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CHAPTER Two: WHAT Is A DRAMA EVENT
It is clear from this example how the focus is moved in rehearsal from creating
an extreme moment that is showing the interpretation to the audience
— the Student is confronted by himself — to concentrating on the Enemy’s
action using his vest to wipe his own blood off the bayonet that he was
stabbed with. The DE is created here by the meeting of the objects within
the logic of the situation. Even though in the example above the whole
situation is extreme it is important to note that Cooper specifies the wiping
of the bayonet with the vest as the action that can highlight the underlying
contradictions depending on how it is realised in performance. Cooper points
out that when an object is cathexed it retains its use value, but “its grammar
is changed", he clarifies that the objects have a journey through the plays
and that their changing value creates a productive tension. The word ‘journey’
used by Cooper implies that DEs happen within a larger structure, rather
than as random individual events. For example, the motif of cleaning up after
oneself, or being told to clean up and take responsibility for making a mess is
repeated through many situations of the play, and is developed to an extreme
in this last event. It is useful to look at another, more detailed definition of
DE from Cooper.
A DE occurs when objects that are ideologically neutral or where the ideological
content is striking in a given dramatic situation, are deconstructed by cathexis
and decathexis. This process charges/imbues the object with meaning (and energy)
and value that extend beyond the thing itself and penetrate ideologically-given
meanings in order to reveal to us what was previously concealed — the objective
situation (also known as the Invisible Object).5°°
Cooper argues that socially accepted meanings can be questioned through
engaging the audience in the constant re-description of the meaning of
the objects used in the fictional situation as long as the actions remain
within the logic of the event as seen from the example of the bayonetted
soldier. Cooper claims that “there is a tension between the received meaning
ascribed to the object in everyday life (which still remains) and the new values
invested in it”.?”! According to him the change in meaning and value can
reveal the concealed structures and elements of the situation that are usually
invisible. The Invisible Object referred to here by Cooper is a concept used by
Bond that I return to later.
38° Cooper: Imagination in Action, 56.
3°0 Cooper: Making a world of difference, 44.
391 Ibid.
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