Seite 14 [14]
INTRODUCTION
undertaking, which was interested in restoring whole performances that
already disappeared so that they would be present before our spiritual
eyes with the vibrancy of “ein blutvolles Gesamtbild” or “ein unmittelbares
Abbild”.! Although the Web makes it possible, Philther does not intend to
simulate some kind of liveness (deconstructed by Philip Auslander in his
seminal book),"! also aimed at, for example, by the virtual reconstruction of
the 1526 Battle of Mohács as a 20-minute film created through the marriage
of historical research and computer animation at Károli Gáspár University
with the engine of the Total War series of games.!? Thirdly, Philther does
not share Hermann’s perhaps most ambitious goal: the influence of theatrical
practice by confronting today’s audience with a reconstructed performance.”
Recent examples of this attempt, such as the “original practices” productions
at the reconstructed Globe Theatre in London or Le bourgeois gentilhomme,
directed by Benjamin Lazar in Paris in 2004, show the contradiction that
Jan Assmann pointed out in relation to music in the context of “werkgetreue
Rezeption”. Namely, that a work can be performed in the spirit of the ideal of
fidelity, reviving its (supposedly) original way of performance, but it cannot
be received or experienced in the spirit of this ideal, i.e. “faithfully”. Since
reception cannot be reconstructed, the relevance of this endeavor gets highly
problematic from the point of view of contemporary theatre practice. Therefore,
Philther prefers influencing the practice of understanding theatre. The way in
which its historical analyses read theatre intends to serve as a model for the
approach to productions of the present and the recent past. Fourthly, Philther
does not cumulate documents treated as facts, but provides interpretation
instead, putting textual and visual memories in context and evaluating them
according to their reliability. It is not simply a matter of assessing certain
documents as reliable or unreliable, but rather a matter of analyzing selection
and interpretation themselves. It is a matter of examining what memories we
are left with focus attention to (i.e. what is recorded in them and why) and
what conception of theatre is revealed in them. Compared to the positivist
form of reconstruction, this is the most important difference: the reflection of
the memories of a past production, in terms of the expectations and the (not
necessarily adverse) prejudices and values carried in their medium, which are
considered far from neutral.
Max Hermann: Forschungen zur deutschen Theatergeschichte des Mittelalters und der
Renaissance, Berlin, Weidmann, 1914, 7.
Philip Auslander: Liveness. Performance in a Mediatized Culture, London — New York,
Routledge, 1999.
» Cf. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3KiCZDq_C4 (accessed 6 February 2021).
Cf. Hermann: Forschungen, 13.
Cf. Jan Assmann: Die Zauberflöte. Oper und Mysterium, München-Wien, Carl Hanser
Verlag, 2005, 12.
«12-6