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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. « 98 «
