some parts: Manuel, P. (2017) Theatre Without Actors: Rehearsing New Modes of Co-Presence

p. 13

The co-presence of perforrmer and audience (as a basic condition of theatre) is in this boo cosidered a historically contigent phenomenon.

Aim of dissertation: to rethink relations of co-presence between i) spectators and their surrounding realities and ii) humans and non-humans –> the absenting of the actor is nistrumental in rethining notions of i) presence ii) acting iii) spectating

p. 18

There are artworks without performers in a series of artistic fields: theatre, dance, performance art, music… Here the forcus is on theatre

p. 21-24

Tthree contemporary artistic practices of performing without human or professional performers, as well as with non-humans: i) “object theatre” is affiliated with theatre while, in the others, ii) “expanded choreography” and iii) “installation art”” the absence of the performer is articulated within the disciplinary fields of dance and visual arts respectively.

i) “object theatre” : the main aspects of acting concern the manipulation of objects (not included in this dissertation)

Found objects are relocated to the theatre from the contexts of daily life (e.g. mass-produced objects) or of a specific practice (e.g. tools). Onstage, human performers manipulate these objects in order to portray fictional characters and stories, as well as to explore the possibilities of making the objects interact with each other. The ways objects are staged and enacted is not always anthropomorphic and, often, theatre makers tend to stage the object in ways that heighten their physical presence and their agency, beyond the presence of human performers.

ii) “expanded choreography” (included): a practice that looks to expand concrete aspects of choreography, such as movement, space, or the human performer, in ways that exceed the disciplinary practices and discourses of dance. By considering the choreographing of movement beyond human movement, or of performing beyond human performers –> create ways of staging non-human actants and ways of rethinking the role of the professional performer.

iii) “installation art”: intersections between “installation art” and theatre such as notions of scenography, theatricality, liveness and spectatorship. With respect to theatre without actors, cases of performances where there is no physical presence of human beings may elicit a reading of the absence of the actor as a signal that the performance is, instead, a piece of installation art. The relation between the two is not established on the modifications brought by absenting the performer but, instead, established on the level of how the absence of the performer modifies the conventional set up of theatrical presentations.

p. 24, Co-presence

Co-presence refers to a relation established between human actors and spectators, being co-present during a performance, in a co-extensive space and on a simultaneous time –> it has become a way to define what is distinctive about theatre in regards to other artistic disciplines –> it carries with it embedded dualisms: actor vs. spectator, active actor vs. passive spectator, fictional time vs. real time, and stage vs. audience

Theatre without actors (the absenting of the actor) i) disputes that the above arrangement of co-presence is the only possible form of co-presence in theatre and performance ii) interrupts the relation established exclusively between human actors and spectators and iii) dualisms embedded in such an account of co-presence.

Rather, a relation of co-presence i) is multiple, and ii) establishes modes of being co-present with a multiplicity of human and non-human entities

p. 25

German director Heiner Goebbels in his lecture “Aesthetics of Absence” (2010): how a theatrical space emptied of actors can be seen to be inhabited by a realm of other “matters”. Notion of “theatre of absence”, where theatre is re-thought according to the “absence of a story”, or the “absence of a visually centralized focus”, or “a division of presence among all elements involved” or “the disappearance of the actor / performer from the center of attention (or even from the stage altogether)” –> the absence of actors creates an emptied space that allows spectators to discover things on stage by themselves

p. 31 Chapter 1 — Strategies of Contemporary Theatre Without Actors

Section 1 — Artificial Beings: Technology

Strategy 1 — Doubles

*physical presence of actors is replaced by audio-visual technological installations *an illusion of an actor’s physical presence is created *the strategy is to create a sense of physical presence of absent actors — while also implying a sort of re-enactment of a past performance (and thus absence)

Denis Marleau: Les Aveugles by Maurice Maeterlinck (2002)

Marleau projected video recordings of the faces of two actors — one female, one male — on to several masks that were cast from each actor’s face. The effect, reinforced by the dim lighting and a distance from the audience, created the illusion of the physical presence of actors.

The audience looks at the fixed faces of the blind while they describe their still perceptive journey, by creating not only a visual experience, but also a suggestive experience of hearing and of remembering. In the final moments of the performance of Les Aveugles, the lights brightened to the point where the masks revealed the surface upon which the faces were projected, and the materiality of the masks as objects became the sole presence, inviting the audience to fully realise the artificiality of the piece. The resting masks provided a canvas for the projection of audience’s memories, to flicker through them and to project faces onto these heads as after-images.

p. 39-48

Strategy 2 — Autonomous Machines

staging of technology in ways that it performs autonomously from the presence or acting of humans and it does not attempt at simulating their physical presence

in pieces without actors, these apparatuses are not supporting the performance of actors but, instead, become acting entities. However, in these makers’ views, this focus on mechanisms and on their autonomous performing does not determine a moving away from theatre. These makers see their works without actors as challenges to disciplinary issues of theatre. (p. 44)

Annie Dorsen: Hello Hi There

Computers are not seen as means of representing dialogue, but as speakers themselves, as acting subjects. In this way, machines perform a kind of theatricala cting devoid of human affection35 through programmed but unexpected and unrehearsed motion. Considering these qualities, this mechanical motion became the manifestation of a kind of natural phenomena.

Rabih Mroué and Lina Saneh: 33 rpm and a few second

Within this “living room” setting created by Mroué and Saneh, machines were actually the only elements in motion, bringing about an immediate manifestation of the potential of media and mediation that suggest interpersonal communication and human presence. The script of 33 rpm unfolds the narrative of the disappearance of a fictional character, however in doing so, there is a dramaturgical step taken from staging the disappearance of the character and towards the disappearance of the actor.

Heiner Goebbels: Stifters Dinge

Goebbels aimed at creating a performance engaged with “theatre as a ‘thing in itself’, not as a representation or a medium to make statements about reality” (Goebbels 2010, 5) […] by devising means for things to perform in the absence of actors.

The presence of fabricated objects is not supporting the acting of actors nor working as an accessory to the dramatic plot. Rather, objects themselves are staged in order to become the protagonists of theatrical acting. In Stifters Dinge, “things” are staged in a way that allow for them to be perceived in their concrete materiality; objects and natural elements are not staged as a means to symbolise and demonstrate, but rather in the literalness of their “objecthood”.

Romeo Castellucci: Sacre du Printemps

Castellucci sought to present the automated, precise machinery of robots as well as the porous and diffused materiality of bone meal dust instead of the living, professional body of dancers. Within the dramaturgy of the piece, the reference to this cycle of production and of consumption fulfils the idea of sacrifice referenced in the piece’s title, providing a funerary imagery to the absenting of the living.

Conclusion: Disciplinary Challenges

1. Mroué: His observation regarding how the performance’s placement changes the way it is perceived denotes an awareness concerning the construction of spectatorship in each of these contexts, and how the spectatorial gaze is organised differently in a gallery from a theatre.
2. Goebbels: challenges the conditions of co-presence characteristic of the conventional theatre, given that the performance aimed at altering the very relation of “self-confirmation to both a performing and a perceiving subject”. In removing the actor, one is also removing the experience of being in a “direct encounter (with the actor)”. Thus he aims to shape an experience where an audience, rather than recognizing itself “in the actor or singer or dancer on stage”, experiences “the presence of the other”. In this sense, in Stifters Dinge, the automation of the performance worked as a formal strategy that compensated the void left open by the absenting of the actor, while it could also be seen as a strategy that reinforced the presence of things towards an audience of “perceiving subjects”.
3. Castellucci: Le Sacre du Printemps, again, offered a perceptive experience but in his view, it did not alter the fundamental relation of co-presence between audience and stage. An actor does not necessarily imply the presence of physical human body. Instead, an actor can be “transformed into dust, or geometric shapes, or animals”. Castellucci envisions that a relation of co-presence is still evoked by the presence of the spectator, but can be reconfigured in a manner in which spectators relate to other non-human beings and things.
4. Dorsen: proposes to acknowledge non-human and unrehearsed beings as performers.

Their observations suggest that the absence of performers is the result of how their work explores the possibilities of the medium of theatre, the possibilities of non-humans to act, and the possibility of new modes of co-presence.

p. 49

Section 2 – Environments of Play: Spectators

strategies of audience participation where the interaction with the audience is primarily based on instructions (i)“Aural Scores”: spectators are instructed through listening and ii)“Readership”, where spectators are instructed through reading

instruction-based performances without actors that place the spectator in the role of an autonomous participant/performer –> “autonomous participatory performances”

instructions as a strategy for absenting the actor

scores: their function is to trigger and direct the enacting of audience participation in a precise manner, and set the atmosphere of play. Instructions become the very matrix from which participation is devised because they become the means for theatre makers to delegate the acting to spectators, as well as allowing spectators to act and experience autonomously.

audiences act autonomously in immersive environments of play –> self-sufficient settings where spectators act individually –> a participatory setting that can “run by itself” i) employing a degree of automatism that becomes a key element in creating an “autonomy” of audiences ii) facilitates spectators having individual perceptive experiences of the surroundings