Something is missing, or was missing, was no longer
there, and now it has come back, or is in the process
of coming back.
All of the increasingly sophisticated additions that
sometimes embellish, improve and enrich theatre productions
- the sets, design, staging, acting styles, profusion
of light or exaggerated darkness, costumes, props
and images - gradually had a perverse effect, a "pornographic"
effect whose unavowed purpose was to take away our
pleasure, as opposed to eroticism which is full of
promise.
Pleasure cannot - and should not - be seen. It must
be taken in like a breath. But lately audiences have
been prevented from "breathing" in the theatre,
and thus from experiencing a climax
because
the way to the playwright's breathing has been blocked
and the audience could no longer see or hear anything.
So playwrights had to get empowered again, to regain
strength and courage, resources and resistance in
order to say that the theatre is intended for us to
hear what cannot be seen. It's the gaps and lacks
- what is not there - which must be seen if we are
to hear them.
But what must we hear?
Someone observing the times in which he lives? An
observer of other human beings living during those
same times? Perhaps! But it would be erroneous, for
instance, if a spectator three or four hundred years
from now thought that I lived the way Rodrigo Garcia
says. Did people in the 17th century live the way
Cervantes describes them? Maybe not!
Cervantes and Garcia, to stay with the Spanish example,
were only "interpreting" their times. They
felt empowered to interpret what they saw, heard and
felt.
Nowadays we have television to do the observing and
reporting!
Playwrights now - more than ever - do not need to
be observers, but rather "translators" of
the world. In using words as a poetic act of interpreting
the world, they become committed and empowered, helping
to develop humanitarian values within the community.
The very word "author" comes from the Latin
auctor, "one who increases" and is thus
empowered.
Television fascinates you and wears you out, like
pornography. Playwrights, however, by speaking to
a live audience (both those performing and those watching),
create a stimulating distance which makes the world
intelligible and listeners intelligent, provided that
their imaginations are allowed a free rein.
And when a director succeeds in making the playwright's
words visible, at the same time he makes visible the
gap that is the playwright's voice, which must be
heard through the actors.
The current focus back on playwrights and the laudable
efforts on the part of the sacd, eat, the Théâtre
du Rond-Point (and others before them) point to where
this voice can be heard, through the playwrights who
are again empowered, and thus committed, thereby making
the community more human.
Louise Doutreligne
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