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THE TRAGEDY OF MAN AS THEATRUM THEOLOGICUM (A DRAMATURG’S DIARY)
FEBRUARY 25, 2020
More and more stuff ends up on the stage: the three tables, costumes, the final
props, body paint, makeup, masks. Now that everything becomes skin-colored,
this proximity suddenly becomes beautiful and gripping. Eroticism is not a
matter of nudity.
The text becomes perfectly incomprehensible — I was waiting for this mo¬
ment. The technology, the objects, the lighting, and the sounds confuse the
actors’ speech. It will clear up: it must clear up. When a scene, or even a
short passage, takes place, the text is perfectly audible. I take notes feverishly;
Purcarete changes his location in the audience space more and more frequent¬
ly, paying attention to sightlines, from above, from below, from the locations
most distant from the main axis, or from the very front rows.
FEBRUARY 26, 2020
Set decoration is in progress on the stage; meanwhile, we reviewed the entire
text with the actors in the studio. Could it be that the need for scrupulousness
in examining the philosophical-theological aspects of the text, which is the
essential uniqueness of theatrical tradition, is in danger of extinction? But, of
course, we also seem to be lacking in fundamental dramaturgical knowledge,
or perhaps we are continually distancing ourselves from the cultural principles
of the Hamburg dramaturgical tradition. What will theater become in the
post-literary age? Will the demand — indeed, the need — to point out and
analyze socialized aggression remain at the center of the contract the theater
has made with itself? It would be good to live to find out; I will not.
After the workshop, the actors thanked me for the textual work with a
warmth I had not expected. They told me that they had begun to sense their
neutral, meaningless sentences, and their relationship to the text had changed.
The eternal danger of the theater of Purcarete — given that it’s very frequently
ensemble play with protagonists flashing into view, then vanishing, as well as
characterful, idiosyncratic (antique) choruses — is that in several productions
one can see the above problem; only the director shows his hand because the
actors do not achieve true characters, worked out in detail and thus render¬
ing the strongly formal element unnoticeable: that is, they fail to become a
personage. The role, as it were, stands before them, at times very distantly; they
race after it during the performance, so the viewer is left with the directorial
intent, observing the performance at a distance, sometimes without the slight¬
est chance of merging into it and achieving empathy. When, by contrast, the
dynamics of the protagonist group work organically and the actors completely
fill the form, as in Faust or Victor, in Phédre or Pantagruel’s Sister-in-law, or in