A Theory of Dramaturgy [1 ed.] 0815354703, 9780815354703

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Table of Contents
List of figures
Foreword
Chapter 1: Theory of dramaturgy for the 21st century
Art and science
Systems theory
Art as system
Dramaturgy-α and dramaturgy-ς
Dramaturgy in the 21st century
Nation and globalisation
Chapter 2: Challenging dramaturgy – reflections on praxis
Challenging expansions
State of the art
The art of dramaturgy
Dramaturgy as a revolution in theatre
On the problem of universalisation
Thinking in differences
Chapter 3: Systems theory – draw a distinction, observe observers
Systems and observations
Systems theory
Society as communication
Chapter 4: Art as system
Rules in the art system
The function of the art system
From philosophy and aesthetics, to poetology
Aesthetics in the beginning of modern times
Poetology on poietics
Chapter 5: Theories of consciousness and communication
Perception
Arousal
Forms of vitality
Emotions
Cognition
Consciousness
Communication
Luhmann on communication
Conclusion
Consciousness and communication
Chapter 6: Poiesis, aisthesis, and performativity
Poiesis
Unfolding a theory on poiesis
Aisthesis
Performativity
Performance
Chapter 7: Analysing poietics – Eugenio Barba and Odin Teatret
Odin Teatret – and four motives for the choice
Dramaturgy in Odin’s house
Semantics
Values of art in the house of Odin
Weaves of tradition
Chapter 8: Postdramatic theatre
Post-dramatic ambiguity
Words to the concept “culture”
The concept of culture – the vilest of all concepts
Chapter 9: Immersion or new realism?
Immersive theatre
Concepts of immersion
Lob des realismus
Wide-range theory of dramaturgy
Index

Citation preview

A THEORY OF DRAMATURGY

A Theory of Dramaturgy is the first text of its kind to define concepts and combine arguments into a coherent dramaturgical theory supported by an operative systems theory. This is a wide-ranging theory with historical and contemporary perspectives on dramaturgy, rather than simply a how-to book. Dramaturgy began in ancient Greece, born from experimentation with democracy and commentary in the theatre on the human condition. The term itself has seen constant evolution, but thanks to its introduction into common English usage within the last three decades, it has gained new importance. Dramaturgy draws focus to the communication of communication, and in theatre it examines how moving bodies, voice, sound, and light can tell a story and affect values. Beyond the theatre, in daily life, dramaturgy becomes a question of “performativity”, as we constantly have to act in relation to the roles that we occupy. It is because of this that the way in which society describes itself to itself is not just a matter for scientists and theorists, but for all of those who are met on a daily basis with devised, staged, and directed versions of important values and events in our contemporary lives. Ideal for both scholars and students, A Theory of Dramaturgy explains how to approach the values, strategies, and theories that are essential to understanding arts and media, and investigates what art should do in the current world. Janek Szatkowski is Associate Professor in the Department of Dramaturgy at the University of Aarhus, Denmark. Previously head of the Danish National School for Playwrights, he has worked as a dramaturge for children’s, regional, and national theatres, and his areas of research include dramaturgical textual analysis, performances, and artistic processes.

A THEORY OF DRAMATURGY

Janek Szatkowski

First published 2019 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business  2019 Janek Szatkowski The right of Janek Szatkowski to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Szatkowski, Janek, author. Title: A theory of dramaturgy. Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2019. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2018054237| ISBN 9780815354703 (hardback : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780815354710 (paperback : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781351132114 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Theater—Production and direction. | Dramaturges. Classification: LCC PN2053 .S93 2019 | DDC 792.02/33—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018054237 ISBN: 978-0-8153-5470-3 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-8153-5471-0 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-351-13211-4 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by Swales & Willis Ltd, Exeter, Devon, UK

I dedicate this book to . . . my children, Iben, Ida Mathilde and Magnus, for their love and compassionate support. They have lived with this book for so many years. . . . Lise Lotte who convinced me to do it, and has been there all the time with love and thoughtful challenges. . . . all my colleagues at the University of Aarhus, School of Communication and Culture, Department of Dramaturgy. For inspiration and help, for generously providing time for me to finish the book. . . . all the students for their inspiring questions, including those I could not answer. . . . the artists who have given generously of their knowledge and time. . . . Torunn Kjølner – in memoriam.

CONTENTS

List of figures ix Foreword xi 1 Theory of dramaturgy for the 21st century

1

Art and science  2 Systems theory  2 Art as system  3 Dramaturgy-α and dramaturgy-ς 6 Dramaturgy in the 21st century  6 Nation and globalisation  7 2 Challenging dramaturgy – reflections on praxis

32

Challenging expansions  32 State of the art  34 The art of dramaturgy  34 Dramaturgy as a revolution in theatre  42 On the problem of universalisation  48 Thinking in differences  58 3 Systems theory – draw a distinction, observe observers

64

Systems and observations  64 Systems theory  66 Society as communication  80 4 Art as system Rules in the art system  85 The function of the art system  88

84

viii Contents

From philosophy and aesthetics, to poetology  94 Aesthetics in the beginning of modern times  107 Poetology on poietics  115 5 Theories of consciousness and communication

122

Perception 127 Arousal 128 Forms of vitality  128 Emotions 129 Cognition 129 Consciousness 130 Communication 132 Luhmann on communication  137 Conclusion 143 Consciousness and communication  144 6 Poiesis, aisthesis, and performativity

152

Poiesis 152 Unfolding a theory on poiesis  154 Aisthesis 163 Performativity 166 Performance 174 7 Analysing poietics – Eugenio Barba and Odin Teatret 185 Odin Teatret – and four motives for the choice  185 Dramaturgy in Odin’s house  190 Semantics 202 Values of art in the house of Odin  209 Weaves of tradition  217 8 Postdramatic theatre

222

Post-dramatic ambiguity  224 Words to the concept “culture”  237 The concept of culture – the vilest of all concepts  242 9 Immersion or new realism?

248

Immersive theatre  248 Concepts of immersion  249 Lob des realismus 267 Wide-range theory of dramaturgy  276 Index 281

FIGURES

2.1 Four positions in theories of difference. Szatkowski  referring to Niels Lehmann (2004) 60 3.1 Types of systems. Adapted by Szatkowski from Luhmann (1985) Soziale Systeme 66 3.2 The (!) drawing of systems theory by Niklas Luhmann 68 3.3 The unmarked space 68 3.4 An operation as observation: indication and distinction 70 3.5 Self-reference – the distinction used to observe 71 3.6 Preference code or programme 71 3.7 A psychic system – Niklas Luhmann 72 3.8 Social and psychic systems 73 3.9 Systems theory in a glance  Szatkowski 76 4.1 Poietic hierarchy – dramaturgy as aligning poietics with poiesis and aisthesis 88 4.2 Draw a distinction – imaginary reality >< reality 89 4.3 Re-entry of a distinction in the distinction 90 4.4 Art as system – preference code as poietic hierarchy  Szatkowski 91 4.5 Art as system – with operational and structural couplings  Szatkowski 92 5.1 Consciousness 126 5.2 Psychic system and social system 133 5.3 Communication as selection of information, utterance, and understanding  Szatkowski 143 5.4 Second order reflection relative to psychic and social systems  Szatkowski 144 5.5 Christian Lollike (director/playwright): Erasmus Montanus (after Ludvig Holberg), at Aarhus Teater, Denmark 2017. Stage design by David Gehrt and Ida Grarup Nielsen. Photo courtesy of Aarhus Teater, Denmark. Photographer: Emilia Therese 145

x Figures

5.6 5.7 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5 6.6 6.7 6.8 7.1 9.1 9.2 9.3 9.4 9.5 9.6

Communication triangle 147 Communication “disturbs” consciousness  Szatkowski 147 Aristoteles on práxis 153 Recursive creation  Szatkowski 155 Structure and expectations  Szatkowski 157 Normative structures  Szatkowski 158 Cognitive structures  Szatkowski 158 Practice and theory – and the re-entry  Szatkowski 161 Performativity – aligning person and role  Szatkowski 171 Performing performativity  Szatkowski 173 Selection of utterance, information, and understanding in the dramaturgy of Odin Teatret  Szatkowski 201 “Immersion” number of times appearing in books in English from 1600–2008 249 Quantic Foundry is a market analysing company. Here is the generalised version of their “Motivation Model – what makes gamers game?” 252 Three levels of performativity  Szatkowski 263 Performing performativity – figure values challenges personal values  Szatkowski 264 Four poietics in immersive theatre  Szatkowski 266 Recursive creation in four ways  Szatkowski 277

FOREWORD

Observing as researcher/scientist/teacher – A biographical note I have been an extremely privileged citizen. Paid by the state to research and teach in fields that have given so many rich experiences, challenging body and mind. I have had the opportunity to evolve my sensitivity towards “irritations” whether they came in form of works of art I did not understand, or from a society on a collision course with its own ecological environment. I have had time to reflect different strategies for detecting, coping with, or forgetting such irritations. The combination of research and teaching, as in the vision of Humboldt, is a unique opportunity to maintain reflection and self-reflection in several orders. When I first met dramaturgy as a young student at the University of Aarhus, it was not even a department. The founders of my own department chose the name in 1969.1 Foresightedly, they decided on the name “Dramaturgy” in order to differentiate it from theatre science and from a mainly historicist tradition, in order to include practical workshops, internships on theatres etc. They also wanted to mark a difference to the Department of Nordic Language and Literature, which financed the first experiments. In this short history, we have many traits in common with many departments in Europe. Enthusiastic professors in Aarhus (Tage Hind (1916–1996), Christian Ludvigsen (1930) and their assistants wanted to investigate theatre as a media, and not only as a textual genre. Our department was founded in 1973, and staff grew in the following years, as did student numbers. We ended up as a midsized department, due to an academically and politically very gifted professor, Jørn Langsted (1945–2018). The development inside our department has been challenged, as in every other living organism of scientists, by differences of opinion as to which kind of scientific programmes to observe what kind of objects. However, it has been possible to conduct research on a broader level thanks to colleagues willing to familiarise and/or criticise the epistemology I choose. Thanks to PhD students2 whom I have had the privilege to be challenged by as supervisor, my own position has been under constant reformulation. Reading Derrida, Deleuze, Rorty, and Luhmann in order to keep in touch, I had the fortune of constantly having to rethink my understanding of dramaturgy. My own way through the field of dramaturgy started in 1971 with a fascination of theatre forms including the spectator in the artistic process. This interest arose as a consequence

xii Foreword

of the results from the then new field of theatre research studying the sociological side of theatre, which informed us that only 8% of our population went to the theatre; they were all members of a higher middle class, well-educated and also then mainly women. In an attempt to find ways to break this inequality, and to give the experience of theatre to a broader public, the study of interactive forms developed inside the then blooming drama-ineducation movement, and the narrative forms invented by the early pioneers within the Danish Children’s Theatre movement, became an object for my research. The study of those forms in the late 1970s gave way to a wish to understand the creative processes in artistic work, and to establish a landscape of the many different poietic hierarchies at work in the historical development of theatre. Jevreinov and Brecht’s Lehrstücke became objects of study. The fact that there were more than one or two dramaturgical models (dramatic/epic) at work challenged me. Further work had to be done in the research field of dramaturgical analysis. The connection between our department and Eugenio Barba and Odin Teatret presented a gift in terms of establishing an understanding of a complex theatre form that I first met in 1973, and could not immediately find any satisfying way to analyse. How could the widespread uses of theatre become a part of the educational system, and of education of young artists in the field of theatre? I studied the development of programmes for new playwrights in Denmark and abroad, and was in 1997 appointed leader of a first national experiment with educating playwrights in Denmark. In addition, work as dramaturge for theatres ranging from small groups of children’s theatre, independent groups, and regional and national theatres, gave me some insight in what dramaturges needed to know, and how they had to understand the creative process. When I joined a national research project “Staging of Virtual Inhabited 3-dimensional Spaces”,3 it became manifestly clear that dramaturgy had something to provide also in the context of the new media matrix. We investigated interaction, virtual spaces and its 3D-applications, used laboratories with holographic benches, 3D-panorama screens, and blue screen studios to build an interactive theatre event, including a room filled with sensors allowing the spectator to interact with space, 3D-rendered real-time videos etc. We used Samuel Beckett’s text That Time as inspiration for experiments with the advanced technology in search for way in which it could be used to create new theatrical forms.4 Dramaturgy could also be applied in the experimental construction of a “Virtual Puppet Theatre”, where children from six years old could interact with autonomous agents. Further, we have started a research project where the analysis of the internet as a socially differentiated system provides us a platform for investigating programmes and poietics in the internet system with dramaturgical means. It felt like coming around full circle, and it has been extremely interesting to note how theatre groups around Europe during the last 15 years have investigated immersive and interactive theatre forms, where spectators are directly involved in the work of art. Be it with or without digitalised enhancements. This magnificent journey has made it compelling to summarise some of my findings.

To compare After 40 years of experience as scientific scholar in a university system you might, looking back, start to wonder how choices are made. Have you been on your own, following your own, personal “free will” or have your choices been predetermined by the changing modes amongst colleagues and international influences? Have you been a free agent, working under

Foreword  xiii

your own agency, or have you been subjected by powerful systems and their logic? This line of questioning is very characteristically modern, and it reflects a constant struggle between idealism and realism. The answers to questions like these are inexorably connected to our thoughts and perspectives on individual reality and society. I am convinced that we need to alter the way we formulate those questions. There are different degrees of freedom, and different degrees of external and internal influences to be detected if we substitute the subject/ object dichotomy with the question: who observes what by means of which distinctions to solve what kind of problems? The divide between natural sciences and the humanistic sciences could be seen as the result of two different approaches to the said “reality”. For some, this difference points towards the conclusion that humanities are not real science. For others, pointing at the mistake made if we believe that only natural sciences may patent what science is about, and how it should be conducted. The modern society would be ill-advised if it did not consider other sciences than those of nature and technology. As many countries in Europe have experienced from the early 1980s New Public Management took over, and triumphantly conquered the political system and imposed on the universities a top-down management profile, a turmoil masked by managerial gibberish, claiming that innovation, interdisciplinarity, and efficiency was the only strategy possible confronted with competition in a world society. Value for money, as Margaret Thatcher announced. The theoretical research phase behind this book has been extensive. So have my 40 years of empirical studies of theatre, production processes, playwriting, digital experiments within theatre and theatrical experiments within digitalised universes, educational drama, and children’s theatre. Many years have been spent studying different scientific programmes like Critical Theory, Post-structuralism, and Neo-Pragmatism in pursuit of theoretical concepts and explanations. If the modern society is one world society, where functionally differentiated systems perform specific tasks (i.e. a scientific system with the reference code: Truth/ false, a juridical system reference code: Legal/illegal, an art system reference code: Imaginary reality/reality, a mass media system reference code: Information/non-information etc.) then we need a complex theory to cope with this. If society is hyper-complex, it is because each system observes other systems (and itself) and no system is able to regulate all the others. Each differentiated system serves its own purposes and is the only system in society to provide its type of services. Even though the systems are diverse and evolve in their own ways, it is possible to identify some common traits describable as “structures of modernity”. To do so we need a theory that is adjustable, i.e. performing on a high level of self-reflection. The theory must provide a huge range of possible connection points, so much needed in the development of cross-fertile sciences that copes with a hyper-complex society. Luhmann (1990) uses the term anschlussfähigkeit5 to describe the possibilities for affiliations of theoretical concepts. This is an effect of theory being applicable on both micro- and macro-level analysis, as I hope to demonstrate. Theoretical enunciations are only interesting as far as they allow comparisons. The velocity of the fall of an apple and a feather, may lead to theoretical questions. In order to compare you need a temporarily steady point of perspective from which comparison is possible and this point shall further permit asymmetricalisation. To compare the timing of a fall of a feather and an apple makes those two asymmetric, dissimilar objects comparable in order to explain how the difference in speed of falling relates to other differences between the

xiv Foreword

two objects. What science does, generally speaking, is to find ways to formulate still more daring, more improbable, more amazing comparisons with the aim of expanding the field of practical re-substitutions of the results.6 In other words, science needs to lead the temporary points of comparisons in a direction that allow a comparison of still more implausible connections, not in order to identify causal relations in “the real world”, but to explain by combining theoretical sentences in still more complex theoretical programmes. Theories are forms in which explanations can be communicated and reformulated. Theory relates to reality understood as an unmarked space. Reality is an infinite complex simultaneity of matter, spaces, and movements. The only chance we have to create meaning (also scientifically) is temporarily to produce a “stop” of this restless movement and reduce complexity. In order to do so, we need time, communication, and observations, i.e. an operation that indicates something as distinct from something else. In a world of infinite complexity, we need theoretical input from many different, loosely coupled sciences. The major challenge is to find a theoretical solution to the problem of how to observe from a point of perspective that allows comparisons of evolution in time and communication relative to different social systems. The fundamental question to ask is “how does an observer construct what he observes, in order to allow observations to be linked to each other?” And “who or what makes this observation?”7 This foreword gives the reader a few clues as to who makes the observations. The following chapters should provide answers to how I have constructed my observations of dramaturgy.

Notes 1 An independent Department for Dramaturgy was officially established by 1 November 1973.The main rationale behind the Department for Dramaturgy was a combination of an Anglo-Saxon tradition (USA and England), where the practical knowledge on theatre was stressed, with elements from the German development of a dramaturgy from Lessing and onwards rather than from Theaterwissenschaft. It also marked a difference to the Department of Theatre Science established at the University of Copenhagen 1962. In both Copenhagen and Aarhus, the first activities of university-based theatre studies were introduced in the beginning of the 1950s. 2 Niels Lehmann, Kjetil Sandvik (1964–2018), Falk Heinrich, Mads Thygesen, Thomas Rosendahl. 3 See: Qvortrup, Lars (Ed.) (2001) Virtual Interaction: Interaction in Virtual Inhabited 3D Worlds. London: Springer, and Madsen, Halskov (Ed.) (2003) Production Methods: Behind the Scenes of Virtual Inhabited 3D Worlds. London: Springer. 4 Kjølner, Torunn and Szatkowski, Janek (2003) “Dramaturgy in building multimedia performances: devising and analysing”. In Madsen, Halskov (Ed.) (2003), pp. 125–148. 5 Luhmann, Niklas (1990) Die Wisseschaft der Gesellschaft, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, p. 200. [My translation] (Hereafter quoted as Luhmann (1990) WdG). 6 Luhmann (1990) WdG, p. 408 ff. 7 Luhmann (1990) WdG, p. 6.

1 THEORY OF DRAMATURGY FOR THE 21ST CENTURY

Both science and art, as we have come to know the two functions today, share an understanding of themselves in terms of difference from what already exists. Scientific results and artworks have to be new, in order to attract attention. This has made both science and art extremely sensitive towards “irritations” in their societal environment. “Irritation” could be described as events in the environment, which attract attention and provoke responses, from the system that observes. The major prerequisite for understanding the process of irritations is that they stem from the transition of modern society towards the evolution of many independent systems providing full societal functional differentiation. Science and art each have their distinct and defined functions as systems in society. Each system is free to develop its own endogenous dynamic as it reacts on irritations from its environment, and these dynamics cannot be coordinated. This in turn accelerates the societal self-irritation.1 We are continually presented with problems in society in the form of communications that do not offer adequate solutions. We receive information on ecological disturbances, economic inequality, migration, effects of mediatisation in digital form, and an increases in ethnic, religious, and national conflicts. We further witness the emergence of ethnic distinctions in regions where the states are unable to pacify conflicts. The re-emergence of religious fundamentalism as reaction against a widespread “secularisation”. Gender trouble, racial motivated xenophobia, nationalism, protectionism, populism are all examples of how distinctions and boundaries (re)appear. Because they are bound to questions of identity, they become “hard distinctions”2 that cannot be crossed, and often result in violence as a way to communicate an insistence on indispensable values. Absolute values always know who will oppose them, and see no reason to give way: “they know only victories or defeat”. Fanaticism and fundamentalism creates irritations that put pressure on decision-making in the world society and its functional systems. Migration becomes a political and economic problem, religious radicalism is seen as a problem for democratisation and treated as legal problems. Each functional system has to transform irritations into structures of expectations offering perspectives for solving given environmental problems. How does art (theatre) do that? How can science observe art processes in their attempts to define and transform irritations? That could be one way to describe the purpose of a theory of dramaturgy.

2  Theory of dramaturgy for the 21st century

Art and science Dramaturgy is genealogically coupled with theatre and its European history is at least 3000 years long. What we today call art has a shorter history of 300 years, and the first modern theories of dramaturgy is accordingly dated around the mid-18th century. The first authors of dramaturgical theory were artists (often playwrights) and/or philosophers; however, the new order of modern society also entailed the differentiation of science as functionally differentiated system. Science observes in form of theories, and negotiates truth questions. To do so science has developed many different scientific programmes from natural sciences focusing on causality and predictability, to humanistic sciences where experiments with other focal points of orientation unfolded rapidly in the early and mid-20th century. Our experiment investigates theories where concepts of communication and observation substitutes those of causality and predictability. A science that observes the arts, asks the question: how does art observe society and how does art provide meaningful communication about society to society? It necessitates of course the need to ask how a given work of art is recognised as such. Further to wonder, how art manages continually to provide new forms in diverse media, and how we observe and describe evolution of meaning in art. We leave behind questions about essence (what is art?) in favour of more constructive and operational questions (how is art observed?). Therefore, when we ask how dramaturgy contributes to create meaningful art, it might at first sight appear to be either a lofty and abstract question or a very exclusive, specific and narrow question, but when rephrased as a question of how communication is communicated and observed as art, a much wider horizon opens up. My hypothesis is connected to the fact that other functionally differentiated systems in modern society applies dramaturgical knowledge, be it in mass media like film, television, radio, in the emerging internet system, or in organisations in other systems. From its earliest beginnings, dramaturgy has been mixed up with politics, religion, and education. It still is, perhaps now more than ever. My experiment to construct a theory of dramaturgy should be seen in a broad perspective. We are concerned with constructing a theory that allows micro-analytical observations of works of arts and art processes to be coupled to macro-analytical observations of social changes. The theory should allow us to observe historical forms and contemporary practices, and it has to be useful on the floor of rehearsal rooms in the creational artistic process, as well as in comparison to the varied artistic forms and media.

Systems theory To provide the reader with an initial overview of the theoretical construction, I will briefly sketch the outline. As the epistemological frame for the project I have chosen an operational systems theory, as it appears in the works of Niklas Luhmann (1927–1998). While introducing a scientific programme it also provides a complex description of modern world society. In order to understand how meaning is produced, three dimensions are needed. Meaning needs communication to emerge. Without communication, no meaning. Communication needs time in order to evolve meaning. And to lead the process of meaning, the evolution of communication needs a “case”, a matter that enables the selection of adequate contributions to theme. In a modern hyper-complex society, the science system may observe how meaning in the art system functions.

Theory of dramaturgy for the 21st century   3

Art as system In the theoretical architecture of art as system, the central operation is the work of art. The work of art is described as a very special form of communication. It is condensed and characterised by a self-imposed undecidability. Where a scientific text is condensed by its wish to produce clear arguments and sharp concepts in order to persuade the reader to follow and confirm the truth-claims, the artwork is condensed by a wish to make any confirmation difficult. There are uncertainties in the work of art that claim our attention, and at the same time make us aware that this is a different type of communication. Struggling with the condensed communication the beholders may select meanings and connect as they wish to their own consciousness. Our leading question therefore, is how a given work of art creates condensation and uncertainty. The attempt to find and formulate answers will take us through a theory of communication, which centres on the concept of double contingency, i.e. the idea that as our consciousness is an operatively closed autopoietic system; it means that we do not have access to the thoughts, emotions, and cognitions of the other. Therefore, we are condemned to communication.

Communication and consciousness When we cannot see into each other’s minds, nor feel the feelings of the other, we need to communicate in order to survive. In search of a theory of communication, I have been through quite a number. I report from this investigation, and discuss an attempt to construct a meta-theory. This discussion leads to the conclusion, that instead of looking for meta-theories, we need to explicate the epistemological perspective, from which we observe communication. A systems theoretical take on communication works with a concept of uncertainty at the base of all communication, contingency. In fact a double uncertainty: I have no direct access to your consciousness, and have to select and reflect upon what may be the case, knowing that it might always be something very different. Further, whenever you communicate something to me, you will risk meeting with either negation or affirmation (or a postponement of any such decision). We are all aware of this from our daily experience with human communication. The theory of communication rests upon the idea of communication as a social system. It takes two to communicate. Any enunciation can be chosen as communication, when we then select how to understand the condensed information and utterance. How do we manage this double contingency and triple selection of information, utterance, and understanding in real life? We introduce a simple model of consciousness based on the distinctions between perception, emotion, and cognition. I suggest that we re-investigate the distinction between person and role, based upon the insights of role theory, and reconstruct the concept performativity within a theory of dramaturgy in order to describe how the condensation and uncertainty evoked by the distinction person and role, contribute to the workings of theatre art (and society).

Poietics New forms shattered old forms in a hitherto unseen tempo. The coexistence of different forms were not new. Tragedy, comedy, and farce thrived side by side, as did religious drama and marketplace mountebanks and jesters. What was new was the acceleration in evolution of forms, which also required an accumulation of answers to the question how to decide, what was new

4  Theory of dramaturgy for the 21st century

and could count as art. Pre-modern theatre was so closely interwoven with or clearly evicted from social power. Plato and Aristoteles had their disagreements about what good mimesis could do for society. Such discussions could be tempered in periods where clergy or aristocrats had the power to decide the matter, but it exploded when modern Romantic art discovered its new freedom in an autonomous system. The historical avant-garde (1890–1930) made it clear, that the autonomy of art, had had its own price to pay. Given the new position in a differentiated system as an institution of its own, art suffered from asphyxiation, and the avant-gardists dreamed of reuniting art and life, only it was too late. Modernity is in this sense irreversible. The art system managed to engulf the avant-garde, and its experiments. Today they serve as important cultural pieces in museums. When the lesson of the avant-garde dawned upon the artists, new experiments tried to make the struggle with the art system to an important theme in enunciations that were self-referential. When Bertolt Brecht turned from surrealism to Epic Theatre, it was with an emphasis of gestures of reference to theatre as form, and art, as a direct communication to spectators. This eruption of forms was interwoven with a constant evolution of attempts to reflect on the function of art. When the system of art reflects upon its own function and possibilities, it is a reflective theory, and we identify this as poietics. Poietics can be analysed at work in the artefacts, texts, performances, installations. Texts that artists make in attempt to describe what kind of art they deem necessary in times when society functions as it does generate especially interesting material for our analysis. At the top of the hierarchy, we find the inviolable values, which direct the choices in the process of aisthesis: how the spectators should be engaged and confronted or affirmed; and poiesis: how to programme the artistic creation of a work of art, rehearsals, training, and performativity. It is a local, normative value system.

Poiesis To understand and describe the artistic creational process we need to develop an analytical approach and concepts fit for micro-analytical observations. We suggest the concept recursive creation, to describe how the creative mind constantly oscillates between observations of what has been achieved so far in the process, and a notion of the work as result. An oscillation between structure and vision. We identify two different kinds of structures (normative and cognitive) and combine this with a theory of the “implicit knowledge” embedded in every artistic creational process of operations. At the core of poiesis, we find the fluctuating, recursive movements led by attempts to work with condensation and redundancy, and with uncertainties and variation. In many cases, these operations are guided largely by the implicit knowledge of the artist or the group. We prefer the term implicit for the often-used “tacit” knowledge, as we insist that the knowledge can always be demonstrated in practice, thus is never silent. In poiesis and aisthesis, we are able to study the process of directing. To direct is to attune affectively the imaginary reality in a work of art, so that an audience is presented with a range of specific material forms of vitality in order to provoke a communication the allows spectators to reflect and self-reflect upon perceptions, emotions, and cognitions, enhancing a moment of conscious communication.

Aisthesis Another source of undecidability is enforced by the fact that communication in theatre relies on our senses. In the phylogenetic evolution of a theory of the human mind, the senses

Theory of dramaturgy for the 21st century   5

have played many different roles. From times when senses were seen as disturbances and hindrances for the rational mind, to a position where reality could only be observed through our sensations of it. The way works of art appealed to the senses were used to distinguish different dramaturgical forms as tragedy and comedy. In a modern theory of mind, the old dualities have been uprooted and replaced by ideas of the more complex interdependencies of perception, emotion, and cognition in our consciousness. When art formulated its first modern self-reflections, it was assisted by the ideas of aisthesis. Aesthetics rose as a philosophical attempt to argue for art’s special potential in a differentiated society: art was an appeal to our senses, and thus in principle neither committed to moral or scientific truth. Kant provided the tripartite unity of the rational, scientific truth, the morally good, and the beautiful. The aesthetic discussion then took many turns in order to describe how the beautiful could be obtained in works of art, even by incorporation of the ugly, the horrific, the sublime, and the uncanny unheimliche. Was art aesthetically dependent upon truth and moral, even though art emerged as autonomous? It took some 100 years for the art system to recognise the full impact of the new social order, and the meaning of autonomy. The Romantic call for art to loosen itself from rational truths and moral dogmas started the first truly self-reflective theories of art. Poietics gained a new dimension. Aesthetics had difficulties in deciding the undecidability of art, and accordingly propagated very different forms of condensation in the artistic communication. Aesthetics oscillated between positions focusing upon rationalistic models with Kantian inspiration or upon sentimentalist models of the ineffable secrets of art, with Shaftesburyian inspirations. With the elaboration of reflective theories assigned to specific artistic forms, poietics tried to solve the problems in another way.

Performativity Communication is only possible because of a reduction of complexity. Be it in the use of language, verbal and bodily, or in the use of programmes for acceptable social behaviour inside the functionally differentiated systems of society. I have chosen to focus at the concept performativity, here in a condensed version based upon a modern form of theatre theory and the distinction between the concepts person and role. Therefore, as we condense communication in the form of expectations to the role, we also create a new dimension of uncertainty. With the differentiation of the modern society, both individual and society stood confronted with a huge challenge. As the absolutistic and stratified society dissolved, what would then guarantee the cohesion of society and the individual? Kant trusted an enlightenment based upon freedom and rationality, and even found a place for the arts in this revolutionary philosophy. The French Revolution placed such idealistic constructions under realist suspicions. The first 100 years of modernity struggled to find answers, and the attempt to situate them in the unique individual gave rise to varied models of society built upon moral requirements. When Freud invented the multi-levelled Ego and the unconscious as the “unknown” inside the human mind, he finalised the attempt to “heal” the split between the individual and society, in a way that followed an idealistic aspiration. Today we witness the functioning of a hyper-complex modern society and sociologist and psychologists have come up with alternative solutions, as when they – borrowing from the vocabulary of theatre – developed role theories the mid-20th century. We use the concept in everyday conversations of how to behave as a good father or mother, lover or spouse, son and daughter, but also as a good teacher, bus driver, sales person etc. The difference between person and role stood clearer,

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and so did a new uncertainty: am I the “sum” of my daily roles, or is there always something “more” inside me, than that which can be acted out in any role? Is there a “core” that manages my appearances so that I give the impression of a consistent and trustworthy person?

Dramaturgy-α and dramaturgy-ς Given these prerequisites, we are now able to address the question of how dramaturgy functions when it deals with condensation and uncertainty. We suggest that dramaturgy-α in the art system functions as a practice-theory recursively aligning the inviolable values of the top of the poietic hierarchy with the fundaments of the hierarchy and its processes of poiesis and aisthesis, the production and reception of a work of art. As such, dramaturgy is a reflective theory. Based upon observation of the many different dramaturgies at work in the art system, I claim that it is possible to arrive at a theory of dramaturgy, dramaturgy-ς inside the scientific system. A scientific theory of dramaturgy may be elaborated and consolidated as a theoretical investigation of how the many different reflection theories illuminate the question of how art creates meaning. Where dramaturgies inside the art system by necessity are normative, valuebased praxis-theories, the scientific dramaturgy avoids this, and concentrates its observations on artwork and processes, to re-describe, analyse, and compare the poietics and the many different values at work inside the artefacts (performances, texts, in processes of production and reception). The next part of the chapter invites the reader to join me in a trip around the globe, where reports from different continents and nations allow us to point at important differences between dramaturgies and their social function. The theory of dramaturgy presented here, is not an attempt to universalise, and insists upon the idea of one dramaturgy-α to do the job. It is instead an experiment with a wide-range theory with concepts on a sufficiently high level of abstraction that insists upon dramaturgy-ς as a theory of artistic communication of communication to society, in society.

Dramaturgy in the 21st century The first two parts of The Routledge Companion to Dramaturgy3 are titled “World dramaturgy in the twenty-first century” and “Dramaturgy in the age of globalization”. What a mere 30 years ago was a conceptual speciality in primarily German speaking countries, has now turned into a worldwide field of interest in the functions of dramaturgy in art (theatre and performance as well as in puppetry, dance, musicals, and opera), in mass media (film, television series, digital games), and research. This is by no means a coincidence, but just another example of how the 21st century will construe one world society in co-emergence with the new media matrix born by the digital alphabet (I/0) and computers’ increased ability to handle everything representable with unprecedented speed, memory capacity, connectivity, and interactivity on the World Wide Web. If dramaturgy is understood as suggested in the introduction, as production of and reflection on communication of communications to society about society, we are inevitably faced with the challenge to understand what is meant by a “world society”, “globalisation”, and how concepts like “nation” and “state” are reflected in a modern functionally differentiated political system and its power. In order to be precise and theoretically coherent in our attempt to establish a theory of dramaturgy, an understanding

Theory of dramaturgy for the 21st century   7

of society seems unavoidable. In the process we need to open the theory towards questions as to how “mediatisation” impacts communication locally and globally.

Nation and globalisation Some theatre is – due to its dependence on language – by necessity local/regional or nationally embedded. Other forms of theatre travel without problems around the globe. Throughout its history, theatre has been extremely aware of what happened outside national or regional borders. Troupes have travelled, and inspired, dramatic texts have been read, translated, and caused heated debates, as differences in cultures became clearly detectable. With the advent of modernity in the 18th century, the English, French, and American Revolutions provided the turning point for the evolution of fundamentally new societal structures. We are still struggling to find ways to describe the results and effects of those changes. How does a “nation” in the 21st century describe itself? What is the relationship between “society”, “nation”, “state”, and “political system”? Not to mention the extremely multifarious concept “culture”. Inside the “one world society”, we find huge differences due to climatic, ecological, industrial, and cultural conditions. It is thus no wonder, that there are very different challenges for dramaturgs and dramaturgy in America and China, in Germany and Iran. Globalisation is a common inescapable condition for every nation, however the ways in which national political systems react are dissimilar. If dramaturgy wants to involve itself in a debate on “world dramaturgy”, it demands some very clear-headed thinking, including concise conceptual use of terms like “globalisation”. Part I in the Companion to Dramaturgy, presents short glimpses of 16 different nations. How do these short statements reflect the functions of “nations” and “dramaturgy” in a 21st-century world society? In her introduction to the Companion to Dramaturgy (p. 6) Magda Romanska sees for the dramaturgical function a “unique space of communal interaction that can bridge the gaps between virtual and physical spaces, both global and local identities” and the theoretical and practical methodologies have an “enormous opportunity to seize the challenge and to assert its central position on the global stage”. This is indeed a very fine vision. Reading the 16 short texts provides a captivating sense of the different challenges dramaturgy faces if it wants to emerge “as an essential interlink that translates and connects the vast and varied cultural paradigms” (p. 7). The concept “interlink” could be considered as a pleonasm, as a link is a connection from one thing to another and “inter” means between. However, there might be a good reason to scrutinise the concept further. In her introduction, Romanska identifies several entities that have to be linked. In countries with an “established tradition of dramaturgy”, there exists a need to “adjust and respond” to “modern paradigm shift”. Dramaturgy has existed in other countries as a “skill” but is now claimed to be a “function and a field”. Here dramaturgy is “deconstructing and reconstructing” senses of “national identity” in the age of “information and globalization”. In countries where a struggle with “postcolonial legacies” are outspoken, dramaturgy functions as an “interdisciplinary tool of cultural transformation aiming to bridge the post-traumatic gaps in the socio-political fabric of the respective nations”. Here dramaturgy “negotiates” conflicting historical narratives. This also happens in countries where dramaturgy has to “navigate” between “particular traditional ethnic tradition” and “modern theatrical forms”, which are combined in “hybrid performances”. In countries where one-party governments control the art, dramaturgy has

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to “face its own internal politicized division” between “ideological” dogmas and “attempts to circumvent”. To span gaps, navigate, and negotiate between the local and the global, the old tradition and new traditions, the theatre media and new digital media, theory, and practice seems to be an all-important element in “world dramaturgy”. This is maybe the reason behind the pleonasm “interlink”, a need to investigate how cultural transformations take place. In the contribution from England, Duska Radosavljevic quotes Michel de Certeau4 “The bridge is ambiguous everywhere: it alternately welds together and opposes insularities. It distinguishes them and threatens them. It liberates from enclosure and destroys autonomy”. The bridge connects what has been separated. In doing so, it allows a travel from mainland to the isle, from one side of the river to the other. A transgression of a “border” that protected the separateness and autonomy of the two sides of the frontier. As the link connects, it also disrupts, because now we can compare the two insularities and a new inter-relation emerges, unavoidably transforming what was formerly enclosed. Globalisation is indeed transgression of borders. In order to reflect a concept like globalisation I have chosen to do so from two different perspectives: one of a philosophical culture theory and one of sociological origin. Both are what I consider vivid examples of wide-range theories.

Nirvana or cosmos – as first global concepts From the perspective of a theory of dramaturgy, we recognise a long and winding narrative, which investigates the difference between reality and mimetic versions of reality. How are the separate entities of imaginary reality understood and valued? In India, we are told by Ketaki Datta (2015, pp. 94–98), a beginning of dramaturgy should be traced to Silalin and Krsasv in the 3rd century (BC), who wrote about Nata Sutras, rules (sutra) for actors (nata).5 They were later completed in the 7th or 8th century (BC) in Bharata Muni’s Natyasastra said to be composed by Lord Brahma (the Lord of Creation according to Hindu mythology), we learn that Bharata gave detailed instructions of architecture, dramaturgy (the need for an “introducer”, number of characters and avoiding hero’s death on stage), and acting. Acting was described in detailed analysis and classifications of rasa flavours, (today we would possibly say “affects”) and Bhava (emotions) and sangita-nritya (music and dance). The conglomeration of Hindu religion and art following its own track, developed poietics where the “empirical presentation” and the “sensuous presentation” made the performance entertaining, in contiguity with real life. At the same time an intense search for meaning, anusandhana, could lead the spectator to experience a composite of the eight stahyin bhavas, basic emotions: love (erotic), humour, compassion, horror, the heroic, fear, repulsion, and wonder. The transcendental level of the presentation is reached, “when the spectator feels that he himself is an impersonation of pure consciousness in and through feelings and images” (p. 96). Another pathway in ancient Greece formed dramaturgy as a way to represent real life where the memory of deeds of heroes of former times could make an imprint in the spectator of how humans fights to conquer demons, only to fail, because their knowledge of cosmos was – and always would be – insufficient. The spectator would feel compassion and terror towards the heroic, in its attempt to fight. This you could fear and accept as a human condition or you could laugh at it, and see the trivial commonality in all mistakes and presumptions. In Chapter 6, of his Poetics6 Aristoteles called it katharsis: “Through the arousal of pity and fear effecting the katharsis of such emotions”. In Chapter 9, Aristoteles substituted katharsis with the word wonder

Theory of dramaturgy for the 21st century   9

(awe-inspiring, astounding, or surprising), to rhaumaston, and he argued that pity and fear arise where wonder does, and finally in Chapters 24 and 25, he pointed to wonder as the aim of the poietic art itself. Where Bharata has Adbhuta with the double meaning of wonder or magical, we find Aristoteles’ to rhaumaston, without any magical element. Core concepts in dramaturgy with two different semantics, reminds us of the care we should take, when we translate terms and their meaning, indeed to avoid any careless equations of “wonder” as if it were identical in ancient Indian and Greek dramaturgy. When Plato and Aristoteles in the 4th century (BC) argued about dramaturgy, they looked for the benefits for an early experimental “democratic” society. Plato’s revolution of the European mind, emphasised the rational knowledge opposed to the hitherto celebrated poietic knowledge commemorating heroes of times gone by, and Aristoteles found that human practice should strive at coming close to the practice of the gods. The divine práxis had as its important goal the pure form eidos towards which all activity moved. This movement was enabled by pure energy, energeia provided by the unmoved movers. According to Aristoteles, práxis should be understood as a living praxis, as what we have in common with animals and all living matter, but the speciality of the humans were their rational praxis. This rationality could either be outwardly directed actions, or inwardly directed reflections, theoria, where our knowledge, episteme, could be directed towards the highest human possible insights: sophia. Lovers of sophia, philosophers could glimpse the order in cosmos. Some cognitive theories speculate on these two different approaches are bases for different forms of cognition.7 To argue thus is to suggest a causal relation between cognitive and geographical differences like the east/west distinction. I would prefer an idea of what the two approaches to cognition (in art) share: namely an idea of the universe as a whole. This idea of the cosmic whole of the universe, as an orb, which contains everything, an all-encompassing sphere, but which is contained by nothing, could, according to Sloterdijk be seen as the very beginning of globalisation8 – a first phase where an absolute globe could be presented as the world of gods and a sphere that held it all. On earth, we humans had to make do with something less, but we could rest assured we would not fall out. The mental image of cosmos and the sky as containers of infinity and order lasted long, however repeatedly challenged by discoveries of disorders, wars, and imperial dreams.

Terrestrial globalisation The next phase of globalisation could, according to Peter Sloterdijk’s three-volume philosophical experiment9 Spheres I–III, be called “terrestrial globalisation” and be dated 1492–1945. Christian-capitalist seafaring realised it, and it was politically implanted through the colonialism of the Old European national states. Here the world history of “mankind” starts as people reciprocally discovers the “others”. It was driven by “a triumphant onesidedness of expansive European nations”10 Here the earth was explored and different cultures were met on voyages of “discovery”. However, the discovery of terrestrial earth and its manifold inhabitants in various formations of cultures or worlds was also accompanied by the discovery of Copernicus and Kepler of the non-circular planetary orbits, and new scientific understandings of man and physical reality. Here the momentum of the Modern Age accelerated as the fascination of physical, chemical, and biological “secrets” of nature led to new findings. This excitement with enquiries and initiatives brought knowledge that would allow predictions as it worked within restricted areas of causality. Energy from team and fossil fuels, explosions, vehicles, all brought the terrestrial globalisation forward. The new results

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made increased expansion possible. As victims of colonialism began reporting back on the perpetrator’s deeds, globalisation at some point accumulated a moral obligation to listen and reflect. It is fair to say, that globalisation at least since 1945, and especially in the last few decades, has been analysed with both repentance and anger in post-imperial and post-colonial anti-eurocentrism. When communication took the time of sea voyages and horseback riding, reports were scarce. Globalisation meant something new, as the fast-speed media allowed news to travel around the globe. The reports of unilateral expansions arrive back to the perpetrators within hours. As world trade found momentum in the world-monetary system based upon gold in 1944, globalisation had reached its saturation point.

Globalisation as “foam” A third phase of globalisation came into view. Satellite entered the earth’s orbit in the 1960s. In 1973, the financial system denounced the gold base. New communications acts (actively stimulated by Margaret Thatcher in UK, and Ronald Reagan in USA) gave access to transmit across national borders in 1982. Finally, the digital revolution took form as the World Wide Web in the 1990s gradually emerged as a new functionally differentiated system; globalisation entered its third phase. Neoliberalism could flourish with its Holy Grail “growth” as its only credo. Globalisation, contends Sloterdijk, is now like foam, a multitude of social bubbles surrounding the Globe in one society with an electronic sphere. The effects of the terrestrial globalisation is of course still with us. In privileged countries, especially after World War II, it has meant that increased spending power allows populations to live in an extreme “comfort zone”. Need is transformed to options. A realm of “necessity” has been replaced with a realm of “freedom”. Old and new conservatisms including Romantic, national, and religious temperaments react violently. In the realm of the comfort zone of options, moods and personal taste substitute strong reasons, and old imperatives lose their ability to justify actions. Sloterdijk describes how the concept of labour was eroded by a “postmodernization of consciousness” that supposedly gave a view of living conditions in our “poly-dimensionally relieved ‘society’”.11 To add inverted commas to society suggests a need to see this effect as one dividing national populations, and at the same time reaching out globally across national borders to people in zones of affluence.

Pampering relief – the big unburdening Relieving populations of burdens, securing their lives economically and politically, is a process inherent in any civilisatory process. Where goods were no longer scarce, where peace seems constant, as constant as the sustenance and entertainment, relief makes visible how the welfare state created an expanded space of existential possibilities for those fortunate enough to participate in it. Where the welfare state unburdened people by taking responsibility for peace, education, insurance against sickness and unemployment, it also opened up for a collective investigation of hitherto unknown individual needs. A new unrest created turbulence in the zone of relief. A constant reminder of competition, from inside and outside the comfort zone, provided an antidote to the calm existence. In this “crystal palace”,12 a cathedral of consumerism and pampering, inhabitants are relieved of burdens, and it has fundamentally changed psychological and semantic structures for those living in this “society”. When relief is established, boredom and stress become complementary concepts. Relief creates boredom;

Theory of dramaturgy for the 21st century   11

the enhanced sensitisation in post-necessity zones, makes a constant irritation of subjective and unfulfilled expectations possible, and that creates stress. The anthropologically oriented theory of pampering does not aim for a reversal of relieving effects enabled by civilization; it seeks to optimize the ability for cultural navigation among the subjects of pampering in their hazardous and largely uncomprehended milieu by offering conceptual orientations for existence in heavily relief-defined situations.13 Let us see how dramaturgy is introduced in the Companion to Dramaturgy’s short texts from some of those nations, where the zone of relief is markedly present. As preamble to this quick run-through, let me state that I am keenly aware of how difficult it is to produce such “reports”. How to balance specific examples with generalised statements is always tricky. When the national reports furthermore are to be presented in a global perspective, some selfreflective elements could be necessary additions. It is indeed a difficult genre.

America We get America first. By interviewing the American dramaturg Robert Blacker, Jacob Gallagher-Ross intended to “indicate macrohistory by relating anecdotal microhistory, revealing snapshots from the evolution of American dramaturgy” (p. 19). This obviously creates a perspective carried by its personal narrators and his observations. We get a glimpse of how work in a regional theatre (La Jolla) between director (Des McAnuff) and co-director (dramaturg) fosters award-winning productions by taking advantage of a seismic shift in the 1980s as a new generation of artistic directors emerged. Good advice flows from the development of playwriting courses as they were structured in Sundance Theatre Labs. Finally, a stay with the Stratford Shakespeare Festival of Canada allowed McAnuff and Blacker to introduce more living playwrights and writing retreats. They engaged in a reaction against a tendency to overcut Shakespeare, as an example they reintroduced two crucial scenes from Henry V, that previously had been cut out in the seven productions Stratford had given in its first 50 years. In search of national or global insights, you find sentences like: “I see talent, but I also see a lack of opportunity in these difficult economic times. Opportunity and money are always related” (p. 24), and “The rural retreats offered opportunity to reflect on the immensity of the world and to ponder something outside yourself” (p. 22). What has been made invisible by choosing to report in this way, is telling. No mention of other important American theatre forms of performance, no story of the growth of literature on dramaturgy from Bert Cardullo14 and forward, no mentioning of the network LMDA15 and its work to spread and consolidate the functions and methods of dramaturgy. I fail to see what kind of macrohistory is indicated, at best, it goes to demonstrate how living in a zone of pampering relief, centres on personal carriers and important acquaintances and makes anything outside the crystal palace unimportant. Compared with the other national reports the American choice is remarkable, and could be expanded in many ways.16

Japan As a zone of affluence in the east, Japan has worked out specific ways of living in highly competitive and affirmative styles as the pampering dimensions in the Japanese society is less

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outspoken. Government spending in percentage of Japan’s Gross Domestic Product was 39% in 2017. Compared to those of the USA (37%) and to France (57%), Germany (44%), the UK (41%), and India (12%). As abstract as these figures might be, they do give an indication of different levels of welfare. The history of Japan after World War II, is that of a nation with immense power and an ability to navigate between traditional values and foreign inspirations. Thus, Eiichiro Hirata, Professor at the Department for German Literature at the Keio University in Tokyo, provides examples of dramaturgical experiments with integration of “other theatre cultures and other art genres into modern Japanese theatre” (p. 87) that in Richard Schechner’s terms belong to “Hybrid Performance”. It is about letting Nô, kabuki and kyôgen meet western texts, or other theatrical styles of the west. Hirata wisely warn us: The directors of modern Japanese theatre often have a tendency to assimilate the elements of other theatre cultures without deep consideration of the otherness which is incompatible with their own artistic concepts. The performances with this tendency are often just a mixture of the diverse theatrical elements organized around a simple context. They are lacking in impact, which can only be made through intensive confrontation with the incompatible aspects of otherness. (p. 87) In the terminology of our theory of dramaturgy, Hirata points at the challenges the dramaturg is confronted with when two different poietic hierarchies meet in the same production. It takes precise analytical powers to identify the way in which the dramaturgs “can make use of the differences, radically questioning and innovating their theatrical visions, while exploring the various combinations of different theatrical elements” (p. 88). This position insists on maintaining differences, not in a mere juxtaposition, nor in an amalgamation, but in letting differences make a difference. In two concrete examples Eiichiro Hirata demonstrates how such dramaturgy could work with distance and connection, interrupted narrations, and a pathos of the distance in performance dealing with the atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima (Park City), and the earthquake, tsunami, and radioactive catastrophe in 2011 (No Light). Both performances confront trauma with distance and interruptions in what Roland Barthes called “pathos of the distance”, which through opposite elements of interrupted solitude, paradoxes, the aporia of bringing distances together could evoke the “pathos of living together”. Hirata thus promotes a dramaturgy that works without indicating new connections, new constellations of separated parts, which could be sought and found by the audience. Instead the spectators “remain torn in their perception and recognition” but they may although “persevere and maintain coherence in such a radically separated situation which they would usually avoid” (p. 91). Hirata seeks the dramaturgy of difference. As we shall discuss later, there are difference between dramaturgies of difference.

Germany If we turn to Germany, Bernd Stegemann provides a dense combination of history and sketches of contemporary dramaturgies. It does not take many hermeneutical operations to identify a strong and convicted voice in the enunciations. As we are later going into discussion with Stegemann’s latest publications17 we will here seek to identify the position, from which this national report is written. What the French did in the revolution of 1789, the German

Theory of dramaturgy for the 21st century   13

bourgeoisie could not, it was impossible in the tattered country, with its many different regional reigns. We will return to details in this and discuss and Peter Szondi’s contribution. Stegemann sees the political path Germany took instead, as “an escape into the arts”, where Romanticism and Building of German city theatres were “the two most distinctive examples of this sublimation” (p. 45). The bourgeois tragedy, Bürgerliches Trauerspiel, tried to establish a new relation between the audience and the theatre, distinctive from folk theatres amusing entertainment and the “lofty elevation” of the French tragedy. As the bourgeois tragedy found still more realistic and naturalistic expressions of the self-discovery and self-affirmation in its new position in society, it could see itself as a “class that experiences itself as the winner” of the difficult contradictions in bourgeois life: A need to hide inner feelings, in order to appear outwardly in tune with conventions. Stegemann ascribes this to a double alienation in capitalist society. In this genre of a “dramatic theatre”, realist representations eventually became “commercial realism”, when it only referred to strong feelings in identification, “without the desire of showing the contradictions behind it”. The Epic Theatre on the other hand re-established focus on social relevance with its reflecting actor demonstrating facts, and it also introduced the dramaturg as collaborator in rehearsals. Stegemann then makes a distinction between two forms of theatre inspired partly by postmodern theory. The postdramatic theatre is qualified as a “feast of self-referentiality in which the contradictions are no longer psychologically or socially justified but rather becomes aesthetic games” (p. 48). Stegemann argues that another tendency could be called “post-epic theatre”. Here the actor is not the emancipated class-aware performer standing in front of the audience, but instead only representing him or herself as one experiencing world and reality: “The performer is the always responsive employee that emotional capitalism demands”. As inspired by poststructuralism the signs on stage are characterised by the play of deconstruction. “Its power to signify something covers that which is hereby signified. [. . .] all certainties crumble into discursive games” (p. 49) [my elision]. Stegemann sees in this a very unfortunate situation for theatre. If spectators are only served postmodern categories of self-reference, performance, and paradoxes, as the result of banishment of discursive theatre, theatre will lose its “mimetic energy” and the attention of the public. As an active participant in German theatre as both dramaturg and scholar engaged in education of directors, actors, and dramaturgs, Bernd Stegemann, we would argue, uses the report on dramaturgy in Germany as an illustration of how postmodern theatre has optimised the ability for cultural navigation among the subjects of pampering in their hazardous and largely uncomprehended milieu. It has not offered conceptual orientations for existence in heavily relief-defined situations, but on the contrary has offered more relief in performances that attune the spectator to the incomprehensible.

France When Antoine Vitez called dramaturgs “les flics du sens” he related to what French theatre artists meant when they sneered at “Brechtism” as an attempt at imposing special political lines, represented by university intellectuals, with “a political flag in their pocket” . In her report from France Kate Bredeson, who observes as scholar, director, and dramaturg, based in Oregon, US, explains how this animosity towards dramaturgs grew during the 1970s and culminated in the 1980s, when “the German tradition” influenced by the Berliner Ensemble visiting France in 1954, was met by a “new, particular French practice” where

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director-centred theatre of Planchon, Chérau, Vitez, and Mnouchkine had lifted the “revolutionary mandate of French theatre”, the théâtre populaire to new heights, and provided dramaturgy with “a more fluid, expansive notion of the profession” (p. 52). This fluidity is expressed in the idea of dramaturgy as incorporated in all artistic contributions to the stage performance as Benhamou explains in her Dramaturgies de plateau (2012). Benhamou’s book, we are told, is “somewhat akin to American Mark Bly’s 1996 The Production Notebooks – a rare glimpse into the thought processes behind particular productions” (p. 53) which again is akin to Brecht’s Katzgraben-Notate from 1952 to 1953, that were publicised in 1964.18 Here Brecht’s discussion with the actors and other members of the Berliner Ensemble is linked with notes from rehearsals. The fluidity of dramaturgy is also found in the idea of dramaturgy as aligning the two sides of directing the “material” and the “immaterial” dimension (André Antoine and Bernard Dort). Joseph Danan is quoted for remarks upon a crisis in dramaturgy and the textual basis, with reference to Hans-Thies Lehmann’s essay on “postdramatic theatre”, so is a German influence returning to French theatre? The well-oriented American observer of French theatre focuses upon a national independent understanding of dramaturgy as both function and field, but a certain reluctance to deal with how dramaturgs avoid or insist on being “les flics du sense” in the evolution of a French theatre practice, leaves important issues underexposed.

England Duska Radosavljevic is lecturer at the University of Kent. She has worked as dramaturg in England, and probably felt the degree of anti-intellectualism in the British theatre, together with attacks on dramaturgs like those of Terry McCabe’s: “creatively bankrupt and destructive forces, confined to not-for-profit theatres” (p. 41). Radosavljevic observes, with inspiration from the theory of Michel de Certeau, how dramaturgy both as function and field unsettles traditional forms of theatre and hierarchical structures in the rehearsals. When dramaturgy travels from the margins and into the place of theatre production, it will undo the interstices of the prevailing codes in traditional programmes giving directions to values and methods. The dramaturg lives in a “gypsy-like” condition, being a cultural minority that resists cultural integration to stay on the move. We are reminded of Stegemann’s paradox defining the dramaturg “include me out” (p. 47). Increased cosmopolitanism19 to handle contemporary life in times of globalisation, together with instalment of new “hierarchies of knowledge”20 where “experiential and participatory epistemologies” are deemed just as important as “textual and critical-intellectual” ones. The anti-intellectual attitude in English theatre should apparently not be countered by “critical-intellectual” means, but by other epistemologies, which will bridge the gaps. Radosavljevic identifies with the dramaturg as working in a field of “archival material and structural ideas, while s/he is ‘good at thinking structurally’, and ‘sensitive as to how something is shaped and how this shape or structure affects interpretation’” (p. 43).21 This is why dramaturgy may be seen as a revolution in theatre.22 Les flic du sense? We find that dramaturgy when introduced to French or English territories provides the possibility of a reflection of contemporary theatre traditions. In this sense it may be a

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destabilisation of conventional thinking. However, the discussion of how meaning is produced and presented to an audience, is left to fairly abstract visions. The approach taken in Stegemann’s presentation is less scared of taking issues and sides. Perhaps less politically correct, by being explicitly political. Returning to our question of how contemporary theatre can optimise the ability for cultural navigation among the subjects of pampering in their hazardous and largely uncomprehended milieu, and how dramaturgy can be a part of that, we find the issue somewhat vaguely introduced, maybe because we are in zones of affluence?

Three forms of society – and revolution In the reports from Germany, France, and England we meet the word “revolution”. Before we investigate the other national reports on dramaturgy in the 21st century from communist countries, ex-communist countries, countries dealing with post-colonial problems, and countries with fundamentalist religious regimes, we will have to take a step back. If globalisation in its terrestrial form meant colonisation of foreign nations by European colonisers, what is the new form of globalisation? The sociological “world history” told in an excessively dense version, is the story of an evolution from segmented societies over stratified societies to our modern hyper-complex functionally differentiated society.23

Segmented society In segmented societies, pyramidal tribes or family federations had disposal of territories, and could autonomously decide to include or exclude members. A tribal leader could regulate internal conflicts, but also conflicts with other neighbouring segments. The use of threats or violence could only be applied by the next of kin with the highest authority. This kind of power is impossible to centralise. Evolution showed that a political centralisation in a ruler-position outside family relatives were the best way to make the political function observable and able to communicate decisions and regulations to the population.24 This meant that family values (like reciprocity, trust, and cohesion) could no longer function as sole supporting value system. Instead the political power had to be generated in forms of threats with negative sanctions. In a centralised, power based, hierarchical political system different structures were differentiated. Religion, and any religious oligarchy had to be seen as separate from the political decision-makers, but at the same time as something that enriched the ruler and his commissioned with mythical merits. In antiquity, both in Greece and Rome, the city-state employed commissioners and gave them power, independent (in principle) from their extraction. The city-state took resources from the population and had to redistribute some of this in public expenditures (water-canals, temple-building, warfare – or even theatre festivals). This meant that nobles were not by birth given political rights. As we know, Seneca advocated the Roman aristocracy to keep updates on the complex civil rights. With the re-feudalisation of Europe these achievements were ended. Instead a monarch was legitimised by birth and thus dynasties became leaders of territorial administration. This gradually led to a reduction of the complexity of the medieval societies, where a plurality of religions, philosophies, trading systems, and different political regimes in empires, cities, and churches made any social order difficult to handle.

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Stratified society Stratification (periphery/centre and clearly segregated populations in a hierarchical ranking system) evolved as the most efficient social order, and that meant a differentiation of sovereign territorial states. An upper class with economical resources, endogenous marriages, and internal conflicts managed to stay in political power. The sovereignty of the territorial state gradually provided an independence of the church, and the growing centralisation of the political power meant that in all those cases where problems (religious, scientific, and economical) had to be solved by political means. This included the power to declare war on other territorial states. As head of this power to warfare the king was supreme, however, it also meant complicated additional organisations to administer the army and the finances. Power was now centred and could be observed in its potency, its ability to carry through (or fail), and thus reputation could mean either continuation or destruction of dynasties.25 It also meant the beginning of territorial states, with defined borders (an empirical space), a people (a number), and the hazier concept of state power. The stratified society found ways to ensure the transmission of power from one generation of a dynasty to the next. Fortunes, positions, and land were inherited. When the sovereign could be killed, and replaced by the lord of another dynasty, variations could happen. But the fundamental change, the revolution meant that the murder of the king did not mean another climb to the top of the staircase of power (Kott (1967) on Shakespeare),26 but a new social order. The state had to secure the conditions of systems in society: industrial companies, health, law, education etc. As the state redistributed economic wealth, it added to the pressure on its legitimisation.

Revolution The English Revolution (1688–1689) included constitutional restrictions on the King and his sovereignty, and “Whigs” and “Tories” debated whether the parliament could overthrow James II. The contemporary meaning of the word revolution has most of its global connotation coupled with the French National Assembly’s self-interpretation of the overthrow in Paris 1789.27 After the violent conflicts the Assemblée Nationale tried to construct itself as if it represented the volonté générale – the will of the people. But how could they be certain, that that was what they were? The construction however, did not last long. As soon as decisions had to be made, internal fractions in the assembly (e.g. more revolution or reforms, to kill or not to kill the king) created fierce controversies. How then to decide? Experiments with votes selected by draw, and other fanciful solutions, did not convince. A distinction finally emerged: at the left side of the assembly one would find the radical revolutionary representatives (what would later be socialists and communists), on the right side the representatives for more temperate if not clearly restorative initiatives gathered (what would later become liberals and conservatives). What followed was the generalised formation of parties as a way to organise political conflicts, interests, and elections. The left/right form were then reinterpreted (and ideologically deconstructed) by the code Government/Opposition. By then we were at the very beginning of the differentiation of a political system, and could regard the left/ right scheme as the first internal differentiation. This solution was neither foreseen by the Philadelphian nor the Parisian constitutions.

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Functionally differentiated society After the French Revolution it took at least 70 years before a new order of society began to be visible. The Enlightenment worked to structure and distribute knowledge, rationality became a key to explain what could possibly hold society together under the new conditions. Several important evolutions contributed to the order functional differentiation. The nation was in order to define forms of government forced to make the state and its power as part of the political system.

Nation The modern national state delivered answers that tried to shield the problems of redistribution, as they at the same time could be seen as a “solution”. The formation of a nation “explained” expenditures that served all the new functionally differentiated systems in society. But how to be a nation? The state had to find its own way: either to “plan” or to let “evolution” follow its own order. The state had to decide either to be a “nation” as a union of states or as a unity of language and culture. With political (state) power the nation had to afford some unity of language, religion, culture in the territory it claimed. It followed that national identity is not given, it is something to be defined, conquered, and secured. As such, “nation” is nothing but an imagination, an idea, which needs the building of a state to materialise. Who are the inhabitants and how are they represented? The state now served as the direct political agent for the individual citizen as in the entire population. The concept population, which arose in the 18th century, was connected to the diversity of the population. How could this multiplicity be “represented” properly? First of all, the idea of a nation allowed many other differences between the inhabitants (be they of ethnic, class, or religious sort) to fade into the background. On the other hand, the population was different from mankind as it included a diversity of individualities. Now the state had to guarantee the autonomy of the individual. The historical and political situations in the North American states and France were dissimilar in the 18th century, but the solutions to the internal revolts were in both cases the establishing of a “constitution”. The problem could be articulated as how to transfer the sovereign power of kings to “the people”. What came after the revolutions? State and political system What is of huge importance here, is that from now on, the state and its organisation becomes a part of the political system. The political parties can absorb new problems as they politicise the meaning market, they are the forces of variation, whereas the state subsequently had to secure juridical and economical order and redundancy. Now elections could provide a change of power. The paradox of a people governing itself is what we today call a democracy. The paradox and its problems has been carefully hidden by evolution of the welfare state in the second half of the 20th century. What Sloterdijk describes as the pampering relief zone of unburdened consumers is the result of the welfare state. What Luhmann enjoins is the fact, that what confronts the welfare state, is a new version of the fundamental paradox: What the political system conjures up as problems to be solved, are in fact unsolvable problems, because the problems that are mirrored in the political system are in fact problems that arise from the functional and structural differentiation of society. There is no centre for solving

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ecological problems with sufficient political power. Solutions are dependent on decisions in many dissimilar functional systems: e.g. the industrial, financial, scientific systems, and, of course, the political system. What becomes clear, is the limits of political steerability of other systems in society. The relation between the political system and the economic system (industries, finance etc.) does provide a special difficulty. The social-democratic welfare state operated with limitation and restrictions on the economic system, and discussed of course the economic consequences of this trend. To put it simply: in the life of each citizen many daily decisions are deeply dependent on money and influences his or her interest. The political system has to take this into consideration when addressing voters. Not only in terms of poverty, but in the relief zone, also in terms of the many diversified interests (education, health, transportation, entertainment etc.). As taxes are financing political enterprises, the political system is dependent on the state of the market and the economic system. Any attempt to regulate the economic system by taxation has to make sure that the sufficient income can be made. Socialist/liberal Luhmann remarks that the dualism socialistic/liberal, which for a long time has been the functioning political scheme in welfare states, seems to lose importance and attraction. What motivates participation with the economic system? Theories of political economy has since the 17th century onward to modern theories of “rational choice” been founded on uniformity. When it could be observed, “that only one part of a transaction got exactly what he wanted, the other part got, however, in return only money” (Luhmann, PdG, p. 218), then the answer to even out this difference, was to posit that both parts had a calculus of utility or use value, and a motive for maximising. Politics, in liberal and socialist understanding, ended up being a residual function, which should resolve the unresolved conflict of interests, and the controversy focused only on the proportions of the rest, and the necessity to regulate it. [. . .] For the observation of the real motives, and posterity may wonder why, literature and theatre took charge. (p. 218) Now, in the final end conflicts of interest are trivial conflicts. They may be resolved in many different ways. Luhmann sees upcoming non-trivial conflicts: ethnical and religious conflicts, identity conflicts, conflicts over values, norms, and beliefs that are non-negotiable. These conflicts have been there all along, however, we may have to accept, that it was an illusion to believe that all could be reduced to conflicts of interests. The revolution and its left/right scheme, contributed to the Russian revolutions in 1905 and 1917. What became a major problem and an important issue for the communist party in the former Soviet Republic was that the party identified itself with the will of the people, and became a system with one unitary block. That meant that conflicts internally were oppressed (oppositional members of the party killed or deported), and conflicts between the political system and its social environment would be deafened by censorship in the public communication, and/or by violence. With the downfall of the Soviet Union in 1989, a radically new situation arose. Now China represents the communist ideas. The history of the Chinese Republic since 1949 is of the utmost importance for any visions of what might happen in the 21st century. A monstrous one-party regime, having gone through a “cultural revolution”

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by Mao Zedong, is now inventing new strategies of dealing with the nation’s environment: Adapt market systems, invade financial markets, and invest heavily in other continents infrastructure and companies, all while internally increasing the digital surveillance of the Chinese people. The Chinese have found their own way to deal with one world society.

China The author of the report on dramaturgy in China, William Huizhu Sun, is Professor at Shanghai Theatre Academy. Shanghai were a British Colony from 1842 until the 1930s, and became a Chinese province in 1949 when the communists took over. In 1992 Shanghai got a special status with reforms of the economic system, and has now a leading position in the Chinese experiments in new ways to deal with the world society. William Huizhu Sun has a PhD from New York University, and has since 1999 worked in Shanghai. Dramaturgy in the People’s Republic of China post-World War II is a story of how the new communist regime from 1949 eagerly changed the entire theatre system. In the many new state theatres the government created central organisations such as the “Office of Artistic Creation” and the “Bureau of Chinese Opera Improvement”, where orders of Mao Zedong were carried out. As Sun laconically put it: “by eliminating the elements of so-called superstitions and highlighting the Maoist view of the progress of history, to serve the people of the new China” (p. 82). Responsible for this work was Tian Han, an accomplished playwright, but he was politically persecuted and physically abused during the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976). Tian Han died in prison in 1968. Mao directed the Cultural Revolution in an attempt to mobilise the party and its youth against movements in the government and the party, and the violent purgation of opponents only stopped after Mao’s death in 1976. Tian Han “was exonerated in 1979”, Sun informs us.28 Dramaturgy has since been in the hands of officials from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the government. These “unofficial official” dramaturgs announce themes, review proposals, decide grants awards (and their size), supervise rehearsals with dramaturgical advice, all in the “needs of the CCP and the government”. William Huizhu Sun provides a telling story about how a contemporary playwright, Meng Bing, due to some internal disagreements between two provinces and their dramaturgical wishes, ended up having two different versions of a play celebrating the first CCP congress in Shanghai in 1921. The way new elements enter into this heavily regulated theatre system, has both influenced classical Chinese forms, as in Sun’s own production of Confucius Disciples where the central element of classical and traditional Chinese Culture finds it way in the production of contemporary plays with urban themes connected to “the newly formed group of university-educated, corporate or governmentemployed theatregoers” (p. 85). These projects were Shanghai-based, but made an impact in mainland China as well. A National Theatre of China (NTC), a Beijing-based centre for Playwriting and Planning was born in 2001, where both new national and international plays were in focus. The centre, Sun informs us, was abolished in 2010. The new leader of the NTC implemented a “‘producer-led approach’ to produce more commercial plays to maximize ticket sales” (p. 85). Having read this report, the following quote from Confucius seem adequate: By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest . . .29

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When a one-party political system with a “great leader” shapes the organisation of the art system and its purposes, censorship is the only possibility, to prevent an “autonomous art”. Bitter as the fight against censorship may be, it finds its own reflected ways to circumvent, posing as imitations, “hidden” messages are secretly enjoyed by the audience who observe closely.

Poland The fight against censorship indeed created some of the best Polish theatre in the 1960s – absurd, grotesque, penetrating. What the Chinese report manages in terms of reflection, is oddly lacking in the Polish report by Agata Dabek. We are introduced to Leon Schiller (1887–1954), born and educated in Krakow (then under Austria) and the Sorbonne, his theatre activities including correspondence with Craig. The fact that he lived through a Poland divided and occupied by Germans and the USSR, spent some time in Auschwitz, was taken hostage by the Germans in retaliation for the liquidation of a polish actor working as agent for Gestapo is in itself a piece of an important picture. It could have been completed by the equally vivid history of Jan Kott (1914–2001) who with his Jewish-Polish background fought the Nazis, joined the communist party after the war, only to desert it after the invasion of Hungary in 1956. He migrated to USA in 1966 after writing some of the best dramaturgical works like Shakespeare Our Contemporary (in English in 1964). I mention this because I have just returned from a trip to Wrocław (former Breslau) in Poland. Here the new national-populist government has recently removed quite a number of theatre directors from their post, in order to replace the unruly, and experimenting with more reliable persons closer to the government. A Poland that after 1989 had a new chance to find itself, has found a nationalist and religious fundamentalism. Agata Dabek describes a Polish theatre in the power of the director (p. 59). Considering names like Kantor, Grotowski, Wajda, and Lupa, this is understandable. In such a landscape the dramaturg has to fight to find a suitable way to a position. It is not made any easier by the fact that in Polish (as in French) dramaturg also means playwright. In times of postdramatic (here it surfaces again) theatre texts are “fragmented” but that does not mean that dramatic theatre texts have lost their importance as inspiration for dramaturgs. New Polish dramaturgs describe how the “revolutionary, and, at the same time, unpredictable aspects of their operations” could be considered to be a “positive virus” (perhaps a reference to Eugenio Barba?), which infects the theatre and its rigid hierarchical structures, by introducing “new interpretive tropes and formal solutions” taking into account the perspectives of both actors and audiences. In her finishing lines, Dabek asserts that there is a “strong desire to subjugate the dramaturgy profession to the Polish theatre establishment with its tradition and history, which, however, Polish dramaturgs oppose with increasing effectiveness”.30 Let us hope they succeed.

Russia Pavel Rudnev makes his case exceptionally clear: The ethical atmosphere of today’s Russia is extremely complex. We have lived twenty years outside the Soviet order, but just as before we have not fully organized our conception of reality, not named that country in which we now live, not finished constructing it. (p. 62)

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Theatre in the Soviet system was closely coupled with the state as censorship, prohibitions and communist ideology sought to induce “virtue, harmony, imperial grandeur and complacency”. When reality changes so abruptly as it did in Russia, confusion, lack of orientation, and social unrest are just some of the several reactions. Rudnev, project director at the Moscow Art Theatre and Theatre School, identifies two trends in Russian theatre. One that rests on a foundation of taboos and traditions from the Soviet culture, where theatre becomes nostalgic or anachronistic. In this trend, the dramaturgy of European theatre in the 1960s and 1970s had not been incorporated. So here the faith in “theatre of logos, in life on the stage, in the meaning of the word, and in the linear construction of the plot” still prevailed. Others looked for ways to let contemporary life enter the stage, challenging the taboo of “the topical”. This trend is gradually experimenting to find ways to understand the new times, name it, and contribute. Immediately after the fall, in the beginning of the 1990s, theatre life was suffering from stagnation, crisis of financing, lack of spectators. In the 2000s new conflicts arose. Putin was elected President 2000–2008, and again from 2012, and has just been re-elected. In Pavel Rudnev’s words: “Putin’s Russia – especially in his second and third terms – raises the question of the rebirth of the Stalinist system, the rebirth of Sovietism” (p. 63). The cultural politic under Putin, and under the influence of the Orthodox Church, seem to favour a traditional cultural legacy, and as art depends on government funding to survive, only a small operating space for contemporary art exists. This re-traditionalisation of art and theatre in times of enormous social changes, is a way to soothe the social irritation. Another way is for a new aesthetic to return public significance to the theatre. A new generation of playwrights in cooperation with young directors and actors produce performances, often written by playwrights in the provinces, but presented by theatres in capital cities. Only later the plays would produced by the theatres in the provinces. “The new play recognizes man’s need for self-identification, which is essential in order for him to function properly. The contemporary play in Russia is a manifestation of enormous social unrest and even of social irritation” (p. 65). Rudnev briefly mention some of the aesthetic elements in the new plays: a documentary style with a naturalistic verbatim style of dialogue, with a hint of Nietzschean tragic optimism, confrontation with neo-positivist values, renunciation of false national values and priorities, and how a totally open world affects a person’s consciousness. However, there are also themes on anti-globalisation and resistance to capitalism. Rudev gives three example of taboos which has not yet been broken: “The de-mythologization of the Soviet Soldier in World War II, the interfaith and international relations in Russia, and finally the topic of the church”. (p. 66). Life in ex-communist countries exerts massive pressure on populations. Values are changed, how to develop new attitudes and beliefs? Here, indeed, there exists a task for dramaturgy to optimise the ability for cultural navigation. This is no zone of relief, even though life in communist countries provided a subjugated calmness, there were burdens to be carried. Now, after the “decolonisation” the subjects experience a hazardous and largely uncomprehended milieu, because what is to be learned from the past, and what to be expected of the future? How to negotiate values in communities where values were official ideological maxims? This difficulty is attested by the massive retrograde movements towards nationalism and religion. If I understand the irony of Pavel Rudnev’s final statement correctly, he sees an important task in the cultural navigation in ex-communist Russia to be a critique of dreams about future and past grandeur and any non-involvement strategies:

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To save them [traditional values and the nation], one can either exit to the depths, there to vanish, or else become a museum, a tourist centre. In the 2010s, when Russians have again begun to speak about the repressive mechanisms and the premature rollback of liberal reforms, the playwright has appeared: speaking about the salvation to be found in illusion and the therapeutic effect of escapism and social phobia. (p. 67) One thing is to negate illusionism, escapism, and social phobia, another is to navigate in the political: the capacity to observe, criticise, and participate in the decision of collectively binding agreements. What the people in ex-communist countries experience as a result of recent “decolonialisation”, some of the post-colonial countries we have reports from have had longer to contemplate.

Dramaturgy in non-secular societies The world society is dependent on nations and their way of deciding how state and political systems arrange in constitutional orders. Since the differentiation of the modern world into functional systems, religion lost its power to rule society. However, we have seen nations where fundamentalist religions surpass the secular. The consequences are many. Absolutistic rules bans any free political discussion, with reference to the idea that religion is above the secular world. This makes for conflict zones in which it is extremely difficult to manoeuvre. We have reports from Iran where religion tries to rule all the systems in society. The suppression in these countries is then by necessity extremely aggressive. When no arguments can be given that counters what the rulers declare to be the true exegesis of their religion, then only violence and suppression are left on both sides. In such cases dramaturgy is left with a choice: to pledge allegiance to the religious leaders and their political representatives, to hide in anonymity, or to find the always highly dangerous ways to oppose.

Iran Marjan Moosavi who reports from Iran, was born there, has worked in there, and travelled in USA and Canada, and is now a doctoral student at the University of Toronto, where she focuses on “transgressive dramaturgy and resistant aesthetics” (p. xxv). In Iran revolution, war, economic sanctions, and Islamicisation have transformed the cultural landscape. The revolution in 1979, the Iran–Iraq War from 1980 to1988, gave the Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution the decisive role in all art-related matters. This meant that “Iranian theatre productions must not refute the principles and ideals of the Islamic faith, and must not contribute to the cultural, political, or economic influence of foreign enemies” (p. 71). These explicit rules are then supplemented by other regulations as to costumes, dialogues, placement of male and female on the stage, body language, stage designs, and music and dance elements. The whole process of theatre production is controlled by the Committee of Theatre Supervision and Evaluation, to secure “the appropriateness and Islamic decency of all theatrical productions” (p. 71), as the ideological imposition is that the Iranian audiences expect “to see their moral and religious values recognized and respected on the stage” (p. 72). All this oppressive censorship easily transforms to self-censorship. Under these circumstances any dramaturgical work is of course compromised before it even begins. This kind of suppression

Theory of dramaturgy for the 21st century   23

will continue. It will also create internal problems in both economic and political systems. The people suffer not only as a result of wars and famine but also because internal transport, health, education are stifled. The world society has great difficulties and so far there are no good solutions for intervention in nations that oppose secular order.

Syria Fadi Fayad Skeiker was educated at the Higher Institute for Dramatic Arts in Damascus, he reports and interviews the head of the Theatre Studies Department Mayson Ali, so they are both inhabitants of and active in Syria. They tell the story of dramaturgy that evolved from the 1980s partly with inspiration from western ideas, partly with an eye on Syrian practices. One of the other graduates, Imad Jalol, “became a manager for the directorate of theatre and music in Syria, the directorate that supervises all theatre and music activities in Syria” (p. 78). We are not informed exactly what the supervision includes and how it works. The internal war and the enormous political difficulties are only mentioned fleetingly. At the end of the interview Fadi Skeiker asks: “How will dramaturgy change in the midst of all the social and political changes currently happening?” and in her answer Mayson Ali says: When a dramaturge is working on a text or a performance, the dramaturg has to connect the vision of the work to a broader social/political/aesthetic vision. Dramaturgy has to find a new future that has nothing to do with the illusions of the past and monsters of the present. (p. 80) This is, one must surmise, a very diplomatic answer. The attempt to declare an Islamic caliphate and the uncoordinated and politically disastrous way in which world society has tried to intervene, is but another example of how difficult such interventions in a nation’s internal religious and political affair becomes, when the state and the political system in a nation loses control of its own territory.

Post-colonial dramaturgies When significant shifts in the political system are supported by new powers of state, major shifts occur in other functionally differentiated system, including the art system. In the cases of colonial power resigning, the schism between the colonised “culture” and what was before becomes an issue for any communication trying to establish a new self-description of the nation or the region. What to remember and what to forget? Return to the “original” culture is forever made impossible, as the old has already been contaminated with the new. What to dream of and what to fear? Visions of futures are dependent on memories of the past. The recursive movements in the present must bear the full weight of enabling a communication that self-reflectively addresses this dilemma. What are the dramaturgical strategies described in The Companion to Dramaturgy?

Canada Brian Quirt reports from Canada. He has made a long journey with dramaturgy, and has witnessed how its function has gained in importance. The story of his own company

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“Nightswimming” documents the possibilities for a non-producing, commissioning company, where research, creation, and performance leads new and/or experienced artist to communicate to local and national audiences. Quirt, in his second sentence mentions that he will speak only of dramaturgy in English Canada, e.g. understandably as Canada provides a very complex mixture. The internal schisms between language domains (the result of the fights between France and England over America in the 18th century) is a particular postcolonial burden: We are not offered insights into the French-speaking side of Canadian dramaturgy. Maybe there are no important differences, but the fact that it is mentioned, makes one wonder. Canada suffers from its own colonial activities in dealing with the indigenous Inuit people and at the same time suffers another contemporary colonialism from the big neighbour in south. Quirt only mentions the “overwhelming and often stifling colonial influences of the United Kingdom and the United States” (p. 26). This is another piece in the complex matter of arriving at a unified self-description of nation with vast territories and limited numbers of inhabitants. The dramaturgical strategies Quirt focuses upon, is development of new Canadian plays. “[A]s artists, audiences, and arts councils have prioritized a national need to generate a canon of Canadian plays and performance pieces” (p. 26). The serious and extensive work to develop new playwrights, plays, and performances has to focus on “core set of ideas at the heart of the work’s inspiration”, communication of those ideas to the spectator, to “deepen and enrich the expression of the core ideas”; and finally the designing of the creational process completes the complex dramaturgical work. The growth and evolution of new plays has been supported by a huge amount of festivals on new plays, the work of LMDA (Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas) who arranges conferences and workshops, and 11 centres for playwright development in Canada (PDCC) supports playwrights who works on mandates to create national and regional plays. Quirt finds that future dramaturgical tasks should prioritise diversity to live up to the cultural mixture of cities and audiences. This also includes challenging conventional production methods with integration of new media, choreography, visual, and movement based work. Finally, this points to the vital need to support director training and internships in such a way that collaboration between theatre makers, artists, and dramaturgs are to truly flourish. The need for new plays to reflect and contribute to build a new national identity, together with experiments with new theatrical forms and production methods, is a sign of a brave intention to find ways out of a (post)colonial maze. It takes courage to engage in a selfreflective evolution of a national understanding in times of a globalised world society.

Australia The report from Australia is written by Peter Eckersall, Professor of Asian Theatre at the City University, New York. He has played a prominent role in the development of dramaturgy in Australia, worked as dramaturg for the performance group Not Yet It’s Difficult for 17 years. Where theatre circles have ambivalence to “the apparent academicism of dramaturgy as a factor that might constrain the creative process and/or inhibit directorial and authorial voices” (p. 99), the devised performance companies have engaged with dramaturgs and uses them in a variety of contexts. Eckersall states his case clearly: A challenge for dramaturgs in Australian theatre is how to work with playwrights, directors, performers, and creative teams to make the theatre insistently about

Theory of dramaturgy for the 21st century   25

something more than a process of self-improvement, national cultural essentialism, and/or goodly consumer experiences. (p. 100) In a political and populist climate of mass consumption and media sensationalism, with massive decline in support for the arts, and emphasis on measures and efficiencies, dramaturgs, artists, and audiences together should be a progressive community, who as “active interpreters of culture become agents of change”. Dramaturgy should hence be less occupied with structures of dramatic unity and production efficiencies, and instead “show dramatic forms as moments of rupture, surprise, anxiety and violation” (p. 100). With concrete references to contemporary production Eckersall finds dramaturgies that “expresses disbelief in the very sense of stability that theatre historically forecasts onto the audience. It rejects theatre that has a readable sense of mimesis and resolution” (p. 101). Such a “precarious” dramaturgy is highlighted in a production about the recent history of East Timor, the former Portuguese colony declaring independence in 1975, and then invaded by Indonesia, covertly supported by Australia. First in 2002 East Timor gained statehood. The 2012 performance Doku Rai, says Eckersall was an experiment in intercultural dramaturgy, it was “an exercise in aesthetic interruption: using multiple languages and clashing performance styles the gaps in communication created the dramatic form and enabled a ‘communion’ of contrasting styles/ideas of performance” (p. 102). The confirmation in 1989 of a treaty between Indonesia and Australia gave East Timor access to gas and oilfields in the Timor Sea, but also precluded East Timor from pursuing further claims against Australia. Such a history of domination and colonialism’s violent ruptures is contrasted by “a fruitful sense of giving and vulnerability in the theatrical process. We see gaps as moments to realise possibility and we see a responsibility for dramaturgy and that is freely shared” (p. 103). Here we meet a concrete example of how colonialism is countered by intercultural dramaturgies that presents gaps and communions, working together and re-describe myths, history, politics, and rituals, using improvisations, multimedia, and music. Such a dramaturgy takes note of an “irreducible non-satisfaction” – once colonised any attempt to reach back for an origin, is deemed to be non-satisfactory. An irreducible gap is installed. What Eckersall presents is a poietic that confronts the necessity of a theatre in a zone of affluence, where both post-colonial and own colonial tendencies are present. How to find ways to enable concepts for navigation in such a mental horizon?

Latin America and Brazil Margarita Espada and Julie Ann Ward report from Latin America and Brazil. They are both situated at American universities (Stony Brook and University of California), and have worked and travelled widely in Latin America. Espada has worked with the Latin American and Caribbean Theatre School, and she reports on the alternative theatre and the method of collaborative dramaturgy in creación colectiva. The political turmoil in the 1960s was instrumental in the formation of theatre groups insisting on finding other ways to produce popular theatre, which, according to Espada included theatrical forms that “encourages audiences to become active members of society and engage in the transformative process of their own community” (p. 30). The transformation of society requires a solid investigation process of space, historical memory, and the personal and social identity of the actor. This “rescued native cultures and stories that were repressed and classified as myths, legends, and oral

26  Theory of dramaturgy for the 21st century

tradition” and the physicality of the actor was also a way of “reconnecting with and rescuing indigenous dances and traditions”. The actor was at the centre of creative efforts, and they developed “the poetic that will be used to create the spectacle”. It has to happen in a “dialectical relationship between assimilation and differentiation”. So important input from “masters”, from Stanislavski to Barba must be set against investigations of the new historical and cultural contexts. This mode of creating includes actors’ improvisations but also “the director/dramaturge is essential”. The task not to “impose decisions” but suggest ways or organising the theatrical material. The “chaotic reality full of political repression and economic struggles stimulated collective creation of an alternative theatre” (p. 33). Rescuing indigenous traditions, assimilating actor-training methods from Europe, and insisting upon the collective creation of new forms, is a resolute answer to post-colonial artistic work. It has its own inbuilt problems as how to assimilate, acculturate and differentiate within the contemporary body of the actor who may have experienced oppression and destabilisation. The vital need for reinvention and re-describing becomes just as important as body and intuition. The report from Brazil focuses upon documentary theatre, with inspiration from Augusto Boal’s Teatro Jornal from 1971. It is a “theatre of the real” that recycles reality of personal, social, political, and historical events to form and reframe what has really happened. So working with archives of testimonies, objects, and people includes a dramaturgical work of compiling and sorting. This yearn for the real also includes site-specific theatre, and mixing of “real-life testimonies by workers with those of actors as well as with fictional testimonies” (p. 36). The real, the personal, the world intervenes in the staged. The theatrical selfrepresentation is questioned and instead documentary forms seek to investigate other forms of self-presentation. It is a search for voices and stories that allow the spectator to take part in a re-description of a common search for identity in personal, political, and national reality.

South Africa Marié-Heleen Coetzee, Professor at the Drama Department, University of Pretoria, and Allan Munro, Professor at the Tshwane University of Technology report from South Africa with shining clarity and imaginative theoretical suggestions. The ontology of dramaturgy is seen as a “discourse”: Discourse is a vehicle which makes it possible to map aesthetic, embodied, textual, historical, cultural, and socio-political “slippages” and the interstitial spaces between these that contest a fixed locus of control in the dramaturgical process and position. (p. 110, note 1) The dramaturg is accordingly described as one who operates in between discourses, and who also negotiates authority in and through discursive spaces and strategies. The work of the dramaturg is thus connected to a potentially self-reflective “third space” where the “expert” knowledge of the dramaturg and the knowledge of those in the creative team engage in a development of a mutual text, which draws on the memories, experiences, and discourses of both. Here decisions are made over what to select, and is thus a “locus of control”. The sensitisation towards control, different discourses, and their implicit values, is a product of the South African history. Coetzee and Munro refer to Homi K. Bhabha and his work on

Theory of dramaturgy for the 21st century   27

post-colonial texts. Two of Bhabha’s most influential concepts is that of hybridity and interstitial spaces. Hybridity as concept has historically “slipped” from meaning “bastard of mixed parentage, class, or race” into a positive concept in the 1980s that works against hegemonic norms of representation. Where dichotomies like coloniser and colonised, self and other, east and west clash, hybridity suggests a form that overrule the dichotomy, not by a simple reversal of the poles, or a sublation of the intercultural tensions of the opposition, but by insisting on a unsolvable and mutual interpenetration of oppressor and oppressed. The third space is accordingly a space in between the discourses, where displacements of values may occur. The dramaturg intervenes in the discussions on the purpose of the performance, points at relevant discourses and discursive strategies, and “fosters the migration of the locus of control over decisions made for inclusion and exclusion in the creative moment and product” (p. 106). This is close to what we in this book present with the concept “poetic hierarchy”. In the historical context of South Africa Western colonialisation has influenced the discourse of race, class, religion, identity, and language, in a weave of domination, subordination, and rebellion all these discourses coexist in unresolved tensions – also inherent in the “dramaturgical pursuit of ‘creating’ South African theatre and performance” (p. 105). The constitution of South Africa in 1994 entailed a sea change. “Yet even here, the sea change brings new slippages and new discussion points as further engagement surface around gender, class, rights and responsibilities, retribution, reconciliation, and development and the role of dramaturgs and dramaturgy in this” (p. 106). Coetzee and Munro suggests four roles and functions of the dramaturg in South Africa. The work as/with playwrights; the director as dramaturg individual or collective (asking to what extent a locus of control can be dissolved); the dramaturg as member of an interventionist applied theatre work with a selected section of a community; the community as dramaturg “as observed in the indigenous rituals and performance practices embedded in a particular community” (p. 107). Finally, an “autodramaturg” is an artist that present personal experiences being both actor, director, playwright, and dramaturg. Coetzee and Munro conclude: “The role of the dramaturge in South Africa is located not in the people operating in the theatre collective but in the power of discourse itself that manifests as dialectical and oscillatory in a ‘third space’” (p. 110). To position the dramaturg in this third space begs the question of how the locus of power applies in the third space. Who is able to gain access to it (is it the privilege of the intellectual cosmopolite?) and how can a collective mobilisation find new identity and strategies of action in this oscillatory space? It might also be a reflection of a cultural theoretical choice, to see discourse as the power governing the actions of the people operating in the theatre. Changes in the action in daily life do happen, and they are of course created in the tension between old and new discourses, but they take place in existing orders, not in a hovering third space.

Post-colonialism An effect of the terrestrial globalisation was the “triumphant one-sidedness” of European nations. They arrived in new regions and saw the indigenous people as “periphery”. No mental or cultural “bridges” were built to mend the “gaps”, no hybrid forms were sought. European cultural and religious values, language and economic systems were rolled out, with more or less violence and success. What happened to the indigenous cultures and languages? We are not in zones of relief and pampering, but in zones of subjugation, exploitation, and conflicts. When empires collapsed, some with greater speed than others, the population of

28  Theory of dramaturgy for the 21st century

the colonised regions, had to find new ways, but how? When colonisers enter the insularities of regions, the colonised are involved in a process of change. What was once indigenous, has already changed. So what history, language, or rituals to return to? Any former national identity will be lost, and any new identity cannot avoid globalisation in its new form. Is multiculturalism of alterities living side by side an option? Or is there hopes of a dialectical aufhebung of opposites in new identities? Or is it so that every cultural contact creates a “third space” that models identity and alterity in an indissoluble process where centre and periphery, coloniser and colonised interpenetrate each other in a process of hybridisation? Just as translations from one language to another can make visible incommensurable words or symbols, so can cultural transformations shed light on vital differences.31 The qualifying question is however: who compares what, and how do they observe? Post-colonialism is a concept with an implicit ambiguity. To what does the prefix “post” relate? To different after-colonial tendencies, or to anti-colonial strategies in nations trying to establish their own identities in a break with colonial heritage? And how does post-colonial theory handle neo-colonial powers and globalisation? Observing the ambiguities in post-colonial theory, makes visible an important distinction between different theoretical structures. Any cultural theory has to decide on its chain of casualties, and how it controls intransparency.32 A theory of dramaturgy has to decide how we observe and describe a work of art, in its internal differentiations and in its relation to its environment. A work of art is an expression of a certain knowledge. What kind of knowledge? Is it a knowledge gained in an “experience” situated in the terrain of the lived, in a praxis and in consciousness, or is this knowledge determined by over-individual structures, categories, classifications, and frameworks of culture in a society? If we take a look at the evolution of cultural theories, several important and different answers can be traced.

The theoretical architectures of Cultural Studies Cultural Studies was born in Great Britain after World War II. Here the restructuring of society produced social, political, and cultural displacements. The welfare state integrated the working class, as Labour-governments insisted on providing equality, e.g. in the educational system, and as the empire declined and the acceptance of a “multicultural” dimension in the British population created problems, a new approach to the research of “culture” became necessary. Cultural Studies aimed at the analysis of the dynamic relations between cultural artefacts, and historical and contemporary social data. In a first theoretical construction “cultural materialism”33 saw the lived life in social groups, and the personal experience as “the ground”. Raymond Williams (1921–1988) expressed it so: “Concentrated in the word culture are questions directly raised by the great historical changes which the changes in industry, democracy and class, in their own way, represent, and to which the changes in art are a closely related response”.34 Williams circumvented the static Basis/Superstructure scheme of classical Marxism, and insisted upon art as part of society, but: no solid whole, outside it, to which, by the form of our question, we concede priority. The art is there, as an activity, with the production, the trading, the politics, the raising of families. To study the relations adequately we must study them actively, seeing all activities as particular and contemporary forms of human energy. (p. 63)

Theory of dramaturgy for the 21st century   29

Williams saw the need to discover “patterns” within the varied forms of human activity, and to study the relations between these patterns. The purpose of such an analysis should be to grasp how the interactions between all these practices and patterns are lived and experienced as a whole, in any particular period. Williams called it the “structure of feeling” in a given society in a given epoch. In its own way cultural materialism was a privileging of “action” or practices as the perspective from which all structures should be read and thus provide a description of society as a whole, a totality. It is important to see how Williams’ conception of culture is permeated by conflicts and antagonisms.35 He saw how different practices of representation and distribution were a battle between dominant, emerging, and residual cultural powers. However, as he gave the concept of “experience” the “structure of feeling” dimension as prerequisite for all cultural utterances and human life as such, contradictions emerged. How do you ascribe meaning and values to different powers of culture, if you are immersed in experiences with many different powers? How do you gain access to the totality of those? Williams’ answer was the long revolution led by the emerging classes, whose actual experiences had to drive a process of consensus towards a more democratic and collective society. But if all experiences are discursive constructions, how can we then identify those that are “more” valuable than others? Are we not forced to recognise the unavoidability of cultural difference, divisions, and dissensus? The next theoretical construction within Cultural Studies came with the integration of structuralism in the research projects. When Lévi-Strauss characterised “culture” as frameworks and concepts in thought and language, which classified the conditions of existence in a given society, he turned the table. He insisted upon an analogy between the way in which the categories and mental frameworks worked and transformed and the way language works, i.e. as signifying practices, production of meaning. Lévi-Strauss did not focus upon determinacy and a causal logic, but instead upon the internal relations within the signifying practices. Finally, the structuralist position on “experience”, was in direct opposition to the culturalist’s position. In an article36 from 1980, Stuart Hall (1932–2014) contrast the two paradigms in Cultural Studies: Whereas, in “culturalism”, experience was the ground-the terrain of “the lived”-where consciousness and conditions intersected, structuralism insisted that “experience” could not, by definition, be the ground of anything, since one could only “live” and experience one’s conditions in and through the categories, classifications, and frameworks of the culture. These categories, however, did not arise from or in experience: rather, experience was their “effect”. The culturalists had defined the forms of consciousness and culture as collective. But they had stopped far short of the radical proposition that, in culture and in language, the subject was “spoken by” the categories of culture in which he/she thought, rather than “speaking them”. These categories were, however, not merely collective rather than individual productions: they were unconscious structures. The major difference between the two positions is connected to the concept of action. Either “men” are bearers of the structures that speak and place them (structuralism), or, they are active agents in the making of their own history. In 1980 Hall identifies the core problem of Cultural Studies as the relation between “culture” and “ideology”. It is a heritage from Althusser,37 who declared, that ideology is structures that impose their “representations” on

30  Theory of dramaturgy for the 21st century

the vast majority of men, not via their “consciousness” but within an ideological unconsciousness. This potentially makes men succeed in altering the “lived” relation between them and the world, thus acquiring that new form of specific unconsciousness called “consciousness”. Here “experience” was conceived, not as an authenticating source but as an effect: not as a reflection of the real but as an “imaginary relation”. When post-structuralism emphasised the fluidity of signifiers, and carried this theoretical construction into the analysis of cultures, the recognition of a permanent instability, a unending dissemination of meaning (Deleuze) or the constant influence of diffèrance (Derrida) were clearly marked. What Foucault, Bourdieu, and others then suggested, was to observe how discourses were ways of producing knowledge linked (or interlinked) to social power structures. We will return to the discussion with post-structuralism later on in this book, so I leave this position of Cultural Studies, at this for now.

Problems in causality My main point is to demonstrate how cultural theory in all forms presented here, has a common theoretical structure based upon the search for causalities. Whether between culture and ideology, knowledge and action (praxis), or experience and social structures. It is evident that there are internal disagreements: does knowledge determine actions or vice versa? It is undoubtedly a question of causality. Whoever uses the medium of causality must bear the burden of the unavoidable fact, that in order to describe, clarify, and explain any phenomenon, you have to choose a number of fixated causes and connect them to a likewise chosen number of fixated results.38 Causality operates between two interminable horizons: an interminable horizon of causes and an interminable horizon of results/effects. Between these two horizons reality can be observed. Not in any sparkling self-identical transparency, but together with and in reality we always find an observer who has made the choices. There is no observerindependent reality. Causality is as medium also used by rationality, as an interlink between a horizon of ends and a horizon of means. Between the interminable horizon of problems and the interminable horizon of solutions, the chosen options on one hand have to pass the test of the actual conditions, and on the other hand make the observer conspicuous. Causality is political, says Luhmann (p. 119).

Notes 1 Luhmann, Niklas (1997) Die Gesellschaft der Gesellschaft. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Translated into English by Rhodes Barret (2012) Theory of Society. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Hereafter quoted as GdG, followed by page numbers in German and volume and page number English versions. Luhmann, GdG, p. 795/ Vol. 2, p. 120. 2 GdG, p. 797/Vol. 2, p. 121. 3 Romanska, Magda (Ed.) (2015) The Routledge Companion to Dramaturgy. Oxon: Routledge. 4 Certeau, Michel de (1984) The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: University of California Press, p. 128. Quoted from Romanska (2015) p. 44, note 8. 5 Datta, Ketaki (2015) “Dramaturgy in India. A closer view”. In Romanska (2015), pp. 94–98. 6 Here quoted from the translation by Stephen Halliwell (1987) The Poetics of Aristotle. Translation and Commentary. London: Duckworth. 7 Nisbett, Richard E. (2003) The Geography ofThought: How Asians andWesternersThink Differently  .  .  .  and Why. London: Nicholas Brealey Publishing. See Chapters 1–2, where ancient Chinese thought is compared to the Greek.

Theory of dramaturgy for the 21st century   31

8 Sloterdijk, Peter (2005) In Weltinnenraum des Kapitals. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag.Translated to English by Wieland Hoban (2013) In the World Interior of Capital. Cambridge: Polity Press, p. 8. 9 Sloterdijk, Peter (1998) Sphären I, Blasen, Mikrospherologie. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Translated to English by Wieland Hoban (2011) Bubbles, Spheres I: Microspherology. Los Angeles: Semiotext(e). Sloterdijk, Peter (1999) Sphären II, Globen, Makrosphärologie. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Sloterdijk, Peter (2004) Sphären III, Schäume. Plurale Sphärologie. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. 10 Sloterdijk (2005/2013) p. 13. 11 Sloterdijk (2005/2013) p. 212. 12 Invokes the image of the Crystal Palace of the Great Exhibition in London 1851, as used metaphorically in Dostoyevsky’s novel Notes from the Underground (1864), Sloterdijk explains (p. 12). 13 Sloterdijk (2005/2013) p. 212. 14 Cardullo, Bert (Ed.) (1995) What is Dramaturgy? New York: American University Studies, Peter Lang Publishing. Jonas, S., Proehl, G.S., and Lupu, M. (Eds.) (1997) Dramaturgy in American Theatre: A Source Book. Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace. 15 Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas https://lmda.org/. 16 Mark Bly gives his history of dramaturgy in America:Trencsényi, Katalin (2016) “Mark Bly in conversation with Katalin Trencsényi: ‘questioning spirit’—dramaturgy in America”, The Theatre Times, 5 September, available at: https://thetheatretimes.com/mark-bly-in-conversation-with-katalintrencsenyi-questioning-spirit-dramaturgy-in-america/. 17 See Chapter 10. Stegemann is also co-initiator of a new political left-wing initiative, May 2018 (announced while these lines are written). 18 Brecht, Bertolt (1964) Gesammelte Werke Bd. 7, pp. 69–186. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag. 19 Here referring to Rebellato, Dan (2009) Theatre and Globalization. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. 20 Referring to Conquergood, Dwight (2002) “Performance studies: interventions and radical research”. The Drama Review 46 (2) (Summer), pp. 145–156. 21 Referring to Anne Bogart and Anne Cattaneo, in Turner, Cathy and Behrndt, Synne (2008) Dramaturgy and Performance. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. 22 Luckhurst, Mary (2006) Dramaturgy: A Revolution in Theatre. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 23 Luhmann, GdG. 24 Luhmann, Niklas (2000) Die Politik der Gesellschaft. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, p. 74. Hereafter quoted as PdG, followed by page number. My translations. 25 Luhmann, PdG, p. 418. Power was from then a symbolic, generalised medium. 26 Kott, Jan (1967) Shakespeare. Our Contemporary. London: Methuen, p. 9. Where Kott describes the “Grand Mechanism”. 27 Luhmann, PdG (2000), p. 208. 28 Romanska, Magda (2015) The Routledge Companion to Dramaturgy. London: Routledge, p. 82. 29 Lau. D.C. (Transl) (1979) Confucius:The Analects. New York: Penguin Books. 30 Romanska, Magda (2015) The Routledge Companion to Dramaturgy, p. 60. 31 Bhabha, Homi (1995) The Location of Culture. London/New York: Routledge. Here Bhabha builds a concept of hybridity based on Derrida’s concept of différance, and Walter Benjamin’s concept of translation and transformation. Bhabha has been criticised for his post-structuralist concept of hybridity being the experience of a privileged class of cosmopolitans generalising post-colonial reality, and neglecting the mobilisation of collective identities and actions. 32 Luhmann, Niklas (Ed. Dirk Baecker) (2017) Die Kontrolle von Intransparenz. Berlin: Suhrkamp Verlag, p. 96f. 33 Williams, Raymond (1958) Culture and Society 1780–1950. New York: University of Columbia Press, p. 16. See also Williams, Raymond (1980) Problems in Materialism and Culture. Selected Essays. London/New York:Verso. 34 Hall, Stuart (1980) “Cultural studies: two paradigms”. Media, Culture, Society 2 (1), pp. 52–72. 35 Williams, Raymond (1961) The Long Revolution. London: Chatto & Windus. 36 Hall (1980), p. 65. 37 Althusser, Louis (1965) Pour Marx, (English Translation 1965/2005) For Marx. London:Verso, p. 233. Here quoted from Hall (1980). 38 Luhmann, Niklas (1995) “Das Risiko der Kausalität”. In Zeitschrift für Wissenschaftsforschung. 9/10, pp. 107–119, p. 118.

2 CHALLENGING DRAMATURGY Reflections on praxis

We live in a modern, hyper-complex world society in urgent need of new self-reflective descriptions of central values at work in society. Dramaturgy could of course be kept securely locked up in internal struggles in the art system over what kind of poietic is the best. I would like this idea of dramaturgy to be challenged. Not at least because dramaturgy is a concept with expanding borders, functionally, theoretically, and geographically. Dramaturgy today provides us with important knowledge on how values are at work in theatre, film, television, the internet, and other performative media practices where human body-to-body communication is communicated to society. A dramaturgy that challenges a world society would have to be a wide-range theory trying to cope with the hyper-complex expansion of modernity. Please accept that this is an experiment, and that this book is a search for such a theory. It is an offer, and as an experiment it may fail, that will depend on how the theory manages to provide links to debates and other scientifically based observations. The first chapter took us around the world, and provided a glimpse of the many simultaneous challenges dramaturgy tries to cope with. This chapter focuses on some specific reflections provided by professional dramaturgs and scientists, in order to sketch some common problems and dramaturgical answers. Patrice Pavis1 suggests that we need to “resume our theoretical labours, not necessarily by enumerating all the task of the dramaturg, but by looking for adequate methodological and theoretical tools”. In this book, the theoretical experiment is designed to provide a theoretical coherent answer to the many challenges dramaturgy faces. I agree with Pavis as he concludes: “At stake might be the future of dramaturgy and its challenges”.

Challenging expansions The one world society is an empirical fact. We live on one planet, with limited resources. In the world society, we find huge internal differences, as submitted in the previous chapter. Global differences in standards of living, in political government, in ethnic and gender potentialities. Much has been achieved in the sense of managing to lift many people out of the deepest misery and poverty. If we wanted to, we could obliterate the deepest poverty within ten years.2 Democracy as political form of government is confronted with

Challenging dramaturgy  33

such enormous challenges, that it may be discussed whether, or rather when, it would have to find other answers to how the political system will cope with global finance industries, internet-system tycoons and corporations (Amazon, Facebook etc.), and other global scale operators in other industries.3 Is democracy resilient? Should it be adopted by all national states on the globe? I live in a Nordic country (Denmark), where a specific kind of political consensus in a fairly homogenous population has created an unique answer to how a state and its political system ensure that education, childcare, employment, unemployment security, and wages are negotiated and developed to a common good. We deliver 50% of our income in taxes to the state, and we trust the politicians and government officials to spend them wisely. Corruption, murders, violence, and unrest are at a minimum. Surveys point at Denmark as one of the most trusting and happy societies in the world4 (in 2017 Finland was placed top, followed by Norway, Denmark, Iceland). Amongst the OECD countries the Nordic countries have the lowest percentage of population in poverty. We are also (apart from the USA) highest on the global list of antidepressant users. Divorce rates are high (Denmark: 42% of marriages dissolved, 2017), and a significant increase in the divide between rich and poor has taken place over the last 20 years (Gini coefficient measuring income distribution: if all had exactly the same income the coefficient would be 0, if 1 had all income it would be 100) has risen from 22 to 27. It should again be noted, that the Nordic countries all are amongst the ten most “equal” inside the OECD, where America and Mexico have the highest coefficients app. 45, and thus a markedly higher inequality. My country could have a significant political story to tell. We created a welfare state and tamed within our own borders some of the most aggressive capitalist forces. Now, we are witnessing the European Union’s grave difficulties in its attempt to coordinate an economic politic, foreign policy (immigration) and a widespread nationalistic opportunism amongst the EU’s own member states. The effects of a world society engulfed in a rapidly growing economic inequality are clearly provoking the stability of our Nordic democracies. The internationally emerged “populism” is a sign to be carefully reflected, as it is a reaction on globalisation from those that did not benefit from the neoliberal expansion we have seen since the 1980s, and who now demand to be heard. Capitalism does not provide equality and globalisation have deregulated the nationally provided welfare considerably. If the challenges from our ecological abuse of the planet are added, it provides a dark horizon of futures. Scepticism, doubt, pessimism, and a feeling of “what can I do about it all?” creates paralysis. In the midst of all this, it might seem very inappropriate to publish a book on a theory of dramaturgy. However, I do believe in the need to enforce a communication of communication that dares to meet the political changes, not with acquiescent compliance, but with narratives carrying dissections of local mental blindness vis-à-vis the values taken for granted or abused. Sometimes we do not need answers, but the right questions to open our mind towards new horizons. To do so includes freedom to dare think that it could be otherwise and that freedom, I find, is seriously endangered. The dramaturgy of theatre, television, film, and internet-communication plays a crucial role in the dismantling of that freedom. If one of the most important aspects of freedom is ability to envisage and imagine changes we do indeed need to challenge dramaturgies. An attempt to conceive a theory of dramaturgy gathers momentum in times when the concept and the functions are challenged by expansions. How wide a variety of different areas and professional functions can be managed by a theory behind the concept and its societal functions? Should dramaturgy belong exclusively to theatre and the art system, in an

34  Challenging dramaturgy

attempt to observe, define, and adjust the multiple forms of theatre; or should dramaturgy contribute to a wider experiment with re-descriptions of society in both art and other socially differentiated systems? The argument for a wide-range theory of dramaturgy departs from an assumption about the structure of expansions: they are always multidirectional, often driven by a centrifugal force, away from a centre on which they are nevertheless dependent. Expansions can thus simultaneously be attributed to many causal relations in multicentred networks and systems, and any unilineal chain of causality will be unable to capture the complexity of expansions. Summarising a cursory examination of the state of the art at the beginning of the 21st century, this chapter outlines the suggested theory of dramaturgy, to be unfolded in the following chapters.

State of the art The literature on dramaturgy is expanding rapidly in the first two decenniums of the 21st century. This short survey is not able to cover all relevant material. Therefore, a limited number of works are presented, and they are selected to supplement the theory of dramaturgy. I have chosen to search for descriptions of dramaturgy that combine theoretical reflections with descriptions of the challenges facing dramaturgy. Even within this limitation, I am not able to cover all relevant contributions. The need for a theory in times of expansion are as mentioned also increased by the fact that dramaturgy enters universities and institutions of arts education. It is my opinion that the education of dramaturgs must enable them to work within the arts system and with many different poietic hierarchies. They have to be trained by participation in different processes of producing theatre, in order to sensitise their understanding of when, how, and with what kind of input they may intervene in the creative work. Here a lot can be learnt from the reflective theories produced by professional dramaturgs.

The art of dramaturgy A collection of reflections from German dramaturgs in very diverse theatre forms, together with descriptions of German curricula for education of dramaturgs, presents a very informative outlook, and provides a rich starting point. Active dramaturgs within different fields have been asked to reflect upon dramaturgy as it appears in their daily work. This has secured a span in perspectives, and a variation in the dimensions of reflections. Dramaturgs do contribute to create meaning in plays, music theatre, dance, performance, space, media theatre, radio plays, and site-specific theatre. This is all exemplified in the book:5 Die Kunst der Dramaturgie, where the many different media functions as a way to create a disposition in the book. The underlying assumption must be that different media presents different challenges for the dramaturg, and accordingly a way to systematise reflections. No doubt, there are considerable advantages in creating such a media context sensitive differentiation. Editor Anke Roeder summarises the book by concluding that it is impossible to subsume the many different aspects under one concept, be it scientific or artistic. She proposes that dramaturgical work should be recognised as both “analytic and artistic work and both capabilities should be placed side by side on the same rank”.6 I do acknowledge the point of view and amend that when dramaturgs work inside the arts system their work must prove its worth with reference to the artistic demands. Anke Roeder underlines this “Dramaturgy – as I conceive the concept in context – is under these varied conditions Art and the work of the dramaturgs

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an artistic work” (p. 273). I would supplement and specify that when dramaturgs work as artist within the arts system, they apply a very special kind of analytical competence; this is a matter for the reflective theory, and this is of course highly context sensitive, this is what we call dramaturgy-α. When dramaturgs are educated, they must be trained to work with many different poietics. This is why the scientific dramaturgy-ς in the science system has to apply a second order perspective. The operative systems theoretical dramaturgy acknowledges the fact that the art of dramaturgy requires both analytical and artistic competences, however, we have to accept that we are dealing with two different set of contexts. Their academic training (in the science system or in arts education) should prepare and train dramaturgs for this. In order to do so the scientific theory on dramaturgy must be able to reflect and analyse different reflective theories. The dramaturg needs to understand the artistic process of creating theatre from the inside. He or she must know when to apply what kind of analytical skills, be they procedural, thematic, or semantic matters concerning actor, text, space, or audience. This requires an understanding of how we generate meaning and thus knowledge of communication, evolution, and factual procedures. We need to develop a theory that is applicable in both micro and macro-analytical processes, and it must allow us to apply all dimensions of meaning-making procedures. This requires a theory that allows a shift in point of perspective (from near to distanced) but still functions within the same epistemological frame. It is the task for the science system to develop this theory, and it must consequently work scientifically. This is an altogether different context. With proper training and understanding of the scientific dramaturgy, dramaturgs should be well equipped to join in artistic processes.

Who needs a dramaturg? When dramaturgs gather they very often discuss and share their difficulties finding their proper place in the artistic process. They may be used in many other theatre related functions, but when and where is the dramaturg needed/tolerated? Should in fact not all artists in the theatre be trained analytically? Any actor should be able to reflect upon the work at hand. The director sees him/herself as the producer of coherence and logic (or coherentincoherence and in-decidability, if another kind of poietic hierarchy is at hand), so why on earth should theatre need a dramaturg?

Elfriede Jelinek on dramaturgs The book opens with an essay from Elfriede Jelinek: “The Text-Angel (Dramaturges)”. Jelinek’s answer to the function of the dramaturg is a small masterpiece of goodwill and irony, and we get a glimpse into the artistic process and temperament of Jelinek. Art is bottomless and unfounded, declares Jelinek. The author throws herself in the abyss to write, but why? Why should she? From the dramaturge she gets the overarching [Übergreifende] ideas that the author often feels like an abuse [übergriffig], but an author like me, she needs it. She wants it. She stumbles far too often on the edge of the abyss, because there she calculated looks for a cause for her one-family-house without family or even without a house, but in art everything is causeless and bottomless. (p. 13)7

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The author fights to find meaning, within theatre and in her own life. She writes in a state of limbo, where she fights a constant battle with herself, and with the writing questioning it all. This appears in Jelinek’s writing. The suffering in an artistic process projects directly into the text; it can be followed as an endless struggle to create meaning sinn stiften. Jelinek plays with the word over 15 lines: Stift, Stiftung, Stiftungswesen, and then, when it is all over “ein Herrchen welches man Regisseur nent” (a mannequin called director), takes over the task of making meaning. The dramaturg – and this is Jelinek’s answer – can help her in two ways: The dramaturg can help her to get started on a project, by showing enthusiasm for a topic or an idea, and when Jelinek gets smitten, and starts writing, the dramaturg must stay away. Somehow, Jelinek at times needs the support to get started, a push needed to throw herself in the abyss once more. That makes the dramaturg responsible; he or she must bear the burden of finding meaning, wherever he/she can. Responsible because the dramaturg has set it all up. And when the time comes the dramaturg tells the author that now the play is finished. The dramaturg then takes the text and presents it to the director and the actors, explains the text and bestows it with meaning. A meaning that the author did not know was there, and maybe she even feels that the interpretation is a violation. To hand over the text to director, the manager, and the audience is for Jelinek another process of anguish. Once more, the meaning of the text must be explained, “who needs it? Nobody!”. The dramaturg helps Jelinek to begin and to part with the text, which she has worked with, taken part in, and taken apart, only to have to depart from it herself. In this small essay as well as in her writing, Jelinek writes with a constant awareness of the ultimate paradox that meaning has to confer meaning to itself! The dramaturg can ease the burden by taking over the responsibility for the production of meaning. “Machen Sie was Sie wollen” (do whatever you want to do) says Elfriede Jelinek to the director and the dramaturg and calls herself “eine Art bewusstlose Autorin” (a kind of unconscious author). The latter seems to be a doubtful conclusion, unless you identify the way in which she is unconscious: only by giving up any hopes of creating greater meanings, can she write. Then the “Other” must take upon them the burden of creating meaning. The dramaturg could be one of them. In the central part of the artistic process, Jelinek wants to be left alone, but she appreciates any help she can get, to get started and to wrap it all up in a final delivery. Is the dramaturg prepared to be an inseminator and a midwife? Let us begin with what has become the enfant terrible in European theatre.

Ritual, restitution and entertainment for the well-offs . . . or? The major state-subsidised theatres (national/regional) in Europe generate quite a lot of important theatre, but they are as organisations also suffering identical structural problems by being incredibly wage-heavy, so if subsidies do not rise with the rise in wages, they are confronted with obvious economic problems. The fact that public money comes with strings attached adds to the entire predicament. Theatres must prove themselves useful for the public: “value for money”, as Margaret Thatcher once said. A demand for high percentages of sold tickets exerts its own influence on repertoires. The double strategy many of the major national and regional theatres adopt include a repertoire of well-known classical texts, musicals etc. to be the gaining part, and what economic resources there might be left, can then be allocated to more experimental productions on the smaller stages in the huge house. In Germany a specific term has been developed Regietheater (director’s theatre) to cover one

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of the common solutions to the permanent crisis of these huge theatres: the daring directors who creates new languages for the theatre and attract the audience who comes to see Thalheimer’s Emilia Galotti (not Lessing’s). The audience to this kind of theatre is across Europe characterised by an overrepresentation of the well-educated, elderly, and females. How may these institutions and their comparatively large part of any cultural political budget be defended? How can they evolve? Is theatre becoming a ritual for the critical, enlightened, and knowledgeable part of the population? Asks dramaturg Björn Bicker.8 Finally it [the contemporary director’s theatre] stands for an affirmative selfacknowledgment of a calculable group of educated, wealthy, and mostly Germanrooted people, to whom the theatre has become a closed section of restitution with harmless get together. (p. 194) He describes how he as dramaturg tired of small talk in the canteen about gossip, prices in the canteen, and complaints over schedules for rehearsals, and initiated by the shock of 9/11 tried to discover new opportunities. He initiated theatre activities in the neighbourhood, used some of the artistic and economic resources to create theatre together with emigrants and schools. They became “artist activists”, constantly looking for new ways to give relevance and necessity to the theatrical representations. Therefore, he discarded himself as dramaturg and reinvented a new dramaturg, which partook in a “dramaturgy of partnership”. There is no doubt that within the well-protected and funded organisations you will find artists more concerned with pensions and casting lists than with finding new ways to give relevance to their work. Theatre sociology ascertains that theatre audiences all over Europe share the same socio-economic patterns. The dramaturg is, of course, a part of this dilemma. To what extent can he or she be a part of new solutions? Is Regietheater and its often directorled inventiveness an answer? Since writing and printing were invented, theatre production strategies have relied heavily on a scheme where the dramatist’s text constitutes a more or less secure point of departure. Selecting, translating, analysing the text became important phases in pre-rehearsal activities. Finding the right director, stage designer, and the good cast was often next in line. Before rehearsals could start director and stage designer should come up with suggestions as to how the text would be “read” and staged. Very often rehearsals start with a “reading” of the text around a table. The director talks at length about his “concept” (i.e. the basic idea that explains why and how this text should be performed in front of the specific audience). Then rehearsals start: only seldom in the appropriate stage design, but in other rooms where the actors have absolutely no possibility of creating a relation to the potential in the concrete design. From here, it is a question of transforming the text into three-dimensional communications on stage. The director has during the 20th century and in the beginning of the 21st developed a fair amount of power in the process; he is the leader and his decisions are final. Such an uneven balance risks limiting the creative potential amongst stage-, light-, and sound-designers, actors, and other members of the production team. The paradox of modern theatre being a collective art form seems to focus on this balance between director and group. Theatre needs what Eugenio Barba calls “maîtres fous”,9 who possess an artistic will and need partners prepared to render their freedom in the hands of the master. There is a risk that when a group as group tries to develop new forms, it often ends with a row of rather feeble

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compromises. How does theatre live with this paradox of being a collective art form in need of a master? How can rehearsal provide opportunities for different members of the group to apply their creativity in a common contribution to the final result? Many forms have been tested.

Jan Fabre Troubelyn Luk van den Dries10 reflects on experiences working as a dramaturg with Jan Fabre. Dries presents a cartography of the dramaturgy at work. Dries’ story about the dramaturg in Belgium is recognisable, I believe, in many non-German speaking countries. From an office in the theatre’s cellar, dealing with archives and establishing the repertoire, the dramaturg was transported to an office near the manager, so the manager could claim he had something to do with the repertoire. During the 1970s, the dramaturg was allowed to enter the rehearsal and became a creative partner in the artistic process. Within the oppositional theatre movement “les maîtres fous” established their own laws and rules for producing theatre that experimented with new representational effects: a “postdramatic” theatre, where the sign systems were given more autonomous status, where energetic dramaturgy became more important than a dramaturgy of plot and fable. Here we find what Dries calls the postdramatic dramaturg. Jan Fabre is a “one-man-movement”, he and his “warriors of the beautiful”, i.e. actors, fights to find a way to transform theatre into a combat zone, challenging consciousness and body of the spectator to take part in a flickering energy of a “black hole”. The dramaturg can only take part in the artistic process of creation if he/she shares, what we in our terminology call the aesthetic hierarchy of Fabre. Then the tasks are numerous: from assisting Fabre during casting, fetching cigarettes, comforting actors, to note-taking in a rehearsal protocol. To be secretary but also internal critic suggesting interpretations, adding new material, asking unwanted questions etc. Dries describes the steps of the process, often repeated from project to project. Decisive for any start is the formulation of a title: “Requiem for a Metamorphosis” (different aspects of jobs dealing with death) or “Orgy of Tolerance” (on the extremes of human consumption). These titles function as an impulse and act as a guideline throughout the process. The next step is to cast the performances: long auditions for new actors, and final choice of the “warriors”. Fabre’s process of casting is of course a choice of the right actors, but also an invitation into the dramaturgy of Jan Fabre and the ideas behind the new performance. Then all engage in a process of associative gathering of material of all sorts. When rehearsals start, only the decision on title and performers are solid ground. (Well, and then of course the poietic hierarchy of Jan Fabre, I could add). The first four weeks consist of long and intense working days (up to 12 hours). In schematic form the day’s programme starts with warm-ups, and then an endless row of improvisations. Everything takes place on stage, never around the table. An answer is only right for Jan Fabre when it has a physical right of existence. It is not until the question has found an answer in the body and the energetic consciousness of the actor that a hypothesis also finds a scenic form. (p. 104)11 The biology of the actor is a field of continued investigation for Fabre; he challenges physical and psychic limitations. However, focusing on the evolution of life and biological concepts

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like cells, tissue, organs provides an important framework to understand how the performance slowly takes shape. In an organic process of growth movements, sound, light, projections etc. find their shapes. For the rehearsal process, one important rule is constantly applied: nothing is determined; everything might be thrown up in the air again. Processes restarted from scratch. This is where the rehearsal protocol becomes important; it is a notebook of material once provided. After four weeks of intense rehearsals and improvisation, the process of composition begins. Now is time for the montage of the flow of the performance, scene by scene. Dries offers us a fine attempt to describe the criteria for selection that applies to this part of the process. Decisions must be made, and here the aesthetic hierarchy assists the selection, together with the title. The embodiment of meaning in the body of the actor, Dries/ Fabre calls it an “engraving”, is, on the level of the smallest unit, an important criterion for selection. The quality of this action should be ambiguous. The scenes and the whole performance should appear as a precise but complex form. Dries calls this a geo-dramaturgical, ein geodramaturgisches, principle. The performance should be composed as simultaneous actions so an overload of information reaches the spectator, who has not “eyes enough” to behold it all. This is also a conscious strategy: to sink the audience in a sea of impressions, in which it must find its own ways. The bodily dynamic on stage creates furthermore a spiralling movement that one cannot escape. The “black hole” of the production has an equivalent engulfing suction effect.12 The spectator is drawn into this irresistible suction from the “black hole” and she is overwhelmed with information. A spectator to Jan Fabre’s oeuvre must accept being pulled into a process of generating meaning under difficult circumstances: one is seduced, but also constantly aware of one’s own responsibility of creating meaning in the intense journey. When I saw the re-enactment of his 1982 performance “This is theatre like it was to be expected and foreseen” (2012) it was suction into a universe that blended sensuality, irony, and sexuality with harsh critique and nightmares. The title itself a play with theatre as convention, as a masquerade covering the paradox: “we call this art, so, art it is!” – the very paradox that the arts system lives by and tries to cover in the same gesture. The irony is sharpened by the whole re-enactment idea: now Fabre himself has become “tradition”, what we see, is thus what we expected to see, and as it has all happened before, it was easy to foresee. Dries suggests that Jan Fabre’s oeuvre is characterised by the obsessions with the collective body: The dramaturgy of Fabre, which determines the total oeuvre, is constantly emanating from the collective body, in which recurring and new obsessions create their tracks. Every new production draws a new line through the oeuvre. (p. 101) Is it possible to discover a semantic within the corpus of Fabre’s oeuvre that explicates the collective body and obsessions? It must exist in order to create meaning in the complete work and keep the single work “on track”. Dries (2006)13 attempts to describe it together with reflections on the aesthetic process. An interesting question in this connection is also related to the process of selection: is it possible to make changes in the poietic hierarchy, if yes, how? How do the variations on this level emerge? Finally, it is important to

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analyse the rules applied in rehearsal process. Luk van den Dries describes them with a sharp sense for the decisive qualities (i.e. “engraving”, “geo-dramaturgy”), but is it possible to discern latent structures at work in the single operation in a rehearsal? In other words: how is Fabre’s “corpus” interrelated with the possible “tracks” crossing through it, adding new material? An operative systems theoretical dramaturgy suggests an analysis of recursive movements connecting the poietic hierarchy, the concrete concept for the actual performance, and the notion of the final performance in rehearsal. When we address the paradox of the structurality in process, and the processuality of structure, we are prepared to discriminate different structures of devising, which might offer different strategies for different purposes

Challenges from new media In a contribution from Birgit Wiens,14 we find an inspiring investigation of how digitalised new media expands theatrical space and time, and thus challenges dramaturgy. Wiens quotes Michel Foucault who in 1967 declared: We are in the era or simultaneity [. . .] the nearby and the far away, beside each other and apart. I believe that we are at a point where the world experiences itself not as a vast life evolving through time, but as a web, that connects its points and stream through its territory.15 Even though this description of society is from an era without the internet and computers, it sounds contemporary. The globalisation and changes in media formats have since then become a cultural experience, which affects us all. In cultural sciences, this radical development has been baptised “the spatial turn”.16 According to contemporary knowledge, space has to be understood as a space-action that emerges in a relational, multiple, and network-like construct. In other words: through events of communication and perception in a field of tension between Here and There, Presence and Absence, Closeness and Distance.17 This pinpoints the new claim on our understanding of social systems and communication. New media offers us telecommunication with real-time rendering of pictures and sound. What kind of impact does this have on our perception and communication? This is not only a theme for artistic work, but also a deep theoretical question that needs answers. Wiens presents some of the contemporary artistic experiments within theatre that takes turns with this challenge. The German theatre group Rimini Protokoll: Call Cutta (2005) arranges a city-walk in Berlin (or wherever they want to perform), where the “spectator” is handed a mobile phone, through which she receives information and directions. Her speech partner is placed in a call centre in Calcutta, India. When I experienced the performance, I got on very well with my foreign guide; we took time to discuss small glimpses of our lives, exchanges of impressions of our immediate surroundings, hopes for the near future etc. The weird feeling of a social meeting in a shared time, but in separate spaces vibrated in me, and it resulted in a new block of experience of living in one society, a world society.

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Wiens makes an important comment on this performance when she emphasises the dramaturgical conclusion: Even though theatre has experimented with the “site-specific” for many years, this is something else. It is not only leaving the theatre building, it is also the connection with the remote spatial site, which enhances the aesthetic experience. It is in the connection to spaces far away, be they geographically distanced or created as cyberspaces, that new and dynamic constellations of spaces appears, spaces that do not require all participants to be gathered in the same place, but to share common spheres of communication and experiences (p. 131f). A theory on dramaturgy must take this challenge upon itself. How can our theoretical understanding of the concept of space and time incorporate these new fundamental dimensions? Results from Wiens’ research project on “intermediales Szenografie”18 is presented in her latest publication.

Immersive theatre with or without interactivity. Theatre with an audience When Björn Bicker tired of small talk in the canteen, he engaged himself in an experiment that invited new audiences to collaborate with the artistic expertise of the theatre. His “participatory dramaturgy” weaved art life and real lives together in ways that augmented the space of theatre and art and its achievements. I believe that we in this intentional gesture recognise an extremely important movement for theatre in the 21st century. We find, throughout the European scene, many examples of theatre experimenting with new contracts between stage and auditorium, actor and spectator. Experiments including the audience in the imaginary reality not only mentally but also bodily, not only as receiver but also as active co-creator of the imaginary reality. The ramp with footlights dividing the stage and its actors from the theatron, i.e. the seats for the audience, vanishes. This does not mean that theatre vanishes, only that all participants are now part of the imaginary reality. Some would claim that this is nonsense, and that theatre disappears the moment its audience enters the stage. They are right according to traditional definitions of the essence of theatre. They are theoretically wrong. Praxis has proven that it works. It is difficult, it demands new dramaturgical thinking, but it is doable. There are problems of ethics concerning how you introduce this kind of work, and how the rules governing the interaction in the fictional universe are constructed. Utmost care must be taken to generate clear rules, and secure the experience for the spectator-actor (or spectactors as Augusto Boal named them). The tendency to apply interactive dramaturgies is gathering strength because of several concurrent impulses. New generations of spectators are growing up with interactive procedures on the internet, in games, social platforms etc. Their expectations are conditioned by such interactive practices. The theatre needs to connect with young audiences, if it will not accept to reside as a museum. Thus, theatre must find a way to adapt new media structures as we saw in the section above. In these augmented spaces, many lessons as to interactive dramaturgy can be learned, as we will see later. Some performances since the 1970s have conducted experiments with different forms of interactivity. Josef Bairlein19 discusses this and he concludes: The border between stage and audience, between actively producing and passively receiving is undermined. Everybody finds themselves in a liminal space, in interstitial space, betwixt and between. Feed-back loops and liminality are today two catchwords without which neither Performance nor Performativity are thinkable. (p. 114f)

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Dramaturgy is, according to Bairlein (and Professor Erika Fischer-Lichte), liminal because it makes the spectator hover above opposites of active/passive, included/excluded, know pattern/ emerging pattern, subject/object, or spectator/actor. I am convinced we must establish a dramaturgical understanding of performance and performativity. However, I am not convinced that the concept “liminal” is an especially helpful theoretical tool. It inherits Kantian and Hegelian dialectics of sublation, and celebrates a special kind of phenomenology that adds up to a theory where one new paradox: the declaration of a unity of imaginary and ordinary reality just creates a row of new alternative oppositions. When Bairlein concludes that the dramaturg is betwixt and between it is not apparent which opposites are confronted. Neither is it theoretically helpful to describe an interactive dramaturgy as liminal. It is not a question of hovering over a border, a distinction; it is a question of crossing borders. Since Bairlein wrote the article, a considerable amount of books and theories has appeared in English. We will discuss some of them in the last chapter as questions to “Dramaturgies of Immersion”. Just to exemplify the need to be able to differentiate between different poietics in immersive theatre I could point to the world of difference between interactive dramaturgies of Teatro de los Sentidos,20 Barcelona and Blast Theory,21 England. Teatro de los Sentidos invites its spectators to participate in a carefully orchestrated voyage where actors, music, sound, light, and props are presented in sensitive, stimulating, and focused way in order to reach into the memory and sensibility of the single spectator. In Fermentation (2010), you are invited into an old building together with a small group of other spectators. In dim candlelight, you dip your hands into warm, fertile soil, feel grapes under your feet, taste wine, and enjoy a brief moment of common celebration of the miracle of wine. You experience a ritual of stimulus that addresses senses and memory in a carefully planned dramaturgy. As spectator you are never in doubt about what to do, you are guided by caring hands. Trust is of utmost importance when spectators in interactive dramaturgy are supposed to join in the action. An interactive dramaturgy must be able to guide the selection of proper mechanisms to develop trust and deliver instructions together with other artistic impulses. In Riders Spoke Blast Theory experiments with a set-up including the spectator on a bike, with computer and GPS equipped mobile phone, travelling through a city. Finding spaces, listening to stories other cyclists have recorded, finding your own favourite space, and recording your story. To create, what we would call, “the contract” with the spectator and select the proper motivations and expectations, is indeed an intricate matter. If we want to design and/or analyse performances of this kind, we are in need of an explicit theory on interactive dramaturgy.22 The theory must be sensitive towards the differences between the two examples. Both groups augment spaces and time in each their distinct way. Where Fermentation is totally independent of digital technology, Riders Spoke could not live without it. What difference do the two distinctive augmented imaginary realities make for the spectator? How can we theoretically describe the distinctive features?

Dramaturgy as a revolution in theatre Turning to England and the many fine contributions to dramaturgical thinking, a first stop could be made by Mary Luckhurst who has found an interesting reference to the Jewish/ Roman historian Josephus Flavius (37–100). She found the word dramatourgos used to describe a deplorable plotter, who contrived against his king. He planned and orchestrated a

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treacherous plot, played his own, dubious role in the scheme, so as dramatist, director, and actor he manipulated the others to play their part. The word is used in a derogatory sense. Are today’s dramaturgs manipulators? The force in Mary Luckhurst’s book23 is the historical dimension. From interesting observations concerning the Greek roots of the word to the study of Lessing and early English dramaturgs and the first modern examples, i.e. William Archer, Harley Granville Barker, and Kenneth Tynan, we get a substantial and well researched introduction to the English versions of this very special function. The systematic discussion of the theory of dramaturgy is less prominent, and the contemporary outlook is somewhat meagre, but Luckhurst’s important historical material is well supplemented by the next book we are going to present. Luckhurst is of the opinion that a rigid definition of a dramaturg is impossible to achieve, she even finds that: Scholarship, which promulgates universal definition merely, layers confusion upon confusion. This book therefore offers no fixed definitions, but instead examines certain functions of professional theatre-making which from Shakespeare to the present persistently fall within the (overlapping) spheres of dramaturgy and literary management. (p. 11) The leading question is how have dramaturgs functioned? In addition, how do they function in England today? To answer this question Luckhurst convincingly demonstrates how English theatre developed during the 19th century in a landscape of commercial theatres driven by managers (often actors) on a purely commercial basis. With the change of the Theatre Regulation Act in 1843, the numbers of theatres increased rapidly. Competition between theatres were sharpened, and so the attempt to find new dramatists, import good plays, giving classic texts new shapes gradually introduced a need for literary managers and dramaturgs. In the 1880s calls for a radical change of theatre affairs were issued by Matthew Arnold, William Archer, and Harley Granville Barker. The Independent Theatre Society and Archer’s The New Century Theatre (1897–1899) premiered works by Ibsen, Shaw, Maeterlinck, and Hauptmann. It was not until after World War I that state-subsidised theatres began to grow in England and a National Theatre opened. The structural coupling between arts system and political system is demonstrated with great clarity in Luckhurst’s work. William Archer, who introduced Henrik Ibsen to the English stage, was one of the most important dramaturgs in England. His devotion to contemporary trends in European theatre, his knowledge of new playwrights, his experiments with new acting styles, rehearsal methods etc. all made him an influential player in the development of a modern theatre, in emerging art system. He challenged the somewhat provincial English/London stage with its common repertoire of melodrama and comedies, and insisted on the possibility of creating an English stage with an intellectual, avant-garde repertoire. His work was important also for the creation of a National Theatre, where play-development and selection was considered an important element. The model was meant to be a remedy toward the “harmful predominance of the actor-manager system” (p. 81), and it introduced the dramaturg as central in the process of selecting plays, contacts with new dramatists, and also as mediator between author, director, and producer. Archer and Granville Barker proposed that the director should not be given any independent power of selection and production of plays. They envisaged a

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Reading Committee, which should be collectively responsible. Their plans were further developed in 1922 when Granville Barker published his book The Exemplary Theatre. Partly written in frustration as no National Theatre had been realised, partly to unfold a vision of a theatre, which was an active part of the intellectual advancement of society. A theatre where the pressure from commercial interests did not prevent experimentation with rehearsal techniques, acting styles, and where the Reading Committee (director and play reader) had to engage a “third chooser of plays”: He should never be tempted to consider plays from the point of view of the ease with which the theatre could produce them, never for their sheer effectiveness or their chances of immediate success. Ideally, he should possess one of those sceptical, critical, troublous minds, unattachable to any movement, frankly at odds with acquiescence. (quoted, p. 97) This description of a dramaturg is echoed in many contemporary attempts to define his or her tasks. Mary Luckhurst find his writings on the function of the dramaturg to be the most advanced printed document written by an Englishman on the English stage. She emphasises the importance of Granville Barker also seen in the light of the contemporary problems for huge theatre organisations in defining an artistic policy, let alone subsequent invigorations and interrogations of it. The chapter on Kenneth Tynan (1927–1980) describes the difficulties a dramaturg meets in an attempt to be a “chooser of plays”, no matter what number, in a National Theatre organisation. Tynan advanced from a young age towards becoming one of the top theatre critics in England. He chose to accept a position in 1963 at the first state-subsidised theatre in England, a position he had pushed for himself by writing to Laurence Olivier, who was appointed director. Even though Olivier exploded when he was first confronted with the idea of Tynan as a dramaturg, he was persuaded by his wife that he had much better use of Tynan’s intellect inside the theatre than outside as its critic (p. 158). Tynan soon learned the lesson. After three years with painstaking work to overcome critical voices towards a modern repertoire, new ways of making theatre part of an educational and intellectual challenge, his attempt to introduce Wedekind’s Spring Awakening in 1964 met severe difficulties. The chairman of the board banned the play on grounds of taste, even without bothering the director, Olivier. The relationship between board, director, and Tynan became a regular power game. Olivier did not share Tynan’s interest in new plays, let alone obvious contemporary political plays. This led to many controversies, and in 1967, after Hochhuth’s play Soldiers on Churchill and the moral dilemma of saturation bombing during World War II had made furore Olivier blocked any new plays. The chairman of the board felt that the National Theatre was constitutionally committed to serve the people, and that the play insulted the suffering of the soldiers and the people during the war, thus it should not have been produced. Tynan had to learn to navigate in troubled waters, but he gradually found himself at odds with his own convictions. The tensions grew and finally his work and role was effectively silenced in official documents. Tynan became disappointed, overworked, banned from meeting with the board, with no salary raise etc. When a new director, Peter Hall, took over in 1972, he expressively demanded that Tynan had to go. What this sad story can tell us is that there is a long way from fine thoughts and ideals to reality in subsidised theatre. Once Tynan wrote (1961):

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I became aware that art, ethics, politics, and economics were inseparable from each other; I realised that theatre was a branch of sociology as well as a means of selfexpression. From men like Bertolt Brecht and Arthur Miller I learned that all drama was, in the widest sense of the word, political; and that no theatre could sanely flourish unless there was an umbilical connection between what was happening in the stage and what was happening in the world. (quoted, p. 168) However, when Tynan finished he had done a formidable job, but won no recognition for all he had contributed. He was indeed the “third chooser of plays” but he lost the battle due to an ignorant board and a weak director. This is an important lesson for any theorising on dramaturgy; a healthy reminder of conflicting interest involved in any culturally important project and its organisations. It is also a reminder that dramaturgy might introduce a much-needed self-reflection in theatre, but without guarantees for revolution. We get a summary of Brecht’s important “Messingkauf”-dialogue, which Luckhurst noticeably marks as one of the most important of Brecht’s contributions to the theory of dramaturgy. However, we find no critical questions to the scope and coherence of Brecht’s theory. Tynan was spot on: there is an umbilical connection between society and theatre, and Granville Barker knew that a single-minded ideology could never be sophisticated enough to inform the dramaturg and her battles. Therefore, we more than ever need a theory of dramaturgy where values are chiselled out.

Performance and dramaturgy Turner and Behrndt24 introduce dramaturgy in contemporary England. It is an important, well-researched and inspiring supplement to Luckhurst’s historical facts, and together the two books makes for a nuanced and scholarly comprehensive exploration of an expanding dramaturgical knowledge. Turner and Behrndt draw a distinction between dramaturgy as the knowledge of composition of theatre text or performance, and dramaturgy as a varied professional function. In our terms that would translate to the distinction between dramaturgy-ς that could be applied when the analysing professional work with the many different dramaturgies-α in the art system. The insistence on a political dimension is for example made clear in their fine readings in the chapter on Brecht. It illustrates how the author’s focus is more on the functional aspects than on a critical analysis of the theoretical framework. It is well researched, and draws on many different secondary sources, more than 20 in all, and it describes the work of Brecht and his dramaturgs, with examples from the early 1920s to the final years in East Germany. Brecht worked as dramaturg, director, and playwright. After 1933, he had to exile himself from Germany, but he continued to reflect upon theatre, writing plays, and constructing theoretical frames for his poietic programme. He arrived in the USA in 1941, and in 1947 was put in front of The House Un-American Activities Committee. Here he denied ever having been a member of the Communist Party. His decision to return to East Germany was heavily influenced by the theatre potential he was offered. The ways in which he dealt with making theatre under the new regime, are indeed interesting lessons in how theatre and society could be related.

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Seen in the perspective of an operative systems theoretical dramaturgy, Brecht’s oeuvre including his theoretical writings, are indeed interesting; especially because we may investigate the changes (or the lack hereof) in Brecht’s poietical programme for a theatre within a Nazi-regime to the theatre within a communist regime. This could be a task for a new independent research project. Let me just rephrase the understanding that emerges in Turner and Behrndt. We see how Brecht works for a theatre that wants to enable its audience to reflect critically on their contemporary social situation, regarding the world as changeable, in the hope that changes may be created. It is a firm belief in the possibility for the theatre to tell a story, from a position that allows greater insight to things “as they are”, and thus to convey a truer version of life. Key elements in this narrative procedure are to make the well-known become strange and unknown, in order to call forth recognition of reality “as it is” the so-called Verfremdungeffect. Brecht preferred to work with adaptations, bearbeitung, and only rarely worked with newly written plays. He devised his performances in collaboration with all members of the crew, be they assistants (dramaturgs) or costumiers. The presentation of social conditions as they were represented in the texts, were debated, analysed, and the historical social conflicts were then reinterpreted in terms of contemporary social conflicts. Theatre, if put forward with intelligence, clarity and humour, can reach out to its context to initiate social change. It is an engaged theatre in touch with its world. All Brecht’s dramaturgical ides are concerned with facilitating this engagement, having an effect in the world, changing it. (p. 68) Are we still able to believe in such a powerful theatre? The question is hinted at whether Brecht’s hopefulness has been handed down, but according to Turner and Behrndt, the enormous legacy of Brecht’s dramaturgy has had a huge impact on political theatre in 1960s Britain. As I see it, we find inherent in the poietic hierarchy of Brecht, an epistemological belief in a science that provides us with pictures of the “world as it is”, a truth that we may come closer and closer to understand. If we have reached this level of knowledge, we are able to take concrete steps to change society in the wanted direction. Unfortunately, stronger and more complicated forces seem to be at work in modern society. Brecht had his own troubles dealing with Galilei and the “true nature of science” and came up with several rewritings of the text.25 According to Turner and Behrndt, this is reflected in the development of dramaturgies within English theatre from the 1960s until today. Their story points us at the political theatre movement from the 60s and 70s, to the feminist theatre in its socialist and radical embodiments, where the inspiration from French feminism (Julia Kristeva, Hélène Cixous, Luce Irigaray et al.) sought new forms, that destabilised “the symbolic through a range of strategies, including gaps, erasures, stutters, repetition and word-play” (p. 83). The search for new gender roles leads to ideas of a nomadic subject, restlessly investigating new options in a hybridity of social possibilities. The idea of “cultural hybridity” does not solve all our problems in attempting to name emerging dramaturgies, since Bharucha26 also warns against the potential for valorising “hybridity”, “displacement”, and “migration” as essential aspects of “the postmodern condition”, which can lead to a dismissal of those who either do not or cannot migrate.

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Nevertheless, an exploration of the ways in which form can mirror a sense of hybrid identity has become increasingly important within the British performance scene (p. 89). Even though this development is only presented in a brief sketch it is quite clear how Turner and Behrndt try to establish a story about shifts in epistemological perspectives and their consequences for the development of alternative dramaturgies. “New Dramaturgies” are all dependant on alternative functions for the dramaturg. In the following section of their book where concrete fields of work are presented, we learn about the development of new strategies for edification of new playwrights, the dramaturg working inside the artistic process as production dramaturg, and finally the dramaturg in the devising process inform us on the challenges. Turner and Behrndt provide many interesting examples of practical work, again underplaying the theoretical dimensions behind the development of new structures and working methods. The final chapter “Millennial Dramaturgies” provides an examination of recent performances, and attempts to give us some ideas of what challenges new dramaturgy presents. Turner and Behrndt describe new tendencies in the third millennium as an evolution of new relationships between theatre and narration: the narrator and the mode of telling provide ambiguous, suspect, and multiple forms of storytelling. “A strategic re-entry of narrative, textuality and even of representational strategies existing, perhaps paradoxically, alongside an increased awareness, even valorization of theatrical presence” (p. 188). We are no longer witnessing a “plunge into relativism, dismissing the possibility of making meaning” but rather an exploration of how meaning is (and has been) made. Quoting two significant contemporary English directors Tim Etchells (Forced Entertainment) and Phelim McDermott (Improbable Theatre) what seems to be at stake is a “shift of register”: a play with levels of reality and theatricality. A part of this could also be the tendency to allow “real life” elements in to the structures of performances, to regard the stage as a public platform for debate. The audience thus becomes aware if its own creative role during the present moment of the performance. Examples are given in form of new dramatic texts by Martin Crimp, Sarah Kane, Elfriede Jelinek, and Roland Schimmelpfennig, and it is concluded: What all these works have in common, is a dramaturgy of process – a dramaturgy that makes us aware of the mechanisms of communication and the artificial construction of imaginary (real) worlds, even while we are moved and engaged by them. (p. 193) Further Turner and Behrndt exemplify how new groups and performances work at “the spatial turn” that elaborates on our relationship with different spaces, enhances the trend toward “interactivity” and the application of “new media forms” folded into theatre performances thus exploring the relationship between virtual media and live acts. Here, no doubt, is the challenge for a contemporary theory of dramaturgy: to provide theories and concepts capable of handling such complex narrative strategies without leaving communication out of sight. In perfect accordance with this, we find the winner of the Kenneth Tynan Award 2012, Australian dramaturg Ruth Little,27 presenting her thoughts on dramaturgy in the essay: “Dynamic Structure and Living Systems: An unreliable pocket manual for the dramaturgical human”. Here Little affirms her inspiration from biology, chaos theory, and a kind of cybernetic thinking. The live performance is a “living, evolving system”, and as all living systems work in essentially the same way, dramaturgy is the work of action. Systems are

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always patterned. We seek patterns, but can also be seduced and anaesthetised to truth. Meaning is found in disturbance and creation of new patterns, at the edges of experience. Complexity in dramatic structures comes out of simplicity. “Living systems are fluent and adaptive; they incorporate feedback and change and are constantly moving, flowing.” Dramaturgy, Little suggests, “is a study of process and pattern, which explores the changing behaviour of systems. It looks at the whole, not the part, finding patterns across the scale. It’s drawn to unpredictable but finely structured kind of order.” Living systems respond to environmental disturbances by rearranging their pattern, arriving at new critical states, where new patterns may emerge. Living systems require energy, they may be disturbed, but they cannot be directed. So, she concludes, there are no guarantees, dramaturgy is “a way of knowing common to all of us, rooted in embodied experience, dialogue and interaction, and developed in sensitivity at every level of the scale to the fundamental relationship between movement and meaning”. I find these examples from England and Australia addressing issues of great importance for a theory of dramaturgy. These examples will have to do. Dramaturgy expands and faces numerous challenges. Is it at all possible (and worthwhile) to search for a theory of dramaturgy, that embraces all these different positions and functions?

On the problem of universalisation In the German lexicon on Theatre Theory, Christel Weiler says in her article on dramaturgy: Even though the concept of dramaturgy is genealogically tied to the theatre, it has already proved useful for other performing arts. There exists a dramaturgy of film, dance, music, radio plays, etc. As broad areas of life in society and culture have increasingly become staged, the concept has also found its way in to this. This expanded notion of dramaturgy has not at least led to the founding of a science of Dramaturgy uncoupled from Theatre Science. [. . .] A stringent and operational dramaturgical theory applicable to both historical performing and to the expanded field of objects has still to be developed28 [My translation and elision]. Any attempt to construct such a theory must inevitably take into consideration its own local anchorage. This stresses the importance of combining particular with universal strategies, as formerly described. As an impressive example within theatre science, a voluminous and comprehensive German-based research project “Theatre as Paradigm of Modernity”,29 started in 1992 and was concluded in 2001. It included more than 200 researchers from theatre science and many other disciplines and attracted several million Euros in subsidies. This project can be discussed as a thought-provoking example of how an art science interprets the demands put on the science system by other functionally differentiated systems in society. The university, as an organisation within the science system, has to be an interpretative system: it observes the surrounding world, the potential markets, customers, manufacturers in order to discover potential “lacks” that might be filled with the knowledge the system might be able to deliver. The interpretative system must discover its “niche”, determine the geography within it, and then “invent” the needs and desires requiring to be fulfilled. The interpretative system

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discovers its own strengths and is able to connect to ever changing demands on research goals. When the German project completed the last of the official publications,30 it added a significant question mark to the title: “Theatre as Paradigm of Modernity?” There are many highly interesting articles in the six volumes31 published during the project. The titles suggest how several focal concepts appeared in the process: Staging, authenticity, embodiment, perception, mediatisation, performativity, event, ritual. The interpretative research system developed an expansion of “theatre” and hence of theatre science and its customers, by discovering that present day society can be described as “staging” of “embodied events” triggering “perceptions of authenticity”, which in a “mediatised society” becomes a “ritual” of “performativity”. In this way, theatre may be seen as a paradigm describing central features of our society. When Professor Erika Fischer-Lichte ventures an attempt to subsume some of the results of the impressive work in her informative book on an Aesthetic of the Performative,32 we are presented with the concept of the “performative turn”. This turn should allegedly be the result of new forms of theatre emerging in the 1970s as a sort of neo-avant-garde pursuing a collapse of the distinction between the imaginary reality and reality. Erika Fischer-Lichte privileges the avant-garde and its attempt to make reality explode in a way that allows us to see the world “as it really is”. It is worth noticing that the former hermeneutic approach of Fischer-Lichte has now been replaced by an interesting mixture of phenomenology and post-structuralism, but without any explicit recognition of the important difference between the two epistemologies: that of thinking in identity versus thinking with differences. It is somehow characteristic of enterprises of this magnitude that they tend to end up in a cluttered plurality without any theoretical sensitivity towards more systematic possibilities to focus and combine the research results. The scientific effect of the many minor contributions are then easily lost. Perhaps this is because many participants use the funding and the common thematic frame as an occasion to prolong whatever it is he or she is researching, to be part of the common endeavour. Within humanities, projects driven by single researchers are far more widespread than in other scientific fields. Major projects are therefore often seen as an opportunity to finance and prove important aspects of the research area of the single researcher. Consequently, we are presented with a variety of visions, concepts, theories, and methods of the organising field, to be applied to a whole range of new fields. The price often paid is that core concepts are expanded in so many different directions and spread so widely that their power of communication is diminished. This book ventures another approach to the new demands, and argues for the necessity of a wide-range theory of dramaturgy. This might be controversial. Some of the newer propagators of dramaturgy seem to believe that such an endeavour is futile: Anke Roeder, editor of the anthology on dramaturgy in Germany, suggest that: A conclusion that would subsume the many different aspects and the varied tasks of the dramaturges in one concept is not possible, from neither scientific nor artistic points of view. [. . .] The experiment to draw lines might be risked, in order to make differences and nuances visible, so that in the end – despite the apparently unmanageable variation – one could provide a thesis that claimed dramaturgical occupation as both analytical and artistic and placed the two abilities on same rank. (p. 269)33 [My translation and elision]

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Indeed the variety of task and aspects in the job as dramaturg are many and widespread, and it may seem impossible to imagine a single theory subsuming them. In one sense, I do follow the argument: It seems unlikely to melt a scientific theory with reflective theories. It is unmistakeably true that dramaturgs working in the art system are part of an artistic project. Dramaturgs reflecting in theoretical form over their daily artistic work do so, and deliver important input to dramaturgy-α, the theory of self-reflection within the art system. On the other hand, dramaturgs reflecting on dramaturgy-ς, inside the science system have to comply with other demands. They must reflect on an epistemological level, and in ways consistent with the challenges of a scientific peer group. These two different types of dramaturgy need each other, in their difference to each other. The existence of two dramaturgies can be reflected by the fact that in Germany we find two dramaturgical societies: one is the Dramaturgische Gesellschaft from 1956 with members today numbering over 600, who might be theatre makers of all genres and all organisations, whether municipal theatres or independent scenes, as well as publishers, journalists, and students. The other is Arbeitsgruppe Dramaturgie der Gesellschaft für Theaterwissenschaft34 founded in 2008, with 40 members, dealing with scientific research observing the “dynamic relations that are inherent in every performance as relational processes between elements in the weave of direction and its function on and interaction with the spectator”. This research should enable perspectives on selected fields and methods to be framed within a science of theatre oriented towards dramaturgy. In the first publication35 from this group, we find the following statement: “It is next to impossible to consolidate these divergent arts practises into one unifying definition of dramaturgy” (p. 7). This is also the reason for the title stating dramaturgies in the plural. To have used the singular “dramaturgy” would, according to the editors: Imply a misplaced grandeur and unifying generalising logic that is absent in performance and dramaturgical practices of the last decade, and that the editors of this volume do not subscribe to. On the contrary, this book aims to open up the discussion about the heterogeneous future of dramaturgy as a concept and a practice. [. . .] That future is diverse, disparate and heterogeneous. It is a future of dramaturgies. [My elision] First of all: the idea that grandeur and unification are inevitable consequences of generalisation might be an unfortunate generalisation. Reading the articles verifies the fact that there are several generalising logics at work behind the constructions of dramaturgies. They are based upon diverse scientific models of difference as in reference to Rancière, but also with reference to a number of phenomenological positions. It is noticeable that discussions inside the field of phenomenology exhibits several different positions. We find essentialist positions close to Husserl and Heidegger, where insistence on the relation to the Other could point us in the direction of Sinn des Lebens “the proper meaning of existence” (Husserl), or even towards dasein, existence (Heidegger). We find other positions also referring to intersubjectivity that insists on an authenticity in meeting “the Other” as something neither perceptual or cognitive, but ethical (Levinas or Sartre). This is of course a consequence of the different epistemologies at work. These positions cannot be unified or subsumed by one Grand Theory if by this we imagine one theory to encompass all theories subsuming them under its own concepts. To construct such a metamodel would be to claim a position hovering above all other positions; we are dealing with the paradox problem of unity and plurality.

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What might be possible is to move the point of observation in a direction that allows a comparison of how society may inform itself using concepts, which are selectively relational. May the future be as diverse and heterogeneous as imaginable; we still have to rely on communication. New ideas will have to be tested and accepted or discarded. Society will still need to confront itself, and art can play an important role, if it acknowledges the paradoxes creating stumbling blocks for our communication, and establishes images of how we may circumvent paradoxes by changing perspectives. Turner and Behrndt comment upon the difficulties of definitions: In this chapter, we do not propose to offer a final definition of the term “dramaturgy”, since this would inevitably be reductive. While we aim to be as specific as possible, the very attempt to be so leads one to recognize the many complexities and multiple possibilities inherent in the concept and practice of dramaturgy. However, we do aim to provide clarification of some possible uses of the word, and to exemplify what it means to look at the dramaturgy of a play, or performance, or to provide a dramaturgical analysis.36 With this agenda Turner and Behrndt provides examples of diverse dramaturgical praxes within the art system and different types of theatre institutions, with playwrights, and as production dramaturgs in devising processes. Turner and Behrndt are of course right in pointing at the dilemma between specific and general terms, and the difficulties with reduction. However, I would like to supplement this way of thinking the distinction specific > < general. The implicit critique of generalisations in the above quote seems to indicate that theory is inevitably reductive, maybe because it is regarded as speculations, which have to establish themselves without empirical analysis, or perhaps because theory is only perceived as midrange and placed in an unsolvable dilemma between micro and macro-analysis. As mentioned earlier this battle between reduction and generalisation has no totalising solution. It is an ongoing process. What seems to be at stake in the quote and in the project of Turner and Behrndt, is a problem for the scientific work: comparisons are connected to normative valuations. The progressive theatre must be a critical theatre, fighting for greater justice, freedom, or equality. Fine, if justice, freedom and equality as such were absolute values. The fundamental problem here and in the earlier quoted examples, is that this leads to a both easy and solid alliance between ideology and empiricism, because relatively modest empirical methods provide satisfying results. Science, however, comes out of this as the loser because almost no theoretical effort is needed, and thus evolution of theory is left behind. Mary Luckhurst has written a book that states dramaturgy as a revolution in theatre. It is, taking her own findings into consideration, a surprisingly bold statement. Here is Luckhurst’s thoughts on universal definitions: Scholarship, which promulgates universal definition merely layers confusion upon confusion. This book therefor offers no fixed definition, but instead examines certain functions of professional theatre-making which from Shakespeare to the present persistently fall within the (overlapping) spheres of dramaturgy and literary management. [. . .] When a historically or culturally specific meaning must be understood, or seems helpful, it is established and analysed, but from chapter to chapter, mutatis mutandis, it is functions not labels that define my investigation. (Luckhurst, 2006, p. 11f)

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Once again, we meet an understanding of theory that clearly marks a distance to universal definitions, and prefer to analyse functions. It is a choice of epistemology that provides well-researched material, and it is in itself an important contribution to the re-description of dramaturgy, and a plea for its necessity. However, a comment on the concept of “universal” could perhaps help to clarify: In the semantics of Old Europe, the schemas of “Whole/ Unity and Part/Units” were based on a cosmology where cosmos was a unity, a whole that consisted of parts. This semantic had, according to Niklas Luhmann to be abandoned in the 20th century. World society has too little visible harmony for it to be understood as such [cosmos, JSz]. The traditional schema has therefore been replaced by the less demanding distinction between particular (regional, ethnic, cultural) and universal forms of meaning (that can be used everywhere). This makes it possible to elaborate particularity in explicit opposition to the universal structures of the modern world (e.g., as religious fundamentalism) and at the same time to participate in the technical conditions of modernity (e.g., mass media, travel, banking). World-societal universality can then even become a condition for the comparative cultivation of local particularities. (Luhmann, GdG, p. 931/Vol. 2, p. 209) It seems fair to remind ourselves that in order to understand the very particular and specific functions of dramaturgs we need to study them as functions in a world society. What Luckhurst sensibly reacts against is most probably a universalism that claims to give meaning everywhere. She sees universal theories as something that provides fixed definitions, and they produce confusion, when these definitions can be shown not to work universally. More fixed definitions contribute to more confusion. However, any theories today with a claim on universality must reconstruct the concept validity in order to integrate it in modern science. Luckhurst sees historically and culturally specific meanings worth analysing in order to get at the “function”. How does the analytical work proceed from the fixed meaning in words or concepts to disclose a function? Luckhurst suggests with the phrase “mutatis mutandis” that the meaning or matter remains the same, while the “labels” change. Could this not be considered an unlucky universalisation? Any comparison requires a position point of comparison. I would suggest that this point necessitates some sort of abstraction, no matter what the intentions are, and it will inevitably include a process of universalisation. In order to see through words and concepts to their function, we need to observe the distinctions, the forms used. Studying reflective theories in functional systems makes it abundantly clear that changes in the societal body of ideas are sat in motion by changes in the reflective theories. One of the most important problems for a hyper-complex modern society is that each functional system develops its own semantics, which cannot be reduced to a common denominator, e.g. world of modern states, capitalist or secularised society, these concepts are universalising in a way that do not lead anywhere near a theory of society. This is where a new interdependency between particular and universal becomes discernible. Inside a functional system, concepts function as valid – everywhere in the system itself – universally in the local system. To observe these local semantic forms and to compare them, we need a point of observation, from which the many different locals can be seen (a universal

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point of observation). This point is not “outside” reality in some transcendent or metaphysical space, it is a construction “inside” the reality and inside a system allowing the observer a wide-range perspective of observations done either of another system, or as self-reflection in the system itself. To give an example: in this sense, “theory” and “truth” are universals marks belonging to the scientific system. “All functional systems assert claims to universality, but only for their respective domains” (Luhmann, GdG, p. 982/ Vol. 2, p. 242) so in order to develop a semantics that understands society as a whole, it has been unavoidable to develop a combination of a universalism of potentials for thematisation and a specification of system references. A theory with such combinatory tools is in Luhmann’s vocabulary a theory with universal requirements.37 This kind of theory comes with tall orders: it must be able to construct itself, and it must be able to allow a wide range of affiliations. This of course, does not mean that all theories in Science, or all theories inside a specific discipline could be derived from such universal theory; no more does such a concept presuppose the existence of only one universal theory in Science as such (or in the singular disciplines). It might happen, but it need not be so, that a whole discipline (or even Science as such) is forced into one single paradigm. So claims of universality must not be confused with claims of exclusion. (Luhmann, WdG, p. 413) What the experiment I have in mind, sets out to investigate, is what might happen if we formulated a theory of dramaturgy with such a wide-range perspective. The word game Luhmann plays with “universal” is perhaps more a provocation than a helpful indication of a systems-theoretical endeavour. Be that as it may, the interesting thing about theoretical enunciations are that they must allow comparisons (Luhmann, WdG, p. 410f). The velocity of the fall of an apple and a feather, may lead to theoretical questions. In order to compare you need a temporarily steady point from which comparison is possible and this point of view allows asymmetricalisation. What science does is to find ways to formulate still more daring, more improbable, more amazing comparisons with the aim to expand the field of practical re-substitutions of the results. From this perspective we might point at a science, which leads the temporary points of comparisons in a direction that allows us to compare still more implausible connections, not in order to identify causal relations in “the real world”, but to explain by combining theoretical sentences in still more complex theoretical programmes. Theories are forms in which explanations can be communicated and reformulated. Theory relates to reality understood as an unmarked space. Reality is an infinite complex simultaneity of matter, spaces, and movements. The only chance we have to create meaning is momentarily to produce a “stop” of this restless movement and reduce complexity. In order to do so, we need time, communication, and observations, i.e. an operation that indicates something as distinct from something else. To sum up: We need a theory of dramaturgy in order to observe how dramaturgs in the art system reflect. Based upon these observations science may build theories and analytical methods, applicable both to dramaturgy in the art system and other functionally differentiated systems. When dramaturgs work as artists within the arts system, they apply a very special kind of analytical competence; this is a matter for the reflective theory, and this is of course highly context-sensitive. Their academic training (in the science system) should

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prepare and train them for this, and in order to do so the scientific theory on dramaturgy must be able to reflect and analyse different reflective theories, apart from the fact that it should also include an understanding of dramaturgy within other functional differentiated systems. This requires an appropriate level of theoretical abstraction and another degree of context awareness. The scientific theory of dramaturgy-ς must inform the art of dramaturgy-α and its reflection. Let me put it in another way. The dramaturg needs to understand the artistic process of creating theatre from the inside. He or she must know when and how to apply what kind of analytical skills, be they procedural, thematic, or semantic matters concerning actor, text, space, or audience. This requires an understanding of how we generate meaning and thus knowledge of communication, an understanding of how evolutions of works of art are made, and factual themes are produced. We need to develop a theory that is applicable in both micro- and macro-analytical processes, and it must allow us to apply it to all dimensions of meaning-making procedures. This requires a theory that allows a shift in point of perspective (from near to distanced) but still functions within the same epistemological frame. It is the task for the science system to develop this theory, and it must consequently work scientifically. This is an altogether different context. With proper training and understanding of the scientific dramaturgy, dramaturgs should be well equipped to join in artistic processes.

Expansion of dramaturgical theories The last two decades have seen many new attempts to describe dramaturgy. It strikes me how the aftermath of a concept like the postdramatic (Hans-Thies Lehmann) from the German version 1999 and the English translation 2006, reverberates between positions dominated by post-structuralism (Deleuze) like Laura Cull: Theatres of Immanence38 and positions critical of the affinity between postdramatic theatre and neoliberalism insisting upon a “new realism” as in Bernd Stegemann: Lob des Realismus.39 Between these positions, we find attempts to stress dramaturgy as a “relational” activity, such as in Peter M. Boenisch’s “Poetic relations with the real”:40 Against the false stability of our own perception, the poetic mode of relational dramaturgy induces an irritating moment of interruption, which [. . .] allows for a strictly formal change of perspective that offers new ways of perceiving the very same reality, of relating to it and par(t)-taking in it. This is the actual political potential of theatre in the twenty-first century, unlocked by the force of dramaturgy: not an actual intervention in the world, nor the critical interpretation of its Verhältnisse in the theatre, but that strictly formal act of “playing” with our dominant modes of making sense, of structuring the actuality of the sensible and relating to the Real. This position is very carefully chosen and it demarcates distance both to outspoken postmodern theatre and a theatre of critical realism. Dramaturgy should, according to Boenisch (p. 215) not aim at “actual intervention in the world”, nor to a mere “addressing of ‘issues’” or “realist imitation” of contemporary life; even less experiment with “staging of “authentic voices” (unless you are Rimini Protokoll). Relation should not allure to the concept of “relational aesthetics” as in Bourriaud,41 but instead take its precise meaning from Boenisch’s unique combination of the “radical roots of German idealism”, (as in Schiller)

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and of Hegel – read with Slavoj Žižek42 – as an anti-totalitarian, emancipatory materialist advocating a political aesthetic. In the position of the hero, we find Jacques Rancière43 (p. 205). I have two reservations about this position. The purpose and potential of dramaturgy is linked with a concept of “the poetic” as in Schiller’s sublation Aufhebung of the opposition between “naturalism” that misses the “truth” by demanding verisimilitude and accepts fiction as an autonomous reality (p. 207), and “fantasy” as the other side of reality, where everything is possible. With Schiller, the concept of “poetic art” sublates this opposition, which at the same time is both preserved and neutralised. Could it be that maybe there was no opposition in the first place? Systems theory might answer affirmatively. Maybe Schiller in his anticipation of the Romantic discovery of the function of the new art system, identifies how art has to self-reflect in order to come to terms with what art in modernity meant. Establishing a link between Schiller’s tripartite thesis and Lacan’s order of the Symbolic, the Imaginary and the Real turns the table in another direction. One wonders how Lacan’s concept of “the Real” will ever function as a sublation, in so far as it is considered unreachable, and that “the Lacanian Symbolic order [. . .] seeks to separate reality from the Real” (p. 210). That aside, the main problem lies in the identification of the Schillerian concept of play that “effects true actual, formal freedom” with the main function of art. In the formal freedom, promises of emancipation, political agency, and freedom emerge as values to be reached, which is a beautiful, idealistic thought. Boenisch remarks with reference to Rancière that we need to counter the “all-pervasive ‘partition of the sensible’ of our globalised digital media economy” (p. 205). The concept of “the sensible” contains a fine doubling, which alludes to both the senses, as in perception, and as in sensible: that which makes sense, is given meaning. How, we might ask from our systems theoretical perspective, is the sensible partitioned? In terms of our perception, we might find that there are patterns in our consciousness that makes something not perceptible. In terms of meaning though, we have to ask, “what is beyond meaning?” A systems theoretical position claims that we are unable to come “behind” meaning. Meaning appears as medium and form. Therefore, what we investigate is the partition of meaning. The partition (again with a double meaning of dividing and take part in) is in systems theory the observation, which simultaneously makes a distinction and an indication. This “translation” of the rhetorically more elegant French into a rigid and distinctive German theory is an epistemological partition. When Boenisch identifies the “poetic” with a parallax split (Žižek) of reality with Rancière’s “partition of the sensible”, I totally agree, that art may take forms, which establishes another order of “the sensible”. Nevertheless, to posit promises of political impact on a strictly formal level quoting Rancière: “because of the type of space and time it institutes, and the manner in which it frames this time and peoples this space”,44 is to my mind, a conflation of the reference code that constitutes the art system (imaginary reality/reality) with the many different programmes of aesthetic preference codes, which suggests how to construct the imaginary reality. In this sense, the heritage of German Idealism misses an important point. What dramaturgy in its scientific version has to do is to compare different artistic hierarchies – poietics and the values inherent in these – in order to come up with analytical tools with which we may detect crucial poetological45 differences. This means a study of how the work of art makes individual consciousness in a psychic system intersect with communication in a social system. This book intends to experiment with an alternative thinking in differences as the basis for a scientific theory of dramaturgy.

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Dramaturgy and the value-transversal As apparent from the use of the word dramaturgy in its very early days (Luckhurst, 2006, p. 6), the ideas of “manipulating” with narratives and communication for specific purposes were not restricted to one field of social activity. Tyrants communicated in other forms than did early democratic politicians. Poietics changed from epic narratives to theatrical mimesis. Religious communication controlled behaviour and social power. Thus, in 784 AD at the Second Council in Nicaea, the Catholic Church declared: The substance of religious scenes is not left the initiative of artists; it derives from the principles laid down by the Catholic Church and religious tradition [. . .] The art alone belongs to the painter; its organization and arrangement belongs to the clergy.46 The worlds of mimesis were dictated by principles of authority. When markets arose as one of the central societal structures, the need to distinguish the honest tradesman from the fraud became important, so mimesis and performativity took on new modifications, so did the search for truth. When religion no longer was the lone carrier of truth, communication again took on new forms. Theatre echoed all these changes in the values of society. The European theatre displays a 3000-year-long history of how society has used theatre as a media to describe values at work in society to society. The experiments with imaginary reality using live actors not only to tell but also to perform stories to an audience, created new potentials of investigation of society and its ambiguities in tragic heights and in satiric depths. The theoretical reflection on how this kind of poietics works in poiesis and aisthesis is dramaturgy. In a European context manifested by Plato and Aristoteles, it started as a struggle about which values should be ascribed to mimesis and its contribution to a description of society. In the Renaissance, an unwinding of religious power and new scientific observations led to a completely new discussion of what values could be connected with art. Modernity provided its own functionally differentiated search for truth and values within separate systems as those of science and of art. Theory and art have since the Renaissance been involved in a close relationship of a particular kind, as they discovered how they could use each other, in their difference from each other. The constant combat between science and art developed gradually into a selfreflected knowledge of their own specific ways to observe the world. Since the 19th century, values have developed its own peculiar semantic. In legislation, be it in politics or law, values mark “highest relevance with normative merits”.47 If we are prepared for a moment to neglect our never satisfied hunger for a priori we might focus on how values are communicated, and we will begin to notice how values often functions as communicative stop signs for further reflection. When concepts like Freedom, Equality, Justice, Peace, Security, Welfare, Solidarity, or GROWTH are given a privileged rank, we find it difficult (or unnecessary) to ask whether these values should be accepted or rejected. When one or more of these values collide, how do we then decide what to do? Values are not and cannot be ordered hierarchical (peace are not always above freedom, for instance), and they are not equipped with directives as how to handle conflicts between values. Decisions can only be made ad hoc, and substantiated by reference to arguments derived from the concrete situations. Values are unavoidable, as each decision in our everyday life needs to seek its basis in the indubitable. Shall I get out of bed this morning? Should I prefer the cheaper non-organic version of fruit today? The necessity of making decisions makes

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values appear. Values are special in the sense that we very seldom communicate directly about values, but with them. We take them for granted, and accepted. Health is good! Sickness is bad! Whoever enters into a debate upon this bring upon him/her self the burden of argumentation. Further values are special as they often are furthered by a moral code (good/bad or estimable/despicable), and by implication made to apply for all. When observed over time, in a second order, it appears that values are contingent: you could always have made another decision, based upon another value. Values are not essences, given with exact rules and programmes, resting in a timeless transcendent cosmos. Values are functions, and should be observed as such. Art communicate with values. In times where the relation between the individual and society is stretched ever so thin, and the relation at the same time makes the individual ever more dependent on a world society, the discontent is so widespread that the maintenance of trust and solidarity does seem almost unsustainable. If art and science thus confronted want to respond – and a theory on dramaturgy should not be an exception from this prerogative – the answer has to focus upon the communication of values. Which values are currently implementing dramaturgical principles? As the tour round the world in the first chapter demonstrated, we need to ask the questions: to whom or what does art belong today, and, do we still believe in its (relative) autonomy? Dramaturgy was from its early start involved in education, religion, and politics. It still is, perhaps now in a degree as never seen before. This intensifies the obligation to reconsider how dramaturgy may contribute to values in actions, experiences, and reflections on communication of communication. Values not understood as transcendent essences but instead as functions operating at every level of communication. In a world society values differ, it would be a fatal repetition of colonial strategies if values were to be universalised. The future of dramaturgy is indeed, as Pavis states in the quote above, at stake. A hyper-complex society needs complex theories in order to come up with some qualified answers to the question of what happens to “ownership” under these new conditions.

Dramaturgy in the transversals of global, educational, and epistemological expansions As the first chapter demonstrated, dramaturgy as concept and function has entered a phase of globalisation, not least because it has been adopted in English speaking countries during the last 30 years. As the concept of dramaturgy has widened its global scope, an important momentum has been added to our search for a theory of dramaturgy. Many universities around the globe have now departments or courses in dramaturgy, and modern dramaturgy points at several different professional functions, to which one might be educated. This function deals primarily with different aspects of producing theatre or narratives in other human communication based media. The professional function can be applied in different phases of the production process, e.g. as in establishing the theatres’ local political positions and their repertoires, text development with a playwright or a group, the devising of a performance, elaboration of public relation or educational material for theatres. Dramaturgs also work inside mass media (radio, television, film etc.). Furthermore, dramaturgs may apply their skills in other societal systems: in education or health systems, in business or spare-time systems. The documentation of this expansion can be found in numerous anthologies and books on the subject. How do we train dramaturgs? How might the theoretical foundation for these activities be articulated? One possible answer, I would suggest, is to make a clear distinction between the

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evolution of poetology, i.e. scientific theories, dramaturgies-ς situated inside the system of science, in universities, and of poietics, i.e. reflective theories, dramaturgies-α, situated inside the art system where artists and dramaturgs continuously reflect upon their practices and strategies. These two theories need each other in their difference from another. In a professional training of dramaturgs inside the university, a wide-range theory on dramaturgy would help qualify the students and provide them with knowledge and methods straightforwardly made context-sensitive to fit many different jobs, functions, processes, and poietics.

Epistemological expansions If scientific work is understood as dealing with comparisons, we must compare phenomena of increasingly different appearances in order to expand our understanding of how it all works. It is not merely to look for any confirmation of transcendent “truths” out there, or in order to come still closer to reality “as it really is”, but instead to expand the complexity of our understanding. To compare the timing of a fall of a feather and an apple makes those two asymmetric, dissimilar objects comparable in order to explain how the difference in speed of falling relates to other differences between the two objects. What science does, generally speaking, is to find ways to formulate ever more daring, more improbable, more amazing comparisons (Luhmann, WdG, p. 408), which aim to expand the field of practical re-substitutions of the results. In other words, science needs to lead the temporary points of comparisons in a direction that allows a comparison of still more implausible connections to explain by combining theoretical sentences in still more complex theoretical programmes. Theories are forms in which explanations can be communicated and reformulated. Theory relates to reality understood as an unmarked space. Reality is but an infinitely complex simultaneity of matter, spaces, and movements. The only chance we have to create meaning (also scientifically) is momentarily to produce a “stop” of this restless movement and reduce complexity. In order to do so, we need time, communication, and observations, i.e. an operation that indicates something as distinct from something else. In a world of infinite complexity, we need theoretical input from many different, loosely coupled sciences. My conclusion here is to suggest that dramaturgy emerges when we in a scientific theory dramaturgy-ς compare different artworks and poietics as reflective theories in dramaturgy-α with the help of an operative systems theory. The theory draws upon insights from sociology, biology, mathematics, cognitive neuroscience, communication, and media theories. It is a tall order, and I am indeed aware of the limitations and the provisional character of this first attempt. I hope that you will find it is worth a try.

Thinking in differences Since the 1950s humanities has lived through a rapid process of fluctuating epistemological programmes, each with their own take on how to create truth, and produce good science. It has been tempting to create a kind of overview by showing how these different epistemologies from hermeneutics and structuralism to phenomenology and post-structuralism, have provided different dramaturgical scientific results. Yet, I have chosen to do something different. I have committed myself to the task of elaborating a systems theoretical approach

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to dramaturgy. This choice could have been made differently. There are no reasons “out there” to suggest that it has to be done so. We are not claiming to “get nearer to reality as it is”, or to be on height with the contemporary society and its “rationality”. We try to avoid the endless see-saw between idealism and materialism, holism and reductionism, and all the other platonic dualisms science has inherited. In fact, we need to accept that such struggles are never-ending. Art theory48 has been hovering between Scylla and Charybdis. Between an attempt to approach the shores of “real” science, i.e. natural science and its particular brand of rationalism, and another shore where the call-outs from aesthetic sensualist would encourage us to get under the skin of the works of art in order to come closer to life, and the inexplicability of the world. Scylla would thus sing after the tunes from structuralists and semiotics, where Charybdis would call out with melodies adapted from hermeneutics, phenomenology, and post-structuralism. The attempt to steer clear of either of the dangerous shores could be managed by setting the course after a third position: here the sound would be coloured by modulations of a radical operative systems theory. The hope attached to this course, would be to make art theory capable of avoiding metaphysical calls to describe reality “as it truly is” (be it in a correct description of the world, or as a stimulation of aesthetic presence), and furthermore avoid morally and normative based elements in the theory. Instead, we should accept that art and science are two different systems in a hyper-complex society, they may observe each other in their difference to each other, and art theory should be able to identify values at work in artworks and study corresponding poietics. As I mentioned, expansions are multidirectional, working centrifugally away from a centre on which all directions nevertheless depends. One way to describe the epistemological expansions since the mid-20th century is in a systems theoretical perspective the distinction between a thinking in identity and a thinking in difference. This difference rests upon the scientific problems caused by quantum physics and its attempt to investigate nature on the level beneath that of atoms. Here the laws of natural science met phenomenon that when observed contradicted all expectations. The results were dependent on the means of observation, complementarity in the quantum physical sense of the word relates to the fact, that within micro-physics the atom consists of different elements, particles, i.e. electrons. Physicists can make these, otherwise invisible parts, visible by applying mechanical instruments, abiding known macro-physical laws. The problem that Niels Bohr was confronted with arose when it appeared that electrons, when observed in a bubble chamber behaved like particles “corpuscular”, but when observed in another experimental setting using a nickel crystal, electrons behaved like “waves”. In macro-physics the distinction corpuscular >< wave is a two-side form, it is “either/or”. The fact that in micro-physics the same phenomenon (the electron) could be observed as behaving in both ways, created a paradox inter-domain dilemma.49 It is important to add: there are no epistemological reasons why one way of observing should be preferred above the other. Is it the macro-physical (domain 1) distinction corpuscular >< wave that should be abandoned, leading to severe theoretical consequences, or could it be possible, that other “laws” applied within the field of the electron’s micro-physics (domain 2), and that they are unexplainable in macro-physical terms? Bohr was confronted with a dilemma where he could either refrain from using classical concepts in micro-physics, which would preserve their unambiguous use, but at the same time rendering micro-physics unintuitable; or he could apply classical concepts to microobjects, gaining intuitability at the price of ambiguous use of the concepts.50 The Principle

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of Complementarity was designed with regard to the solution of this dilemma. It allows application of classical concepts in micro-physics without rendering them ambiguous. You might say it is a question of who “owns” the dilemma. Bohr chose to focus on the dilemma between the two different phenomenon: electron observed as corpuscular and electrons observed as waves. Bohr chose to declare that it was the two phenomenon that were complementary, not the two different characteristics in macro-physics.51 If we should re-describe this in terms of systems theory, what happened was that science faced the problem, that what the scientist sees (observes) depends on the apparatuses applied (the indication and distinction). The invisible thing turns out to be either a particle or a wave. It cannot be both at the same time, according to our known physical laws. Therefore, what seem to be opposites may be supplementary ways of describing the quantum physics at work inside atoms. The radical consequences of this has enormous impact on theory of knowledge, epistemology. It affects all ideas of correspondence: that knowledge is representations of a truth existing “out there”, in the surrounding world. It makes it apparent that matter is indeterminate, and that no such thing as reality independent of observations exists. The idea that knowledge will bring us closer to reality “as it is” and thus reveal the unity of concept and matter is forever shattered. This is perhaps the most important turn in the history of science. It is a shift from thinking in identity between matter and thought, to acknowledging that in the beginning was difference. Inside the science of humanities, this epistemological centre of unrest has made many distinct theories emerge. My colleague Niels Lehmann (2004), presented us with a redescription of post-ontological theories, which have been of paramount importance for the theory of dramaturgy presented here. In short, Niels Lehmann argues, that we should be vigilant to discriminate between different ways of applying differences. He re-describes four positions in post-ontological theory, Deleuze, Derrida, Rorty, and Luhmann.

FIGURE 2.1 

 our positions in theories of difference. Szatkowski  referring to Niels Lehmann F (2004)

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Figure 2.1 is my version of the results of Niels Lehmann’s investigations. By positioning himself inside the four different positions, he re-describes the other positions as observed from the chosen. The two main distinctions: dissemination >< distinctions, and holism >< reduction standing orthogonal to each other provides the four identified main positions. Where I have holism, Niels Lehmann has “Force”, and where I have reduction, he has “Cognition”. The reason behind the substitution is to fold the model into the recursive process of science. Where Niels Lehmann’s use of force gives another field of associations, linked to a more Nietzschean or perhaps Deleuzian perspective on science. It is of course not difficult to identify this way of thinking as influenced by systems theory, and Niels Lehmann makes that clear, together with the fact that this “order” is not meant to be a normative judgement on the scientific approaches, only as a suggestion of a way to see the directions inherent in the positions. I have chosen to use a systems theory as developed by Niklas Luhmann. You have already met several implications of such a choice: The system >< environment, consciousness >< communication, dramaturgy-α >< dramaturgy-ς, poietics >< poetology. I am however convinced, that evolution of sciences and art is dependent on the four different forces with each their distinct ways of disturbing or observing reality.

Notes 1 Pavis, Patrice (2014) “Dramaturgy and postdramaturgy”. In Pewny, K., Callens, J., and Coppens, J. (Eds.) Dramaturgies in the New Millennium. Relationality, Performativity and Potentiality. Tübingen: Narr Verlag, p. 26. 2 https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty#declining-global-poverty-1820-2010-shareof-people-living-in-extreme-poverty-and-rising-world-population-max-roserref. Visited 2 February 2018. 3 www.idea.int/gsod/files/IDEA-GSOD-2017-REPORT-EN.pdf.Visited 2 February 2018. 4 http://worldhappiness.report/ed/2018/.Visited 2 February 2018. 5 Roeder, Anke and Zehelein, Klaus (2011) Die Kunst der Dramaturgie. Theorie – Praxis – Ausbildung. Leipzig: Henschel Verlag. 6 Roeder and Zehelein (2011), p. 269. My cursivation and translation of this and all other quotes from the work cited. 7 Vom Dramaturgen bekommen sie das Übergreifende, das auf den Autor oft übergriffig wirkt, aber eine Autorin wie ich, die braucht das. Die will das. Die taumelt oft genug am Abgrund entlang, denn ausgerechnet dort sucht sie nach einem Grund für ihr Einfamilienhaus ohne dazugehörige Familie und noch ganz ohne Haus, aber in der Kunst ist alles grundlos und bodenlos. 8 Bicker, Björn (2011) “Die kunst der teilhabe. Stadttheater als politische praxis”. In Roeder and Zehelein, pp. 193–201. Now author and teacher at Otto-Falckenberg-Schule, München: Dramaturgy and “Writing for the Stage” (Szenisches Schreiben). 9 Barba, Eugenio (2010) On Directing and Dramaturgy. Oxon: Routledge, p. 17f and p. 110f. 10 Luk van den Dries is Professor in Theater Science at the University of Antwerpen, Belgium. “Dramaturgie bei Jan Fabre”. In Roeder and Zehelein, pp. 96–108. 11 Eine Antwort bei Jan Fabre ist nur richtig, wenn sie eine physische Existenzberechtigung hat. Erst wenn die Frage im Körper der Schauspieler und im energetischen Bewusstsein eine Antwort findet, bekommt eine Hypothese auch szenisch eine Form. 12 Auch das ist ein bewusste Strategie: das Publikum in einem Meer von Eindrücken unterzutauchen, in dem es selbst seinen Weg suchen muss. Die körperliche Dynamik auf der Bühne sorgt außerdem für eine Spiralbewegung, der man nicht entkommen kann. Das Schwarze Loch der Produktion har eine gleichsam verschlingende Sogwirkung. 13 Dries, Luk van den (2006) Corpus Jan Fabre, Observations of a Creative Process. Gent: Imschoot uitgevers.

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14 2004–2009 Professor in Theaterwissenschaft, Dresden, now (2011) Scientific research in a project on “Intermediale Szenographie”. In Roeder and Zehelein (2011) Die Kunst der Dramaturgie. Theorie – Praxis – Ausbildung, “Telepräsenzen. Zur Performativität der Ferne”, pp. 126–138. 15 Foucault, Michel (1967) “Andere Räume”. In Barck, Karlheinz (Ed.) (2002) Aisthesis. Leipzig: Reclam, pp. 34–46. 16 Wiens refers us to: Bachmann-Medick, Doris (Ed.) (2006) Cultural Turns. Neuorientierungen in den Kulturwissenschaften. Hamburg: Rowohlt Verlag, pp. 284–328. 17 Raum, nach heutigen Erkenntnissen, ist zu verstehen als relationales, multiples und netzwerkartiges Gebilde, das durch Raum-Handeln entsteht, mit anderen Worten: Durch Kommunikations- und Wahrnehmungs-vorgänge im Spannungsfeld wechselnder Konfigurationen zwischen Hier und Dort, An- und Abwesenheit, Nähe und Ferne. 18 Wiens, Birgit (2014) Intermediale Szenographie. Raum-Ästhetiken des Theaters am Beginn des 21. Jahrhunderts. Paderborn: Fink Verlag. 19 Josef Bairlein works at the department for Theatre Science, LMU in München. His contribution: “Dramaturgie und Performance – ein Paradox?” 20 Headed by Enrique Vargas, situated in Barcelona, Spain. Fermentation (2010) www.teatrodelossentidos. com/eo/index.php.Visited 2 February 2018. 21 A group investigating digital net-based technology inserted in theatrical events: www.blasttheory. co.uk. Riders Spoke (2007), A Machine to See With (2010). 22 Rosendahl,Thomas (2011) Interaktive Dramaturgier – I et SystemteoretiskPperspektiv. Aarhus: University of Aarhus. 23 Luckhurst, Mary (2006) Dramaturgy: A Revolution in Theatre. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 24 Turner, Cathy and Behrndt, Synne K. (2008) Dramaturgy and Performance. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 4–9. 25 Lehmann, Niels (1996) Dekonstruktion og Dramaturgi. Aarhus: University of Aarhus, pp. 215–250. 26 Bharucha, Rustom (2000) The Politics of Cultural Pratice: Thinking Through Theatre in an Age of Globalization. New England: Wesleyan University Press. 27 www.dramaturgy.co.uk/.Visited 2 February 2018. 28 Weiler, Christel (2005) Lexicon der Theater Theorie. Stuttgart: Metzler, p. 80f. 29 “Theater als Paradigma der Moderne”. 30 Balme, Christopher, Fischer-Lichte, Erika, and Grätzel, Stephan (Eds.) (2003) Theater als Paradigma der Moderne? Positionen Zwischen Historischer Avantgarde und Medienzietalter”. Tübingen: Francke Verlag. 31 Inszenierung von Authetizität (2000); Verkörperung (2001); Wahrnemung und Medialität (2001); Performativität und Ereignis (2003); Ritualität und Grenze (2003); Theater als Paradigma der Moderne? (2003) all co-edited by Fischer-Lichte, Erika (et al.) and published by Tübingen: Francke Verlag. 32 Fischer-Lichte, Erika (2004) Ästhetik des Performativen. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. 33 Roeder, Anke (2011) “Die kunst der dramaturgie”. In Roeder, Anke and Zehelein, Klaus (2011) Die Kunst der Dramaturgie. Theorie-Praxis-Ausbildung. Leipzig: Henschel Verlag, pp. 269–274 [My translations]. 34 www.theater-wissenschaft.de/forschung/arbeitsgruppen/.Visited 15 March 2018. 35 Pewny, K., Callens, J., and Coppens, J. (Eds.) (2014) Dramaturgies in the New Millennium. Relationality, Performativity and Potentiality. Tübingen: Narr Verlag. 36 Turner, Cathy and Behrndt, Synne K. (2008) Dramaturgy and Performance. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, p. 19. 37 Luhmann, Niklas (1990) Die Wissenschaft der Gesellschaft. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. (Hereafter cited as WdG and all in my translation). 38 Cull, Laura (2012) Theatres of Immanence. Deleuze and the Ethics of Performance. London: Palgrave Macmillan. 39 Stegemann, Bernd (2015) Lob des Realismus. Berlin: Theater der Zeit. 40 Boenisch, Peter M. (2014) “Poetic relations with the real”. In Pewny, K., Callens, J., and Coppens, J. (Eds.) (2014) Dramaturgies in the New Millennium. Relationality, Performativity and Potentiality. Tübingen: Narr Verlag, pp. 214–215. 41 Bourriaud, Nicolas (2002) Relational Aesthetics. Dijon: Les presses du réel. 42 Žižek, Slavoj (2012) Less Than Nothing: Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism. London and New York:Verso.

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43 Rancière, Jacques (2010) Dissensus: On Politics and Aesthetics. London and New York: Continuum. 44 Rancière, Jacques (2009) Aesthetic and its Discontents. Cambridge: Polity, p. 23. 45 The choice of “Poetology” should mark a difference to but also acknowledge the debt to Tzvetan Todorov (1981) Introduction to Poetics. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. From the revised edition 1973 Poétique, Paris: Éditions-du Seuil. Originally 1968: Qu’est-ce que Le Structuralism: Poétique. 46 Quoted from Dewey, John (1980 (1934)) Art as Experience. New York: Berkley, p. 229. 47 Luhmann, Niklas (2008) Die Moral der Gesellschaft. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, p. 244. 48 Lehmann, Niels (2000) “Tilbudspoetik. Et pragmatisk syn på kunstteoriens nytte”. In Kyndrup, Morten and Madsen, Carsten (Eds.) (2000) Æstetisk Teori? Gylling: Aarhus Universitetsforlag, pp. 193–213. 49 Lindenberg, Siegwart and Oppenheim, Paul (1974) “Generalization of complementarity”. Synthese 28, pp. 117–139. 50 Bohr, Niels (1958) Atomteori og Naturbeskrivelse. Copenhagen: Schultz. 51 Petersen, A. (1968) Quantum Physics and the Philosophical Tradition. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, p. 126f.

3 SYSTEMS THEORY Draw a distinction, observe observers

Causality works as a scientific model of explanations. As those models have become more and more complicated, constantly applying additional variables, causality had to be supplied by estimates. Any linear connection between cause and effect was as such only a programme for further estimations.1 We have learnt, that causality must include decisions as to which factors/ variables one has to ascribe. In that sense, whoever uses a schema of causality has to select to what they pay attention. We need to observe observers to identify how they select the causes that provides the selected effects. No “nature” will today be able to guarantee agreement upon these selections and judgements. “Causal judgments are ‘political’ judgments”, said Luhmann. We need to observe what distinctions and differences an observer uses to observe. Biology has provided unique insights in how life operates in cells and molecules, how they as closed systems manage evolution. Semiology has shown how a system is referred to the distinctions it has introduced itself. Mathematics demonstrates how the re-entry of a distinction in a distinction makes complexity emerge. Communication is the simultaneous selection of information, utterance, and understanding, where meaning functions as both medium and form.

Systems and observations Peter Fuchs2 reminds us that the metaphor “system” since Hippocrates has been used to probe how production and variation of order in plants, animals, humans, and gods could be described as ways to cope with our environment. Fully aware that the environment itself does not determine the categories, but poses problems that has to be solved in constantly new and always provisional ways. Systems theory has been spreading rapidly since the 1980s as inspiration for many diverse sciences, even to the study of literature, as I will introduce in a moment. However, systems theory is still met with a considerable amount of resistance and opposition. The reaction is understandable as the level of abstraction and generalisation (by some characterised as

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‘holism’)3 is high. There are no easy solutions and no polished hopes of easy emancipation, as Luhmann’s approach to sociology undermined positivism, critical theory, and postmodernism. Luhmann identified three forces that made the unity of sociology disappear. The three positions in sociological science are described as:4 1) A sociology that asked, “What is the case?” and a steadfast belief in that empirical research would let “reality” decide what is true and not true. 2) “What hides behind?” was another sociological approach that insisted on a critical culture where all motives are subject to suspicion, at the same time as it was convinced of its own critique as correct and successful and that society was a mess. In addition, 3) the postmodern position where theory is discussed by taking the historical and canonised “heroes” under scrutiny, to prove that their positions, which cannot be changed, are overtaken. Fortunately, it is possible to distance yourself from the “heroes” by your (or Derrida’s) ingenious (re)interpretations. Instead of finding corroboration in the outside world, the past dominates the present. This description of Luhmann’s is of course polemic, and representative of the dry humour you occasionally find in his texts. A short view to developments inside theatre science would corroborate a parallel situation. From positivists eager in securing and documenting historical facts of the volatile media, to intense critique of forms deemed obsolete in order to privilege new forms substituting the old mess, and finally a new surge in post-structuralist positions, where closure, decidability, and stable meanings are abandoned and the ingenious (re)interpretations are graciously assigned to the spectators. Luhmann suggested that a radical constructivism presented the idea that cognition is a construction of the world in the world. Taking clues from that epistemological position and developments in biology, mathematics, linguistics, and phenomenology, Luhmann assembled a systems theory where you observe by drawing distinctions, where autopoietic systems emerge as products of their own operations, and where you observe observers in a second order observation. From this theoretical perspective, he reconstructed sociology and its description of society, to society, in society. Luhmann included the unavoidable: every observation creates its own blind spot. In order to observe you need a distinction and an indication. When something is “the case”, then somethings hides behind it. Namely, the distinction from that, which is not indicated, when you indicate something. This latency, the blind spot, is not a structural latency, but an operative one. It is not given by any secrets of the world, or metaphysical distinctions like being/not-being. It is chosen and as such contingent. It could have been chosen differently. That is why, explained Luhmann, the answer to the question “what is the case?” now must be, “that which is observed when you include the observations of observers”. The question “what hides behind?” must now be answered, “that which you cannot observe by observing”. What is that then? It is an “unmarked space”, into which every distinction must slice; it is “meaning” as the final medium for all the possible forms, and lastly it is “the observer self”. Latency translates to contingency, and to the recognition of the consequences for all observations, the fact that you cannot observe yourself observing, which is the paradox of the un-observability of observations in action. Art in modern society has grabbled with this paradox, and reacted with many different resolutions of the paradox. For some, resolutions include artistic forms where the emancipation of contingency over social bonds addresses the individual spectator in introspection

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(post-structuralist). Other resolutions insist on artistic forms where the spectator is directed outwards to consider social bonds not easily recognised, as they are seldom communicated directly (critical).

Systems theory I have been reading Luhmann for over 20 years, and I am still not sure how to present his theoretical main structures. Luhmann made a point of letting each of his many books present the skeleton of his theory as way of introduction. Gradually you become accustomed to the architecture of the theory. Luhmann wanted to construct a theory of society. He described modernity as an evolution of a hyper-complex society, where a web of functionally differentiated systems observe the world and other systems according to their own logic. This is described as an evolution from early, segmented societies, where families or tribes were territorially distributed, but not functionally interdependent. Out of this emerged the stratified society, where layered ranks of families were clearly segregated by their position in society: in the top of the hierarchy the kings and popes, the nobles, and then peasants, eventually also the bourgeoisie. From around 1750 modernity reconstructed society, and by 1850 the full impact of the new social order was vibrant. The modern society arose as a functionally differentiated society, where systems took care of specialised functions of society. We have yet to take in the consequences of this social order. Just as science develops its own system so does

FIGURE 3.1 

Types of systems. Adapted by Szatkowski from Luhmann (1985) Soziale Systeme

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e.g. health, education, commercial business, law, and art, the evolution of each of these systems seems to follow their own separate logic, but also a particular common pattern. One way to begin would be to present the typology of systems that functions as an important distinction. In order to do so I refer to the schema Luhmann draws in order to specify his typology of systems.5 Luhmann differentiates between four types of systems (see Figure 3.1). Machines are systems, but they must be understood as allo-poietic systems, i.e. governed by trivial conditional programmes or algorithms (think of a movement sensor turning on the light). Non-trivial systems are either bio-organisms, social systems, or psychic systems. They are all autopoietic systems. Where the psychic system operates in consciousness, social systems operate in communication. Social systems come in three different versions: interaction, which designates the co-presence of psychic systems that mutually acknowledges the presences of others, as such, it is the minimal communicative system (think of walking through a square in town). Organisations are social systems that include members under the exclusion of others, as social systems they live by their ability to make decisions (think of a theatre institution). Society is the most comprehensive communicative social system; we need to consider this a oneworld society. The major point is that comparisons have to be aware of the levels on which they compare. Society cannot be reduced to psychic systems, as society is based on communication. The many biological systems in the human body may affect the consciousness, but most of them cannot be affected by consciousness. Another way to begin would let the reader follow my attempt to reach out for an understanding, which I hope does not oversimplify the complexity of the theoretical programme; neither should it be too detailed and voluminous. I will refer interested readers to Luhmann’s own introduction to systems theory.6 As the theory has a rhizomatic structure, i.e. in principle, you can enter into it from any given point, and as it is through-composed, durchkonstruiert as Luhmann said, you will be able to travel through a web of coordinated concepts. When I came across a drawing, that had similarities to schemas I had tried to use to illustrate the theory, I found that this might be good beginning.

The (!) drawing After having read thousands of Luhmann’s pages it stands out that he refrained from illustrations. A few simple tables are all you may find. This is understandable since any illustration is a huge reduction of complexity. As one trying to get a grip of the theory, I have however, benefited from the simplicity of illustrations, as a help to probe some of the fundamental concepts and their relations. This drawing is the only illustration of systems theory from Luhmann’s own hand,7 known to me. When asked to make a drawing of systems theory, Luhmann reluctantly produced the following (Figure 3.2). This drawing is enigmatic in its simplicity, dazzling as reduction of complexity, and as such object for many possible inferences of meaning. I have chosen to comment upon the separate elements of the drawing suggesting their operational significance in the theoretical structure.

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FIGURE 3.2 

The (!) drawing of systems theory by Niklas Luhmann

Environment – reality Envision the following element of the drawing: An unmarked space is an endless field of potential meaning. It is an infinite complex world where everything is present in this very moment, which is our environment.

FIGURE 3.3 

The unmarked space

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If we look from the point of our own consciousness, we must imagine the universe expanding into unknown infinities, with planets, dark matter, which we know, we do not know anything about, with stars like our sun, and a planet called earth, inhabited by 7 (soon to be 10) billion called humans, and endless types of animals and organic matter. Inside my brain billions of electronic signals connect to my other organs, my body, my skin, and perceptions reaches my brain, which in an unsettling tempo orders, combines, discards, reacts, and finally comes up with a sketch of it all – we call it reality. This infinite complex environment is in constant and restless movement. No one or nothing can grasp this totality. Observing this process, we learn that we have to reduce complexity. Biological systems and ecologic complexes have done so for billions of years, in an evolution that quite improbably has created these humans with memory and skills of communication and survival. How did biological systems manage this reduction of complexity empowering new complexities? Bios, or life, are the result of an environment in which conditions were right for the forming of organic molecules such as proteins, which have enormous complexity. It needed molecules with membranes stable, though plastic, impermeable or semi-permeable. The cell interior consists of a rich architecture of large molecular blocks. When the cell integrates a molecule, then the interaction is not determined by the properties of that molecule but by the way, it is “seen” by the cell. The incorporation of the molecule is a result of the cell’s autopoietic dynamics.8 Life is in this sense, a biochemical process. Maturana and Varela (1998) describe how the cell is “environment” for the molecule, and the molecule as “environment” for the cell: the boundary between them (membrane) and the dynamic process of chemical transformations between cell and molecule (metabolism) is an autopoietic system. The cell is producing its own components that is essential for the boundary. A boundary is essential for the operation of the transformation network – cell and boundary are produced as a UNITY. This unity is a difference, and the difference a unity. Paradoxical as it sounds: this autopoietic organisation characterises living beings. Luhmann connects this biological observation with the mathematical concept of re-entry,9 and this becomes some of the main concepts necessary to begin an elucidation of systems theory. The boundary can be seen as a mark, dividing the unmarked space in a marked space, which is indicated by the distinction, and “the rest” serving as environment for the marked space. The marked space has to decide what belongs inside it with increasing precision and complexity. Uncertainty as to what elements in the environment are relevant, has to be decided, and in order to do so the difference is reintroduced on the inner side of the distinction. This is only possible because such operations build systems. Operations are building structures. The bold experiment in expounding a systems theory is to establish couplings between diverse scientific results. Where living systems10 are describable as chemical procedures between DNA, proteins, lipids, enzymes etc., social systems are systems whose basic operation is communication. Psychic systems are systems based on consciousness. In the living systems, life is possible because the biochemical structures in a cell makes operations that functions as programmes (the enzymes) for rebuilding structures and operations. This circular framing makes systems that are determined by their structure. In the systems theory presented here, “poiesis” is the production of a “work”, and the concept autopoiesis covers the fact that a system is produced by its own structure of operations, and the structure is produced by its operations. This circular process is ruptured by time.11

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Observation: indication and distinction The only way to cope with the complex world is to reduce complexity. The environment, umwelt, functions as an unmarked spaced. In order to observe something it has to be marked as something. A system indicates: this is a work of art, and at the same time, it makes a distinction: a work of art is different from other human-made elements, from nature, planets, from science, etc. Any observation is thus always a unity of indication and distinction. It is a fundamental paradox: the unity of differences. When a system draws a distinction, it has introduced a difference into the world. It might now observe the world with the help of this distinction. If the distinction is strong, it is able to connect different operations into it, which have a common mark, the self-reference. Difference is reintroduced in the difference on the marked side. The unmarked space, the infinite complex reality, needs to be marked, i.e. observed by distinctions, in order to appear at all. Often, this is designated:

FIGURE 3.4 

An operation as observation: indication and distinction

Self-reference/other reference Now we may try to infer meaning of some of the other elements in the drawing. I see these designs as systems. The black dot in each of them is the “blind spot” the initial difference, the self-reference in Luhmann’s terminology. Without self-reference no

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FIGURE 3.5 

Self-reference – the distinction used to observe

other reference fremdreferenz or, without doubling of reality in language or other imaginary realities, no reality. This code of reference must be kept stable, in order to function as selector outwardly, e.g. what is acceptable as art and belonging to the interior of the system, and what is not. In order to create differentiation inside the system, there is a need of another code, Luhmann terms them “programmes” that work as information inwardly, and make sure that the system will be neither immune to irritations in the environment, nor react oversensitively. A programme has positive values, a code of preference, that signals what will most probably be accepted in the system, so the programme applies the distinction positive/negative or acceptable/not acceptable.

FIGURE 3.6 

Preference code or programme

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The vertical line cutting the elliptic shape is, as I interpret it, the programme axis. The programme enables the system to vary and develop its complexity. The two axes (code and programme) stands orthogonal to each other.12 The enigma in Luhmann’s drawing stems from the fact that the cut-off elliptic figure may stand for systems of different types. This is possible because autopoietic systems are built by their own operations and in this sense can be compared, but only if we are able to distinguish between the types of system shown in Figure 3.1. The main point being, that if we observe a work of art or art as functionally differentiated system – we observe social systems and communication. If we observe a psychic system we observe consciousness. We must make distinctions. When Luhmann identifies one of the systems as NL, we might understand this as referring to the psychic system that tries to identify itself as the unique living being, called Niklas Luhmann, to be identifiable amongst the billions of other psychic systems. What happens inside this psychic system, we cannot know. It is operationally closed. All thoughts and conscious operations are internal operations. NL observes the environment, and identifies other psychic systems. In order to survive and in order to allow NL to express his thoughts, he needs to communicate. As NL communicates in many systems, the psychic system NL has to follow the rules and programmes of the given system. If positioned inside the system of science, he obeys the codes and rules of the system. His “role” as a scientist must be coordinated with his individual “person” – an operation we will later on define as performative. If we manipulate the drawing, it might be brought to illustrate the point of difference between social and psychic systems. In Figure 3.8, NL stands for Niklas Luhmann, who communicates with other scientists, as he reads or discusses with other sociologists, a communication regulated by the special way science communicates. Luhmann and his fellow scientists consider and reconsider theories of society, irritating and/or inspiring each other by disagreements and alternatives, and forcing each of the psychic systems to determine their own positions. So following

FIGURE 3.7 

A psychic system – Niklas Luhmann

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FIGURE 3.8 

Social and psychic systems

the logic of the drawing, we might add the following element: Luhmann observes how other psychic systems, like fellow scientists, observe. In order to present his thoughts he has to communicate. Communication takes place in social systems, science. This will often be organised in universities. Universities live as any other organisation by inclusion and by making decisions. You may become a member of the organisation, but in order to stay a member, you have to comply with certain rules of behaviour.13 The science system has its own blind spot, or initial difference: truth/false. In addition, the many different codes of preference or scientific programmes are epistemological fights over how to argue “truth”. Thus, the single shape “system” may represent either psychic systems (NL) or a social system, like an organisation (Theatre or University) or a functionally differentiated system (arts system or science system).

Structural couplings We must now consider the lines emerging from the cut-off ellipsis and into the environment from the system. I choose to regard them as representing what Luhmann indicates as structural couplings. “Structural couplings limit the scope of the possible structures with which a system can carry out its autopoiesis”, “Eyes and ears and the corresponding connective operations in the brain are prime examples” (Luhmann, GdG, p. 100/ Vol. 1 p. 54f.). What we perceive with eyes and ears are structurally coupled with the cognitive operations in our brain. The input from our senses and their biological, chemical, and physical systems thus bundle and intensify certain causalities that affect our consciousness (the coupled system), irritating it and thus

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stimulating it to new self-determinations. As such, couplings must have a basis in reality independent of the coupled autopoietic system. Or, if we consider structural couplings on another level of systems, decisions are made in the political system to redistribute funds to art, it will then intensify causalities in the art system, which needs to determine how to deal with the reduction. Thus the political and art systems are structurally coupled, but operatively segregated. There are also operative couplings, i.e. couplings inside a given system. In the art system, there are several examples: Whenever a work of art is produced, it is an effect of all other works of art, which have bundled and limited the possible structures in the new work. Operative couplings can point to how one work relates to other works, the oeuvre of the same artist(s), or of other artists in both contemporary and historical landscapes of genres. Knowing what has been created provides many bundled causalities, in the sense that they demarcate operations not to be actualised, thus limiting the possibilities, irritating the creative process, consciously or not.

Autopoiesis Now the next central question is: how does a system organise its relationship with the environment, if it is operationally closed, maintains no direct contact with environment, and only has its own referentiality (initial distinction) at its disposition? The answer is important because the entire theory is dependent on it (Luhmann, GdG, p. 100 / Vol. 1, p. 54). Luhmann’s answer is inspired by the biologists Humberto R. Maturana and Francisco J. Varela,14 from whom both the concept of autopoiesis and structural coupling are inherited. A few remarks to the concept of “autopoiesis”. It is a system intern ambiguity. It could be described as undecidedness that the system has to reduce through its creation of internal structures. It translates to an inscription of meaning in new decisions and additional clarity in social and psychic systems. When psychic systems communicate, they usually try to create meaning. Society creates the medium “meaning” in order to be able to live with this constant need of keeping internal structures open for new decisions. The autopoiesis15 of life is a biochemical process and its structures are exposed in evolution. The biochemical structures that permit the cell to live are concrete operations in the cell. The cell is created as living system by these system-specific operations. Life is in this sense a biochemical invention, a circular self-producing system that due to evolution over time has created many diverse creatures and other systems, all out of one circular, autopoietic mode of operation. Luhmann relates that the biologist Humberto R. Maturana in the 1980s came to the concept of autopoiesis by way of a philosopher friend who explained the difference between Aristotle’s concepts práxis and poiésis. Maturana himself connects this to a discussion on Cervantes Don Quixote. Nonetheless, práxis according to Aristoteles was an action whose meaning was positioned in the very action, e.g. a deed in political life. The action is completed because it in itself is satisfying. Poiesis, on the contrary, was an action that produced something external to itself, a “work”. In poiesis, actions are directed towards production. Therefore, an autopoietic system is its own work; its operations (the elements of the system) and the structures are created internally in the system. The elements, the operations are not just coincidentally structured and connected; they are also created by the system itself. The elements are “information”, i.e. differences in the system that makes a difference. The system thus produces unities that are unique for the system, and for which no equivalent exists in

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the surroundings. Autopoiesis is a unique unchanging principle, for both the system and its observer. Thus, we depart from the ontological distinction between subject and object. Autopoiesis is not the production of a specific “gestalt” (Luhmann, GdG, p. 66/Vol. 1. p. 33), but the differentiation between system and its surrounding world, the environment. What each system produces has to be investigated in the system, and specification of the structures and the direction of their structural coupling: system-internal operative couplings and system-external structural couplings. It is important not to construe this as if a system is causally isolated from its surroundings and that the system in this sense is closed. The simultaneous independence and interdependence mutually provoke evolution. The fact that the system is closed is the very condition that provides its openness. The concept of autopoiesis is easily both under- and overrated. It is overrated if one thinks that the concept explains how all the fundamental operations in all different systems are working. It does not. It is underrated if one misses the ontological and epistemological point: The ontological tradition presumes that something from the surrounding world penetrates into the perceiver, and that the surroundings are mirrored, imitated, or simulated inside the perceiving system. The thesis of autopoiesis points us to the fact that a system creates its own boundaries and thus differentiates itself from the surroundings. At a first glance, it might seem trivial that a system cannot operate in its surroundings, that its operations always must be applied inside the system. However, if system specific operations could take place in the surroundings, it would ruin the distinction between system and environment. By a closer look though, it is surprising. With a radical wording you could say, that cognition is possible only because there is no operative connection to the surrounding world. Cognition is not possible in spite of, but rather because the system is operatively closed.16 This does in no way imply that the system is without possible links to the surroundings. Autopoiesis can be generalised in the sense, that living systems, social, and psychic systems each have their distinctive basic operations. Social systems operate with communication, not with chemical or psychical phenomenon. Psychic systems (consciousness) operate with cognition. The art system operates with the artwork as basic communicative operation. To sum up I would like to present a supplementary drawing of the art system. Here is the thinking behind it: An ellipse requires two centres, where the circle only needs one. I imagine that the black dot of self-reference should have, as its antipode, a dot signifying the other reference. If we draw an outline using the two centres, we have the shape of an ellipsis. If we draw a line between the two dots of self- and other reference, we have the code axis, the axis of reference. Orthogonal to this, on another line we have a representation of the programme axis. In order to build complexity into the system, there is a need for specifications, the preference code. Where the reference code must be kept stable, in order to secure the system, the preference code makes it possible for the system to react on internal or external irritations. We are faced with a society that forces systems to vary at a speed that may cause us to ask whether society can learn fast enough, and whether society manages to focus the production of meaning (Luhmann, GdG, p. 126 / Vol. 1, p. 67).

Meaning as medium and meaning as form A theory of dramaturgy must in order to inform the analysis of how society describes itself to society, sensitise the analytical approach towards how meaning in society is generated.

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FIGURE 3.9 

Systems theory in a glance  Szatkowski

Hence, dramaturgy needs a theoretical concept “meaning” in order to understand how historical works of art, as well as actual works of art, and possible future problems for the arts system are described. The epistemological question of meaning is in no way easy to formulate. In fact, the major discussion between Habermas and Luhmann arose in the 1970s, and departed from their disagreement on this.17 Meaning must be understood as a requirement in any social evolution. In 1975, Luhmann writes: No matter how abstractly formulated, a general theory of systems, a general theory of evolution and a general theory of communication, are three theoretical components necessary for the specifically sociological theory of society. They are mutually interdependent.18 Luhmann wrote this in an attempt to argue for a systems theoretical evolution of sociological theory. He insisted that a fundamental change in our understanding of society was needed. Society understood as social bond or morally constituted rational common sense, could no longer satisfy a social theory. The fight between conservative or progressive, affirmative or critical re-descriptions of meaning and society had to be replaced by a new form of selfdescription now formulated as a second order description. Habermas criticised this approach,

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and he insisted on language as medium to any evolution.19 He made a clear distinction between those who supported “linguistically generated intersubjectivity” (the Habermasians) and those adherents of “self-referentially closed systems” (the Luhmanians). Luhmann, on his side, found this distinction “conservative” resting as it did on dogmatic ideas from the Enlightenment; Luhmann wanted his programme to be “Abklärung der Aufklärung”20 and was sceptical towards the concept of intersubjectivity. Habermas on his side criticised Luhmann for being in defence of existing structures and pursuing a high-level technocratic ideology. This alone prevented many in the 1970s from reading Luhmann at all. Luhmann described Habermas’ position as the last line of defence for the “old” Enlightenment. Habermas, claims Luhmann, builds rationality into a theory of communication, and this eventually leads the theory to have to make a distinction between types of communication that follows rationality and some that do not. Habermas defined “Strategic Action”, where actors are not so much interested in mutual understanding as in achieving the individual goals they each bring to the situation, versus what he later termed “Strong Communicative Action”, where speakers coordinate their action in pursuit of individual (or joint) goals on the basis of a shared understanding that the goals are inherently reasonable. Luhmann identifies this as an expression of the theoretical difficulties you arrive at, when you are building pretensions to rationality into the concept of communication. Luhmann suggests: there is a connection between the assertive force and temporal transience of the form. Communication media entail no bias in the direction of rationality – any more than does the concept of system or that of evolution. [. . .] On the other hand, forms are less permanent that [sic! than] the medial substratum. They endure only through special arrangements such as memory, writing, and printing. (Luhmann, GdG, p. 202 / Vol. 1, p. 119). Temporal transience of form directs our attention to the fact that forms do change and they do so fleetingly, but also to the fact that form is stronger than their medial substratum. Form has an insistent force, but is less permanent than the medium. When forms are considered important, it becomes what Luhmann terms a semantic. The free capacity of the medial substratum makes variations possible in time. Society emerges as attention focuses on the meaning of what is happening, and what is seeking connection.

Meaning as medium In order to understand the radicalism of this position and the level of abstraction, the simple fact is, that “neither theory nor society itself can go beyond what must always be presupposed as meaning” (Luhmann, GdG, p. 44 / Vol. 1, p. 18). The environment, the world is an “immeasurable potential for surprises” (p. 19). This potentiality needs systems to produce information out of selected “irritations”. In this sense, meaning only exists as meaning of the system/operation using it. Meaning is not a “quality of the world attributable to a creation, a foundation, an origin”. Meaning is a product of those operations using meaning, and in order to coordinate meanings, the operations are dependent on a memory function, which makes the results of past selections available in the present state, in order to confront a future. When processing meaning, we have to draw on and anticipate something, to which we can recurrently refer.

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Where recursions refer to the past (to tried and tested, know meaning) they refer only to contingent operations whose results are presently available and not to substantiating origins. When recursion refers to the future, they point to an infinite number of possibilities for observation, hence to the world as virtual reality, and we cannot know whether observational operations will ever feed this reality into systems (and into which ones). (p. 20, my italics) The recursive movement between actualised and potential meaning creates meaning, and is thus at the centre of every operation in poiesis.

Meaning as form This basic pattern generating meaning is the form of meaning: the difference between actuality and potentiality. This distinction constitutes meaning. Further, all forms in the medium of meaning are constituted relative to the observing system. Systems using meaning are systems able to describe and observe themselves and their environment. The system must be able to reference itself (self-reference) in order to describe and observe itself and other systems (other reference) at any given moment. This is why in meaning production the dimension of systems (the factual) must be a part of any theory of meaning. Further we have seen that the distinction between the past, the present, and the future are needed in order for meaning to expand, and this calls on the distinction between variation, selection (what to remember and what to forget), and (re-)stabilisation. This is defined as the dimension of evolution necessary for understanding meaning. Finally, the dimension of communication using meaning is responsible for the production of social systems. Communications has to make distinctions between medium and form, Luhmann describes this as a dependency on the distinction between information, utterance, and understanding. When construction of forms in the medium meaning is relative to the system producing these operations, it means that we are confronted with two distinctive types of systems. Meaning as form therefore: also makes it possible to set out from two operationally very different meaningconstituting systems that reproduce through consciousness and communication, each producing its own point of departure for the distinction between self-reference and other-reference, while always relating to each other through presupposed or actualized other-reference: psychic systems and social systems. (Luhmann, GdG, p. 51 / Vol. 1, p. 22) This correlation between the psychic system (consciousness) and the social system (communication) as two systems operatively closed off from each other is the very condition of possibility for communication in society and in art.

Medium>< form operates in different, constantly renewable poietics as foundations for poietic hierarchies, in which dramaturgy as a praxis theory aligns poietics in processes of poiesis and aisthesis in production and reception. Art communication cannot exist without society, consciousness and life, or without tangible material (no matter how conceptual the work of art may be). When an artist creates a work, she needs and uses values to guide her selection of operations. The top of any poietic hierarchy concerns the values in relation to what art should do and look like, when society is as it is. The concrete operations in the production-process’ methods, techniques, and materials and the inbuilt ambiguities for the process of reception, constitute the bottom of the hierarchy. Poiesis is at work in the rehearsal to enable cooperation between artists, as they are making choices in regard to an imagined audience, practising skills, rehearsing, discussing. And we are with an audience as they observe or partake in the event. The midfield of the hierarchy I identify as dramaturgy: the recursive evolution of a way to combine values of the chosen poietics, poiesis, and aisthesis in reception and production methods of rehearsal, training, and performing. Whether we consider classical theatre, performance art, street happenings, children’s theatre, site-specific theatre with audience involvement, or experiments with theatre forms and digital interactions, we need to investigate how theatre as art form creates horizons of meaning for what kind of spectators. Whether theatre emerges as community theatre in Harare,

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POIETIC

DRAMATURGY

POIESIS AND AISTHESIS

FIGURE 4.1 

Poietic hierarchy – dramaturgy as aligning poietics with poiesis and aisthesis

Zimbabwe, as commercial musical show on Broadway, New York, or as state supported experiments in Berlin, Germany, art creates meaning insofar as works or events communicate. The meaning offered by the work of art is a function of the values inherent in the form of the artwork. Dramaturgy must be able to analyse and reflect the different forms of utterance and their information emerging as selections in the process of understanding. To do so, dramaturgy has to be sensitive to the way communication functions, and the way it requires both psychic and social systems. When dramaturgy observes theatre as media, there are media-specific qualities linked to the co-presence of actors and spectators. This kind of community constitutes different possibilities in terms of how the relation between stage and auditorium invites interactivity and co-creation. Finally, the study of dramaturgy at work in the art system allows us to elaborate concepts and methods that may be applied when we observe communication in other functionally differentiated systems. When dramaturgy observes film, television, and other artefacts in the mass-media system, acting styles, directing of visual and auditory elements, and the depicted performativity is in focus in order to encourage the discussions of emergent values. The dramaturgy of the internet system additionally observes how communication operates assisted by interactivity and accessibility to digital self, other participants, and to the giant digital memory. When dramaturgy observes, it is a research of how communication and consciousness are made available for each other.

The function of the art system These elements of compulsion are some of the recognisable powers at work inside the art as system. They serve to describe the function of the system, pointing at “something” no other social systems provides. In order to specify this “something” systems theory engage in a functional analysis, which require comparisons. To compare you need a point of orientation, a systems-specific question, which is formulated as a problem that makes it possible to compare a broad variety of different solutions to a problem. A functional system (here art) emerges

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when an orientation question (how does art communicate?) is abstracted to the point where many existing contrivances (works of art) serve as solutions to the problem, and allow many equivalent solutions (multitude of artworks) to be acknowledged. In science this aggregates to research where yet unrecognised truths (or untruths) are structured by theories and methods (programmes for decisions), as possible utterances with help of the code true/untrue, and at the same time to potentiate perspectives, which in the current moment are considered implausible or rejected. What systems theory has targeted is the surplus of theories privileging a thinking in identities (as in phenomenology, structuralism, and semiotics) or thinking in differences as an endless dissemination of meaning (as in poststructuralism), advocating a thinking in differences based on distinctions (it all depends on the distinctions with which you begin your observation). For the art system, we suggest to identify the code imaginary reality/reality and its constant call for new and alternative works, structured by different programmes of poietic hierarchies, which provides all the possible artistic utterances. One of the functions of art is to make something in principle uncommunicable, namely “perception” wahrnehmung available for communication in society3 and it does so by works of art presenting a distinctive kind of imaginary reality. This then is the proposition to describe the self-reference of the art system. The work of art is constructed as communication; it has built in the differences and indeterminacies, which will guide and excite the observer in the reception of work. When the psychic systems perceives the work of art, it engages consciousness. We will argue that the work of art can enable an intense experience of observing: what do I perceive? Due to the inbuilt disturbances, consciousness may wonder: did I really perceive that?

The reference code of the art system

FIGURE 4.2 

Draw a distinction – imaginary reality >< reality

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As we have seen in the chapter on systems theory, a first step includes a decision on the code of reference, next we need to specify what makes communication in art into a distinctive kind of imaginary reality in art. Self-reference in the art system is the special operation of communication in works of art: they are born with differences that makes them oscillate between the determined and the undeterminable. This self-imposed uncertainty is the “motor” in the autopoietic recursive process of art. Thus, we may infer the other-reference as reality. We have also seen, how any system needs to be able to let the primary distinction re-enter the distinction. If we re-enter the distinction imaginary reality\reality on the side of imaginary reality (see Figure 4.1), we can see how theatre works with this re-entry. As an example: the actor, who portrays a character, is an imaginary reality. As a human being, the actor is reality of flesh and blood, portraying a fictitious character. This marks a first element of uncertainty: what is the relation between the actor and the character and how does it provide meaning? And it continues: what are the relations between the character’s way of performing, and performativity seen in real life? The re-entry of the distinction in the distinction may continue: is the imaginary reality to be understood as a dream or a phantasy? Phenomenologists would point at the need to observe how we observe the world. They would insist that our normal observation of the world is taking far too much for granted, therefore we need to take a step back and put our normal observation in brackets epoché, and study more carefully how meaning emerges. Systems theoretically we would say, that we observe in second order, when we observe how we observe. To observe in first order, is to see the world as it is, making our endless row of choices in all our everyday actions, based on our indefeasible values. To observe in second order makes it clear that choices could have been made in other ways, contingency appears.

FIGURE 4.3 

Re-entry of a distinction in the distinction

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Not as a bottomless abyss and loss of meaning, but as a reminder of our values and the distinctions we have chosen to live by. In order to make the art system sensitive to its environment and to make possible decisions in the process of producing the artefact, the art system has created an multitude of different works of art, each with their own programmes and values, as how to make the Imaginary Reality provide meaningful communication. This is what enables the art system to react to “irritations” in its environment, and thus remain in contact with society. I suggest we call these programmes poietic hierarchies (see Figure 4.2). It is a hierarchy because it consists of a set of values as to what art should do, when society looks the way it does as the result of man-made decisions. The top of the hierarchy contains important inviolate values, a poietic, allowing the artists to make all the necessary choices in the process of creation, considering the reception, thus framing the hierarchy’s bottom where the creational and reception processes of first order appears poiesis and aisthesis. To each poietic hierarchy there is a specific dramaturgy, which in a recursive process aligns poiesis/aisthesis with poietics. At first, there may be almost nothing. An empty space, directors, actors, and an allotted time. Then again, this nothing is a lot. The artists all have their visions and ideas as to the work they are going to reach for. Improvisations may give the first clue of material. Out of that, structure arrives. The poietic values are applied in order to judge the material and decide what should transpire, what should happen next. If the group have been working together before, a common understanding of the poietics may be in place. If it is a first meeting, the process will require negotiations or communication of a clear notion from a director. During the process of negotiation (often the difficult part of a devising process), the dramaturgy functions

poietic

ART-system Self-reference IMAGINARY REALITY

WORK OF ART

REALITY Otherreference

Preference code: Poietic hierarchy

As distinct to other poietics FIGURE 4.4 

Art as system – preference code as poietic hierarchy  Szatkowski

92  Art as system

as alignment of praxis and the emerging poietics. Figure 4.4 shows how poietic hierarchies functions as the many programmes that informs different versions of “good art”. Any poietic must in addition be able to mark its difference from other poietics in a negative pole: what might be considered art, but seen from the inside of the chosen poietic appears as unsatisfactory. My suggestion is to understand dramaturgy at work in the art system, as the aligning praxis-theory between poietics, poiesis, and aisthesis. Observing the many different poietic hierarchies allows comparisons that generate landscapes of genre in both diachronic and synchronic versions. The work of art is always operatively coupled to all other works of art. Dramaturgy-ς in the science system we would consequently term a poetology. It is possible to analyse a work of art in order to describe the inherent values and the utterance and information it carries. To regard art as a system, leads us to a theoretical construction considering the artistic communication as a self-supporting construction where artist, artwork, and spectator/observer fold into the synchronic landscape of artworks, and their diachronic evolution (operational couplings). The artwork is coupled to an oeuvre: a row of works aligned with an artist or group of artists. The new work has to have resemblances to the past works, but also elements of variation and renewal. This makes it necessary for each work of art to observe how it operatively couples to “tradition” or genres in both a long historical perspective diachronically and in a contemporary, synchronic landscape of genres. As many collective art forms are based in organisations (e.g. theatre groups, theatre institutions) the work of art is also operationally coupled

POLITICAL SYSTEM

P O I E T I C

ART-system IMAGINARY REALITY self-reference

WORK OF ART

Reference-code

OEUVRE OPERATIVE COUPLINGS DIACHRONIC/SYNCHRONIC LANDSACPES OF GENRES

+

H I E A R C I E S

MASS MEDIA SYSTEM

STRUCTURAL COUPLINGS

REALITY other-reference

EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM

ENVIRONMENT INTERNET SYSTEM FIGURE 4.5 

Art as system – with operational and structural couplings  Szatkowski

Art as system  93

to the decisions that organisations are made of. As a collective art form, theatre is dependent on upon its relation to a given organisation, and its decisions inherent in rules, programmes, and values. The relevant organisations are coupled to the art system, and as this is dependent on structural couplings to other systems (e.g. the political, the educational, the mass media, and the internet system), the work of art is sensitive to many interferences. As guest in the art system, the spectator is structurally coupled to the work of art. Thus, any work of art has to establish its own special way of communicating with the psychic system of an observer. Further, the art system is structurally coupled to other functionally differentiated system in its environment. We have mentioned how decisions on funding from the political system or the corporate business system, has to be dealt with inside the art system. Cooperation with the educational system as well as the systems of mass media and the internet system is unavoidable for the art system. This concludes the brief definitions of a systems theoretical explanation of art. It marks the fundament for the experiment with a theory of dramaturgy. When artists produce and spectators observe a work of art, they are looking for meaning in a special way. What the artists intended and what the spectators understands emerges as communication with the work of art. It does not mean that the artists controls the work or that it is understood if the intentions are identified by the spectator. Intentions are not the key to the work. From a generalised perceptive intention is structures that makes a work “unusual” and not coincidental, but made to be observed. This provides an intensified focus on how the work of art functions. We know that the distinction medium >< form operates in different, constantly renewable poietic hierarchies, processes, and systems. In the following quote, Luhmann presents a key to unlock the analysis of work of arts avoiding metaphysical or ideological biases as his hint to Hegel suggests: The artist primes his form in such a way that the artwork thanks to the form may be observed as such. Since the 19th century, with Hegel I believe, it has been articulated how art only can be appreciated if you watch the means its uses in order to build up effects. We might reformulate this, as we say that art builds differences into its work of arts, which directs how the work of art should be observed. Then it is no longer a question of arts resemblance to nature, or just as a matter of course with social-political intentions. (Luhmann, 2002, p. 161)4 [My translation and italics] So there may be another way to inherit Hegel (and Szondi) without the normative fallacy, in a dramaturgy where the focus is on an attempt to redescribe how the differences built in to works of art, communicates communication to an audience.

First and second order observations To describe poietics and poiesis in a work of art and to compare involves a complex shift of observational positions. When the artists build up their work of art it is done in a process where they see the world as it is, use their values and knowledge of traditions and form to make all the necessary choices as how to combine media into form. They act and experience in observations of first order. In the process, they may stop for a while to consider their work and evaluate it. Then it will inevitably appear as contingent: they could have made it differently,

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made other choices and thus made the work dependent upon fundamentally separate differences. If the disturbance, which made them reflect upon the work, irritates sufficiently, they will have to rebuild, replace, or repair elements in the work. They need to be keenly aware of such disturbances. This evaluation is an observation of their work in second order. They now observe how they observed as they operated upon the work, a self-reflection. When the spectator observes a work of art, it is a first order observation. However, the work of art due to its inherent ambiguities will force the spectator to observe how he or she observes (a second order self-reflection). The spectator presented with imaginative characters on stage, will also observe (in second order) how the characters communicate. It has dire consequences for a theory of dramaturgy, as it means we need to shift from action as a hitherto axiomatic central term, to a new concept and theory of communication. This kind of intelligence is significantly modern as now neither Nature, nor God, nor the Political Leader serves as a given, final reference. The artists are made aware of the fact that the art system builds its own dependency relations from the inside of the work. However hard they try to withdraw from any given form, in order to introduce the chock of newness, they are relationally dependent on the art system. Artists constantly observe how other artists work, or, they close their eyes and try to avoid such disturbances, only to find out that the autopoietic network amongst artists is an infinite observation of observations. To understand the complex structure of artistic processes, we need to be able to describe how actions, experiences, and reflection work together, as a recursive movement between first and second order observations. The work of art communicates to society about observations of society. It offers an opportunity to reflect society in second order.

From philosophy and aesthetics, to poetology The first evolution of poetology involved philosophers and specialised critical connoisseurs. In modernity, art-scientists have tried to identify the properties of artistic discourse. Often these studies have been applied to single art-media, be it literature, painting, music, or theatre. The investigation of a generalised theory of artistic work culminated in the concept of aesthetics. Here the work of art is given status of autonomy, but at the same time seen as a manifestation of laws external to it. The attempt to describe how the senses intermingled with a construction of meaning in a work of art thus created both philosophical, psychological, and sociological discourses. The philosophical oriented aesthetics was often guided by and/or ended up with epistemological problems, which left the analysis of concrete works of art the loser. Interpretation precedes any attempt to generalise findings. However, each interpretation is also guided by ideas of how to use the scientific results. Are aesthetics looking for classification into genres, or in descriptions of social relevance, or into psychological descriptions of identity issues, or towards some other relational issues? And just as important: where does that leave our understanding of the concrete work of art? We insist upon the study of poietics of artworks as achieved particular cases of poietic hierarchies, structures, and functioning embedded in the art system. Poetology, we suggest, is the name of the scientific discipline that attempts to describe how the simultaneity of communication and consciousness is achieved by differences incorporated in the work of art and its self-imposed uncertainties. A historical detour to the beginning of dramaturgy in ancient Greece will provide valuable insights in pre-modern thoughts on art, as well as painting a backdrop for the modern discussion of art and dramaturgy.

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Premodern philosophy on form and mimêsis When the segmented society of ancient Greece connected to the phonetic alphabet, scripture invaded the ways in which society to could present and discuss itself. As the birth of dramaturgy in its pre-modern form takes place only a few hundred years after the refinements of an alphabet made script able to form precise description of sounds possible (by adding vowels), it makes sense to dwell on this epoch, before we continue to modern times. Dramaturgy started as a debate of how best to describe society to society, and the value of mimêsis. Was poietic communication to be reserved for very special educational options or could it be used in communication to society in general? A reflection on early dramaturgical theory provides an initial insight in how theatre as media was believed to communicate meaning. When in ancient Greece a tradition of festivals for Dionysus included an audience of many thousands, seated on theatron, the seats from where one could observe what happened in orchestra, and a on stage skene, it was an invention that carried elements from the former oral based society with its epic narrators, into a new media form. How was this new media valued by contemporaries? When we observe how theatre was observed we gain a part of an image of theatre’s societal function and a part of early ideas of communication. As a media in itself, theatre has no intrinsic value. It is in itself neither good nor bad. It offers a possible perspective on society and its members, and we need to investigate how this function has been valued. The very fact that theatre rose to existence and has left traces behind, indicates that it must have had a certain standing in the Greek society. The Festival of Dionysus was a religious ceremony, as well as a political manifestation, and as another important element, it contained an imaginary reality. We know that those who won the prizes at the festival could later earn considerable political influence; Sophocles thus became minister of war in Athens. Wealthy men, who financed the festival, should not contribute further to other public spending that year, so the festival and its theatrical components were supported by society and presumably highly regarded. Seen from our modern point of view this illustrates the way in which politics, religion, and art were intermingled in an early, segmented, and stratified society. Consequently, any attempt to translate concepts or ideas into modern times must exert considerable concern and stipulate many precautions. As we observe how Greek poets and philosophers observed theatre, the task is twofold: establishing a firm understanding of the writings handed down, and reflecting our own point of perspective. Needless to say, any age establishes its own variety of viewpoints on “history”, so the history of the reception of classical texts forces us to accept contingency. This is in no way an “anything goes” attitude, nor a result of fortuitousness, on the contrary, it requires theoretical complexity and an unavoidable need to self-reflect. Just to illustrate this point, let us take a brief look at some of the critical positions known to us as expressed by Aristophanes (446–386 BC), Plato (429–343 BC), and Aristoteles (384–322 BC).

Tragedy and comedy as specific mimetic media-forms Tragedy was one of the forms through which Athens as a new democratic city tried to establish its identity. A tragic hero from a distant past tries to act but due to flaws in ethos (character) appearing as expressions of a daimon, a religious power obsessing him, his actions are politically and personally disastrous. This duality between mythos of past heroes and contemporary logos is the essential constituent of tragedy. The choice of the past myths and the

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strict avoidance of the present seem to be an important element for tragedy. We know that Herodotus mentions a play from 494 BC by Phrynichus that staged the fall of an Ionian city (Miletus) inflicted by the Persians only two years earlier.5 The whole theatre broke into weeping: and they fined Phrynichus a thousand drachmae for bringing to mind their own national calamities that touched them so nearly, and forbade forever the acting of the play. When Aeschylus (526–456 BC) in 472 BC presented The Persians and the battle at Salamis (480 BC) where the Persians had been defeated by the Greeks, he risked this experiment of presenting the near past, because he “inverted” the perspective and showed the Persians kings as the heroes of a past. Communication in mimetic form should stand back from invoking newly induced feelings of defeat, but celebrate in mythos, the existential vibration caused by serene contemplation of the human life hovering between fate and accomplishments of logos. Aristophanes on the contrary delighted in commenting upon everyday life in Athens. His comedies were satirical remarks where everybody could be targeted and all possible topics could be enjoyed. In the plays of Aristophanes, it was not tragic heroes but simple folks who tried to fight against follies of the city and its modes. Aristophanes used theatre and comedy to criticise tragedy. His satiric expositions of Euripides was one way of mocking tragedy and Euripides’ occupation with juridical processes attempting to find new ways of interpreting human activity. A theme that greatly influenced the semantics of tragedy. Thus, Aristophanes delivered an antidote to Plato and his attempt to create a truly new order. Philologists have discussed the use of the word mimêsis in the plays of Aristophanes.6 It can indeed be argued, that Aristophanes criticises (tragic) acting and playwriting. Whenever someone “disguises” himself or herself to appear as someone else, it ends with failures as in Frogs, Wasps, Acharnians and Clouds. This shows how a single protagonist who gets into trouble uses an assumed identity to get out of it, and finally abandons mimêsis. In the play, Thesmophoriazusae Aristophanes splits the figure into two as he lets Euripides and his relative both carry out the dramatic representation, but one is the playwright and the other the actor. So who really does the mimetic work? Can the playwright be the mimic as much as the actor?7 Now, Aristophanes used theatre to counter what he must have considered stupidities in contemporary Athens. In that sense, he himself was a “mimic”. The attempts to ascribe Aristophanes’ dramaturgy the status of a theory of mimesis (the word is mentioned seven times in his works) seems to me rather awkward. What makes more sense is to see Aristophanes as a critic of tragedy and its involvement in the semantic changes evolving in Athens around Plato, which, as we can now see, amounted to nothing short of a revolution not only of Greek culture but also of the early European mind. In one sense, Aristophanes could be considered conservative, supporting the everyday logic and common sense rationality as opposed to the abstractions of Plato’s scientific aspirations. Aristophanes might have been more Socratic than Plato, as Aristophanes insisted on continuities and rejected revolution. What is fascinating is the fact that staging a play today of Aristophanes without a stack of footnotes the size of a complete encyclopaedia is almost impossible. Alternatively, the translator has to invent contemporary names, examples, modes in order to give the spectator a chance to understand what is going on. We might see this as an example of a distinction between the concrete comedy and the more abstract tragedy. Aristophanes objected to the abstraction of tragedy insisting on keeping his feet on

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the ground, and using laughter as a powerful weapon against what he considered illusions and posing in disguises of “the one who knows”. This duality with different appeal structures continues to exist as dramaturgical forms. However, as implied in the above reconstruction, it is a deeper conflict between meaning and evolution, a battle as to how society should be described to society in mimetic form. In order to understand the importance of this battle, we need to examine Plato’s reading of mimesis.

Plato on mimêsis as distortion of reality versus form as detached Theatre and drama, poets and other craftsmen of the arts were not invited into the ideal state as envisioned by Plato. It is common to refer to his tenth and last book of the Republic where he attacks and dismisses the poets from his Republic. Usually this is followed by a reference to the probably most quoted passage in Plato, where the unique idea, an Eternal Form of “bed” is copied by the craftsman, who makes the bed, and finally the painter or poet, who as another craftsman “imitates” the carpenter’s copy. This passage should however be read with the outmost care, not to confuse our understanding of Plato’s reasoning. As Eric A. Havelock reminds us8 this passage is tricky, because Plato here falls “back into the idiom of precisely that psychic condition which he is setting out to destroy”. The rhetorical intention is clear: the carpenter and the poet are both craftsmen, and they imitate, whereas the philosopher gains insight into forms and the sphere of ideas, here an idea of “bed-ness”. The quote is easily understood, and just as easily “imitated” because of the visual content of the argument and its form, as if any noun invokes an idea. However, this manoeuvre avoided hard thinking, and was thus by far, what Plato wanted to celebrate as the effort of abstraction. When the alphabet allowed writing to serve as memory, it manifestly changed an oral tradition by relieving spoken language from the burden of being the sole container for memory. In the oral society, language had to enable memory and did so with the help of rhythms, images, certain phrases etc. Putting words into written form allowed new ways of abstract thinking. Plato’s project was to frame such an entirely new way of thinking. He was convinced that objective knowledge should be separated from the knowing subject. To Plato forms are not the creation of the intellect; he was as such in fervent opposition to relativism.9 In the oral tradition of the Homeric thought, the meaning of “form” refers to the “look” of a person. Mathematicians had already used the “form” or “shape” to describe geometric figures, and Plato insisted that “form” would cover “almost any concept, which was useful as a method of classifying phenomena or of determining principles of action or of generalising the properties of things or of determining their relationships” (Havelock, 1963, p. 262). Form belongs to the new Platonic language. Havelock reminds us, that historical and linguistic necessities behind the invention of the abstraction of “form” can only be understood with reference to an opposed imagistic and poetised state of mind. Plato wanted to change the image-world of the epic into an abstract world of scientific description. This also meant a conversion “from vocabulary and syntax of narrativised events in time, towards a syntax and vocabulary of equations and laws and formulas and topics which are outside time” (p. 259). Where the oral linguistic tradition had connected “motion” to the flight of an arrow or a bird, platonic language insisted on “any and every motion” everywhere in cosmos without qualification. Motion were abstracted away from arrow’s flight and made into “invisibles”. So Plato uses the words “itself per se” in order to describe that which is “one”, and which “is”, and which is “unseen”.

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This is a crucial new stage in the development of the European mind. Plato saw the poietic tradition as not only an obstacle, but also as the enemy. As the Greek word for “view” or “contemplation” theoria lends itself to our contemporary understanding of theory signifying abstract level of discourse, we have indeed inherited the imagistic metaphor and many other platonic dualisms as well. Plato suggested that “contemplation” should be serene, calm, and detached, whereas the poietic type of mental activity was an excited and active emotionality. Theory is not to partake in a religious rite or human drama, but to observe it. Now, on this background it might be possible to discuss the way in which Plato understands mimesis. Mimesis describes an imaginary reality, thus doubling reality. Plato used the word to illustrate what in his opinion was wrong with poietic statements. Due to their use of mimesis, they are illusions, inexact, and unfaithful as they only “reproduce” a reality without any knowledge of ideal, final, timeless, and exact laws. Without such knowledge, poietics may provide portraits of the world in verbal forms, rhythmic images, but they are useless as manuals for social, mechanical and abstract thought. What is astonishing is twofold: firstly, we need to accept Plato’s idea that poetry is conceived and intended to be something like a “social encyclopedia” (Havelock, 1963, p. 31), and secondly, we must come to terms with the fact that Plato applied the word mimesis to the content of poieticised communication and experience. Both of these problems must be explained by confronting our own contemporary understanding of art and poietics. First of all what we today consider as “art” and artists, did not exist for Plato. Neither word, as we use them today, is translatable into archaic or highclassical Greek (p. 33, note 37). Plato could not be aware of a thing called art, as no words were designated to describe that as something distinct and different. An early notion of aesthetics as a distinct discipline first emerges with Aristoteles. Havelock describes how Plato elaborates the concept of mimesis. Plato describes it first as a “stylistic classification defining the dramatic as opposed to descriptive composition”. Plato argues: When the poet speaks a speech in the person of another, he makes his verbal medium (lexis) resemble the speaker. Any poet who makes himself resemble another in voice or gesture is imitating him. (p. 21) Therefore, where the dramatic composition is speeches exchanged between actors, and as such are imitations or impersonations, the descriptive composition narrates in the third person (we would say today). This distinction is clear. What happens when Plato included the poet as actor in the above quote was another opening of the semantic field of mimesis. Now the poet not only choses words, but also performs them for the benefit of an audience. Plato’s ideal Republic divided the free men into three classes (excluding slaves as a class). The lovers of Wisdom, philosophers who should functions as Guardians of the Republic, partly as political administrators of society, partly as military protectors of society, and then industrial citizens who were providers of food, tools, and other necessities. In order for the Republic to obtain an absolute goodness, four forms of goodness had to be recognised: Wisdom, Bravery, Sobriety, and Justice. Wisdom was essential for the political rulers, Bravery for the military leaders. Sobriety gained by self-control or self–possession created harmony and should apply to all classes. Justice is served by this division of labour. Plato saw the soul as tripartite as well: Reason was the prerequisite for ruling the self, the willpower was to help reason in case divergences with the third part of the soul, where desires, urges

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and lust had their place. When reason assisted by the power of the will rules the desires, justice is conceivable in the ideal Republic. In the following section of Plato’s investigation he addresses the question whether the young Guardians of his Republic with responsibility for the education of the free young men of Athens, should they be trained by mimetic forms? To Plato, the Guardians should be “craftsmen of freedom” to train young men of all three classes in their occupations, pursuits, procedures, or practices (all possible translations of the Greek work epitedeumata). In their education, the free young men had to imitate previous models of behaviour, they had to absorb, repeat what they have been told by the master. In order to educate educators, would they not have to learn about the dangers, the pitfalls of human conduct? If they were to instruct their pupils, should they not have experienced and learned to conquer those parts of their consciousness? The educational theory requires character and ethical judgement of the Guardians, and training should therefore employ constant imitation as carried out from boyhood. By “correct” imitation boy may turn into grown man. So poets and actors, teachers and pupils, are all involved in mimesis. Havelock deals with what Plato in Book X of Republic summarises as mimesis in an exhaustive sense. Mimesis has become the word par excellence for the over-all linguistic medium of the poet and peculiar power through the use of this medium (meter and imagery are included in the attack) to render an account of reality. For Plato, reality is rational, scientific and logical, or it is nothing. The poetic medium, so far from disclosing the true relations of things or the true definitions of the moral virtues, forms a kind of refracting screen, which disguises and distorts reality and at the same time distracts us and plays tricks with us by appealing the shallowest of our sensibilities. (p. 25f) The poietic experience is for Plato addressed to the area of the non-rational, the pathological emotions, and the fluctuating sentiments with which we feel, but never think. What Plato sought to contradict was in fact the spirit of Homer, the very central position given to his poetry as the educational manual of the Hellenic people. Plato could not accept that Homer expressed anything true about warfare, military leadership, or politics. Therefore, even if Homer might still be regarded with deep respect and traditional love, he had to be renounced. “A critical examination of tragedy and Homer”, says Plato “shows us, that they do not possess the know-how of all techniques and all human affairs pertaining to vice and virtue, not to mention divine matters”. Plato knew that his contemporaries held poets in general, including Homer, as primus inter pares, as ultimate instructors of ethics and administrative skills. They formed a major consent in Greek society, supported by the state and even celebrated in Dionysian Festivals. For Plato and his academy this is far removed from what knowledge, episteme is about. It has nothing to do with rigorous training in mathematics and logic, allowing aims of human and social life to be defined in scientific terms. This is why Plato regards poetry and mimesis as enemies of the Republic. Observed from the perspective of our modern world society and its hyper-complex differentiation Plato reacted on epochal changes with dualistic firmness: the poietic image thinking and the abstract thinking of philosophy were not compatible. He sought to establish a revolution, not as Socrates by establishing dialectic relations between past, present, and future, but by marking a dialectical split. It created discontinuity. It opposed centuries old oral traditions of

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fusing “subject and object in sympathetic self-identification” (Havelock, 1963, p. 266). From our observational position, we might consider the Platonic answers to the question of the values of theatre and tragedy as unsatisfactory. In terms of Plato and his project: Philosophy (spelling philosophy with capital P to identify it as the major tradition of philosophy in premodern times, and as still extremely influential in some modern philosophies) Havelock identifies – thanks to eminent philological scholarship – some essential and probable answers as to why Plato established his thinking as he did. What makes Havelock’s reading even more relevant, is his well-modulated pragmatic perspective on Platonism as Philosophy. Plato insists on giving the Philosopher the superior status. It is exemplified in the reasoning with which we opened this part of the investigation: whether the very term of “form”, carried as it is by “the image” as metaphor is not contrary to the thrust of Platonism. Havelock says: Our contention will be that a thinker whose historical task was to destroy the effect of one spell should not have re-introduced another, and as it were by the back door. The trouble with the word Form is precisely that as it seeks to objectify and separate knowledge from opinion it also tends to make knowledge visible again. For as “form” or “shape” or “look” it is something after all which you tend to see and watch and visually contemplate. Plato is so convinced of the reality of goodness and of odd and even that he tries to make us see them. But should he have tried? . . . Are we not simply being invited to avoid hard thinking and relapse into a new form of dream, which shall be religious rather than poetic? (p. 270f) Plato used mimesis to designate one kind of correspondence between words, actions and reality; he suggested that theory and ideal forms, abstractions, and scientific scrutiny provided a much better correspondence than did poietics and tragedy. We might conclude that form for Plato is an ideal stable structure independent of time and other changes. In the concept of mimesis we find roots to later religious, even positivist scientific metaphysics according to which truth is guaranteed by its ability to reveal the secrets of the world: to make the otherwise invisible visible. The power of platonic rationality exemplified in the juridical and managerial strategies of the later Roman Empire, could, when be combined with religious conviction of truth allow the Catholic Church to expand. In a contemporary modern landscape, past reformations, revolutions, and world wars, Havelock’s modest request to consider the possibility of re-establishing “hard thinking” by waving goodbye to platonic answers to platonic questions, makes perfectly good sense. Here, we witness how the problem of correspondence creeps in from the very beginning of dramaturgical thinking, and thus makes it categorically necessary to observe how this concept of form is continued or transformed. Aristoteles was perhaps the first to suggest another concept of form. Partly, maybe, in response to Plato:10 And we would allow advocates who are not poets but lovers of poetry to plead her cause in prose without meter, and show that she is not only delightful but beneficial to orderly government and all the life of man. And we shall listen benevolently, for it will be clear gain for us if it can be shown that she bestows not only pleasure but a benefit. Plato thus indicates the need for a theory on poetry, which will convince that poetry is both pleasure and beneficial for orderly government. Aristoteles delivers.

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Aristoteles’ poietics Aristoteles (384–322 B.C.) joined Plato’s Academy in 367–347, and formed his own Lyceum from 334–323. We do not know when exactly he wrote his notes on poietics, but it is clear that it constitutes only a minor field of Aristotelian studies. What Aristoteles’ work on poietics tried to achieve could be described as an attempt to designate the internal aims and techniques of an individual form of poiesis or genre and to point at its teleological function. Aristoteles was faced with a problem: culminating in Plato’s critique of poetry as an unworthy placeholder for educational and ethical truth and wisdom, the status of poetry was weakened. Aristoteles would not condemn poetry, nor would he return to conventional appreciation of poetry as the privileged knowledge and wisdom capable of exhibiting the finest values and ideals of human life. Therefore, he administers his analytical skills in order to present arguments for poietic as praxis, a specific mode of human activity: Technê an activity that results in an end product achieved by applying rational and knowledgeable means. Where Plato found poetry lacking knowledge (episteme), Aristoteles suggested that poetry might serve its own ends, not those of strict episteme, but of producing both referential and emotive states and thus contribute to an understanding of human reality. What then does that amount to in terms of the concepts, which Aristoteles uses to unfold the elements of tragedy? Before we enter into a short exemplification of this, it is important to remind ourselves of the perspective. In a period of less than a 100 years tragedy rose in a particular historical moment of transformation and change, it included a mixture of old religious thought and new political and social practices. The tension inherent in tragedy between the active intentions of the hero and the passive constraint of a destiny predetermined by the gods carried an ambiguity that we observe as a crisis. The present social and political developments in the city-state and the co-present religious and traditional semantics of the poetry of the hero, is presented for the city-state itself to deliberate. The description of society to society pointed at important questions, as for instance: Can man be made responsible for his actions? As Vernant and Vidal-Naquet,11 explicate: in classical Greece, the concept of what we call “free will” did not exist (Vernant and Vidal-Naquet, 1998, p. 59f), and most importantly, in tragedy, we do not find any conclusive or fixed answers: Tragic guilt thus takes shape in constant clash between the ancient religious conception of the misdeed as a defilement attached to an entire race and inexorably transmitted from one generation to the next in the form of an atê or madness sent by the gods, and the new concept adopted in law according to which the guilty one is defined as a private individual who, acting under no constraint, has deliberately chosen to commit a crime. (p. 81) Aristoteles developed, in his vast authorship, an expansive field of connected terms12 in order to discuss the question of how “desire” orexis as a passive function could – in combination with a “wish” boulesis – be connected to a specific and rationally informed “end”, to the deliberated bouleusis “practical means”. Thus making an informed “choice” hairesis – all in all an act of proairesis: a deliberation, taking place before any action and including both calculation logos and reflection. For Aristoteles the truest cause for the subject’s action is not to be found in the subject himself. He is always set in movement by an “end” that directs his behaviour as it were from outside him, namely either the object toward which his desire

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spontaneously reaches out or that which reflection presents to his thought as something desirable. Aristoteles argues that man, as well as every living creature has the power “of moving themselves” autos, but man’s actions “depend upon himself”. What mimesis and tragedy could do was to communicate this understanding. Here we find the communication in theatre linked to what we would call psychological hypotheses. However, Aristoteles carefully connects those to the social: because what defines the goal, telos? It is an effect of the development of city-state law and courts, which makes it important to discriminate between different reasons for crimes, e.g. committing murder. Hekon is an action performed fully on one’s own volition, and akon an action despite oneself. Hekon includes premeditation understood not as a will to do evil, but as a full knowledge of the situation. Therefore, ignorance may be a reason for committing a crime unintentionally. The deeds of intentional crime that are prosecuted by the city, must be distinguished from unintentional crime based on ignorance – which may be man’s blindness – and thus it retains an association to the early religious concept of the daimon, the dark forces that can overtake man’s mind and make him blind to the evil. This may be one aspect of Euripides’ interest in the deeds of Hippolytus and Theseus, which is akon and which is hekon? Theseus believes he has the full control over the situation when he judges his son to death, and maybe Hippolytus’ monotheism has made him blind? On the other hand, it may be seen as an expression of the absence of knowledge regarding the concrete conditions in which an action is perpetrated. The ancient kernel of myth remains sufficiently alive in the collective imagination to provide the schema necessary for what is excusable to be presented in a way in which, precisely, it is possible for “ignorance” to assume the most modern of meanings. But on neither of the two levels of meaning for this term, which is, as it were, balanced between the idea of ignorance that causes misdeed and that of ignorance that excuses it, is the will implied. (Vernant and Naquet, 1988, p. 65) Here we may find one of the reasons why Aristoteles in his Poetics avoids speculations as to the mythical and religious elements in the tragedies he investigates, and pays very scarce attention to the function of the choir. This whole dimension of the tragedy could not be brought into scientific scrutiny of human actions. It also becomes apparent why Aristoteles’ analytical work focuses so strongly on action in multiple meanings of the word.

Aristoteles on action The basic idea of character, ethos linked to action is expressed in Aristoteles’ Nicomachean Ethics. In a discussion of the Socratic idea that wickedness is ignorance, Aristoteles makes his point: men are responsible for their ignorance because it depends on them and they are free to do something about it. Since the objects of imitation are men in action, and these men must be either of a higher or a lower type (for moral character mainly answers to these divisions, goodness and badness being the distinguishing marks of moral differences), it follows that we must represent men either as better than in real life, or as worse, or as they are.13

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He dismisses the objection that the wicked man because of his state should be incapable of doing anything about it. “For in every domain actions of a certain type produce a corresponding type of man”, Aristoteles makes clear. The character ethos depends upon the sum of actions and dispositions that are developed by practice and by force of habit. When ethos has been formed, man is “determined” by it and unable to act in any other way, but – for us rather bewildering – Aristoteles maintains that prior to the final formation man (the young boy) are able to act in various ways “voluntarily”, which is why education and legislation are of “sovereign importance, everything depends on this”. However, when Aeschylus displays Agamemnon as partly making his tragic decisions due to his ethos he also makes it clear that Agamemnon is possessed by a daimon. Agamemnon is thus both agent as source of his own action, and acted upon and overcome by forces beyond himself. These two kinds of “realities” are co-existent in the tragedies of Aeschylus. It can be argued that the balance is different in some of the plays of Euripides, and that may be the reason for Aristoteles (Chapter 13) to judge Euripides as the one “who makes the most tragic impression of all poets”,14 even though he too can be criticised for his plots.

Aristoteles on form and mimesis as medium, object and style Let us follow some of the fundamental thinking in Poetics by Aristoteles. He is concerned with examining how tragedy functions, and why. In order to separate his object from many others, he points to a row of what is termed “first principles”: one of these is an idea of mimesis (re-presentation). To make such a doubling of reality, we need to distinguish between the media (voice, body movement, language, colour, form etc.) the objects (what is re-presented: people in action be they better, worse or like an average human being) and the mode. For the medium being the same, and the objects the same, the poet may imitate by narration – in which case he can either take another personality as Homer does, or speak in his own person, unchanged – or he may present all his characters as living and moving before us. (Chapter 3) If we consider these distinctions as “first principles”, we find one of the earliest attempts to make a definition of art, Technê. In the perspective of our own modern concept of art, it is worth to notice the unromantic approach. In order to create meaning in the imaginary reality, Aristoteles suggest we consider it as a different media involved in representing information about objects from the world we live in, with different modes, or forms of utterance. When speculating over why such kind of communication has come into existence, Aristoteles points us to children’s play, and its function in learning, and a universal pleasure in contemplating mimetic objects: Poetry in general seems to have sprung from two causes, each of them lying deep in our nature. First, the instinct of imitation is implanted in man from childhood, one difference between him and other animals being that he is the most imitative of living creatures, and through imitation learns his earliest lessons; and no less universal is the pleasure felt in things imitated. (Chapter 4)

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Such “natural” and “universal” principles are no doubt too simplistic, but they link the idea of poetry to both ontogenetic and phylogenetic causes, and to an idea of entanglement of emotion, knowledge and learning. It is in arguments like this we find Aristoteles’ concept of form (and medium) expressed. Form is not as Plato saw it ideals placed outside time and change, but form is universal: something ordinary that may be applied to different media and objects. Aristoteles’ description of the historical evolution of tragedy is sketchy, and not one to concern us here, but he clearly marks the changes from Aeschylus over Sophocles to Euripides in terms of media, objects, and modes: increasing number of actors, reducing the choir’s part, scene-painting, tragedy attaining dignity by departing from satyr plays, more complex plots and speech introduced. “And when it had gone through many changes, tragedy ceased to evolve, since it had attained its natural fulfilment.”15 Here Aristoteles ideas of teleological nature is expressed. Tragedy has come to an “end”, telos. However, he also stresses, that “Whether Tragedy has as yet perfected its proper types or not; and whether it is to be judged in itself, or in relation also to the audience – this raises another question” (Chapter 4). Aristoteles conveniently dismisses the question with a “be that as it may”. He does not solve the problem of how to discern Tragedy “in itself” or “in relation to the audience”, and indeed, how do we acknowledge communication? The problem still lies as a core question of modern communication theory. Aristoteles could not solve the problem of how to combine evolution and “natural fulfilment”, but pointed exactly at the endless restlessness that will characterise Technê in its entire evolution into an arts system. Action The universal form of tragedy according to Aristoteles was intimately connected to his concept of action. Tragedy is the imitation of an action; and an action implies personal agents, who necessarily possess certain distinctive qualities both of character and thought; for it is by these that we qualify actions themselves, and these – thought and character – are the two natural causes from which actions spring, and on actions again all success or failure depends. Hence, the Plot is the imitation of the action – for by plot I here mean the arrangement of the incidents. By Character, I mean that in virtue of which we ascribe certain qualities to the agents. Thought is required wherever a statement is proved, or, it may be, a general truth enunciated. Every Tragedy, therefore, must have six parts, which parts determine its quality – namely Plot, Character, Diction, Thought, Spectacle, Song. (Chapter 6) The full impact of defining action as the central element becomes excessively clear. The meaning of action is here manifold: mimetic action relies on personal agents, who have acted and acts, thus creating their ethos, character. We could point to an immanent theory of communication when Aristoteles claims: “we ascribe certain qualities to the agent”. Whenever the mimetic agent acts, he demonstrates his thought in arguments and statements, and the spectator may thus evaluate the character and his success or failure. But in order to do so, the play must present these actions in a certain arrangement – the plot mythos. As tragedy is a representation of actions and life, and not of “people as such”, the plot is the goal of tragedy. It is

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further so, that Aristoteles connects the powerful means of reversal peripeteia and recognition anagnorisis to the complex plot structure, and “[I]t should, moreover, imitate actions which excite pity and fear, this being the distinctive mark of tragic imitation”. These intrinsic features of tragedy means that it should not speak of events which have occurred, but that could occur, i.e. are possible by the standards of probability or necessity. Now Aristoteles makes his daring move to rescue poetry: It is for this reason that poetry is both more philosophical and more serious than history, since poetry speaks more of universals, history of particulars. A universal comprises the kind of speech or action which belongs by probability or necessity to a certain kind of character – something which poetry aims at despite its addition of particular names. (Chapter 14)16 An action, which is probable and necessary, should not be attributed to a singular individual but rather to a universal form of philosophical truth. That is why the intrinsic structure of the plot, according to Aristoteles, should show a man “who is not eminently good and just, yet whose misfortune is brought about not by vice or depravity, but by some error or frailty (hamartia)”. In Chapter 24 Aristoteles makes this plea for a tragedy that is comprehensible in strictly human terms probably in order to undervalue the mythic and religious background of classic tragedy. Just as plot in tragedy should avoid events “which are possible but implausible” and should contain no “irrational components”. However, the classic tragedy he analysed clearly contradicted these normative assessments. Tragedies tended to leave the audience with ambiguous narratives, and undecidability as to what forces did determine the lives of human beings. To sum up: Aristoteles’ analysis of tragedy points us in a direction where the actions of man are seen as the central task for mimesis. It can have an effect on its audience because mimesis is capable of handle patterns of “possible reality”, and it is the unity of the plot structure, which distinguishes mimetic poetry from the frequently disconnected or discrete episodes in an individual life. Aristoteles prioritises purely human criteria of plausibility and causal logic when he prescribes the proper form of tragedy. The revolution started by Plato finds in Aristoteles an ardent follower who adds a pragmatic outlook: maybe societal order were not God-given, eternal and good, maybe man’s actions were what created societies.

The fall of polis and theatre Plato as young could have seen performances of Euripides and Aristophanes. Aristoteles arrived in Athens when not only new plays were performed, but also older works were revived. Many new plays were produced, but they were not copied to the extent that allowed them to be passed on to us. Therefore, we do not know much about the tendencies in these plays. Fragments appear to give support for a turn in the theatrical productions that focused on human agents and their Romantic affairs. The city-state polis had by then spread out to large parts of Greece, and, as an integral part of polis, so had theatre. It meant that each polis had its own festivals, a professionalisation of acting began, and prestige was connected to the polis, which managed to attract the best actors and playwrights. Internal struggles between city-states became common, not only for land and power but also for prestige.

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Aristoteles witnessed how the city-states of Athens and Thebes were overrun by King Philip the 2nd of Macedonia, whose wealth and power attracted many Athenians to “emigrate” north amongst them actors and philosophers. Aristoteles accepted an appointment as teacher for Philip’s son Alexander (to be The Great) from 343–340. The experiment with a polis run by its (free, male) population came to an end, and kings and tyrants took over. The tragic poet Euripides warned against this in his plays, never to trust anyone who believed to have found the truth and acted accordingly. Action had to be understood as manifestation of human volition and character, tragedy had the ability to expose consequences of human errors hamartia, and provoke an emotional and intellectual educational experience for the audience. Aristoteles saw theatre as an institution able to remind a society of its ethical obligations in times when society were undergoing radical changes. The fragile polis ended, not because of any irrational gods, but because tyrant and man did not know how to control desires and wishes. Theatre and its poietics could have an important function in society because mythos was a mimesis of life, precisely because the understanding of human action had to include emotions as a “natural” and proper part in the mind’s experience of actions in reality. Aristoteles first called it katharsis: “Through the arousal of pity and fear effecting the katharsis of such emotions” (Halliwell) or “through pity and fear effecting the proper purgation of these emotions” (Butcher) (Chapter 6). When Aristoteles later substitutes katharsis with the word wonder (awe-inspiring, astounding, or surprising), to rhaumaston, in Chapter 9, he argues that pity and fear arise where wonder does, and finally in Chapters 24 and 25, where he points to wonder as the aim of the poietic art itself. We still believe that art should make us wonder. The entanglement of politics, religion, education, science, and “art” as we meet it in this very first beginning of dramaturgy, is a hint to the complexity of any theory of art, and to the enormity of the social alterations since classical Greece.

Horace: to teach and please audiences The changes in dramaturgical theory in Roman times were an illustration of how poietics and power interlinked. Horace17 (65–8 BC) underscored an insistence on giving way to the “new” under due obligation to tradition “You, that write, either follow tradition, or invent such fables as are congruous to themselves” (v. 119). Mortal works must perish: much less can the honour and elegance of language be longlived. Many words shall revive, which now have fallen off; and many which are now in esteem shall fall off, if it be the will of custom, in whose power is the decision and right and standard of language. (v. 68–72) Horace was a keen observer of custom and styles. He also had a keen understanding of power structures in ancient Rome. Horace was the son of slave bought free. He managed to find his own ways to manoeuvre in the tumultuous political landscape of the Roman Empire, and wrote hymns to important men, including Emperor Augustus. One of his supporters, Maecenas, secured him a comfortable house near Rome. His writings on poietics mainly pointed at the need for the artist to take in to consideration decorum and proper attitudes towards the rulers and their taste. Horace did not approve of the mass-plays of Rome, with

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bear-fighting and boxers, but preferred the more elitist styles. Given his own ability to generate wealth, the following lines from his Ars Poetica (app. 40 BC) are ironic: O, when this cankering rust, this greed of gain, Has touched the soul and wrought into its grain, What hope that poets will produce such lines As cedar-oil embalms and cypress shrines? A bard will wish to teach or to please, Or, as tertium quid, do both of these. In appreciation of all the external forces put upon the poet, Horace advice is probably sound. His Ars Poetica dictated styles and contents to be used by the two noble brothers Piso, in their effort to become illustrious poets, worthy of producing lines that would eventually be bound in books covered by plates of cypress tree, and polished with cedar oil, probably summons up what Horace learned in his attempt to keep up with rapidly changing tastes. Art had to find ways to make itself valuable for the powers ruling society.

Lodovico Castelvetro: the sole end of art is pleasure Castelvetro (1505–1571) was of an altogether different attitude. In direct opposition to Horace, he declared that the sole end of art is pleasure. What pleases mass audiences is the marvellous. “Poetry was invented for the sole purpose of providing pleasure and recreation . . . to the souls of the common people and the rude multitude” (Poetica d’ Aristotele, 19).18 As content appropriate for theatre, Castelvetro argued that it should rely not upon history or sciences but upon “the everyday happenings that are talked about among the people” (Poetica d’ Aristotele, 20). In this sense, the subject must be true to reality and the action possible. The greatest effort of the poet is to make these events marvellous, due to imaginative invention of plot, characters. Poets should “offer the common people the greatest possible pleasure in their representations of actions never before seen” (Poetica d’ Aristotele, 23). Castelvetro laid the theoretical foundation for the unities of time and place, the play “must be set in a place no larger than the stage on which the actors perform and in a period of time no longer than that which is filled by their performance” (Poetica d’ Aristotele, 243). Similarly to Socrates, Castelvetro found great pleasure in arguing against commonly held beliefs. He also provided harsh critique of a poet who praised the important Farnese family. For this and his contribution to the reformation of the Catholic Church, as translator of Melanchthon (1497–1560) and his analytical works on Lutheran theology, Castelvetro was persecuted by the Inquisition, had to flee Rome, and live a life in exile. His oppositional politics, his critical reworking of Aristoteles, has given him an interesting position in the dramaturgical canon. He is an ancestor of a kind of realism, melodrama, and staged mass entertainment, with precious little confidence in “the reasons and the divisions and the arguments, subtle and far from the practice of ordinary men, which the philosophers use in investigating the truth of things” (Poetica d’ Aristotele, 18).

Aesthetics in the beginning of modern times The modern construction of questions of how art functions began in the European philosophy of aesthetics between 1725 and 1750. British, French, and German philosophers

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discussed extensively and along several dividing lines of materialism, idealism, sensualism, and empiricism. They were driven by the intriguing question of how art experience should be understood and judged. As art found still new forms, and no external critic of noble or religious standing could any longer proclaim that they knew and could define excellence in art, a long row of theories tried to describe the problem. In Antiquity and the Middle Ages, human senses were the source of distortion of the observed. Senses were a lower faculty and could not be relied on in matters of cognition; the senses obfuscated the observation of the ideal and universal. The contours of a general cognitive reflection theory emerges in Europe around the middle of the 18th century. From Descartes through to Hegel we find a new focus on the observer and consciousness. Now consciousness and the senses were the main gateway to observe anything at all. It installed some epistemological problems that were “solved” by separating observing subject from observed object. Today we know that neither subjectivist nor objectivist theories of cognition embraces cognitive complexity. Art cannot be understood with reference solely to its creator, the artists, nor to the work of art or its beholder. Separate theories of genius, creativity, and reception have been plenty. Art partook in the general upheaval in the 18th century, and became a functionally differentiated system. As external rules could no longer be applied to judge works of art, the questions of how to observe the work of art consequently had to be address. The freedom from external rules (autonomous art) meant that artistic forms expanded as art constantly produced new forms in different media. However, if anything “new” could be meaningful art, what then prevented anything from becoming art? When form create differences, art must be able to find a way to discriminate. Art theory or aesthetics have struggled with this problem since 1720s. Who was to decide what was worthy of being called art? It no longer belonged to the nobility or the church to decide. Was it then a specialist: “a connoisseur” or a “critic”, and how would they come to know? In the spirit of the Enlightenment, the obvious answer was to insist upon the need for a science of art, an aesthetic, to establish the truth about art. We will comment upon some elements in the evolution of the early modern aesthetics, not in elaborate historical or philosophical details, but with the hope to demonstrate how tendencies from this tradition has blocked several perspectives on art. Most importantly by an unfortunate moral normativity that clung to art theory, as it has had a tendency to prescribe how successful art should combine form and media, in order to let the beautiful contain the truth and the morally good. A systems theoretical observation of a few of these early observations of art will therefore be instructive as it points at the difficult mingling of art and science in the evolution of modernity. This approach to art is a variation of the many other ways to discuss art, be it in philosophical aesthetics or sociology. Art, as we call it today, has provided challenges since Antiquity. How do those peculiar artefacts function, and how to evaluate them? Is it too much feeling, too much irrationality, or is it a freedom of the mind and discovery of alternative worlds and perspectives? What values does society attribute to art? Is it saviour, or devil in disguise? Is it completely unimportant or a guarantee for collective understanding? After modernity, these discussions have taken place centred in the art system itself as an attempt to explain what it was all about (poietics). It has also found its way into the science system as a prolongation of the first attempts to describe art as a special sensual form of reflection (aesthetics and poetology).

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A pragmatic beginning: Jonathan Richardson (1665–1745) When I read Jonathan Richardson (1665–1745) and his works on painting (1715) and his suggestion of a new science of the connoisseur19 (1719), I cannot help seeing how this work truly expresses modernity lived in England, long before the French made encyclopaedias and revolutions out of it, and the Germans speculated over how to cope with new epistemological challenges emerging in the wake of modern times. Richardson clearly expressed his own particular fascination by painting, which for him was an art form that communicated as “another sort of writing”. He saw painting as subservient to the same ends as that of her younger sister, writing, which by letterings communicate some ideas, which “the hieroglyphic kind cannot”. In writing, meaning came by in a “slow progression of words”, often in language peculiar to only one nation, whereas painting was “universally understood”. Painting came with “such velocity” that it was almost “something like intuition or inspiration” (p. 17). Further painting was an example of how “out of materials of inconsiderable value next to nothing” could be created “things so considerable and of so great price”. Richardson found painting able to communicate noble and useful reflections of human life and diverting ideas of both intellectual and sensual pleasure. He acknowledged that pictures may also “pollute my mind with impure images and transform me into a brute”. However, such abuses must be excepted as, “what is not abused?” Instead, it is the very idea of the science of the connoisseur that it should be of use to the public in the 1) “reformation of our manners, 2) “the improvement of our people”, and 3) “the increase of our wealth, and with all these of our honour and power”. Pictures were ornamental, pleasing to our eyes, and it “informs our understanding, excites our passions, and instruct us how to manage them”. To live without pictures between bare walls would be a poor life. So if the people would use their leisure to observation of pictures it would be “profitably employed instead of what is criminal, scandalous and mischievous” (2, p. 45). Richardson reflected “our common people have been exceedingly improved within an age or two by being taught to read and write; they have also made great advances in mechanics, and in other arts and sciences”. If the children learnt to draw, “they would not only be qualified to become better painters, carvers, gravers, and to attain the like arts immediately, and evidently they would thus become better mechanics of all kinds”. So if the education of a gentleman would include to learn to draw, and to understand pictures ”the whole nation would come closer to the Rational State”. Finally, Richardson is not blind to the economic benefits that would follow if gentlemen were lovers of painting and connoisseurs. Instead of spending large sums of money on luxury, it would be a better investment to by pictures, drawings, and antiques: “as the appearances of things at present are, the value of such as are preserved with care must necessarily increase more and more” (p. 48). Richardson foresees that investment in great art “may turn to better account than almost in any other”, if, of course “gentlemen are good connoisseurs they will not be imposed upon as they too often are”. Richardson even sees the aestheticisation possible: If our people were improved in the arts of designing, not only our paintings, carvings and prints, but the works of all our other artificers would also be proportionably improved, and consequently coveted by other nations, and their price advanced, which therefore would be no small improvement of our trade, and with that our wealth. (pp. 48–49)

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Hitherto art had been tightly interwoven with powers of religious or secular character. What happened in the marketplace was vile entertainment, and not art. The stratified society had made it possible to consider artistic work as exemplification of rules. Pre-modern ideas of style included concrete attempts to select, regulate and legitimise special styles, as did Académie Francaise under Jean-Baptiste Colbert (1618–1683) where limits in theatre were placed on time, place, and unity of action to clean up the way narratives were presented in order to please. Richardson took an early and significantly British pragmatic perspective, including benefits of economic gain as well as of educational and formational improvements as art’s contribution to society. Today we would use the term aestheticisation to describe Richardson’s arguments. The “overflow” of art into the other systems of the modern society,20 were already an element in the early English texts on aesthetics.

An idealistic beginning: Baumgarten (1718–1762) and Kant (1724–1802) Modernity broke down a stratified and hierarchical society and created a need for society as well as the individual to find new ways to describe themselves. Now all individuals were in principle equal members of society. What could secure – if anything – social order? If the old order of society had given stable frames for behaviour and taste, how could modernity then find answers to an immensely increased instability? Aesthetic theory from Baumgarten and Kant to Hegel21 tried to develop a theory of art, and their attempts were so heavily connected to philosophical problems, which did not have their roots in art, but rather stemmed from a general societal confusion that called upon new philosophical answers. The constraint of philosophical theory thus often converted art-specific questions to general philosophical theory. The sociological reality of an independent art appeared in the beginning of the 18th century. At first Enlightenment trusted in human rationality to provide truth, and secure the moral standings. Art however, seemed to escape any regular rationality. Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten (1718–1762) insisted upon the science of art should be a science on aisthesis, on what we perceive with our senses, as there is a perfection in such cognition: beauty.22 Baumgarten had to insist on a science of aesthetics because art and its function should be explainable, even though art, so Baumgarten, related to cognitions of the lower senses; the higher rational senses had to enlighten this effect (we are reminded of Plato’s challenge to those who could provide proof of the benefits of art). An aesthetic science should function as a theory for the fine arts. Baumgarten’s intention was to integrate aesthetics and cognition. The velocity with which the concept of aesthetics spread and the mere wealth of such theories speaks loudly of times where society (and art) differentiated functionally. In the 1780s, Kant (1724–1802) provided the world with ideas and hopes for what cognition and reason could do, and reason indeed had a monstrous job to do: after the fall of the stratified, absolutistic society, no simple guidelines for the individual existed. When society fell apart, and no immediate new forms appeared, how should and could the individual cope? Kant’s answer was “by using his own reason”. He even baptised the new member of society: “subject” and declared that it, at its disposal, had an ultimate weapon: reason. Reason could free the subject from all the mechanisms of absolutistic suppression, ignorance, and self-inflicted lack of authority. In his much-quoted answer to the question “What is Enlightenment?” from 1784, Kant insisted that man had to emerge from his self-imposed lack of Mündigkeit competence, not being able to use one’s own understanding without guidance

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from another. Self-imposed meant that the individual lacked resolve and courage to dare to know Sapere Aude! Kant saw freedom as the ultimate prerequisite for enlightenment. In his short programmatic paper, he advances his thanks to King Friedrich, who insisted on giving the people their freedom to choose what religion they wanted. Choice of religion was not a matter for the King and the authorities. If only the people were lifted out of the yoke of autocratic despotism, it would eventually learn to walk by its own reason. Kant mocks the ignorance and laziness, and would presumably have been terrified by our age and its “let’s Google it”-mentality: It is so easy to be immature. If I have a book to serve as my understanding, a pastor to serve as my conscience, a physician to determine my diet for me, and so on, I need not exert myself at all. I need not think, if only I can pay: others will readily undertake the irksome work for me. The guardians who have so benevolently taken over the supervision of men have carefully seen to it that the far greatest part of them (including the entire fair sex) regard taking the step to maturity as very dangerous, not to mention difficult.23 If only scholars used their reason in addresses to the public, gradually the people, even including women, would experience freedom. How could Kant guarantee that reason had this strength? How could every subject in this sense become a scholar? In order to answer this question Kant had to invent the transcendental subject. Kant assumed that the precondition for the possibility of cognition could not be given in cognition itself. So in order to avoid the paradox of cognition made possible by cognition, Kant needed to assume that cognition was based on something prior to cognition, i.e. “a priori” on a unconditioned condition. Kant declared that these preconditions were transcendent. That was the only way he could explain how cognition was possible, he had to break free of the paradox: if the consciousness had to analyse itself, then the subject had to be something more than the empirical existing consciousness: there had to be a transcendent subject different from the empirical consciousness (Luhmann, WdG, p. 127). Kant replaced common sense with the conscious reflection of the conditions that influenced cognition. This might prove to be the most important element in his thinking. He replaced the focus of analytical attention by shifting it from questions like: “what is cognition?” to “how is cognition possible?” His major system included reflections on three different types of reason: pure reason (theory, question to truth, intellect) Kritik der reinen Vernunft (1781); practical reason (questions to moral, reason) Kritik der praktischen Vernunft (1788); and finally aesthetic reason (questions to sensual reason, feeling) Kritik der Urteilskraft (1790). The literature on Kant is enormous.24 When I read Kant, it is with a combination of admiration and amazement. Reading the long and complex sentences with their reservations, conditions, and negations, takes time. When the concepts then emerge as paradoxes, a certain unsteadiness makes you faint. Therefore, I am only going to suggest a short reading of the four “moments” that appear in Kritik der Urteilskraft (1790). These moments are formulated as paradoxes. The beautiful is pleasure without interest, the beautiful provides concepts without rules, purpose without a purpose, and it is subjective and at the same time general. In one way this reflects the very ambiguity at the point we have called the self-reference of the art system. As Kant included nature as object for his critique, he could not observe art as communication. Instead, he had to explain how the aesthetic judgement observed the world,

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when it could neither rely upon empirical or theoretical means, nor upon morals and principles. If art were connected to a specific interest, it would be connected to existence Sein. That would make art unable to follow the imagination and its free play. The aesthetic pleasurable feeling should not care whether its object really existed.25 We should be free to enjoy. Kant struggled with a problem: if we were free to enjoy, what would the prevent us from taking pleasure in immoral phantasies and extravagant transgressions? One the one hand, the individual freedom – where you followed your own reason – would lead to a radical subjective relativism, which Kant could not accept. On the other hand, if there were justifiable reasons to make a distinction between good and bad judgements, this distinction had to be found in a general common sense, Gemeinsinn. Thus only under the presupposition that there is a common sense (by which, however, we do not mean any external sense but rather the effect of the free play of our cognitive powers), only under the presupposition of such a common sense, I say, can the judgement of taste be made.26 This is the kind of paradox that spells trouble: Judgement of taste is individual, but also common and universal. Kant has decided that reason and theory is the result of experiences spontaneous are sorted by categories common to everybody (the transcendental subject), so our observations of the world are not free to choose. He further claimed that moral judgements on right and wrong may seem to be individually based, but for Kant moral functioned after universal principles. The equivalent theoretical manoeuvre with the judgement of taste is to rescue the free play of imagination, by claiming a common sense. In section 40 Kant explains that for anyone who wants to claim the name of Human Being the least that could be expected was a healthy (not yet cultivated) understanding that a sense of truth, as sense of propriety, for justice are concepts, which cannot have their seat in a sense. A sense has no capacity for expressing universal rules. Only by “elevating ourselves above the senses to higher cognitive faculties” (p. 173) such common sense appears. The art of the beautiful is of interest to society because if the drive to society is natural to the human being, then they have to be sociable (and not creatures) and thus belong to humanity. “Then it cannot fail that taste should also be regarded as a faculty for judging everything by means of which one can communicate even his feeling to everyone else, and hence as means for promoting what is demanded by an inclination natural to everyone” (p. 176f). That such an inclination exists is one thing, to explain how to discern between the right and the wrong judgements are another. Kant had to let social criteria provide the distinction between judgements of taste. He does it discretely. By introducing the culture of skill (section 83, p. 299) Kant explains that skill means training to liberate the will from “the despotism of desires, by which we are made, attached as we are to certain things of nature”. Our will must be able to endure the “animality in us”, and free to tighten or loosen these determinations “as the ends of reason require”. Kant has now forced himself into an explanation of how this culture of skill evolves. Here is his words: Skill cannot very well be developed in the human race except by means of inequality among people; for the majority provides the necessities of life as it were mechanically, without requiring any special art for that, for the comfort and ease of others, who

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cultivate the less necessary elements of culture, science and art, and are maintained by the latter in a state of oppression, bitter work and little enjoyment, although much of the culture of the higher classes gradually spreads to this class. (p. 301) Taste is a matter of skill. Kant argues, that in the end, when culture has found its place in the whole, called a “civil society” (Kant has bürgeliche Gesellschaft), then human beings and their “reciprocally conflicting freedom” – as it is distributed in the different classes – the greatest development of natural predisposition occurs. A beautiful hope resting according to Kant on the humans being clever enough willingly to subject themselves to the coercion of such a society, and states being willing to subject themselves to the coercion of a cosmopolitan whole, in order to avoid states “detrimentally affecting each other”. According to Kant, the art system mediates between nature and freedom, between reason and moral, and it is geared towards the individual which is overruled by the universal, and that again is overruled by what is socially valid. Everything that Kant claims he ends up dismissing. Kant unfolds his concepts through their contradictions. And so it has become to be. The art system does not live by its clarity, but by its insistent and self-applied uncertainty about what is art.27

Poietics of Romanticism Kant had already begun by insisting that the world could no longer be seen as a universal congregation of things, but the world had to be considered as the final unobservable condition for the possibility of observations. Luhmann argues:28 In other words, the world had to be made invisible in order to observe. [. . .] This making invisible of an indubitable given and always presupposed world had for Kant and then for Fichte but most of all for the Romanticists dramatic consequences. It led to an excessive overload of the single human being to make meaning and consequently to fail in the communication charged with equally high expectations. The individual gifted with reflexion got the title “subject”. [. . .] To force subjectivity as the only answer to the world-problem, made intersubjectivity difficult, even impossible if you think of it conceptually stringent. Today this must make us ask whether “man”, “human being”, “subject” or other collective singulars are useful at all as possible fundamental basis for a theory of the social. The Romanticists had no possibility at all to develop such a theory. They had to use the concept of spirit, Geist to fill in the gap, and engage with their experiences of the French Revolution. The positioning of the subject with its gifted rationality meant that the subject created its own world and itself. Nature and the world as such could only emerge, according to Fichte (1762–1814), as reality for the single individual. The subject, once constituted, had to accept that “nature” existed as something different, but as such, nature only confirmed and secured the existence of the subject.29 The free self-consciousness had thus the option

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continually to seek new ways to investigate the world. Fichte saw the personal autonomy as guarantee for progress, and for the development of an emancipated and egalitarian society. As the individual had to accept its own limitations, it was also forced to accept that its subjective freedom had to be restricted. The manifold individualities in a culture, was for Fichte the bedrock of society’s movement towards a utopian condition of complete rule by reason and rationality. Schelling (1775–1864) accentuated how art could overcome the ontological difference between subject and nature, as the aesthetics in works of art was designed as a finite entity that allowed the infinite reason of nature to emerge. In the early Romanticism,30 Schlegel (1772–1829) and Novalis (F.v. Hardenberg, 1772– 1801) asserted that the goal of Romanticism was to make poetry lively and social, and life and society poietic. Further art, and for the Romanticists that meant the novel as the highest art form, should be considered as something in infinite becoming as an effect of the imagination, not of any classicist mimetic origin. Art was a paradox: at the same time an infinite universality and a fragment. That made other concepts like irony central. Not only understood semantically as a saying one thing and meaning something opposite, but also as an aesthetic function in which the unresolved tension between the associative imagery of poietic narratives and a philosophical discourse could generate a new autonomous imaginary reality. Fairy tales, jokes witz, fragments were preferred artistic forms. Imagination was needed for both author and reader. Schlegel said that the “true reader” was the “extended author”.31 The extraordinary problem that arose for art, when rules, themes, and forms no longer depended on patrons and traditions in a hierarchical stratified society, had to be solved. But how? “Romanticism found itself as a new-born in an emptied space, and incited to give meaning to itself” (Luhmann, 2008b, p. 361). Luhmann sees the programme of Romanticism as a reaction to a social situation, where no one seems to provide art with instructions as to how works of art should be made. Consequently, Romanticism invented an idea of art, which solved the problem of the new autonomy on the level of the work of art, as it had to produce its own programme by which it should be observed. It should prove contingency in a way that it was clear, that the work itself decided what was undecided. In addition, this decision should be observable as such. That required the full creational freedom for the artist. On the level of the work of art, Romanticism condensed the imaginary to phantasy. A form that included contrafactual logic: animals speaking, space diminishing, time displaced, metamorphoses of man to animal. Therefore, the reader must be able to find his or her own interpretation of all this as an aesthetic irony: something is said, something else is meant. In doing so, the work of art demonstrates its own contingency and manifests its own programme. A work of art was “self-created indefinite”. That did not imply “anything goes”, on the contrary: determination had to be recognised as self-determination, and observable as such. Romanticism played with “reality”: doppelgängers, twins, name switches, mirrors etc., and it did so together with distinctions like finite/infinite, decided/undecided but also with the distinction inside/ outside “If the real is outside then we are eternally divided from it; is in in us, then we are the reality”.32 These are signs of the emerging system of art struggling to decide what could be treated as imaginary reality, and what could not. As a consequence, the values of poietics varied. For some Romanticists poietics should aspire to the endless spiritual spheres, for other poietics should be concerned with the dark and harsh sides of reality. A question that was stored in aesthetics. What could be the answer to the enigmatic question of the relationship between the subject and its environment?

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Poetology on poietics Aristoteles made an example of how poietics work as prescriptive and norm-giving definitions and identification of rules. In the historical perspective, it is possible to see how poietics eagerly attempts to define and redefine the objectives, perspectives and functions of art. The reconversion of society to a functional differentiation during the 200 years from mid-17th to mid-19th century led to an exponential increase in art system internal reflections. This grew out of the necessity for art to explain what it could provide that no other system could. The tight relationship between sciences of art and art in the first period of modernity made it sometimes difficult to distinguish. Lessing was an artist as he wrote Emilia Galotti and a dramaturg when he wrote Hamburgische Dramaturgie. From then it is possible to demonstrate an increase in the differentiation between poietics as developed inside the art system as artists “doing poietics” and some of them reflecting on their own artistic means. Poietics did also become a concept inside the scientific system. The evolution of scientific approaches to poietics is a story with many intermingled threads. It can be told from many different positions where claims of “ownership” to ideas and concepts depends on who is telling the story. I am not in any position to argue with the different version, but I think it is important to demonstrate how some of the central theoretical concepts applied in my theory of dramaturgy links to formalist and structuralist ideas. Even though text and literature (poetry) were the main objects of study, poietics have had a particular influence on dramaturgy. Dramaturgy has taken inspiration from some of the fundamental concepts. The distinction between poietic and non-poietic language was a common basis for the formalist, who wanted to avoid descriptive links to author (biography), culture (history, sociology). What made poietic language different from the non-poietic, should be found in the analysis of the text itself. Viktor Shklovsky (1893–1984) insisted upon the “devices” in poietic texts that made it defamiliarise the known, old workings of the non-poietic. Meaning arose out of a continually evolving dynamic process. As Vladimir Propp (1895–1970) showed, one of these “devices” could be the way in which the text was presented to the reader in one order (syuzhet) different from the chronological order of the events (fabula). Roman Jakobson (1896–1982) saw the search for “literariness” as the goal for the studies of poietics. Poietics as focus for art research started with the Russian formalist (1910s–1930s). The first was Roman Jakobson’s Moscow Circle from 1915. Vladimir Propp and Viktor Shklovsky were members of that circle. Other circles arose (in St. Petersburg, Prague, and Italian futurists joined in) and now a widespread field of scientific activity in poietics, linguistics, and structuralism began. What strikes one when looking back upon this development is the idea of circles, where collective research could take place in the circles and between the circles. This cross-national and multileveled research could be a great inspiration for the future of a dramaturgical circle. Two important assumptions were invoked in this process: The early structuralists saw as their object the artistic dimension (poiesis) of the creative act, and that poietics in the scientific dimension was a cognitive activity working on systematic development of categories. Therefore, Todorov (1939–2017) in 1968 made a distinction between “interpretation” and “description”, where the latter is the recognition of depth structures in the text. The historical evolution of, for example, literary science may be described a movement from predominantly interpretative work of “critics” who manage values in the specific culture, to a contemporary situation, where interpretation should not

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be fought or excluded, but supplied by the scientific description – poietics – that was the arts scientific specific domain. In the following I have chosen the story of the evolution told by one of the members of the Prague School, Lubomir Dolezel33 (1922–2017), who worked on concepts such as “possible worlds”. I have done so, in order to present one reconstructed road of evolution, and to investigate how Dolezel takes up the challenges from post-structuralism. Dolezel describes two main roads for poietics. From its point of origin in the circles of Russian Formalism, one road was to combine with the Copenhagen School (1931) in linguistics (Louis Hjelmslev (1899–1965)). The Copenhagen School was based on inspiration from the Prague Circle, without further theoretical kinship but with main inspiration from Ferdinand de Saussure (1857–1913). This was the point of departure for the post-war French structuralists Saussure, Benveniste, and Greimas (1857–1913) who presented a generalised version of Propp’s narrative agents in his actantial model. The other road, according to Dolezel, led to pre-war Prague. Here Jan Mukarovsky (1891–1975) founded the Prague School in 1926. Dolezel (2000) describes theories of poietics as a process of transition from normative to descriptive poietics. This makes for a rationalist biased experiment, and it is seen as an alternative to other, more diffuse, art theories. Dolezel looks at post-structuralism (and other position) from the 15th century Charles Bridge that crosses the River Moldau in Prague. Seen from this former centre of European culture, Dolezel describes how many of the theoretical ideas and methods of post-structuralism were in fact already introduced by the Prague School of Structuralism. For Dolezel poietics is the core of literary theory. Within literary studies, this has been an important position since the 1920s and in 1976, Benjamin Hrushovski (now Harshav) established a Journal of Poetics and Theory of Literature (now: Poetics Today). He defines poietics as “the systematic study of literature as literature” and not as historical or sociological texts.34 Poietics should be theoretical and descriptive, NOT prescriptive. Dolezel identifies post-structuralism rather broadly (including deconstruction, as in Derrida, Hillis Miller), pragmatics, empirical studies (like Siegfried Schmidt’s Empirische Literaturwissenschaft), and hermeneutics (à la Ricoeur), and describes how the new attempts to revise structuralist assumptions is a reactive movement rather than a particular ontological or epistemological stance. This perspective from the Czech bridge compels a clear distinction to be made between Prague structuralism and the French. There is “no historical continuity between Prague and French structuralists” declares Dolezel. Dolezel (2000) instead identifies the position of Derrida (mediated by J. Hillis Miller) and post-structuralism as an epistemology that argues against scientific ordering, as this thread of logics leads into regions, which are a-logical and disseminate into an undifferentiated textual free play. “Meaning of meaning is an infinite regress of contrastive linking of significant to significant” (p. 638). Dolezel argues that it is “impossible to conduct science and other cognitive activities in Derridean language”. However, if one ignores “the universalist claim of Derrida’s philosophy of language” and instead treats it as a theory of “poetic language” then the connections to the poietics of the Prague School becomes clear. Mukarovsky’s two fundamentals of poietic language claims that it transforms communicative language, the material of literature, into aesthetic structure by procedures of organised deformation, and second, that the question of truthfulness does not arise. The difference, Dolezel argues, is that Prague School poeticians “posited a polyfunctional language” and I as interpret this, it is a sign of a recognition of the functional

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differentiation of society and the existence of other discourses, Dolezel mentions scientific, legal, philosophical, and economic discourses. Dolezel finds that Derridean monofunctional language would make all social communication rest on poietic language, with its indeterminability making it impossible for any society to function. From this point of view, the difference between post-structuralism and poietics becomes a fight over how to handle the two distinctions: explanation and understanding, where Ricoeur would argue that it is two different stages of cognitive operations on the “hermeneutical arch”, and second, the distinction between universal/particular. Ricoeur would say that the distinction between natural science and human science evaporates because both are dependent on subjective probability. I would say both are based upon the operations of observations. Dolezel summarises his attempt to place the Prague School in a central cross-field, when he says: In Prague structuralism, however, poetics encompassed both a theoretical (universalist) poetics, one that designs universal tools (concepts, models, methods), and an analytical (particularist) poetics, one that tests the universal tools in the analysis of particular literary phenomena. (p. 646) Further, Dolezel finds a methodological thread stretching from Wilhelm von Humboldt’s monograph (1799) on Goethe’s poem Hermann und Dorothea over Mukarovsky’s work (1948) on May, by Karel Mácha (1810–1836) to Roland Barthes (1915–1980) book S/Z (1970). Dolezel calls it “the zig-zag method” where alternating analytical segments and theoretical reflections functions in a reciprocal evolution. I have used the word recursive to conceptualise the zig-zag. Mieke Bal35 finds in an article in Poetics Today, that the objective of poietics is to “develop a view of poietics that is not prescriptive, nor derived from the aesthetic statements of writes, but that could become a serious academic field worthy of the name scholarship, discipline, and perhaps, even, science”. The search for a metalanguage that does not prescribe is essential. Bal expresses some reservations towards the idea of this metalanguage, as for instance when discussing how visual poietics could be described. She says: I contend that thinking about visual poetics fares better if it does not take definition and delimitation as its starting point. This is not to argue that a metalanguage should be avoided but that it should be developed in mush closer touch – literally, that is indexically – with the literary text that offers its elements and cases to its formation. (p. 492) To understand literature and to develop a metalanguage are the goals of poietics. Bal suggests that it should be “a metalanguage, albeit one not so rigorously distinguishable from the object-language, since it forms a part of it. I will then position metalanguage within the object-language” (p. 483). This is maybe a way to accept a differentiation within language. Language is an important element in communication, but not the only one. Seen from the perspective of an arts science that concerns itself with language as well as with voice, space, body, images, light,

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sound, movement, it is obvious that the idea of a metalanguage is unmanageable. What a theory of dramaturgy might do instead, is to establish concepts on a level of generalisation (e.g. communication, consciousness, and meaning) that makes it possible to combine discourses. Therefore, when Mieke Bal presents poietics as the description of how a text “is doing poetics” and the ways it manages to do so, the theory of dramaturgy presented here, is in agreement. When Bal, however, repeats that poietics should not be “derived from the aesthetic statements of writers” in order to become a “serious academic field worthy of the name scholarship, discipline, and perhaps, even, science” (p. 480), then I need to differ. Not in the sense that “aesthetic statements” of the artist can be used as central key to an analysis or as evidence for a given poietic, but in the sense that an analysis of the semantics inherent in these statements can supplement the scientific description. Reading aesthetic statements by the author as to what s/he believes s/he is doing, does of course not point directly to the truth about the specific work or its poietics, nevertheless, it may provide important material for the scientific analysis, as I hope to demonstrate in my reading of such a text from Eugenio Barba. The major issue here is then to mark how the presented theory of dramaturgy has taken inspiration from formalists and structuralists from many different countries and schools as an important input, but has chosen a systems theoretical epistemology as its foundation. The definition of art presented in the theory of Dolezel inherits the idea of a distinction between poietic and non-poietic. We rely upon the distinction imaginary reality >< reality as the code for the art system. In Dolezel’s terms, the imaginary reality would be something like his concept of “possible worlds”. In the theory of dramaturgy reality exist as an unmarked space of endless complexity, any observation (be it poietic or not) is an observation, that makes an incision in the unmarked space, a difference (distinction/indication) allows a cut into reality, leaving the new unmarked space its unavoidable companion. As we have explained earlier in this chapter, the programme that then decides how the imaginary reality is “doing poetics” is a poietic hierarchy. I have found it clarifying to let the work of art be the material appearance of a poietic, and the scientific analysis of many poietics be the object of poetology. I am well aware that this distinction is unaccustomed, but it clarifies how different poietics (dramaturgy-α) are the doings of an art system, and poetology (dramaturgy-ς) is the scientific study of relations between poietics, and how they might be related to other works, and the society in which they communicate. The spectator selects a private understanding and is free to choose how to couple the understanding to the observer’s own life. It might be as an “irritation” or a “confirmation”, as entertainment or learning. The individual spectator’s understanding of a performance cannot be planned or predicted in the process of production. It emerges in an operatively closed consciousness, and depends upon multiple variables: age, gender, class, ethnicity etc. The consciousness of the observing psychic system is the environment for the work of art. In an art theoretical perspective, we insist upon the distinction between the private understanding and the scientific explanation. For the individual scientific analyst the same applies. She or he is depending on a private understanding of the works observed. The scientific observation of art is always a first order observation, and the observer is unobservable for herself or himself. The only way to escape this paradox is to be as explicit as possible in terms of the chosen epistemological foundation of concepts and methods, and – as total transparency is never achievable – by observing how other scientists observe. The professional dramaturg,

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trained on university level, has as primary competence acquired a generalised understanding of poietics, poietic hierarchies with their programmes of poiesis and aisthesis. It is generalised by condensed theories of communication and consciousness as separate types of systems. Such knowledge and competences enables the professional dramaturg to work under temporary suspension of private preferences, but also in given circumstances to apply personal values appropriate to artistic choices. In works of art, it is possible to redescribe differences and uncertainties, some values are inherent in the self-ascribed undecidability. When artworks communicate, they apply specific differences and expectations. Selecting an understanding of the information and utterance will provoke values in the observer; the elements of this provocation are in the enunciations of the work. Based upon the analysis of these elements, we may identify some of the poietic assumptions and expectations as to how art should function in a society that is becoming what it is. The values at work in the work of art, and the way these collisions are uttered, points at a description of society to society. It is also an expression of a poietics. All poietics are dependent on values that relate the artists to the spectators, and dependent on a confrontation of expectations as to what art should do, and how it should be done. These values might be unspoken, but they are contributory to the process of production and reception. In some cases we might be able to find reflective theories, artists deliberating their works and function in society. They are of course not answer books, not any nearer “truth” of intentions or values, however, we insist upon reflective theories as important objects for analysis of semantics, concerning genre and art in general. Just as we maintain that the work of art is a material and tangible expression of reflections and values. The spectators have their personal poietics, often as implied knowledge from former visits to the art system, and through observations of how others observe art. This implicit aisthesis constitutes a horizon of expectations and values decisive in the selection of understanding. We have seen how poietics has found many different forms in the history of art. Aristoteles argued that tragedy had an effect upon the understanding of some fundamental existential conditions of life in the Greek society. Aristoteles’ teleological idea of universal harmony, energy, and dynamics in the world of gods (cosmos), never to be apprehended by humans, enabled him to prescribe the “rules” for works pursuing an rapprochement to the divine serenity. Humanity was frail, and had to acknowledge that it would never be infallible, as the cosmic logic was beyond human recognition. With this power of a teleological conviction, Aristoteles could make his poietic into prescriptions for the well-made tragedy. While carefully avoiding elements in the existing tragedies that did not fit in (choirs and gods). From then on, we find poietics concerned with the question of how imaginary realities functions, and what rules they should obey. In pre-modern times, the forewords to performance-texts were often – apart from pledges of allegiance to patrons or Maecenas – normative discussion of rules coupled to the forces of power. Kant, as we have seen, tried to insist on a teleological idea of nature being benevolent to the idea of humanity, if it behaved with reason and morality. Society then, had to be based upon the socialised bourgeois individual, ready to accept the moral and reasonable demands needed to secure the freedom in a liberal society. When we observe the theoretical labour in poietics, it is important to notice how, with the advent of modernity, a new science of aesthetics took over, and how artists multiplied their efforts to reflect and understand what was happening in this first episode of functional differentiation.

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Lessing as both artist and scholar (dramaturg) was still able to unite the two different modes of communication. Art needed science (aesthetics) to describe why art was important, and had to be on its own – free from interest of political and religious power – in an autonomous sphere (art as system). Sciences of art eventually took over from philosophers of aesthetics (who needed art to provide their own scientific standing as separate from fine arts). When the study of art focused less on the genius and the historical facts and changes, then the study of structures insisted upon finding what made works of art function as works of art. We have seen how poietics became a concept to describe the literariness of literature, the musicality of music, the visuality of visual arts, the theatricality of theatre etc. We suggest a poetology with focus upon the study of how art communicates what kind of values. In times of modernity, the reflective theories are important as they stabilise the art system, by expansion and explanation. Even poietics – like the historical avant-garde – that challenges the art as system separated from society is encapsulated in the art system, as modernity is irreversible. The arguments in reflective theory might be more or less coherent; it does not matter as no “scientific demands” are made to poietics. When art no longer was attached to nobles or clericals it had to come up with new answers, and new forms. Art had to reinvent itself, and find ways to handle the demand of “newness”. If anything new was art what kind of criteria should then be applied in the judgement?

Notes 1 Luhmann (1995) Kunst der Gesellschaft. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. p. 90. Hereafter quoted as KdG [my translations]. 2 Luhmann (1995) KdG, p. 63 and p. 90, “verdichtete Kompakt-kommunikation”. 3 Luhmann (1995) KdG, p. 227. See also: Baecker, Dirk (1994) “Die beobachtung der kunst in der gesellschaft”. In Krass, Stefan (1994) Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner ästhetischen Kommunizierbarkeit. Heidelberg: Carl Auer Verlag. 4 Luhmann, Niklas (2002) Einführung in dis Systemtheorie. Heidelberg: Carl Auer Verlag. 5 Vernant, Jean-Pierre and Vidal-Naquet, Pierre (1988) Myth and Tragedy in Ancient Greece. New York: Zone Books, p. 244 (originally French 1972/1986). 6 Pappas, Nickolas (1999) “Mimêsis in Aristophanes and Plato”. In Philosophical Inquiry XXI, pp. 61–78. Here references to Bruno Snell, Albin Lesky, Helene Foley, and Rosemary Harriot provide a broad background for this discussion. 7 Pappas (1999) “Mimêsis in Aristophanes and Plato”, p. 70. (See also Havelock, 1963, p. 22). 8 Havelock, Eric A. (1963) Preface to Plato. London: Basil Blackwell, p. 269. 9 Havelock (1963) pointedly remarks that Plato had an interest in maintaining his own social position and the strict distinction between free men and slaves, an order that should not be relativised, but on the contrary appear as good, just, and a given eternal condition. 10 Plato The Republic: my italics pp. 832f quoted from http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/republic.html. Visited 1 August 2017. 11 Vernant, Jean-Pierre and Vidal-Naquet, Pierre (1988) Myth and Tragedy in Ancient Greece. 12 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics in translation by W.D. Ross, in electronic format at: http://classics.mit. edu/Aristotle/nicomachaen.html.Visited 1 August 2017. 13 Aristoteles Poetics, Chapter 2 – cited from the electronic source http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/ poetics.1.1.html Translation by S.H. Butcher.Visited 1 July 2016. 14 Here quoted from the translation by Stephen Halliwell (1987) The Poetics of Aristotle. Translation and Commentary. London: Duckworth, p. 45. 15 Here in translation by Halliwell, Stephen (1987/1998) Aristotle’s Poetics. Chicago: Chicago University Press, p. 35. 16 Here Halliwell (1987/1998) Aristotle’s Poetics, p. 41. 17 Q. Horatius Flaccus (Horace) The Art of Poetry:To the Pisos. C. Smart, Theodore Alois Buckley (Ed.) www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0065%3Acard%3D44. Visited 1 July 2016.

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18 Castelvetro, Lodovico (1984/1570) On the Art of Poetry: An Abridged Translation of Lodovico Castelvetro’s Poetica d’Aristotele Vulgarizzata e Sposta.Translated by Andrew Bongiorno. Binghamton, NY: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, p. 19. 19 Richardson, Jonathan (1998/1725) Two Discourses. Bristol: Thoemmes Press (Aesthetics: Sources in the Eighteenth Century,Volume 4). 20 Reckwitz, Andreas (2017) The Invention of Creativity. Cambridge: Polity Press. Translated from the German 2012 version by Steven Black. 21 Plumpe, Gerhard (1993) Ästhetische Kommunikation der Moderne. (Bd. I:Von Kant bis Hegel). Opladen. 22 Baumgarten (1750) Vol. 1, sections 1–100, “Vollkommenheit der sinnlichen erkenntnis als solcher. Dies ist die schönheit” (section 14). 23 Kant, Immanuel (n.d.) What is Enlightenment? www.columbia.edu/acis/ets/CCREAD/etscc/ kant.html Translated by Mary C. Smith.Visited 1 November 2017. 24 Guyer, Paul (2017) “Seventy-five years of Kant . . . and Counting”. In The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 75 (4), pp. 351–362. 25 Thyssen, Ole (1998) En Mærkelig Lyst. Om Iagttagelse af Kunst. Copenhagen: Gyldendal, p. 19. (A Peculiar Pleasure. On Observation of Art.) 26 Kant, Immanuel (1790/1793) Critique of the Power of Judgment. Translated by Guyer, Paul and Matthews, Eric (2000) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 122. (In my humble opinion the best English version to date.) 27 Thyssen, Ole (1998) En mærkelig lyst. Om iagttagelse af kunst, p. 46. 28 Luhmann, Niklas (2008b) Schriften zu Kunst und Literatur. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, (Ed. Niels Werber), p. 366. 29 Hartmann, N. (1923 [1960]) Die Philosophie des Deutschen Idealismus 1: Fichte, Schelling und die Romantik. Berlin: De Gruyter. 30 Frank, Manfred (1989) Einführung in die Frühromantische Ästhetik. Vorlesungen. Frankfurt am Main: Nisbet. 31 Schlegel (1958) ff., Bd. 2, p. 182, quoted by Nünning, Ansgar (2001) Metzler Lexikon. Literatur- und Kulturtheorie. Stuttgart:Verlag Metzler, p. 562. 32 Paul, Jean (1963) Vorschule der Ästehtik [1808], Werke Bd. 5, München p. 445 Quoted by Luhmann (2008), p. 364. Jean Paul lived 1763–1825. 33 Dolezel, Lubomir (2000) “Poststructuralism: a view from Charles Bridge”. In Poetics Today 21 (4), Winter, pp. 633–652. 34 Quoted in Dolezel (2000) “Poststructuralism”, p. 638. 35 Bal, Mieke (2000) “Poetics, today”. In Poetics Today 21 (3), p. 479.

5 THEORIES OF CONSCIOUSNESS AND COMMUNICATION

Wilhelm Wundt (1832–1920) studied psychology, and founded one of the first scientific frames for experiements in this new field of science. Wundt wanted to supplement the natural sciences’ study of physiology and biology in body and brain, and humanistic sciences like philosophy. His work in Germany included laboratory studies. The first laboratory was installed at the Philosophy Department at the University of Leipzig in 1876, where research of perception were conducted under controlled conditions. William James invited Wundt to USA, and many students learned about the methods of “introspection”, not reports of complicated thoughts in consciousness, but measures of timing and ability to discriminate, for instance between tones or visual perceptions. In many ways, Wundt made a greater impact on psychology in America than James did.1 Wundt drew on Leibniz (1646–1716) who evolved integral and differential calculation, and speculated upon the possibilities of the binary alphabet (0/1). The oft-quoted Leibniz citation that appears on the front page of Wundt’s work on sensory perception “Nothing is in the intellect that was not first in the senses, except the intellect itself”,2 gives an idea of how Wundt tried to find an epistemological stand that accepted the differentiation between perception and cognition, and readily accepted paradoxes. Wundt has only appeared sporadically in English and American studies, partly because only small parts of his work are translated, and because there have been critiques from behaviouristic-oriented psychologists. In terms of dramaturgy, it is of interest to note, that the first work on dramaturgy as science in Germany, written by Hugo Dinger (1865–1941) saw the necessity of having psychology as an important “assisting science”. Aesthetics as a modern scientific (philosophical) enterprise began in the mid-18th century. It should take another 50 to 100 years before independent sciences of art became part of the universities. Lessing made normative statements in his Hamburgische Dramaturgie (1767–1769) as to the form and content of the new drama, a dramaturgy that privileged one specific poietics. It is fair to say, that dramaturgy unfortunately ever since has been considered a normative science. Dinger tried to make it clear, that dramaturgy should avoid such normative bias and try to establish a more explicative science. If we turn to the end of the 19th century Max Herrmann (1865–1942) held the first lectures

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on theatre science at the university in Berlin in 1900, he insisted upon the necessity of independence from the Department of German. His importance cannot be ignored; he combined an interest in historical and contemporary theatre, and a focus on theatre as live communication to a co-present audience. He died in Theresienstadt concentration camp. He had just managed to finish his last book on the professionalisation of acting. Born the same year, and also dying during World War II, however under very different circumstances, Hugo Dinger presents in his book Dramaturgie als Wissenschaft (1904/1905) the first attempt to claim dramaturgy a science. The book is clearly inspired by the evolution of a new science: psychology, and its German pioneer, Wilhelm Wundt, Hugo Dinger presents not only a first attempt to reflect dramaturgy itself as a science, but also to hint at the difference between systems (science and art). Unfortunately, Dinger’s prose is loaded with talkative associations, which often lead the theoretical aspirations far astray. His observations and focus on the importance of having a theory of psychology connected to dramaturgy is however inspired. After losing two sons in World War I, he joined DNVP (Deutsch Nationale Volks Partei) in 1918, and in 1933, he became a member of NSFK (Nationalsozialistischen Fliegerkorps) and NSLB (National-sozialistischen Lehrerbunds). He died in 1942. I have not been able to find a cause of death. Varying reports on his Nazi activities makes it difficult to ascertain his level of engagement with the national socialist union, but he has been largely neglected in research ever since, nonetheless his work at the University of Jena, must be considered as one of the first attempts to formulate dramaturgy as an independent science. Hugo Dinger argued that the distinction explicative/normative was of little use, and should be replaced by a distinction of dramaturgy as a sonderwissenchaft with theoretical power to explain how the specifics of theatre art functions. Such understanding should include other sciences as hilfswissenschaft, and Dinger was greatly inspired by the new science of psychology. In his view, any dramaturgical theory had to comprise an understanding of how the human mind functions and creates meaning in life as in arts, i.e. a psychological bias. In recent theatre studies research, theories of cognition have been introduced.3 Theories that for quite some time have been applied in film studies.4 I find such experiments to be of the utmost importance, in any attempts to let wide-ranging theories emerge. There are many observations in the mentioned works, which easily combine with this theory of dramaturgy. However, there are some points of epistemological difference that should be mentioned. In an article5 Blair and Lutterbie argues that with a theory of cognition new definitions of fundamental categories such as emotion, feeling, and action are provided, and new relation between mind and body, “and perhaps more fundamentally, new definitions of ‘self’ and ‘other’” (p. 64). They explicitly comment on the care one should take in such projects. Not only because it is very easy to misuse or produce invalid transformations from a science on which you are not an expert, but also rather because: Scientists use a reductive approach – verification through repeatable experiments that accounts for all other of the variables involved in the experiment – and an inductive process. In the arts and humanities, theorizing (or, more accurately in terms of science’s vocabulary, hypothesizing) is typically deductive. (p. 67)

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According to Blair and Lutterbie the observation of historical artefacts, performances, and “the assessment of the experiential through a particular critical, philosophical, or political framework, (and) often involves a good degree of subjective interpretation” (p. 67). They identify five areas where caution should be taken. I will summarise them, as they are central in several ways. The first area is the misgivings that occur when one uses research on the neural level to explain something in the realm of the experiential or conscious. As warning example, they refer to the discovery of mirror neurons in monkeys. Secondly, they focus upon the distinction between explanations (demanding repeatability and falsifiability) and speculations, which are possible explanations not yet borne by experimentation. The third point follows up on scientists’ disagreements when it comes to explications and interpretations of the findings, where one should be vary of such differences. This – fourth point – suggests the need to be careful about differences between disciplines in cognitive science (cognitive linguistics and neuroscience). Finally, one should be aware of the intrinsic human tendency to think metaphorically and analogically. [. . .] Sometimes these associational leaps are apt, and sometimes not, growing as they do out of experience, habit and desire. [. . .] This potential for creativity and experiential and intellectual efficacy, however, is different than making a claim that what we do has the efficacy or “truth” of science. (p. 68f) [my elisions] The distinction between “science” as in natural science with inductive methods and repeatability and falsification premises, and humanities and theatre science based upon deductive and subjective interpretations, begs the question of observation to be asked. From a systems theoretical perspective, as we have explained, these distinctions prolong an unproductive discussion of who is the most “scientific” and how. We insist that even the most positivist natural-science researcher is also an observer, an observer of the machines that provides data and new images. This goes for humanities as well. The distinction subject >< object vanishes when the subject is acknowledged as an element in any observation. The dichotomy in science between reductive and holistic approaches, just as the difference between inductive and deductive methods, has been an ongoing seesaw battle. Perhaps the seesaw is a necessity in any recursive process of evolution. However, to disclaim a search for truth in humanities is a bold step out of a system of science. Bruce McConachie6 writes on theatre and mind in the excellent series edited by Jen Harvie and Dan Rebellato “Small books on theatre and everything else”.7 He asserts that theatre science “could use some scientific grounding for our assertions about rituals, emotions, and narratives” and he demonstrates how cognition is experienced and explored in playing, acting, and spectating. The major reason for theatre studies to be a late mover on this field is according to McConachie: that most scholars in our discipline remain committed to one or another area of poststructuralist theory, an orientation to knowledge that does not recognize the value of empirical science for humanistic investigation. [. . .] (M)ost poststructuralists believe that human perceptions about gender roles, class relations, historical causality, and

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similar phenomena are entirely socially constructed and have nothing to do with evolution and biology. Poststructuralist also believe in epistemological relativism. (p. 5 [my elision]) So according to McConachie, propositions of a Michel Foucault, Jacques Lacan, and Jacques Derrida cannot be tested and falsified. This is also clearly addressed in McConachie (2008), where the battle against post-structuralism disqualifies many findings in theatre science from the last 30 years. Even though there are significant differences in approaches by Blair/Lutterbie and McConachie, they share the same epistemological problem. McConachie’s appeal to get back to science, read research on cognition and neuropsychology, and only take tested and testable empirical science at face value, is the most explicit. Clearly, the fiend is the epistemological relativism. The arguments for returning to objective science are, alas, not convincing. We have presented our theory of dramaturgy in the perspective of a systems theory. Here, the competition between epistemologies are seen as different programmes in the science system, testing their own versions of finding truth. At least since the breakthrough of quantum mechanics, science has had to recognise the unavoidability of the observer, and therefore have to live with relativity. The mistake to accuse post-structuralism for believing that reality is socially constructed, is unfortunately widespread. It would not make much sense to make claims like that. What one might insist upon is that reality cannot be reached independent of observations, and their applied distinctions and indications; and that any observation can be observed by an observer in second order. This prevents any bottomless abyss of relativity. There is a blind spot in any observation. We have also pointed at the importance of making distinctions between different theories in post-structuralism, and in thinking in differences at large. This provides another approach to our study of cognition, perception, emotion, and consciousness. We need theories of consciousness, just as we need theories of social systems and communication. Obviously, the experiment here has to accept that it will be a sketch, a condensed version of newer neuropsychological research, cognitive theories of mind, and other sources. This condensed version has to be compatible with the sociological theory. This is a necessity if we want to investigate the way in which works of art make the extraordinary simultaneity of communication and consciousness accessible. For a start let me introduce the model of consciousness that I have arrived at. It states that consciousness is always embodied; it is in constant connection with all the biological, chemical, physical systems contained in the human body. Luckily, it is not all the information streaming around that our consciousness needs to attend to. We would not be able to regulate the liver to send signals to other organs, or to ask the heart to remember to take the next beat. This is partly due to the fact, that our consciousness is embrained. The brain constantly deselects information, and only provides consciousness with information of vital importance for our survival. This makes our consciousness dependent on the environment in which it is situated – that is why we say the consciousness is embedded. Leibnitz made the drastic statement that everything that we are able to think with our consciousness have first been in our senses, and with the paradoxical comment: except our consciousness. In a systems theoretical perspective this is to say, that consciousness is an operatively closed system. It is produced by its own operations. It also identifies a

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fundamental concept for any theory of mind: perception. Here we have learnt extremely valuable lessons from the neurosciences, such as the concept of arousal. From the brain to different centres of perception, five distinctive different systems of arousal with each their hormones as bearer of signals moves with incredible speed both up and down. Arousal is an affective state. It has in the first place no specific emotional value. Emotions are what we call affects when they are recognised by the brain and our consciousness. Thus, affect is always a first estimation of relations and the embeddedness of the body. As emotions are conscious, affects do not have to be. When emotions are further qualified they may turn into feelings, that we are able to identify and describe. In this way, we recognise the interdependency between perceptions and emotions. All this, of course, is only possible because we have a memory. Our brain are able to contain perceptions and emotions, and what we call cognition is, put simply, the ability to let new operations (thoughts, precepts, or emotions) connect with recollected operations. Consciousness, we claim, is the coordinator of the three fundamentals: perception, emotions, and cognition. It is illustrated by Figure 5.1. This reduction of the complicated matter of consciousness is a condensed simplicity. We are aware of the many relations and concepts that do not appear. The main reason for the chosen version is the wish to make this part of the theory of dramaturgy easily accessible, but also as rich as possible, in connectivity to other theories and concepts. In the following sections, we address each of the three components to suggest possible connections. Our brain depends largely on the operation of neurons, and we know something about the structure and function of those neurons, we know what molecules are involved, we can describe what they do, namely fire, or engage in patterns of excitation. There are hypotheses about which genes make those neurons behave as they do.

MEMORY Meaning COGNITION

THE SENSED Perceiving perceptions PERCEPTION

FIGURE 5.1 

Consciousness

CONSCIOUSNESS

VALUES Expectations EMOTION

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But clearly, human minds depend on the overall firing of those neurons, as they constitute complicated assemblies ranging from local, microscopic scale circuits to macroscopic systems spanning several centimetres. There are several billion neurons in the circuits of one human brain. The number of synapses formed among those neurons is at least 10 trillion, and the length of the axon cables forming neuron circuits totals something on the order of several hundred thousand miles. (Damásio, 1999, p. 259)8 To make a sketch of consciousness is in the first place a reductionist adventure, a chance to speculate and infer endless hypotheses. Nevertheless, humans try to understand, even beyond what we see – in life, machines, and consciousness.

Perception Our perception is traditionally connected to our five senses, but has to be supplemented by two other body related senses. Seeing is made possible by our eyes, with is camera-like structure that focuses and adjust light beams on the retina. Here over 100 million receptors reacts to light and six million receptors register red, blue, and green light, making us see the world in colour. Smelling is a rather special sense because the nerves from the nose feed directly into the primitive part of our brain, called the limbic system. Here we find a combination of centres for fear, sex, hunger, and memory. This makes the sense of smelling able to release memories and feelings that are often stronger than memories and feelings relate to the other senses. The amount of information transmitted per second from our sense of smelling are markedly lower than from other senses. Hearing is a transformation of waves of pressure in the air to sounds. The small hairs (cilia) in the ear create the transformation. Ear and brain cooperate to convert the size and frequency of these waves to different tones and volumes, and to decide from where the sound comes. This ability to locate the source of sound is an effect of our ability to discriminate time differences, down to 1/10,000 of a second. Tasting stems from receptors on our tongue reacting on chemical molecules in food. We have approximately 10,000 taste buds with each 1,000 receptors. Even though that should make it possible to distinguish ten billion different tastes, we are not particularly good at it. We need the smelling sense as well. Touching is a feeling sense that informs the brain about contacts with our body. Pressure, stretch, movement, temperature, and pain are registered by receptors all over our skin. Fingers, feet, and face have the highest density of receptors. Our inner organs have fewer receptors. Body sensing is a collection of inputs from muscle and joints that keep the brain updated on where different parts of our bodies are placed in relation to each other. Head up, mouth closed, arms crossed. Balancing is a sense that supplements the body sensing, it sends information to the brain from small channels in the ear filled with liquid. It registers the movements and positions of the head relative to gravity and pace.

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Arousal Neurological brain research is now able to explain the process of transformation from sensing to consciousness. It is a result of systems of arousal.9 Each system has its own location in the evolutionarily oldest and primitive parts of the brain; each system has its own connections via amygdala (another “primitive” part of the brain) and further through specific neurotransmitters, which sends signals to the cortex where they stimulate centres for perception, emotion, motor-activity, and cognition. However, the flow also goes the other way from cortex and emotion centres to the centres of arousal. These two systems may operate independently, but they interpenetrate each other in many other cases: cortex centres may regulate strength, length, and form of the output from arousal centres. Cortex vision registers danger as a momentary chock, and the body moves influenced by arousal centres, milliseconds later “danger” is registered as a snake on the ground. The exact temporal connections are not always clear but the feedback mechanisms “stages a specific dynamic information” (Stern, 2010, p. 73). Biochemical processes in the brain are parts of our consciousness. It helps us to ascribe meaning to experiences and actions. This research and its results are vitally important for the construction of a theory of dramaturgy. Depending on the specific form of arousal and their neurotransmitters, different aspects of our consciousness are activated. On the most basic level, a general arousal serves to regulate the cyclic process of sleep and waking state. Control of emotions, motor activities, attention, etc. are due to more specific arousal systems, and their complex interfaces in the brain, reveals perceptions and emotions to our cognition. In fact, experienced arousal is externalised as emotions, which control and valuate perceptions. Perception could be defined in all simplicity as an immensely rapid process of surprise (what is this sound?) and recognition (low cognitive level): Buzz=danger=wave-arm-to-make-it-go-away; or (high cognitive level): Ah, it was the buzz of a fly. In perception, we obtain information of high complexity, but with comparatively unfocused cognitive and analytic depth. We have not yet decided whether it is random peripheral movements or something else.

Forms of vitality Stern suggests that what we above have described as the two supplements of senses (body sensing and balancing) is part of what we would call the seventh sense. Perceptions and senses are traditionally seen as modality specific, with each their specific sense organs in the body and brain. The seventh sense has no specific sense organ or place in the brain. Stern has had different names10 for this, but in 2010 he termed it the sense of forms of vitality. This modality senses duration, speed, and temporal forms of the force in the perceived. To do so, requires a combination of force (or intensity), movement, time, space, and Stern adds intentionality. Now, anger may be externalised in many different forms of vitality: it may “explode” or “leak out” or be “cold”. None of these forms is solely reserved for “anger”. The dynamic changes in forms of vitality seems to be a result of perceptions. If a supra-modal sense of perceptions exist, it has to be interconnected with cognition and as a result with our consciousness. Stern discusses the relation between consciousness, emotions, and forms of vitality, and ascertains the level of confusion on this issue. I would suggest that this confusion might stem from the attempt Stern makes to conflate consciousness and communication.

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Emotions As a consequence of Stern’s choice not to enter into the discussion of function of consciousness in dynamic forms of vitality, he instead chooses to work with a broad concept of feelings, to which he locates “affective feelings”, and “background feelings”, and adds dynamic forms of vitality. Here he follows Damásio,11 who differentiates between “feeling your emotional states, which is to say being conscious of emotions, offers you flexibility of response based on the particular history of your interactions with the environment” (p. 133). Damásio suggests that primary emotions (dependent on the oldest part of the brain) does not describe the full range of emotional behaviours. They are, to be sure, the basic mechanism. However, I believe that in terms of an individual’s development they are followed by mechanisms of secondary emotions, which occur once we begin experiencing feelings and forming systematic connections between categories of objects and situations, on the one hand, and primary emotions, on the other. (pp. 133–134) This leads us to the conclusion, that emotion is the combination of a mental evaluative process, where responses to that process are directed “mostly toward the body proper, resulting in an emotional body state, but also toward the brain itself” (p. 139). Then how do we define “feeling”? Damásio suggests that all emotions generate feelings if we are awake and alert. However, only some feelings relate to emotions, there are many that do not: “I call background feelings those that do not originate in emotions” (p. 143). A background feeling corresponds to the prevalent body state between emotions. When emotions are cognitively acknowledged, they become feelings, which can be named and reflected. The important conclusion is that feelings are just as cognitive as any other perceptual image. Where Damásio places background feelings as emotions and perceptions, Stern’s vitality dynamic is functioning in all areas, which means they can be independent of emotions and sensing. Stern argues that background feelings refers to the general feeling of inner state of the system, responding to how adequate it functions in a given moment. It is a feeling of that which happens. Vitality dynamics on the other hand respond to changes in an ongoing event. It is a focus upon forms of vitality and the variations in intensity, interest and life (Stern, 2010, p. 54). If we follow this lead, it appears that Stern is more occupied with how we experience dynamic changes in communication, where Damásio is concerned with the processes in the closed psychic system. We might add another perspective on feelings. As they connect with memory and cognition, they establish patterns of evaluative cycles: experiences gather around expectations as connected with feelings. If our expectations are met, we may be happy or neutral, if they are negated, we may become sad, angry, or furious. It all depends on how important those expectations were. This is where a concept of values could be introduced combining psychological and sociological interests, as we observe values as functions, externalised in communication.

Cognition Cognition is, put simply, the ability to let new operations (thoughts, precepts, or emotions) connect with recollected operations, we claimed. In the European humanistic tradition,

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cognition was attributed to humankind as the power that separated man from animals and machines. Sensing was common to both animal and man. Machines were relief and continuation of human actions. This tradition is possibly responsible for the attribution of reason, rationality, and reflectivity to cognition, which led to an underexposure of the importance of the senses and perception. If the brain is an operatively closed system, we need to explain how we arrive at conception of the outer world. The only answer is through our senses and perception. The externalisation of neurophysiological processes (arousal) appears in perception and emotions. Cognition is observation of these appearances. Not all cognition results in meaningful entities; cognition is not only rational thoughts. Memory stores experiences, and it order to do so, cognition has to observe and decide how to connect the new experience with those already stored. The capacity of our brain is impressive, however the constant flow of new operations, experiences, and perceptions makes it absolutely necessary to forget. Oblivion and forgetfulness is imperative. It also means that new operations and situations need to be related to preceding operations, which is why our consciousness works on condensations of previous operations and situations, i.e. to store only the most important information under exclusion of redundant or unimportant conditions. We will often mark this as “knowledge”. It is however, important to mark that this knowledge is not necessarily long chains of thought or theories it is often implicit knowledge. Others call it tacit knowledge, which in our opinion it is not, as it always can be demonstrated. Cognition is primarily the ability to generate and recognise redundancies. Cognition thus saves consciousness the trouble of repeating all the details surrounding an experience, but enables confirmation and recognition. This takes place in the individual psychic system. This is the prerequisite for communication. The environment does not feature “information” nor “themes”. Only observations with indications and distinctions are able to provide that. There are no guarantee that what cognition observes and remembers is consistent with “reality”. It is left to communication and its flow of events or operations. Events appear and disappear in the same moment. They thrust an indeterminable future in front of them, as well as leaving “knowledge” open for confirmation or changes.

Consciousness Consciousness is not able to control its own neurophysiological conditions, barely register them. Neurophysical processes are strictly confined to the place in the brain and body where they take place. Consciousness must leave out all information concerning locations and instead de-locate cognition, in order to generate the impression that we are able to perceive something “out there” (Luhmann, GdG, p. 125, note 163 / Vol. 1 p. 375, note 163). Consciousness is an operatively closed system, where perception, emotions, and cognition constantly interacts. It means that no one has access to the thoughts and images. We know this, and we try to compensate for this in communication. It means that consciousness must accept that it cannot reach into others. Therefore, whatever we try to understand is dependent on our observation and selection of information and utterance. As this applies to all who participate in communication, it means that double contingency is a condition of life. We are now able to formulate how consciousness as a structurally determined system is medium for communication. This, says Luhmann, is only possible because consciousness

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and communication in social systems never fuse, never overlap, as they are completely separate autopoietic systems.12 However, before we enter the discussion of communication, there is one more complication to consider in the concept of consciousness. Given the distinction between the psychic system, its consciousness and communication, it follows that interpenetration is the only “contact”. In an interpenetration13 one system is used in the construction and reproduction of another. Consciousness is thus dependent on the complexity of communication (but cannot control it). What does that entail? For consciousness, it means that any attempt in consciousness to observe itself, has to rely on communication. Or, to put in another way: consciousness is divided by a re-entry of the distinction consciousness >< communication on the side of consciousness. The psychic system reproduces itself in relation to communication but it uses its difference from the social systems and communication as an operative difference within consciousness. The psychic system comes to understand itself as an addressee of communication. This confronts consciousness with a split. Freud named it the unconscious, but it might also be described as that which “emerges as the residue for psychic material that must be repressed for the contract between the ego and the symbolic world to hold”.14 Where consciousness responds directly to the demands, expectations, and programmes (roles) from its environment, it can contain the negotiated contracts. In the fulfilment of the demands however, some elements have to be repressed, the demands from the role/programme/expectations leaves consciousness with a residue, a surplus of potentiality, which has not been addressed. This creates an internal split between the images in consciousness of potentiality, and that which have been actualised. It is a split between consciousness and the “forgotten” or “submerged” parts of the personal potentiality and desires. Consciousness registers that it is contingent on finding acknowledgement in several expectations from social systems and other psychic systems. This creates a split between consciousness as addressee and the many different external addressers. In both cases, consciousness registers something that eludes it. It has to accept the split between consciousness and communication. Consciousness is a medium for communication. As consciousness operates as an autopoietic system, it can only rely on its own operations: it can draw a distinction, indicating something, and then observe. This enables other operations to be observed. Cognition combines the operations, and recursively they become meaningful. The single operation cannot access itself it only produces connectivity to earlier operations and indicates restrictions to further operations. Cognition observes and meaning unfolds. Meaning as medium has been given form. If we ask how consciousness observes, we have seen how it depends on the operations of perception and emotions, some of which are beyond control of consciousness, and some of which are products of cognitive operations. If consciousness wants to see itself, it is confronted with the splits described above, and it is then confronted by sociality, by communication. Therefore, what consciousness observes is that any attempts to understand itself, is inextricably caught up in communication. Consciousness can only observe that its own working is to function as medium for communication, which is not consciousness. The psychic system reflects an internal other (as in the residues of unused potentiality) and it reflects an external other, as the representative of the social order, to whom communication is addressed. The irony of the situation is that only the latter [the external other, JS] gives voice to the former [the internal other, JS]. It is the re-entry of distinction between communication

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and psyche into the psyche that makes the trick possible, the trick by which the psyche comes to treat itself, the sphere of its own unconscious operations, as another address of communication. (Bonfer and Schmidt, 1999, p. 7) It means that the psychic system has to recognise that it will never be present for itself as a unity. In the beginning was difference. There is no possible return to “an unmarked space”. Consciousness’ operations with perceptions and emotions are conducted with a speed that by far exceeds that of communication. As Bonfer and Schmidt state: The fullness of the psychic processes will thus always exceed and escape any socially informed distinctions. In its attempt to observe itself via communication the psyche will therefore always be surprised by itself and these surprises in turn irritate communication. (p. 9) With this in mind, let us now turn to communication as an autopoietic system.

Communication Human communication is, for all its complexity, fundamentally a time-based appearance of social meaning. When humans are gathered in a system of reciprocal acknowledgement of co-presence, where I observe others, and I know that they are aware of being observed, just as I am aware that they are observing me, we have a system, which is an immense potential field for communication. The acknowledged co-presence of two or more human beings activates the hydraulic of interpenetration. It is a combination of suction and pressure: when one human being observes another it makes its own complexity available for the other psychic system, it adapts its own behaviour to those of the receiving system and thus affects itself as the penetrating system. It is not intersubjectivity, neither is it communication. In this forceful field, be it the street, the market, the bus, the bed, we are in constant movement: we breathe, we blink, and our body is in constant movement, and we perceive the other or others. Without this pressure of presence, society would not be possible. Without society as an endless environment of possible meanings, co-presence would not create the need to communicate. In an age of internet communication “co-presence” need not indicate presence in the same, shared space, but when you surf the net, you know when you do so as an observer, or as an observed observer. Man meets man: friend or foe? What are the possible expectations? Beginnings of sexual relations: who is the first to commit him- or herself? By committing oneself to the other, the other is given the freedom to accept or deny; the other gets freedom to select and hence to condition the system of intimate communication. Before that, he might have spotted the wedding ring on her finger, and arrived at the conclusion, he should probably not begin communication at all. Such considerations find their reasons outside the actual co-presence. The social environment makes itself noticed in the co-presence but also as obligations and bindings connected to the roles that each person has outside the given situation. They are somewhere else associated with other histories and expectations.

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This applies to all participants in the mutually recognised co-presence, and it produces a restriction on the endless possibilities – an articulated contingency – by enabling a collective short-term memory. To make a long story short: when societal complexity increases so does the amount of different roles making demands on the person. In traditional segmented or hierarchical societies, co-presence took place in the family or – if outside – at least within the same class. This provided a certain clarity and manageability. You considered primarily those present. The code of conduct was established by reference to the church and the ruling classes. In the modern bourgeois society of the 19th century, co-presence could occur under diminished consideration for those not taking part in interactions. The wedding ring would not necessarily stop the flirtation. In modern society, conditions of trading and managing conflicts could be managed because society understood itself as regulatory instance for economy and law. So usurpation and conflicts could be allowed to a degree that no former society would have allowed. Luhmann argues that with the French Revolution it became obvious that an idea of society based alone on forms of action in the upper classes and their socialising, were no longer of any use. The ideology of society could not be controlled by ideas of action. The difference between individuals in co-presence and society rapidly becomes more significant. Because all interaction cannot anymore be referred to a clearly identifiable social subsystem. Thus, no single ethos could any longer guarantee coherence. In the hyper-complex modern society of the 21st century, individuals in co-presence and society are drawn so far apart that no bridges are able to span the gap. No actions – by the participants of high standing and importance – can radically change or coordinate social systems. We live our interactions; we comprehend them and make them understandable. However, the sequences of such episodes seen from the individual’s perspective, cannot explain, influence, or control the complexity of society. Action is always social action.15 We have to take into consideration what others might mean. Action is only societal if it is intended and/or experienced as communication. It might sound trivial, but it is perhaps the most important element of a systems theoretical theory of communication. Actions in modern society

ENUNCIATION CONSCIOUSNESS Embodied Embrained Embedded

SOCIAL SYSTEM

CONSCIOUSNESS Embodied Embrained Embedded

ENUNCIATION PSYCHIC SYSTEM - EGO

FIGURE 5.2 

Psychic system and social system

PSYCHIC SYSTEM - ALTER EGO

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only take social meaning if it is communication. If social meaning appears only in communication we need to understand how communication works as social system. We are – as psychic systems – accustomed to observe communication as our conscious actions. However, communication does need consciousness as environment, but we are dealing with two different types of systems. The psychic system works with consciousness, but the social system works with communication. This difference is theoretically extremely important. The psychic system is environment for the social system and its “rules” of communication. Luhmann has provokingly stressed that it is not the human being who communicates, but communication. Communication is regulated by references to the social differentiated systems that exist in modern society; these systems produce organisations (operating by inclusion and decision-making) to compensate for the ever-widening gap between individuals in co-presence and society. It is a fact that no interaction can any longer assure the participants of the meaning of society by the force of conviction that stems from presence. This is the experience, which the formula of loss of meaning tries to activate – and misuse. The formula responds to nothing but the historically unusual differentiation between societal system and interaction system. There is no reason to react to this with cultural pessimism.16 [My translation and italics] Cultural pessimism is an easy way out, blaming society; however, the differentiation between interaction and society could also be seen as the condition that makes sociocultural evolution possible, and finally reframes the question: how does society describe itself and the world? As William James said: we break the world into histories, art, and sciences; we would say, the modern world is a hyper-complex, poly-contextual society, where socially differentiated systems exist and observe the world, and, in a second order observe how other systems observe, including the system observing itself.17 How does this complicated working of communication evolve?

Communication in an ontogenetic perspective Aristoteles pointed us in the direction of the child’s play and pleasure in mimêsis to understand the “origins” in an ontogenetic perspective. As play is distinctively important in any theory of dramaturgy, we must acknowledge that it starts as communication. From infanthood, we learn to communicate and read others’ communication. Each individual consciousness operates as a closed system. We cannot enter into another human being’s consciousness, feel her feelings, or think her thoughts. As psychic systems, we are operatively closed, and our consciousness is only one of the innumerable systems that constitute the human being. In order to survive we have had to learn the process of communication

Affective attunement Daniel Stern (1934–2012) studied early infanthood communication, and developed various methods to study the early interaction between child and parent. He showed how the infant was actively participating in communication, and how parents could enhance vital affects, using cross-modal perception. When the child (boy, eight months old) stretches out for a toy

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just outside his reach, his mother watches, as the boy has to tauten all his muscles to reach the last centimetre, his mother says “Uuuuuh . . . Uuuuuh!” with very tight voice lips, so her voice and timing matches the efforts of the child. This dynamic process is communication. The mother expresses her understanding of the child’s inner condition, not in a simple imitation of the bodily movements, but in an attempt to express the affect in the child. Affective attunement has as its reference point an inner emotional condition. In this sense mimesis is not only an imitation of outer actions, but also of inner affective state of mind. Affective attunement is thus crucial for development of the ability to belong, experience co-existence and solidarity. Following Stern, it is the ability of the infant to register and combine supra-modal qualities like intensity (force), time, space, movement (velocity), directedness (intentionality), and life, which allows communication to flow in dynamic forms of vitality.18 These forms of vitality may be short, only seconds long, perceptions of a dynamic change of “tonicity” that informs us about our surroundings – in nature and human interaction. As humans, we are in constant movement, just as the hyper-complex world surrounding us. A recursive movement between perception as “surprise” and “recognition” lasting milliseconds may develop into communication. It enhances an understanding of the complexity of communication as developed from an ontogenetic perspective. The cross-modal communication and its use of dynamics common to all modalities serve as prerequisite for any interpretation of human movements and actions. Forms of vitality are always present in human interaction and communication. The mother’s response to the child’s movements is attuned by the child. It stimulates the complexity of the child’s psychic system. Interpenetration19 is thus a paradox of simultaneous stimulation of dependency between the two and an increase in degrees of freedom to explore their relation and own individuality. We learn to observe the minute differences in gestures and mimic, in movements of the eyes or of an arm, this is possible because forms of vitality generate meaning across several sensual modalities in a holistic form. All time-based works of art connect to this dynamic stream of variations in movement and sound, we ascribe meaning to these forms of vitality of life.

Communication in an phylogenetic perspective Humankind has communicated in order to survive. As a species (Greek: fylos) we recognise an enormous evolution (Greek: genesis origin, source) from Neanderthals to today in the communication matrixes of societies. For the theory of dramaturgy this means that any act whereby society describes itself to society deserves our full attention for the specific reason that it enables us to study how meaning is generated phylogenetic, in diverse historical times as well as in our contemporary society. It allows us to access unique communication disclosing the formation and evolution of major values and their function in society. A theory of the way in which the theatrical communication builds its semantic experiments requires an incisive approach towards the specificities of how meaning is generated in imaginary realities. We need a poetology in order to show how this communication builds up reservoirs of possible forms and activities, pending unforeseeable futures. Society has always needed to confront itself with a future in order to adjust what should be remembered and what could be forgotten about the past. The main assumption behind the scientific experiment conducted in this book could therefore be formulated as the idea that society is communication, and that art science investigates poietics, i.e. specific ways in which works of art create meaning and values.

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Today the description of society is a task for different scientific disciplines, i.e. sociology or political science, nonetheless it is still possible dramaturgically to consider the vast use of communication of communication in mass media, television, film, and theatre as additional ways to study how society in non-scientific ways describes itself. Our studies suggest that we need a historical, media-, and system-sensitive approach, which will allow comparison. The analysis of meaning in imaginary realities is a complex task. Much can be achieved without words in the silent language of a body and accompanying sounds, but any society of even low degrees of complexity needs another language.

Language Language “doubles” reality; language is a form with two sides: there is a sound and a meaning (Luhmann, GdG, p. 218 / Vol. 1, p. 131). The sound is not the meaning, but it determines, due to this non-identity, which meaning might be addressed. Conversely, the meaning is not the sound, but meaning determines which sound to choose if one wants to talk about this or that specific meaning. Spoken language is processing of meaning in the medium of sound. Medium understood as loosely coupled, separate sounds, which through reiteration condense into words, and as such constructs a vast formation of loosely coupled words that create a reservoir for sentences. This recurrence can only succeed if the word is not tangled with the thing. Language functions exactly because words are not identical to the objects of the world, but only designations. This constitutes a new emerging distinction, i.e. the distinction between real reality and a “semiotic” or imaginary reality. This differentiation creates a position from which it is possible to signify reality as reality, and the real world emerges as something that may be signified. This must not be misunderstood as if reality is a fiction (or a linguistic construction) that does not really exist. It is the differentiation between imaginary reality and reality, which enables us to signify something as reality. Society is made possible because imaginary meaning-space, which is stabilised by recursive uses of communication of communication, will survive. This amounts to an autopoiesis of society. One of the important structures of language and thus the emergence of society is a binary code at work in the autopoiesis of communication. Each enunciation in language provides a positive and a negative variation. The code provides language with the ability to communicate affirmation or negation, or of course, undecidedness, postponing the decision to affirm or negate. Communication unceasingly creates minute stages of conflict or potential fights, agon. Encounters might lead to consensus or conflict. Society develops because of this possibility to confirm or deny, which in turn enables further conditioning. The binary code’s most important contribution is to provide the possibility for communication to be acceptance, rejection, or undecidedness. The yes/no bifurcation make it possible to enter interest in communication, and thus implicit understanding. Without understanding communication, it is impossible to decide whether to affirm, reject, or postpone decisions until later. When understanding is enabled, it requires further communication to stabilise or destabilise the meaning. Therefore, this warrants the autopoiesis of communication in society. The liberty to say yes or no to every decision that has ever been established is how language and communication has developed and promoted society. Bios – life is a biochemical process. Society – is a process of communication. Our psychic system – is a process in consciousness. To rephrase it: society is not alive. It is not reproduced

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by exchanges between molecules in the cells of an individual person. The processes in our brain that we may study as neurophysiological processes are not accessible to our consciousness. Neither are they societal processes. It amounts to the conclusion that our consciousness functions as a psychic system, different from the biological system and its biochemical processes, and different from society and its communicational processes. Communication is a social system, whose autopoiesis creates society. This runs contrary to many traditional thoughts on a “human-centric” society, where society is understood as something that could be humanely constructed and only judged by moral standards. In terms of territorial concepts of society, it becomes increasingly clear that worldwide interdependencies intervene in all details of societal occurrences. We do live in one world-society. With regional differences of course, but the interconnectedness is indisputable. The main point being that society cannot be observed from the outside. This is a goodbye to further traditional philosophical goods: If we still believe that it is possible to observe society from “an outside”, we need to explain where (and how) this new point of observation could be positioned. The answers inevitably lead to transcendental distinctions indorsed by a traditional theory of cognition: thought>< utterance to the enunciation and selects an understanding (the enunciated enunciation). Using the selected understanding as premise for further communication, Alter Ego in turn enacts an enunciation. The communication is started. It this complex operation that generates the first step in the analysis. The next step called for in the analysis, is the second order observation, where Alter Ego reflects. Figure 5.4 illustrates this by showing how reflections are referring either to psychic systems or to the social system in which the communication is embedded. In a self-reflection, Alter Ego will evaluate his or her own reactions in the given communication, and the consciousness tests cognition vis-à-vis perceptions and emotions. The reflection concerning Ego will deal with valuation of the expectations that Ego attributes to him- or herself, and directs towards Alter Ego. Consistency (or gaps) in the behavioural modes and forms of vitality helps to the affective attunement in the communication. Finally, Alter Ego reflects on how circumstances, rules, programmes are influencing the situation. All this takes time, and exactly because time is needed, Alter Ego are unable to remain in the first order. Often these reflections rely upon condensed schemas in the memory, and in that case, the analytical sharpness of cognition is very limited. We need the second order reflections to dig deeper.

Consciousness and communication The Danish playwright, director, and theatre manager Christian Lollike made an awardwinning version of a classical Danish comedy from 1723 Ludvig Holberg’s Erasmus Montanus, with scenography by David Gehrt and Ida Grarup Nielsen at Aarhus Teater,

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Denmark in 2017. Ludvig Holberg was inspired by the Enlightenment, but politically conservative, and he had a diminutive trust in democracy. In the original text, Holberg ridicules a scholastic tradition at the university, where rote learning and rigid logic passed as knowledge. Rasmus Berg is the son of peasants, who though impoverished have managed to save enough money to send Rasmus to be educated at the university in Copenhagen. Inspired by all his new “wisdom”, Rasmus Berg changes his name to the Latinised version: Erasmus Montanus. When he returns to the small village to meet his fiancée, he offends his father-in-law-to-be as Erasmus insists upon the world being round, and not flat, as the locals firmly believe. When he also affronts the Bailiff and the Parish Clerk, he ends up being threatened by a lieutenant to withdraw the statement, which Erasmus, agonised by his failure to stand for the truth, eventually does. In the performance, Lollike uses large parts of the original text, and partly his own new text. The performance’s concrete political agenda is to point to the right-wing government’s repeated actions to emphasise that the Danish culture is based upon Christianity. Values of Enlightenment and Christianity openly fight . . . again. The performance manages to make 1720s Denmark appear as a distant world of stylised two-dimensional figures, cut-out of a marionette theatre, with figures clad in white/greyish costumes, moving in straight horizontal lines as if they were attached to the sticks of the puppet master. Only the main character Erasmus Montanus is able to move in all directions and he appears colourful and lively, he argues with the audience, and is “modern” in many ways. Sounds are added so when the

FIGURE 5.5 

 hristian Lollike (director/playwright): Erasmus Montanus (after Ludvig Holberg), C at Aarhus Teater, Denmark 2017. Stage design by David Gehrt and Ida Grarup Nielsen. Photo courtesy of Aarhus Teater, Denmark. Photographer: Emilia Therese

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family is eating, slurps are amplified and appearing milliseconds too late, enlarging the cartoonish universe. Lightning amplifies the black/white/grey composition, but at certain peak points, it explodes in sharp single colours. The church is placed in the vanishing point of the central perspective. Moreover, when a choir appears, slowly gliding in (see Figure 5.5), they sing psalms in beautiful polyphony. Very familiar hymns used today in the Danish Protestant Church. Let me stay with that moment in order to elaborate on the connectivity between consciousness and communication. When hearing the hymns sung a cappella, it is a perception that arouses emotions connected to memories of many experiences in a chapel. These experiences are associated with ceremonies in my own life: baptism, weddings, Christmas, funerals. Thus, choir song calls upon a broad palette of emotions. As a result of this stimulus I close my eyes. I need to stay with the sounds. After a childhood where I served as ministrant every Sunday in the small local Catholic Church for many years, I have only attended church at ceremonies. Memories of happiness and sorrow. Why am I still affected by the moods of the choir’s song and its associations? I am seduced by the harmonies, and when I open my eyes again I see the invaluable comic in the fact that the choir is just as quietly pushed onto the stage. I register that I am touched and amused at the same time. The compound emotions make me need to focus attention on perceptions. Sensory experience activates a value reaction. And the value reaction sharpens my senses. The choir’s function in the performance added a moment of pathos (in the positive sense) to my experience. It helps to give the performance a depth, which made it cognitively effective. The communication of the performance managed to add a reverberation in my consciousness. It added an extra feeling dimension to the understanding of the performance I was building. The oscillation between the 1720s and today, between the comic, cartoonish universe and the hard political reality, were amplified by this little moment of pathos. It adds to the impact of the performance and assists my consciousness in selecting my understanding. The performance communicates with a constant destabilising of the relationship between perception and cognition (e.g. the sounds) and it allows other ontologically impossible interactions: The Parish Clerk is entering his house, while Erasmus tugs away the cut-out drawing illustrating the house. Illusion clashes with reality: a huge black mosque appears, to stand for a short while before it is deflated. Niqab-clad figures slowly walk through the village. A giant red dinosaur runs across the back stage. All these elements make consciousness flare with bursts of activity when cognitive efforts to relate to perception and emotions oscillate. The performance asks society how it is able to create meaning in a consistently secularised society, where politicians can get away with claiming that society is based on a Christian tradition. Is it a society which infringes knowledge? Is it a society which when shaken by new realisations, turns its back to truth, and finds satisfaction in old, familiar knowledge. I came to see the performance as a description of how a sinister neo-nationalistic and religious politic revives a witch-hunt for those who believe in “the wrong” values. The interpenetration, where consciousness makes the psychic system available for communication, can now be explained in some detail. The three dimensions of the psychic system (perception, emotion, cognition) are connected to the three selections of communication.

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FIGURE 5.6 

Communication triangle

When consciousness wonders: “Did I experience this?” it is due to a undecidability in the communication and this triggers relations in consciousness. The perception of choir song activates emotions, that triggers memories (of childhood and churches), cognition requires audio-perception to be enhanced (I close my eyes), out of this cognition requires more input (I open my eyes again), and I come a bit closer to selecting an understanding of the performance. What here has to be described as a process (and therefore as irreversible) is of course a structure of relations that works at enormous speed in constant co-relational procedures in consciousness. Figure 5.7 illustrates this effect of artistic communication on the consciousness.

FIGURE 5.7 

Communication “disturbs” consciousness  Szatkowski

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The individual episodes/moments in the performance creates different affective disturbances. Art deliberately makes it difficult to determine meaning, because cognitions, perceptions, and emotions are constantly interacting in dissimilar ways. In order to select information, utterance and understanding, the recursively accumulated effect of the many separate sequences (the plot) provides various hints at the compiled understanding of the performance’s communication (the fabula). In a classical dramaturgy, we would talk about plot and fabula. In Holberg’s text, the fabula is a clear link between causes and effects in a chronological logic: Erasmus’ parents (and his younger brother) have provided for the elder son to be educated as a priest. Erasmus has been seduced by an ill-advised scholasticism; he confronts the misguided beliefs in the peasant village, which goes wrong because Erasmus’ knowledge is nothing but dogmatism. His social intelligence is underdeveloped. Fortunately, the authority, the representatives of absolutism, can save Erasmus from being sentenced to become a soldier, and he is reconciled with his fiancée Lisbeth, as he recants his belief that the earth is round. In the dramaturgy of the performance, the fabula is attached to a much more complex narrative, which works through the interplay between the uttered information and the information in the utterance. Thus, the spectator is forced to select an understanding, where the past (as Denmark in 1720s pre-Enlightenment) acquires a decisive impact on our present, and therefore influences how we imagine the future. How this is valued by the single spectator is a matter we cannot predict, but the performance and its poietic is a compelling proposition of a “new-realism”.

New media matrix A contemporary theory of dramaturgy must face the unavoidable recognition of the introduction of a new media matrix in society. The theatrical form is based on communication of communication. In Europe, theatre emerges a few hundred years after the introduction of the Greek alphabet. Transition from primary oral society to a society where scripture allowed storing memory and communication heavily influenced the way society reflected itself. Theatre is but one of the rings that spread from this first media revolution. So far theatre has survived and responded to all changes, but what happens now? Script and pictures have allowed us to trace some of the historical uses of the otherwise ephemeral media theatre, and photography, film, video, and the internet have provided ample access to new forms. The impact of the first Cultural Revolution introducing the alphabet is still with us, but now it has been multiplied by the introduction of the binary alphabet and the computers to handle it, which has created an immensity of big data stored in interactive memories. How does this digital revolution challenge our understanding of dramaturgy? It would be ill-advised not to respond to this question. Dramaturgy (and the world as such) is confronted by the fact that society within the last 60 years has entered into a new media-matrix given the binary alphabet and computers’ ever-increasing speed with which to handle it,22 and it is a massive challenge. A theory of dramaturgy has to create methods and concepts with which this transition can be investigated. New forms of communication in society call for new self-descriptions of society. It has been suggested that the “next society” is one of networks,23 and that this will lead to a de-differentiation of modern society, and thus an epochal shift into “postmodernity”. In my perspective, it is premature to decide an epochal shift in society. We might instead try to

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observe the “net” of the World Wide Web as an emerging functionally differentiated system in society. Modernity has taken 250 years to establish the functionally differentiated systems we are acquainted with today, e.g. art, science, law, health, education etc. So given the meagre 60-year span of the digital revolution, it will take time for the new system to become operational and self-aware. The suggestion to observe the internet and the digital media as a new functionally differentiated social system means to identify the primary code of the system. This can be done in many ways; here we suggest defining it as the code: connected/ unconnected. If you are on the net (which today is possible for 51% of the world population, which is to say 49% are excluded) you will be met with an immense volume of programmes deciding how connections are shaped, and how the access to the new global, big-data memory (where anything that may be represented is stored), are designed. This includes many different forms of interactivity. This obviously appears a “conservative” description contrasted with an avant-garde vision of a net-based society. However, we would argue that the digitalised web-based communication could be observed as a gigantic, interactive net-based memory and a multiplatform for communication, which enables transmissions of texts and audio-visuals with the speed of electrons. This incontestably generates a horizon for new dramaturgies if they involve themselves with the internet system. It is still to be investigated how dramaturgy may contribute with important knowledge on communication issues like interactivity, the presentation of the digital self on commercial platforms like “Facebook” or in non-commercial groups of interest. Dramaturgy may provide analysis of the net-based communication of communication and its inherent values. What kind of society describes itself in the internet system? It is obviously a society where information and communication have high priority, and when the immense amount of produced and stored digital memories alters the social memory of society, it creates new social programmes (i.e. cultures) with their own performativity, in which attention becomes a new valuable, and hence directing attracts new meaning. This may be reflected in the way in which performances and installations using digital media expands.24 It is important to differentiate between technologies based upon digitalisation of media as sound, light, material interacting objects (robots) etc. and the effect of mediatisation as in web-based communication. Dramaturgy is in need of a clear concept of “media”. Overall, the immediate effect of the new media-matrix could be described as a society, which has discovered itself as existing in communication of communication. From history, we know that the function of social memory changes when a new media matrix is introduced, and that this enables evolution of ideas and values. We are in the middle of such a transition and therefore not able to comprehend or overlook consequences. Observing how net-based communication functions and evolves is nevertheless an important task. Dramaturgy might contribute to such observations, pending further research.

Voyeur or spectator This applies to the participants in the communication. What happens when we observe others communicating without being part of the communicative operations? That is without the participant having recognised you as co-present. This is the position of the voyeur, who may observe, but who is excluded from communication. The voyeur is able to observe how the participants communicate, and make his or her own reflections with regard to the psychic systems and the given social system. The voyeur is not a spectator. At least not if we

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by spectator mean someone who is an acknowledged co-present observer. As soon as the observer is recognised as being co-present (in time or/and space), he or she becomes spectator, if not included as an active participant in the communication. Anyone who has observed children playing on their own, and noticed the change in the play if they recognise they are being observed, or have felt how conversation changes when you come close and your presence is registered, will agree that on the differences between the voyeur and the spectator. When those communicating have recognised the co-presence of another, a new addressee is included. In terms of dramaturgy, we have to operate with different positions for the spectator. In theatre, we normally insist upon co-presence in time and space. The co-presence might be used to include the spectator actively in the imaginary reality, as in some versions of immersive theatre. Here the spectator might become actor, if interactivity is a value in the poietics of the immersive performance. In terms of film, watched in a cinema, the co-presence is felt between the spectators, again within a continuum of being alone, together, or being together (as when dedicated fans of a movie share different rituals). In between the poles we find the shared laughter or shock, as common response to the film. Watching Netflix alone in your apartment . . .? As spectator, you engage with the narratives, under your own command. You are voyeur and spectator. You may observe yourself spectating. Embarrassed by the urge to keep on streaming, or enjoying the limitless access to entertainment. On the internet, you can be either voyeur or spectator or included in online communication, independent of shared spaces. Moreover, if you are visible as participant it may be in many different forms of communication: writing, audio-visual, as your digital-self or as an avatar. Dramaturgy can provide important results in the investigation of the performativity of the “digital self”. The multiple positions of spectatorship and communication in the internet system have undoubtedly effects upon theatre in the 21st century, as the trend of immersive theatre already seems to prove.

Notes 1 Thomas, Nigel (2014) “Founders of experimental psychology: Wilhelm Wundt and William James”. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mental-imagery/foundersexperimental-psychology.html.Visited 2 June 2017. 2 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm (1765/1921) Nouveaux Essais, Livre II, Des Idées, Chapter 1, section 6. Paris: Ernest Flammarion. 3 McConachie, Bruce and Hart, Elisabeth (2006) Performance and Cognition: Theatre Studies and the Cognitive Turn. New York: Palgrave. McConachie (2008) Engaging Audiences: A Cognitive Approach to Spectating in the Theatre. New York: Palgrave. Blair, Rhonda (2008) The Actor, Image and Action: Acting and Cognitive Neuroscience. New York: Routledge. Lutterbie, John (2011) Toward a General Theory of Acting: Cognitive Science and Performance. New York: Palgrave. 4 Bordwell, David (1985) Narration in the Fiction Film. London: Methuen. Grodahl, Torben (2009) Embodied Visions. Evolution, Emotion, Culture and Film. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press. 5 Blair, Rhonda and Lutterbie, John (2011) “Introduction: Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism’s special section in cognitive studies, theatre and performance”. In Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, Spring, pp. 63–70. 6 McConachie, Bruce (2013) Theatre and Mind. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, p. 5f. 7 Series by Palgrave Macmillan (New York). 8 Damásio, Antonio (1994) Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain. New York: Putnam Publishing. 9 Stern, Daniel (2010) Forms of Vitality: Exploring Dynamic Experience in Psychology, the Arts, Psychotherapy, and Development. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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10 Stern, Daniel (1984) “Affective attunement”. In Call, J.D., Galenson, E., and Tyson, R.L. (Eds.) Frontiers of Infant Psychology, vol. 2. New York: Basic Books, pp. 3–13. Stern, Daniel (1985) The Interpersonal World of the Infant. New York: Basic Books. 11 Damásio, Antonio (1994) Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain. 12 Luhmann, Niklas (1995b) “Wie ist bewusstsein an kommunikation beteiligt?” In Soziologische Aufklärung 6. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, p. 45. 13 Luhmann, Niklas (1987) Soziale Systeme. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, see Chapter 6. 14 Bronfen, Elisabeth and Schmidt, Benjamin Marius (1999) “Psychoanalysis and systems theory”. In The Germanic Review: Literature, Culture, Theory 74 (1), pp. 3–13. See also: Fuchs, Peter (1999) “The modernity of psychoanalysis”. In The Germanic Review: Literature, Culture, Theory 74 (1), pp. 14–29. Fuchs, Peter (1998) Das Unbewusste in Psychoanalyse und Systemtheori. Die Herrschaft der Verlautbarung und Erreichbarkeit des Bewusstseins. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. 15 There is of course social action that is free of interaction: reading, writing, lonely actions, etc. 16 Luhmann (1984) Soziale Systeme, quoted from the Danish version (2002), Sociale Systemer, København: Hans Reitzles Forlag, p. 496. 17 James, William (1983) The Principles of Psychology. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, p. 1231. 18 Stern, Daniel (2010) Forms of Vitality. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 19 Luhmann, Niklas (1984) Soziale Systeme (In Danish version: p. 257). 20 Luhmann, Niklas (1992) “What is communication?” In Communication Theory 2 (3), pp. 251–259. 21 Bühler, Karl (1934) Sprachtheorie. Die Darstellungsfunktion der Sprache. Jena: G. Fischer. 22 Finnemann, Niels Ole (2011) “Mediatization theory and digital media”. In Communications 36, pp. 67–89, Walter de Gruyter. 23 As for example Baecker, Dirk (2007) Studien zur Nächsten Gesellschaft. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. 24 Eckersall, Grehan and Scheer, Edward (2017) New Media Dramaturgy: Performance, Media and NewMaterialism (New Dramaturgies). Kindle Edition.

6 POIESIS, AISTHESIS, AND PERFORMATIVITY

Poiesis I have chosen to use the concept poiesis to describe evolution in artistic work. The concept is preferred to avoid other common concepts within the field of artistic creational work. Creativity, intuition, innovation, tacit knowledge, or praxis are all words that might be used in order to describe and analyse artistic processes. It is a fact that some artist still believe in the Romantic idea that combines his or her work with some ineffable inspiration, which should best be kept in the dark. Therefore, intuition is a part of artistic practice that leads towards innovations, but some find that it cannot be translated into models or theories. The genius of Romanticism or the visionary artist is thus seen as a force that gives the art system its unique qualities. To some contemporary artist and theoreticians this aggregate to an idea, that knowledge exists that cannot be articulated. A position that goes well with an attempt to keep the artistic work in some kind of deeper mythic layers, avoiding demystification as that would take away the magic. I subscribe to another position: here we insist that knowledge is never ineffable. Knowledge may not be fully articulated, or codifiable in generalised, contextindependent forms, but it may always be demonstrated in situ, in context and thus articulated. I refer to this kind of knowledge as “implied knowledge”, instead of the elsewhere used “tacit knowledge”.1 We have seen how questions of science and epistemology result in some contemporary writers on dramaturgy expressing doubts as to whether a generalised theory of dramaturgy is at all possible or attractive as scientific perspective. I do believe that this is a result of a mistake reducing science to natural science, where the description of natural laws calls upon context insensitive (or independent) theory. As I have argued this is only one, very specific, ideal inside science. So alternatively it should be possible is to establish a theory that accepts the context-sensitive and -dependent nature of poiesis: an activity that provides a product, and as such a process that establishes the means by which it is regulated, i.e. poiesis is a recursive, auto-poietic process regulating perception, memory, affects and activities imbedded in the product.

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Poiesis, práxis, and theoria by Aristoteles In the above definition, I seek to find a way to distinguish between knowledge and implied knowledge, as a way to avoid the more common dualism between theory and practice. In fact, a short historical detour to Aristoteles might prove fruitful. The concept poiesis appears in Aristoteles’ writing:2 Here Poiesis, Práxis, and Theoria are concepts in need of careful consideration. Aristoteles broke it down by distinctions on different levels. Praxis should be considered as something pertaining to the divine: Divine Práxis. In the teleological philosophy of Aristoteles, this meant that divine praxis had separate goals from what was humanly possible, but it was a praxis, towards which any human activity ought to strive. The Divine Práxis had as its important goal the pure form eidos towards which all activity moved. This movement was enabled by pure energy, energeia provided by the unmoved mover. On earth, we humans have to make do with something less. Instead of the pure form, eidos, we deal with the dead, impenetrable pure matter hyle. This matter contained an indefinite potentiality dynamis, which served as the vehicle for those parts of the living práxis common to both animals and humans: basic growth and reproduction. Having established these distinctions Aristoteles introduces the concept of human rational praxis, which might aspire to connect the human praxis to that of the divine. Our western ideas of rationality, as we have inherited it from Plato and Aristoteles is thus construed as an activity somehow excluding the primitive basic potentials for life. The human rational praxis needs further distinctions (see Figure 6.1) Aristoteles made an important distinction between

Rational Práxis ACTION

REFLECTION

POIESIS

PRÁXIS

Technè

Phronesis Sophrosyne Andreia

FIGURE 6.1 

Aristoteles on práxis

THEORIA

Epistemé Nous Sophia

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the kind of praxis connected to outgoing action, práxis, and the praxis of inward reflection theoria. This distinction between the ‘outward social practice’ and the ‘inner contemplation’ made it necessary with yet another set of distinctions of the different social practices. Aristoteles differentiated ‘outgoing actions’ in terms of poiesis and práxis. Poiesis required techné: technical skills, as in craftsmanship and management. Distinct to poiesis was práxis, which pertained to deeds in social or political actions; it required amongst many other important skills, common sense knowledge phronesis, virtue sophrosyne, and courage andreia. Poiesis pertained the creation of something tangible, a work ergon. Práxis was decision-making that influenced the lives of many. The main argument in this excursion into Aristotelian philosophy is the fact that Aristoteles pointed at the interdependency between poiesis, práxis, and theoria: Theoria is rational, reflective praxis and it depends on knowledge of the material world, episteme, and intuitive intellectual knowledge, nous. The very goal of theory is to arrive at sophia the pure and highest self-possessed wisdom obtainable to man. Praxis in the Aristotelian system was thus both an overall concept, and a specific term for a political and social action whose meaning lay in the very action itself. Aristoteles considered technê craft as outward reaching competence and, epistêmê an inward theoretical knowledge, a distinction which still today is considered valid and often applied even less developed than by Aristoteles. According to this (mis)conception, theory is something so abstract and far removed from the facts of daily life that it cannot be used in our lives based on practice. Thus, concrete experience could very well be all we needed. One can happen to meet this outlook at theory as a base of mistrust in dramaturgy amongst artists. It is important to dismantle this misconception. If we notice, that Aristoteles refers to technê and craft (what we have come to call ‘art’) as knowledge, and that he insisted that technê is also connected to epistêmê because technê is a practice grounded in an “account” — something involving theoretical understanding, we will have to acknowledge that poiesis needs both epistêmê and technê, both theory and practice. I will expand this thought in an account of poiesis, where I observe the work of art as an autopoietic system, created by the operations that develop the structure, which guides the production of further operations: poiesis is a recursive process. To explain how recursive processes function, we need to understand how technê and epistêmê are complementary operations. In other words, we cannot work artistically without knowledge and reflection. Finally, the creative artistic process is relying heavily on memory, and must be able to confront schemas and habits with the unexpected in order to coincidentally produce and apply operations that momentarily create inconsistencies and chances for something surprising or “irritating” to emerge. Therefore, we abandon the dichotomy between theory and practice and insist on replacing this with other distinctions. Aristotle saw the paradox in “techné as epistêmê”, and maintained that every theory had praxis and any praxis expressed a theory. Let us agree in this fundamental assumption, and attempt to follow the thought further in our theory.

Unfolding a theory on poiesis What is meant by this assumption on recursivity and poiesis is simply an observation on how any operation in the artistic process folds itself into a structure that is made by the choices that are already taken, the meaning, which is actualised. This structure is selecting the new field of potential meanings, inside the imagined vague notion about the final work. Based upon these observations the new operation can take place.

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4 2

STRUCTURE Already actualised meaning

1

FIGURE 6.2 

NOTION Potentialised meaning

3

Recursive creation  Szatkowski

If we take it step by step we find the actors as (an example) in the middle of Figure 6.2. They are perhaps in the middle of an improvisation, and each of them has to decide what to do next. It could also be a question of what words in the dramatic text to write on the white paper, what kind of sound and lighting should be applied, etc. etc. We are in the middle of a work in progress. To decide, the artists have to take a moment to reflect, or, as we shall see later, rely on their “intuition”. It is in any case a question of looking back at the tangible material already produced (1). Each operation containing say, movement, sound, and spoken text, provides its own expectation as to what follows next? Are we trying to meet those expectations or are we trying to disappoint them and create a new set of expectations (2)? However, in order to be able decide, it is not enough only to look at the already existing material. Our artists also have to take into consideration what they envision, how the more or less vague outline of a final performance appears (3). Therefore, the “future” has to be included in the following operation (4). This is the fundamental recursive operation in poiesis. It has many other determinants, than the one suggested in this first zoom into the system of poiesis. They will be described in the following assumptions:

Proposition # 1: Poeisis is driven by recursive selections of structures The first operation in the creation of a work of art – be it the first stroke with the brush on a canvas, the first word on the white paper, a sound in the silent space, or a movement of a body – has to be followed by another operation. How is the next operation selected? What you produce in an inspired moment may be caused by coincidence, but how you then successively use it should not be coincidental; it becomes part of a structure. The very first operation has actualised one possibility and evoked some specific expectations, thus limiting a new combination of possible operations at disposal. Out of these, one will be selected and actualised, and thus a structure slowly appears. The structure produces further limitations on what may be selected next.

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Recursivity To understand the concept of recursivity in the sense it is used here, poiesis is a procedure whereby one of the steps of the procedure involves invoking the procedure itself. Structures are the results of operations and the resulting work is thus a product of the procedure. In the work of art, determination of its operations can be generated only in the recursive network of its own operations. The artwork is thus tied to the system’s own structures, which make recursions and corresponding operational sequences possible (Luhmann, GdG, p. 793 / Vol. 2 p. 116.). Therefore, a work of art is an autopoietic, structurally determined system. An important element in poiesis is to develop the ability to make decisions: to choose what to do next. We often talk about this as a power of and in decision-making. For the sake of abstraction, I will speak of the act of deciding and realisation of the decision as an “operation”. Recursive means referring to the past, and thus to the contingent operations currently available (the already tried and tested meaning), and not to any substantiating origins (Luhmann, GdG, p. 47 / Vol. 1, p. 20), and in the same movement it means referring to the future as an infinite number of possibilities for observations. It is a movement between actuality and potentiality. Some possibilities have been actualised and are thus tangible, and others are left in the horizon at disposal as potential possibilities. The chosen operation is used in the continuation of the work process, and thus it functions as an element in a relation building. So imagine the artists in the moment of decision. They have to look back at the structure emerging from the actualised operations: What kind of expectations have been established? Moreover, shall these expectations be met or denied?

Structure Structure emerges through the selection of operations. One operation determines the available space for the next operations. As the first operation is chosen it imposes limitations on the field of possible new options. The potential field of meanings is thus diminished This is how structures emerge. A structure is not a stable essence but a floating functionality. Structures are conditions for restricting the area of connective operations, and are hence conditions for the autopoiesis of the system. They do not exist in abstraction, not independently of time. They are used or not used in progressing from operation to operation. They condense and confirm through repetition in various situations a wealth of meaning that eludes exact definition; or they are forgotten. (Luhmann, GdG, Vol. I, p. 430f (English Vol. 1, p. 261)) This amounts to a theory of evolution: If art can be paradigmatic for a modern society, it is as demonstration of how novelty requires an accelerated introduction of novelties. What is new in the present soon loses its property of newness. The new made it possible to distinguish future from past, and to observe time based on this distinction. In modernity, time was no longer a continuum of events that God alone could read. The future could no longer be understood as “a part of time that would come to us” (Luhmann, GdG, p. 1004 / Vol. 2, p. 256), but was now a construction of still unknown meanings, different from the past and considered as new. This transition found its way through almost imperceptible changes in the 16th century in the beginning of which the old was still considered better

Poiesis, aisthesis, and performativity  157

STRUCTURE

O3

O1 + O2

CONFIRMED predictable

EXPECTATIONS STRUCTURE

NARRATIVE DESIRE

REJECTED unpredictable

O3

FIGURE 6.3 

Structure and expectations  Szatkowski

than the new (Renaissance, Protestant Reforms, Humanism of Erasmus). What then made it pick up momentum might have been the printing press, which made information available on an unprecedented scale, even to some degrees independent of the Church and the regional networks of nobility and trade. Arts and sciences developed new understandings; however, the appreciation of novelty was rejected by religion and politics. Even in discussions on art, the principle of imitation from Plato and Aristoteles was prolonged, and art was seen as imitating nature. The massive continuation of development and explorations of new worlds, new transportation routes, new techniques, and the shift from production to local and known consumers to the market of anonymous buyers, made the idea of the “new” gradually more and more convincing. In fact, it was stimulating any narratives that would insist on the future as still unknown, but it could be altered, it was not a simple continuation of the known and familiar ways. An extra stimulus to the narrative desire of knowing “what happens next?”. Since art was differentiated as a functional social system, it demonstrated how this idea of the new could drive the development of an ever-changing plurality of different types of artworks, and it is in this macro-sense a paradigm of a modern world. When we study the evolution of art, we can demonstrate some of the vital mechanisms inherent in poiesis at a micro-level as well.

Normative or cognitive structures Now, our artist has made a first series of operations, and has to decide, what comes next. On the generalised level of theory, there are but two possible ways to go. The expectations emerging from the already established structure might be met and confirmed by the next set of operations producing a normative structure; or, it might be disappointed and a new kind

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of structure is emerging, and thus demanding a cognitive effort to be related to the previous. A process might cohere in a single structuring principle, i.e. the expectations meet as in convergent cognition; or it might contain multiple structures that requires divergent thinking. When expectations are constantly accommodated, they are stylised as “norms” in the process. You may be presented with an operation that puzzles you, but eventually it will confirm your basic expectations. Our narrative desire may be quickly satisfied as in a joke’s punchline. Narrative desire can be satisfied by a certain amount of disturbances, but with an implicit promise of a satisfying solution. Something else happens, when the narrative desire constantly meets new challenges. If a process does not meet the expectations established in the first sequence of

NORMATIVE STRUCTURES EXPECTATIONS o1

+

o2

+

o3

+

o4

EXPECTATIONS ARE REPEATEDLY CONFIRMED NORMATIVE STRUCTURE: When expectations are met they stylise as NORM FIGURE 6.4 

Normative structures  Szatkowski

COGNITIVE STRUCTURES EXPECTATIONS o1

+

o2

+

o3

+

STRUCTURE A

STRUCTURE B

FIGURE 6.5 

NEW EXPECTATIONS

Expectations are NOT met

Cognitive structures  Szatkowski

o4

Poiesis, aisthesis, and performativity  159

operations and new operations creates new expectations, then a new structure may emerge. When the structure seems to imply that expectations cannot predict the outcome, then the cognitive process of generating new structures becomes the norm. When expectation cannot predict the results, they need to find generate new structures. This constant cognitive effort is the stylised as “norm”. Hence the expression cognitive structures. It should just be iterated that cognitive in our theoretical terminology is not only based upon articulated meanings, but also as a process of consciousness.

Process and structure The concept “structure” is based upon the idea of an operation that builds itself by the choices made. Further, it includes an idea of process as something both individual and collective, dependent on tangible material and media, and on mental pictures of an outcome. Where a process is irreversible in time, the structure is reversible, as it may always be reversed and changed in time. A work of art gradually emerges out of the series of single steps choosing to connect one operation to the others. It has its own dramaturgical structure, which combines the poietics and the programme of poiesis in a poietic hierarchy. As a central hypothesis for our theory of dramaturgy, we define the connection between the “top” of inviolate values and the “bottom” of concrete methods, rehearsal programmes etc. as the dramaturgy. We claim that it is possible to provide a theory on implied knowledge, derived from context-dependent material, but formulated on a context-independent level. To be able to select an operation is not only a question of looking back to the past tangible structure of operations, one also has to look forward towards what might be termed “a notion” – a vague idea of the envisaged product. Just as the structures might change, so the notion, but we need a notion in order to decide. This is where time becomes of essence: time can be irreversible as in a process; the order of events cannot be changed. However, time also allows reversibility as in structures, which may always be replaced. To translate it into an example from classical dramaturgical terms inherited from the Russian formalists: plot (syuzhet) exists as a process irreversible in time, the performance and its scenes appear in the sequence they do, whereas fabula is a structure that may always be revised.

Chance and structure (some call it creativity) Time is of essence when it comes to the social dimension, where communication takes place between not only the individual artists and their medium, but also when it involves several participants inside the collective creative process. Working alone, the artist will have to decide when to work in flow, and when to stop to reflect, i.e. when to observe in first order, and when to observe in second order. When a collective process involves many different artists as in a theatre production, there has to be a programme to regulate the process. Generalising over the factual dimension it is the contingency of coincidence and chance that creates dissipative structures. What happens by chance has to be built into the system; one might say that in the factual dimension creativity is an offer of a spontaneous momentary synthesis, it appears and is almost immediately gone again.3 If whatever caused the chance is adapted into the system, be it as resonance, applied, or remembered, “it” will contribute to the development of the system and its structure. When it has been integrated it is gone, it is not possible to maintain “it”, only to do something with “it” within the frame of the system. Creativity might thus be described as a systems ability to evolve by applying the difference

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chance >< structure, i.e. what happens accidentally may be a gift, but only if what happens to the accidental meaning is not accidental.

Proposition # 2: Poiesis is the provision of flows of space and time allowing events that provide opportunities to produce and/or apply “coincidences” to build structures and thus evolution The need for the ever sought after “new” have provided the artistic process of poiesis with considerable experience in handling the unexpected, the “coincidental” and embedding this in evolution, often as implicit knowledge. In a society where neoliberal economy performs on the basis of knowledge as its new materiality, and where catchwords like “innovation” or “disruption” overspill in managerial language it is almost as if the Holy Grail should be filled with poiesis. Studies of the work processes in the laboratories of great scientists and artists are looking for answers to the question of “creativity”, of the invention of the new, and never unseen. Can creativity be taught? Provide models for leadership? To put the question in another way: how is it that an increase in unexpected advances in science and technology have emerged in times of war and crisis? Maybe because here provisions and flow of resources, space, and time have provided the opportunities of huge cooperation between scientists working on specified problems. Directed flows, which allowed production of “coincidences” to be produced and then applied in the evolving structures. Inside the art system, this flow is rarely provided by affluent funds and sufficient means, let alone clearly specified problems, but rather by committed artists taking their time to build up laboratories and “floating islands” (Barba)4 in which experimentation could take place. It is therefore reluctance and sceptical questions that are in place when the Holy Grail of inventiveness is for sale. You might ask those on the market selling poiesis for Grails, what kind of problems they address. You might also ask whom they believe benefits from the solutions. So in this spirit let us try to the question poiesis in the art system: what kind of problems are addressed, and who benefits from artistic poiesis? “Art: to what end?” has been the question ever since modernity differentiated art as system. We have pointed at one possible answer: artistic communication of communication foregrounds values externalised as meaning. Now, as any meaning of every individual statement depends on other communications by other participants in the process, whose utterances are then again recontextualised by previous and following statements, no single individual can “steer” communication. The single individual cannot know how, and seen from a social point of view, it is not of interest either. What counts is how any following communication indicates understanding. “Communication is an operation that includes the individual as excluded”, Dirk Baecker states.5 This is what artistic communication addresses: the difference between sensory perception and communication.6

Proposition # 3: Poiesis needs “intuition” in both first and second order observations When the artistic process is in flow, the involved artists are observing the world in first order, i.e. they observe what they observe. They use the inviolate values of the poietic hierarchy they work within combined with their personal values to guide their decisions, to allow selections to be made. They observe the world using the distinctions inherent in their poietic hierarchy. Actions or operations are dependent on values and not the other

Poiesis, aisthesis, and performativity  161

way around. Actions externalise values. Where “intuition” often is regarded as something distinct from rational thought, we will consider it as a cognitive function using the distinction condensation >< confirmation. Condensation is an operation, which subsumes many unique instances of many operations under different circumstances, by forgetting all the irrelevant or redundant conditions around the operation, thus creating a core memory, easily stored and accessible. Confirmation is an operation where the condensed core memory is reactivated: and this is where we normally experience the feeling of eureka, and apply the concept intuition, to explain why and how we reacted. Poiesis applies intuition in two ways and the artist has to be able to leap from the one mode of existence acting/experiencing to another reflecting. When an artist is at work, he or she observes the world in first order: the world appear as it is, decisions constantly have to be made, and in order to do so one will have to use values in order to prioritise. After a sequence of creative operations, there may be a need to stop the immediate flow in creation in order to reflect. We insist that this is another mode of existence, to reflect means to observe observations in self-reflection or in communication. It is not possible to create and reflect at the same time. Time is needed to observe what has been made tangible, and to consider what to do next. This process is much slower and has to include analytical operations. The artist must spring from one form of observation to another, how often this happens, when, and for how long cannot be predicted. However, if the two modes of observation are distinct from one another, how can they then support each other? To describe the process of poiesis we must allow a re-entry of the distinction action >< reflection in the distinction, and on both sides of it: as reflection-in-action and action-inreflection. Or, as theory-in-practice and practice-in-theory (See Figure 6.6).

Praxis: act & experience

Theoria: reflection

Divergent action & experience

Theory-inpractice

Convergent analysis Practice-in-theory Reflection

1. 1st order observation

1. Condensed cognition may

1. 2nd order observation

1. The condensed perceptions

2. Selections

2. Be brought in immediate contact with practice

2. Analysis

2. Corrects reflection making sure theory does not miss touch with practice

3. Based on inviolate values 4. Expectations led by emotions 5. Associative connections links 6. Flow: the speed of perception 7. CONDENSATION OF EMOTIONAL PERCEPTIONS 8. Compressed by leaving out all redundant conditions

FIGURE 6.6 

3. CONFIRMATION OF CONDENSED COGNITION 4. INTUITION 5. Guides the flow and facilitates speed

3. Observing values as contingent 4. Expectations led by reason 5. Connection in causal-logical links 6. Flow: Slow, testing, reiterating 7. CONDENSED COGNITION MEMORIZED 8. Compressed by leaving out all redundant conditions

Practice and theory – and the re-entry  Szatkowski

3. CONFIRMATION OF CONDENSED PERCEPTIONS 4. INTUITION 5. Guides interpretation and slows down the flow

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Acting/experiencing is a first order observation/operation. Operations create expectations and they link to emotional evaluation of either acceptance or dismissal, which is why processes of artistic creation can be exceptionally emotional. If, say, an actor’s movement provided in rehearsal is dismissed by the director because it does not satisfy his or her expectations, then the actor who has made the bid with the hope of being accepted, will respond. What might the director do? S/he might abstain from offering explanations, or throw him- or herself into lengthy discussions. It requires a precise programme of the rehearsal to institute what should be acceptable behaviour in the rehearsal room. Must the actor trust the director totally? Or, if arguments are allowed, will the director manage to convince the actor by referring to the poietic hierarchy, and the need for coherence (or divergence). To do so a certain vocabulary is needed, we have called it a semantic. If arguments cannot be settled by such short and concise intervention, referring to the condensed cognitions gained in the process, then a moment of reflection may be needed. The rehearsal changes its mode from action/experiencing to reflection. How often this will be tolerated, how often it is needed cannot be put into absolute rules, it has to be negotiated as a part of the emerging programme for rehearsals. However, in the process of linking action to action in improvisations and rehearsals certain knowledge is gained. It is led by chains of associations. This process can progress at high speed allowing immediate and spontaneous actions. When these speedy actions are repeated over time they condense into patterns of embodied knowledge in the artist. These patterns then function as generalised rules for artistic behavior. They work as compressed precepts, wich means that they point at poietic values by subsuming experiences from many different creative moments and by “forgetting” all the redundant specific conditions in each particular case. These condensed edicts serve the artist as reminders whenever reflection is required. Reflection is a second order observation of observations. In a creative and artistic process, this includes an observation of the operations already created in the process to determine structures in operation. It includes the artist’s self-reflection. It is analytical in the sense that is addresses the question: how do I, as a psychic system observe? Such question may lead into the abyss of introspection, possibly a never-ending soul-search. For some artists this might be the ultimate function of art. However, art does not function without communication. So it might be more productive to pose the question: how do I, as an artist, observe the world, and what do I want to communicate? Such reflection requires an elaboration of the poietics and its assumptions on the function of art in society: what do the artists consider art should do, when the world appears as it does? Further reflection could evaluate the performance of the art system: How does the artist appraise the way in which contemporary art presents the imaginary reality? All this is condensed into the inviolate level values of the poietics at the top of the hierarchy. When observing in second order it becomes clear that values are contingent. They could be implemented in other ways, and that includes an inevitable acceptance of another fact: that of co-existing programmes or poietic hierarchies: maybe the artists involved in the collective process do not share each other’s poietic hierarchies (serious trouble ahead), or others have done something differently (problems ahead, if we are not convinced of our own results). This is why periods of reflection during rehearsals risk taking up incredible amounts of time, and therefore often avoided or forbidden. Anyway, the process of reflection takes time. It cannot be done in a few seconds. It must include time to analyse the operations that are available as manifest products, and determine what kind of structures are at work. It is

Poiesis, aisthesis, and performativity  163

important to take time to decide whether a structure should be continued and enhanced, or another structure should be introduced in order to create new expectations. This conscious choice of structure enables the artist to make variations under obligation to the overall poietic hierarchy that governs the process. Any artist with extended working experiences will be able to register how this analytical work follows logical and rational patterns, but also how these patterns at any moment may provide opportunities to be tested and maybe changed. This is what slows the process down. It has to reiterate its procedures. During this process, we contend that a condensation of cognitive patterns emerges. Insights into the very fabric of the work of art and the necessary operations and their structures relieved from superfluous observations of concrete aspects of where or who or how. These condensed cognitive patterns are then brought into the quick flow of the artistic process of creation: they linger in the back of the mind, and when in a split second in the creative process a decision has to be made, those condensed cognitions are brought forward, and when applied they will confirm the choices made. We often speak of this as “intuition”. It is, we would claim, implied knowledge. I suggest that this process also applies to the reception of a work of art. When experiencing the work of art, the spectator observes in first order. In time-based works, the recursive process allows the experienced spectator to use any previous understandings to predict structures and expectations. In the rapid interchange where hypotheses on fabula are adjusted to the sequenced plot, the condensed percepts and cognitions coexist in the process of reception.

Aisthesis Sensations, as we have seen, are part of a complex process of cognition. The work of art has its own way of directing the senses. When a theatre performance with poietic hierarchies of any kind addresses an audience, it has to establish some kind of contract, with an audience. It is often a silent negotiation of expectations. This has been called the “feedback loop”,7 which underlines the performance as a communication. We will show how this can be explained with a theory of communication and consciousness, but we will have to give the concept of directing special attention. In times when a new media-matrix of digitalised communication has made the globe accessible in a web of connections attention has become a battlefield of enormous dimensions. Staging and direction of attention is a necessary competence. To let something appear, to make it stand out from a stream of everyday interactions, is not as such a phenomenon reserved for the artistic system. When you dress for a special occasion, when the teacher leaves an odd object on a table for the pupils to examine, when the political party celebrates itself in an assembly . . . we find the elements of aisthesis. The reasons for someone to do something to make “it” appear are connected to communication. The staged and directed communication in society have probably been an aspect of life since we gathered around the fire to let “community” appear. Phenomenologically it is an attempt to make an incision in time and space in order to call forward specific responses, by reducing the possible reactions to the appearance, i.e. a manipulation of attention and communication. In a theory of dramaturgy, it is important to focus upon the theatrical means and their function in different poietics. Based upon the results, it will be possible to analyse the staging and directing in other functionally differentiated systems. Such analytical work might have an eye-opening effect on the implications of everyday routines in the classroom, at the board meeting, or in

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the hospital ward and many other non-poietic activities. When today communication (and life) is characterised as “aestheticised” it could be seen as the consequence of an immensely expanded use of second order observations in everyday life. We register how communication is communicating. When even the sound of the closing of a car door is designed down to the details of differences in the sound it makes, we have a pretty good example of the dimensions of directing and staging. In his excellent book8 Directing Scenes and Senses Peter M. Boenisch explains how concepts like Regi and mise en scène emerged in the 1770s in German and French theatre. The term director appeared in English theatre in the 1950s as a replacement for “producer”. For a dramaturgy with a perspective to a world society, it is particularly important to have in mind how national differences in terminology may be the cause of confusion or misinterpretations. Referring to Patrice Pavis’ important survey9 of contemporary mise en scène, Boenisch continues this line of work by presenting a “conceptual exploration of the thinking of Regie: of how to think about theatre direction and how Regietheater thinks itself” (2014, p. 4). An alternative framework of categories, that focuses on “what directing does, and what directing can do, tapping into and realising the potential of what theatre does and may do”. Emphasising this aspect of directing in connection with “communicative capitalism” and Jacques Rancière’s concept of politicity as a “political potential that springs not so much from the content, as from the very formal and structural fabric of an art form” (Boenisch, 2014, p. 5) [my italics], Boenisch concludes that directing should be taken “to mean ‘giving a direction’ – or a purpose – to the text that is being staged, and to theatre at large, as medium, as cultural form and aestheticopolitical force within society, on every single night the curtain goes up” (p. 5). Art as a medium creates, with another term of Rancière’s, mèsentente – messy understanding – and Regietheater according to Boenisch could be seen as a “genuinely emancipatory ‘messing up’”. It is also to the same effect Boenisch quotes Žižek, I have no qualm whatsoever following the line of reasoning that posits the merits of art in the mèsentente, in fact that is what I have used as the very code of self-reference in the art system, my only reservation is that this self-reference of indeterminacy applies to all art. In order to specify, I insist upon the necessity to identify poietics as a programme directly influencing both form and content. Hence Regietheater might be described as different poietics sharing a special “recognition (and indeed, celebration) of essentially collective, social and political practice” (p. 7). Again, I find that the conflation of self-reference and preference codes provides a mèsentente in the scientific operations. It is perhaps a minor issue, but theoretically, it prevents any overly optimistic position of emancipatory hopes for aesthetic-political constellation in art as such. In the illuminating Chapters 5–8 of Directing Scenes and Senses where Boenisch analyses contemporary regie, we get qualified insights into the work of Gosch and Thalheimer, tg STAN and Kriegenburg, Ivo Van Hove and Guy Cassiers, Castorf and Ostermeier. Boenisch presents “working methods, creative strategies and aesthetic principles”. Not to celebrate the geniuses at work, but in order to “interrogate and explore some of the central (in Hegelian) ‘concrete universal’ principles, problems and coordinates of Regie and of contemporary theatre-making at large” (p. 11). Read with the terminology of dramaturgy presented here, what Boenisch gives us, is a tremendously valuable example of different poietics, and concepts on a “concrete universal” theoretical level. This is not the place to enter into discussion on the Hegel-revival (Jameson,10 Žižek11 et al.) where Hegel is relieved of his teleological burdens, and redescribed as an early pioneer of new cognitive thinking. Instead I would rather point to the parallel

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between Rancière’s concept “partition of the sensible” and the concept of communication so central to the present theory of dramaturgy. Boenisch describes the term with precision as “the prerequisite for meaningfully accessing and participating, or, in another key Rancièrian term, for ‘par(t)-taking’ in culture, politics and society” (p. 17). In the following chapter, we will present a concept of communication, which would provide another – not contradictory, but supplementary – construction of meaning and communication. To observe contemporary ways of directing and/or staging in the art system, we need to see it as programmes within a specific poietic, chosen amongst several other contemporary poietics. It is a form of communication, and hence we need to investigate the information presented and directed. We have the utterance of an information, and we have an understanding of the utterance of an information. The information is a difference that makes a difference for her or him who understands. Utterance is the entire (performed, directed, and staged) complex, which makes it possible for “the other”, Alter Ego, to understand the distinction Ego has made. Understanding means that Alter Ego understands that Ego wanted this information to be uttered, and Alter Ego understands that this information is an utterance from Ego. This explains why any theory of communication reduced to an image of a relation between sender and receiver fails to describe the complexity of communication, or to a theory of infinite displacement of meaning (as in différance), does not provide sufficient precision. Communication is an understandable process between two parts, with the extra exactness that neither part has control over the three selections. Boenisch is searching for “concrete universals”. This intention also carries this theory of dramaturgy. As we have chosen another epistemological perspective (although in concordance with a general thinking in differences), we tune in to a systems theoretical perspective, where the dimensions of the political is not “necessarily an aesthetic one” (p. 22), as it is for Rancière. Boenisch phrases Rancière’s position very eloquently: As he [Rancière] reminds us, establishing any order of the sensible will inevitably be based on exclusion, on “counting out” what (and who) has no part in the common, and must therefore remain unperceivable, invisible, unspeakable, untouchable, unheard of, unthinkable as nothing, nobody or mere rabble. The partition of the sensible thus distributes, in another of Rancière’s proverbial phrases, what (and who) counts as voice, and what is merely considered a noise: any “common good” can only exist by not being common to everyone. A political act happens when those who are thus “counted out” and denied a voice, a vote and a body, begin to demand to be counted as part of society, hence to par(t)take. (p. 23) The general theoretical thought behind this position insists on a difference that makes a distinction has to keep reminding itself of the original distinction, which is active in both the distinguished parts. The thought is in systems theory transformed to the concept of a re-entry of a distinction on both sides of the distinction. However, the extremely important political problem addressed here could be examined from another angle. If we with aesthetic refer to the “indeterminacy”, I can see how the line of thought can be referred back to “modes of being” or “specific forms of sensory apprehension”. If on the other hand we investigate the problem of exclusion, and what makes those “counted out” begin to demand a voice in

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terms of the political system, I find that a more nuanced picture emerges. A picture where the concept “populism” appears as an element in the political strategies of directing and staging. Does this have anything to do with what happens in the art system and the theatres and performances? Is it an aesthetic dimension of the political? If there is a connection, I would suggest regarding it as a description of contemporary political manoeuvres in a world society challenged by globalisation. There are ways to operate in populism in zones of affluence, which could remind us of postdramatic (or postmodern) ways to direct communication.

Performativity To perform and make a performance are ideas familiar to the art system and the art sciences, so is the concept of theatricality, which expresses the special poietics of theatre as media. Performativity is a concept with a shorter history, and a less unified scientific background. In a theory of dramaturgy, however, performativity has a central function, and its various theoretical inspirations makes its connectivity to a wide range theory an obvious advantage. The use of theatre concepts in attempts to describe sociological and psychological theories has been applied for centuries. Concepts like “role”, “person”, “script”, “front and backstage” are just a few examples. To “perform” and “performance” have so many connotations in ordinary language, that their art theoretical specificity has been if not lost then submerged. Performance studies are taking advantage of this, in an attempt to reverse the perspective, and construct analytical concepts out of rituals, ceremonies, social dramas, and cultural performances in order to contribute to social analysis and special art practices. The main perspective in this chapter is to treat performativity as an integral part of communication, which may be described and analysed by applying the distinction person >< role. As scientific concept “performativity” has been circulating since the 1950s. It has been elaborated and expanded in humanistic and social sciences since the 1980s. The concept of performativity provides a possibility to correlate scientific and artistic ideas. Ideas evolve when semantics are provided to interpret and stabilise new understandings. If such semantic work is absent, the few scattered, new experimental artworks or theoretical concepts will be lost and forgotten. It has often been noted how the concept of performativity shows a tendency to attract a still larger reservoir of meanings. The fate of such conceptual development is often dead by overload. Building on a redescription of some of the former results of artistic and scientific research, the experiment in this chapter is to suggest a re-specification of the concept by taking seriously the references to the theatrical origins of the semantic. We also discuss what happens if we by performativity mean: observing communication in the world with the distinction person >< role. In accordance with the general outlay of the theory of dramaturgy presented here, we will try to indicate how performativity carries different forms of poiesis in relation to acting, and how these are driven by different poietic hierarchies, and thus different forms of aligning dramaturgies: dramaturgy-α. In order to explain the analysis and observations on the level of dramaturgy-ς we need to find the epistemological variations used to control the in-transparency inherent in the different understandings of performativity.

Performing functionality and functional performing “Perform” takes on meaning in music and theatre from approximately 1610. The musician or the actor performs a work for an audience. Earlier uses around approximately 1300 in medieval

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French connects to par (completely) and fournir (provide for), i.e. to see to something is done. It is also suggested that there might be a connection to the word forme (to form), which again comes from Latin forma. As to the origins of the Latin word several suggestions are given, here we could mention the connection to the Greek word morphe (form, beauty, appearance, and phenomenon). Ovid named the god of sleep Morpheus (he who creates form). It could then mean that performativity was “to create meaning by giving form”, however, that would be a classification far too broad to give the concept any analytical power, and other concepts – like communication – would be suitable replacements. I suggest that we follow the double roots of the word as referring to both performing and to functionality.

Performativity a short overview Several adequate attempts have been made to survey the development of the concept performativity.12 It is often told as a story, which started as an experiment within a philosophy of language (Austin, 1957) was criticised from post-structuralist position (Derrida, 1977), applied in in the (New York) performance studies (Schechner, 1973/1988), and was given extra weight in Gender Studies (Butler, 1990). According to the narrative as told by New York Performance Studies the evolution of the concept has of course its main roots in Schechner’s work.13 Performativity is thus a concept with many mothers and fathers, disciplines like sociology, philosophy of language, ethnography/anthropology arts sciences have contributed to the somewhat mixed offspring. It has resulted in a rather overwhelming and complex concept. In terms of our attempt to construct a theory of dramaturgy, one of the important lessons learned from observing the development of “performativity” as a scientific concept, is the way in which art sciences and social sciences have interacted, but without any fundamental ideas as to how the twain should meet. It is no exaggeration to claim that within arts sciences the concept have primarily reflected evolutions of art works that challenged ideas of “representation” and “illusion”. To identify such objects (performances) and analyse them, new terms had to be invented. Instead of “theatre” we came to speak of “performance”. Why? Maybe because, as Shepherd (2016) suggests (p. 222), that the concept performance co-evolves within art and sociology, or, to put in the terminology of the sociological theory applied in this experiment, because the hyper-complex society begins to react on the functional differentiation of systems with an ever-increasing awareness of the necessity to formulate contours of second order observations. This means that communication needs to be observed as part of a social system, and, crucially, as something outside the consciousness of the psychic system. This is controversial because cultural theories very often work under the assumption, that such a distinction is impossible. It is a part of cultural studies tradition that the conflicts between materialism (as by Raymond Williams) and structuralism (as by Levi-Strauss) found their own dialectical sublation in the recognition of the interdependency between the lived life as experienced and materialising itself, and the implicit and explicit knowledge structures that were enacted/repeated in actions. The dispute as to how the relation should be read, were temporarily silenced by the impact of post-structuralism and its insistence upon the impossibility of reducing the one (actions in daily life) to the other (the knowledge structures), as it all depended upon differences. For some this meant a freedom to exercise never-ending disseminations of meaning (Deleuze), for others the very origin of all meaning were the mark of difference (différance, Derrida). Here we insist on difference understood as distinctions and

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indications used in observations of the world, and that meaning needs both psychic systems (consciousness) and social systems (communication) in their difference from each other, in order to transform meaning as medium, to meaning as form (Luhmann).

Person and role: the distinction The distinction between person and role obtained its modern meaning as the functional differentiation of society evolved. Sociological theories of roles were affluent post-World War II, because an important field of sociological and psychological research arose as an attempt to describe and explain how the atrocities could be conceivable, and how to deal with their aftermath in democratic societies. An important trend in the development of a theory of performativity is genealogically coupled with the development in the vocabulary used by role-theory, and further developed and popularised by Irving Goffman who, in 1959, published his book on the presentation of everyday self.14 It described a change in society that transformed after-war generations into more rebellious youth, where new behavioural structures in public life at first seemed scandalous but gradually reconfigured the formal 1950s into the swinging 1960s. Front stage behaviour took on qualities from what would have been previously strictly backstage attitudes. It followed up on the psychosociological research in role-theory, which was developed in order to investigate how it had been possible for an entire people to be taken in by political propaganda and eugenic policy recommendations. Goffman’s semi-phenomenological studies gave many empirical examples on how individuals adjust their behaviour relative to social situations and the “stage” on which they perform. When the waiter appears front stage (i.e. serving the guests), he adopts the formal conduct prescribed by the rules of the establishment. When the waiter returns to the backstage (i.e. the kitchen) he is between mates, and behaves according to another set of rules. According to his later work,15 the ordinary adult reads situations and their primary framework extremely fast and adjusts their behaviour accordingly in face-saving manoeuvres. Even when the framework is layered or “keyed” by another framework: the dinner party with the boss is also a silent negotiation on future job aspects. Where Goffman’s situations were often physically bound (e.g. a restaurant) and the frames often static, Joshua Meyrowitz16 attempted to expand the dramaturgical theory by focusing on frames as “informational systems”. This might enable the theory to reflect changes in the framework and explain how the dramaturgical vocabulary can be extended to include mediatised communication and not just face-to-face communication. Meyrowitz suggests a “middle stage” concept, as a description of blending of front and backstage. If ordinary front stage behaviour is continued backstage, it formalises an otherwise loose communication: i.e. when the teacher in the staffroom continues to uphold a formal teacher attitude towards his colleagues, instead of stepping out of the front stage role and adapt the more relaxed backstage performance, where pupils may be discussed and jokes exchanged. One setting merges with another and a new setting is established, according to Meyrowitz. Deep back and forefront region behaviour develops when performers gain increased isolation from their audience. The new separation of situations allows for a coarser backstage style and a more pristine onstage performance, and it increase the pressure on the individual, i.e. “the attempt to present oneself as relatively consistent personality” (Meyrowitz, 1990, p. 80). In a media science perspective Meyrowitz pointed at the need to see how different metaphors for media (as channel, language, or environment/setting) provided very different platforms.

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Even though Meyrowitz takes important steps towards a systems >< environment oriented thinking, he does not step out of a limited systems thinking.

Agency and action The concept of “action” has been central to many theories of dramaturgy. We suggest that we substitute the concept of action with “communication”. We need to ask the question: are there components of “action” that are not in themselves other actions? Aristoteles’ answer was that any action is set in motion by envisioning an “end” telos, combining desire, wish, and choices. This served as a satisfying definition for millenniums. With the terminology of sociologist Max Weber (1864–1920), one should distinguish between two components: means and goals. Why does somebody act in a special way (means and motivation), and what will they achieve by their action (goal)? This difference of means and goals inspired the sociologist Durkheim (1858–1917) to the question: what kind of conditions regulate the choice of goal and means and their relations? Durkheim claimed that it is not the “actor” alone, who decides the possibilities of freedom and the necessity of limitations; there is always some social order that regulates this. For Durkheim this means that society primarily was to be considered as a moral institution, that societies only exists when sufficient moral consensus can be obtained. The American sociologist Talcott Parsons (1902–1979) developed this question even further.17 In the aftermath of World War II, he wanted to investigate the values that a society used to limit the individual freedom in specific combinations of goals and means. The importance of this epistemological question can be described by the following argument: the original and traditional argumentation takes its leave from the idea that without an “actor”, no actions can be taken. Therefore, action is an expression of the will of the “actor”. Action is in the traditional understanding subsidiary to the “actor”. Talcott Parsons however, turned this upside down. He depicts the “actor” as an element in the appearance of action. Action can only take place if the conditions are already established, when it becomes possible to distinguish between goals and means, when collective value systems are in place and an “actor” is at disposal. Thus, he declares, “Action is System”.18 All action must be seen in light of the system in which it operates. This is probably the inspiration Goffman built upon, when he declared the self a product of its role behaviour on the specific stage. Theoretically, Goffman never established any expanded network of his own concepts. However, when he states that the Self resides in the arrangement prevailing in a social system, it runs parallel to Parsons’ statement. It seems possible that Goffman attempted to create his own road between Talcott Parsons and the somewhat overloaded theoretical constructions of systems and Charles Wright Mills who criticised Parsons heavily for his “Grand Theory”.19 Mills argued in his sociological works that theory needed to establish a sociological imagination, an awareness of how individual problems were connected with societal issues. He found Talcott Parsons’ sociological theory of social systems based on mere abstractions, and described it as a scary example of what he termed “Grand Theory”. The opposed scientific failure would be the empiricist mistake of extrapolation from mere data collection. Instead, Mills pleaded for a middle-range sociological science, which connected private experience with sociological trends, and that never lost sight of the individual perspective and actions in real life. Goffman attempted to create an understanding of how societies managed to exist, and how they create meaning over time in much the same ways as a theatre performance does.

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Performativity as system-relative Parsons however, followed this path in his theory of modern society, but he did not track it down to the consequential dilemma this establishes for the subject, that has now turned object for systems, and the way in which this begs the question of how to observe this. In order to make this extra turn, we address ourselves to Niklas Luhmann. Normally, we would assume that whatever we observe exists before we start observing: the work of art is there and has the merits that dispose it to be observed as such, and even when we do not observe it, it will maintain to exist as such. Alternatively, it could be argued, that whatever you observe is determined by the point of view and concepts of the observer: so if you observe a system, then no system needs to exist in reality. It is created as a construction of the traditional systems theoretician (often seen in theories of social constructivism). However, both of these epistemological stances have a major problem. It is the fact, that they conceive the observer as external to the system. Luhmann suggests that we address this problem by asking whether such an external position exists at all: The observer is always already conditioned as a physical, chemical, biological, and physical being. Does the observer in any way exist as an extra-worldly subject? Should we not rather presuppose that in all significant meanings the observer takes part in the world he observes? “Or, in other words, is it not the observer who instigates the difference between observer and the observed object?”20 Man and world is in an operative continuity before it is broken by an artificial rupture installed by the distinction: observer >< observed. This is a lesson learned in response to developments within quantum mechanics and biology. All physical phenomenon are for physical and epistemological reasons produced in the observation of the phenomenon. Further, if an observer wants to observe, he must function physically as man and as instrument. The parallel lesson within biology: our cognitive apparatus is developed as a living organism. Therefore, life is in itself cognition of the surrounding world, and everything that we recognise as living beings, are determined by the fact that they are alive. This results in the conclusion: To declare that action as system is not quite enough. We need to be able to specify the system in which the actions take place and how the given actions communicate. The anthropologist Victor Turner declares that human life is performative by necessity, as it unfolds in active processes where conflicts occur, and crises are dealt with.21 Our roles in these everyday dramas are clearly related to societal expectations and the social units (family, institution, or community) in which the “social drama” enacted by homo performans takes place. Seen from a systems theoretical perspective these conceptual evolutions within sociology and anthropology indicates an increased understanding of how an observation of second order becomes an inescapable result of a hyper-complex society and its polycontextural design, and how this resembles theatre in the sense of an audience being witnesses to scripted actions on stage. Let me sum up: the distinction person >< role is seen from sociology a result of the functional differentiation of society. The many functionally differentiated systems work with each of their own programmes for what kind of behaviour is socially acceptable within the system. To refine the functions and their adaptabilities organisations inside the functionally differentiated system operate with specific inclusion/exclusion criteria, which allows decisions to be made, and precise expectations to be formulated as premises for socially acceptable behaviour. Actions in role is in this sense constrained. Seen from a psychological point of

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view, we need to ask how the consciousness of the psychic system reacts to the many different expectations. Each of us carries through our lives an ever-evolving notion of “who we are”. Is there a core self, that contains and aligns all the different versions of me, as they appear in the different roles I inhabit? Or, is the core self a dream, an illusion that we can never apprehend or live? Our consciousness has to find its own answers. Seen from inside the psychic system, the distance to society grows with accelerating speed. This is indeed the case in the zones of affluence we described in Chapter 1. Here the constant irritations from an overstimulated sensitisation demands flexibility in our consciousness. In other zones of political systems where either post-colonial or post-communism has left a partly open horizon, the need to navigate in a culture trying to discover itself, other demands are made to consciousness: what to retrieve from the past, in order to build images of a future, and what to forget. In both cases, the question of resistance, innovation, liberation comes up. To what degree is any person able to decide to imagine things could be different? Freedom is best understood as variations in the strength to communicate alternatives. The distinction between freedom and constraints, between voluntarism and determinism easily applies to the distinction between person and role. Maybe the question should be put differently. In a systems theoretical perspective this dilemma between determinism and voluntarism is understood as a reflection of the movement created in hyper-complex society, where systems of interaction and society are drifting apart.

Performativity as enacted consciousness The vectors of person and role have in common a hierarchical structure, with one set of values governing claims and expectations, as they appear in the goals of the person, and another set of values that governs the programmes containing the implicit or explicit expectations for socially acceptable behaviour within the role, as illustrated in Figure 6.7.

PERSON

ROLE

Values

Values

Claims

Programmes

Expectations Goals

Goals PSYCHIC SYSTEM Embodied Embrained Embedded

FIGURE 6.7 

Performativity – aligning person and role  Szatkowski

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Performativity is the effort to align the personal and the role-specific values and expectations. This also means that performativity is system-relational; it depends upon the actualised social systems in the given situation. We will most often work hard to get a seamless amalgamation of our personality and our function in the given role. Some would say that the most successful performativity would emerge if the two vectors combined into one. A convolution, others would maintain, is impossible, perhaps even harmful. Further questions arise as to how the psychic system handles the many different roles occupied during a normal day with social contacts and interactions. In our everyday life, the world is at is, and values are constantly applied in the wealth of choices we make all the time. If we did not have those values at our disposal we would literally become valueless and unable to function socially, i.e. communicate. This way of being in the world is to observe it in first order. If the flow of this first order experiencing and enacting gets disturbed, we begin to reflect, we have to observe how others observe. This leads to a second order observation: Of ourselves (as in self-reflection) or of other observers (as psychic systems) or of the social systems we are embedded in, in order to make out how communication is relative to the actualised systems. This shift in observational orders may happen in a matter of seconds or it may take longer. The point is that we need time to reflect, and it is normally impossible to be in both orders at the same time. I say normally, because we know, that some reflections are assisted by condensed experiences, enabling the speed of our reflection, so only milliseconds are needed. Sociologists and psychologists have a variety of terms for this: our behaviour is dependent on scripts, schemata, tacit knowledge, or other such concepts that covers the mechanism of condensation and confirmation. The spectre of performativity is large. If we engage someone who shows only small signs of personal appearance, and otherwise are identified only by their roles (bus driver, judge, or doctor) we treat this as an information about avoiding any personal utterances. Alternatively, if we meet someone who seems to be promoting personal behaviour absolutely negligent of any social constraints, we wonder why. Performativity is enacting consciousness, and by the definitions presented here we are able to analyse performativity as an element of communication. We are also able to provide an analysis of what happens when performativity is performed.

Performativity performed An actor on stage or in rehearsal is a part of an organisation. It might be a nationally subventioned regional theatre, or a group outside the big organisations, gathered for a single project, in both cases the actor is an included member in an organisation. Organisations live because of and by their decisions. Some of these decisions may take the form of official employment contracts or just implicit agreements about trust and loyalty. Other decisions concern the way in which rehearsals are supposed to function: the demands on the actors for preparation, programmes of practices on the floor, and the hierarchy of members of the group in relation to further decision making. We could go on, but let this suffice in order to make clear, that the actor in any organisation within the art system always has written and/or unwritten rules to follow, and a commitment to respond to expectations, outspoken or implicitly communicated as values. In this way the “role” of the actor emerges. How the individual actor reacts to the programmes and values of the role is a question of personal values.

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Actors might be professional in the sense that they are able to participate in many different organisations with very different values, and avail themselves and their competences even in processes governed by values unlike their own. Suspension of personal values comes with a price. Actors might be professional in the sense that they only partake in processes clearly aligned to their own personal preferences. This often means collaboration in groups of like-minded artists, and prolonged periods of working together in order to investigate the way in which values may be converted to poietics, ways of working (poiesis) and presenting their art (aisthesis). To realise personal values uncompromisingly comes with a price. The performativity of the individual actor is a constant struggle with the power-field of organisations and the art system. Training and education of actors have to be aware of this, and provide the actor-student with powers of reflection and abilities to observe in second order. To observe how values are communicated is essential. Especially because values seldom are presented with explicit references to the poietics governing the creative processes. To navigate in processes where there are conflicting values and poietics at stake is important and highly relevant, as this very often appears to happen in the art system. When an actor on stage (with or for an audience) establishes a figure, it is a question of knowing what kind of poietics this figure is a part of. In some kind of poietics, the figure may be what normally is referred to as a “character”, implicit in the concept we may find the notion, that a full character is a person with an individual background story, a wide range of emotions and feelings, and in some sort of struggle with an environment. In modern dramatic theatre this will often be between personal values and roles in an internal turmoil, and/or in conflicts with other characters. In other words, the actor’s professional performativity, is the ability to portray the performativity of the character. This could be illustrated as in Figure 6.8.

PERSON RS Values

ROLE R

PERSON

ROLE

Programmes

Claims

Goals

Expectations Goals

character

ACTOR ‘NN’ PSYCHIC SYSTEM Embodied Embrained Embedded

FIGURE 6.8 

Values

Performing performativity  Szatkowski

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In the poietics of classic dramatic theatre, the actor is supposed to be “invisible” behind the character in order to produce the “illusion” of being the character. The convention of the ramp between stage and spectators appearing as a transparent “fourth wall” came with naturalism and its ideal of realism. The evolution of many other poietics during the 20th century made it abundantly clear that the dramatic way of telling in theatre gradually became supplemented by other forms. Acting in what has been termed “epic theatre” is a question of allowing the actor to become visible again. In epic theatre, the actor functions as both narrator and narrated. Demonstratively selfreflexive epic theatre points at itself as “theatre”, and addresses the audience. The poietics of epic theatre thus requires another positioning of both actor and spectator. It presupposes that the stories told, and the actions enacted had their clear purpose, as a piece of enlightenment, and that they would appeal to both emotions and rationality. The theatre had a message to communicate. The spectator would be reminded that she was in the theatre, but also part of a community with political demands to take a stand. As both the dramatic and the epic form in this sense share a belief in causality and reality, albeit with two different concepts of how to represent that reality, makes it clear, that they share a common epistemological belief in finding the “truth” behind “appearances”. When the French called the dramaturgs for “Les flics du sense”, they reacted against the idea of art being used to promote these kind of “truths”. And they were not alone. Theatre of the absurd, and the neo-avant-garde of the mid-1960s in USA and Europe found forms that challenged audiences in other ways. This again proved to be a challenge for the actors, as they now had to perform in many different forms of performativity. Where the zones of affluence in American and European lives were building fast, other countries had to find ways to live in communist political systems and domains, or to find new orders in post-colonial societies. When we consider the new kind of performativity, we need to bear in mind that it mostly refers to the affluent west and the political system of welfare states. So what characterised the suggestions made in the art system as how to navigate in these zones? We will address this question to some of the art-theories bound up in performance.

Performance For the art sciences one of the central developments in the 20th century art was centred on the developments in visual arts and theatre forms that started with what we have come to know as the historical avant-garde and its renewal in the mid-1960s. “Performance” was from the 1960s a concept that experienced a variety of reappropriations, and allowed new dimensions to be added to the concept. Theatre had, after all, some thousand years of experience with the performative. Marvin Carlson insists in his survey from 1996/2013,22 that it is useful to distinguish the “theatrical” performance from its many close relations (political rallies, sports events, costume balls, public presentations, and religious rites). Carlson’s investigation illustrates how evolution in both science and art is driven by a mutual challenge in the structural coupling of the two systems. When new elements are introduced in the art system: forms of performance that claim to be art and challenges former traditions, unrest and undecidability create “irritation” in both systems of art and science. From the 1970s and onward art system and theatre had to deal with a new flow of solo-performances where body and biography, gender and ethnicity were investigated, e.g. Marina Abramovic in Lips

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of Thomas (1975) whipped and cut herself, or, when Annie Sprinkle (1991) as female performer invited her audience to watch her vagina from a camera she inserted into herself, or, when Ron Athey in 4 Scenes in a Harsh Life (1994), mutilated himself – was this then to be considered art? Theatre? As we have claimed, such “new” events are the autopoiesis of art. In this chapter we investigate the performing of performativity, in relation to the idea of how the relation between person and role evolves. With reference to the above Figures 6.7 and 6.8, we need to consider Abramovic, Sprinkle, and Athey as actors who emphatically negate the idea of “illusion”. Theatre is fake, they insisted on the “real”. No more makebelieve. The body is my body just as the blood is my blood, naked and exposed. Therefore, in our terms of performativity they insisted on collapsing the vectors. Their poietics negated the “symbolic order” imposed by roles, and they insisted to stand forward as “themselves”. When the distinction person/role is obliterated, the “person” becomes the “self”, and what is that? In terms of acting, the figure appears as identical with the actor. Therefore, this distinction also collapses. Or, does it? I will insist, that the mere fact that these “performances” appear in front of or with an audience, the imaginary reality has its grip on the performer. The figure may consist of a very thin layer of imaginary reality, but it is there. The art movements also included performances working on (auto)biographical material or ironically re-representing classical texts, with mixtures of acting styles and use of video on stage, as did the Wooster Group originated 1975 led by Elizabeth Le Comte, working in the Performing Garage (where Richard Schechner in the years before produced performances, that amongst other things experimented with audience participation). Here other poietics seemed to be operating. In opposition to both the didactic ideas behind dramatic and epic dramaturgies, and the radicalised negation of illusion and insistence on liminality in the body-art performances, groups in Europe and the Americas experimented with a playful and ironic dramaturgy, where no single known poietic should stand alone, but could be included, parodied, or exploited. These poietics of hybridity provided new challenges to the actors. Belgian director Jan Fabre called his actors “warriors of the beautiful”, and the focus on corporeality and flexibility made the work of the actor focus upon bodily expressivity, ability to improvise and generate material in processes of devising. The actor had to have techniques and creational knowledge (poiesis), in some cases this meant faithfulness towards the director, even to a degree of lifelong commitments (as in Odin Teatret, Eugenio Barba, Denmark). The performativity in such artistic work demands a strong and clear definition of the poietic values and programmes of poiesis and aisthesis, in order to be able to train, learn, understand, and master the required functions of the actor. Personal values have to be able to navigate in the double demand of commitment and submission under a common goal (often as dictated by the “master”). In the performance, the performativity of the figures does not call upon any clear distinctions of person and role as it has no immediate or significant meaning. The actor however experiences constant and heavy demands on her/his performativity. This list could be prolonged and enhanced, but for the purpose here, we just needed a hint at the kind of new theatre artefacts on stage, which generated the scientific discussion around performativity. Performance clearly distanced itself from theatre, understood as performances that were text-based, narrative, and bearers of a psychological illusionism. Theatre in its classic form is qualified by the co-presence of a collective of actors and spectators in a common time and space. Concepts evolving from this form of theatre point us in a direction of representation, embodied performance and presence, whereas a “postmodern” aesthetic according

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to Carlson points us towards “absence” and “citation”.23 This “performative turn” (Erika Fischer-Lichte) suggested ways of redescribing theatre. Foremost as an (avant-garde) aesthetic that opposes traditional narrative strategies of closure in theatre and instead experiments with the involvement of site-specific theatre, of multimedia strategies on stage or site-specific, solo performances where the imaginary reality is made extraordinarily thin, and use of gender, ethnicity, and autobiography as central embarking or disembarking points, depending on the social and political aims of the performances.

Carlson on performativity Theatre in its classic form is qualified by the co-presence of a collective of actors and spectators in a common time and space. Concepts evolving from this form of theatre point us in a direction of representation, embodied performance and presence, whereas a “postmodern” aesthetic according to Carlson (1996, p. 198) points us towards “absence” and “citation”. This “performative turn” suggests one way of redescribing theatre, only now as performance, and as studied, not in Theatre Studies, but in Performance Studies (Shepherd, 2016, p. 176), which emerged in New York (Richard Schechner/Victor Turner) as a new distinct area of cultural enquiry. Carlson’s critical survey consists of three parts. The first introduces the concept of performance in anthropological and ethnographic studies, in sociological and psychological approaches, and finally in linguistic theory. The argumentative structure in Part I is constructed as a selected introduction to central concepts, a comparison and finally a discussion of tendencies in the respective approaches. As a central operational distinction Carlson observes with the difference affirmative >< subversive as a discussion of what kind of social or political effect might be inherent in performance. When applying this specific distinction, the problem is stated as a question whether performance and performativity mainly functions as a conservative structure in society or whether it might contain elements of subversive or transformational character? Part II introduces the “art of performance” in historical context and “performance art” as contemporary examples of new forms of theatre. Part III confronts performance with “contemporary theory”, which includes a notion of the “postmodern”, of “identity” and a discussion of how a “resistant performance” could be described. Theoretically, Carlson notices a shift from a traditional modernist position with its own internal debates as those between Clement Greenberg and Michael Fried, towards a post-structuralist position as presented by Lyotard, Derrida, and Butler, with critical comments from Hal Foster and Fredric Jameson. Carlson describes how his work with the book on performance presented difficulties in terms of providing terms to describe a complex, conflicted and “protean phenomenon” as performance. It reflects, according to Carlson, the protean self of a postmodern world, where a self may contain corners of stability, but primarily it is engaged in a continuous exploration and personal experiment. What then happens to the academic objectivity and neutrality? Questions like these create an immediate need for self-reflection. Performance by its nature resists conclusions, just as it resists the sort of definitions, boundaries, and limits so useful to traditional academic writing and academic structures. [. . .] Looking back with such a reflexive consciousness to the opening paragraph of this study and of this “conclusion”, and considering what sort of performance it seems to be

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carrying out, I now see operating in it a clear and familiar performative strategy – the establishing of a mediating “authorial” as well as “authoritative” voice, posing itself as a useful interpreter between the “experts in such a wide range of disciplines” with their “complex web of specialized critical vocabulary” and the “confused and overwhelmed” newcomer to the field who is or is in part the implied reader who will profit from such informed interpretation to further an “interest in studying performance” (Carlson, 1996, pp. 189–190) This overall architecture of Carlson’s argument is to introduce concepts and their application within different scientific disciplines, shows their weak and strong points vis-à-vis a modern (or postmodern) tradition of performance and its history, finally to confront performance and theory in a discussion of its possible political effects. I might suggest, that what starts out as a classic American pragmatic study of concepts, artefacts and their possible function in society, ends up in a somewhat troubled self-reflection. Carlson points at the need to be aware how the constructedness of much human activity is a primary concern, both for scientific and artistic work, and the need to look into “liminal territory, in boundaries and borders”. Such a position is close to a neo-pragmatic position (as we find it by Richard Rorty).24 Here the foremost task of art (and philosophy) is to investigate new metaphors with which to redescribe reality. We are even pointed to William James and his “radical empiricism” rejecting the boundary between observer and observed. These pointers are however never united in a new epistemological perspective, but Carlson quotes an essay by Conquergood25 where ethnography is redescribed in a neo-pragmatic, difference theoretical perspective, including a shift from viewing the world as text, to viewing “the world as performance”. This means thinking about culture not as a reified system, but as an unfolding of performative inventions, where the observer regards the fieldwork as “an enabling fiction between observer and observed”. It further involves the question: “how does performance reproduce, enable, sustain, challenge, subvert, critique, and naturalise ideology?” In his concluding reflections, Carlson finally finds that cultural performance (as opposed to “theatrical” performance) may function as a metacommentary on culture: but neither performers nor spectators can be primarily characterized as consciously seeking out cultural performance as metacommentary on their culture. In “theatrical” performance however, this concern is central. Performers and audience alike accept that a primary function of this activity is precisely cultural and social metacommentary, the exploration of self and other, of the world as experienced, and of alternative possibilities. (Carlson, 1996, p .197) Why the need to present the “theatrical” performance? And why the marks round theatre? Carlson concludes that “Whether in form of ‘traditional’ theatre or of performance art, a special, if not unique, laboratory for cultural negotiations, a function of paramount importance in the plurivocal and rapidly changing contemporary society” (p. 197) [My italics].

Imaginary reality and reality: a distinction or a liminoid By stressing the importance of this distinction between “theatrical” and “cultural” performance, Carlson argues for the importance of not “blurring the distinctions”. It makes it a bit

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difficult to understand, why Carlson then earlier in his book, criticises Bruce Wilshire and his attempt expressly to reinforce this distinction. I have chosen this discussion between Carlson and Wilshire because it opens up an interesting discussion on the person >< role distinction. Carlson rightly makes the claim that what is at stake is different ways of interpreting the schism between the social “self” or “person” and its performing of “roles”. Carlson identifies three positions: Goffman serves as an example of a “neutral” position, where the performer assumes roles in order to make communication easy and clear. Goffman is not concerned whether the “self” being presented is the “true” self. Opposed to this Carlson sees Nietzsche as an example of a “negative” position, where roles are the constantly worn mask, which suppresses some emotions that eventually will return and gain power over the individual. “The profession of almost every man, even the artist, begins with hypocrisy, as he imitates from the outside, copies what is effective”.26 Carlson quotes Sartre in Being and Nothingness (1943) that behaviour conducted according to role-programmes (e.g. a waiter) is touched by something artificial and imposed, thus endangering the psyche and its “being”. So a negative version seems to oppose attitudes and role actions with “being” and simple, prescriptive, and predictable roles opposed to “the complex consciousness that fulfils the needs of the self”.27 This existentialist and phenomenological concerned position is, according to Carlson, repeated by Bruce Wilshire28 in his book on roleplaying and identity. Carlson identifies Wilshire’s critique of Goffman as an insistence that Goffman is in effect blurring the distinction between “on stage” and “off stage”, and that this fact has theoretical and ethical implications. Carlson sums up: It is extremely difficult, and ultimately perhaps not particularly useful, to try as Wilshire does to draw a clear distinction between the “real” world of “responsible” human action, and the “imaginary” realm of play and performance. On the contrary, an important tradition of modern anthropological and psychoanalytical theory suggests that the realm of play not only overlaps “reality” in important ways, but in fact often serves as the crucible in which the material that we utilize in the “real” world of “responsible” action is found, developed, and casted into significant new forms. Indeed social constructionism and ethnomethodology introduce into the most common of everyday activities the kind of openness, improvisation, and experimentation that more conventional social theory has normally associated with states of “play”. (p. 53) The “positive” position should accordingly be seen as another way to observe “role”. Here role is to be seen as a construct that overlaps between reality and imaginary reality, and thus enables experiment with significant new forms. The endeavour to define this pattern of positions with Goffman in an “neutral” centre position and Nietzsche, Sartre, and Wilshire in the negative corner, and the positive corner occupied by post-structuralists, neo-pragmatists, and consorts, claiming the “theatrical” performance as a unique laboratory for cultural negotiations (p. 197), makes me wonder how this construction is made and for what purposes. Let me point at some of the problems in the theoretical dimensions. I have already pointed at the inherent contradiction: Wilshire is criticised for his insistence not to blur the distinction between “reality” and “imaginary reality”, yet Carlson ends with claiming the importance of differentiating between “theatrical” and “social” performances. Why is that? One possible way of explaining this dichotomy would be to read it as a clear statement of

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epistemological preferences. A social critique running along the lines from Nietzsche to Heidegger and Sartre is apparently not sufficiently interested in experiments with alternatives to satisfy a (neo-) pragmatist. But the question of how new horizons might open has to include an image of the present, and we must ask how do we describe society? Nietzsche had his way with the hammer and his joyful science that reminded us of how since Copernicus we have been “rolling down an incline, faster and faster away from the centre – whither?” Wilshire makes his interpretation: If it is true that we are our bodies but are not simply centred in them – that experientially we are de-centred – then the person is for-and-by-others, mimetically involved in others, and yet as organism he is other-from-every-other. (p. 195) But does this position in any way construe “roles” as something negative? I would rather point at the fact that behind the construction of a negative-neutral-positive continuum we find an ethical urge to prioritise the subversive. Alas, one would have to ask whether the distinction affirmative >< subversive is in itself either subversive or affirmative. Or in other words: it is of course possible to observe the world with this distinction, but it would demand of those using the distinction that they are able to point clearly to what it is, what should be subverted, and what to be affirmed. An example could be drawn from Carlson’s introduction of the work of Richard Schechner. In the first edition (1996) Carlson acknowledges the importance of Schechner’s work, by highlighting concepts, e.g. “restored behaviour”, “social drama”, and the “strip of behaviour”. Carlson painstakingly points to earlier formulations of the main project as when he reminds us of Georges Gurvitch’s “Sociologie du Théâtre” from 1956.29 Somewhat indirectly Carlson then discusses the concepts e.g. “restored behaviour”, by addressing the question whether it reinforces assumptions of tradition or may be construed as a site of alternative assumptions (pp. 12–15). Carlson highlights the close cooperation between Turner and Schechner in the 1970s as direct, ongoing, and mutually influential. Presenting the 1976 diagram of flows between social and aesthetic drama, Carlson quotes Turner’s remarks from 1982:30 saying that the diagram is “somewhat equilibristic in its implications” and that it is a problem that it is cyclical instead of linear. Turner’s distinction between liminal and liminoid inspires Carlson to reflect on whether “restored behaviour is liminal as in an culturally conservative activity, affirming the conventional structures it challenges, or it is liminoid as in activities that do not honour but resist in subversive ways conventional structures” (p. 23). For Schechner restored behaviour is a process of repetition of acts (“strip of behaviours”) in recontextualisation, in which a continued awareness of some “original behaviour” is included. This double consciousness and its binocular perspective is at the centre of Schechner’s suggestion of the double negative: The figure presented by the actor is “not me”, and yet it is presented by the actor so it is “not not me”. Carlson admits that the works of performance from the early 1970s through to the late 1990s for a major part dealt with silenced individuals or groups, and as such both socially and politically engaged,31 however Carlson finds other ways “more openly resistant”, and as an example points at how the modern women’s movement provided work that were not “apolitical, formalist, gallery-oriented”, but engaged directly in the public debate on issues concerning gender. Not so much in order to raise the consciousness of women, but

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to call attention to “the many unresolved and often ignored problems in contemporary society”. Carlson shows how different trends within feminist theories also inspired and were inspired by different modes of feminist performers. If one, as Sue-Ellen Case (1942), believes in the dominance of a patriarchal system of signs and representations, then women do not have access to mechanisms of cultural meaning production, but are constantly referred to live in between the “courtesan sign ‘woman’” and the real woman, where they have to provide a dynamic fight to expose and explore the in between. Now, the question of what “real woman” is remains another fighting ground. Both Luce Irigaray (1932) and Julia Kristeva (1941) have made the point that if traditional language is itself a male construction, dominated by logic, abstraction, and patriarchal interests, then a more physical language of the mother might provide an opening for the representation of women within it. No doubt a rest of essentialism clings to some of these theoretical positions and they were challenged by a post-structuralist theory. Is the female body itself able to produce a distinctive mode of subjectivity? Carlson turns to Judith Butler to provide an example of such post-structuralist criticism.

Determinism or voluntarism I believe it is fair to say, that the combination of linguistic and sociological concepts of performativity gave rise to and made possible some major developments in the arts sciences concept. The works of Judith Butler had a huge impact on theory and politics of identity in general as well as on an extensive range of academic disciplines.32 Consequently, I am not attempting any exhaustive discussion of the concept of performativity as introduced by Butler, but will focus on a few aspects of her construction of theory. First of all, Butler’s concept of performativity evolves from an existentialist phenomenology33 inspired by Simone de Beauvoir (1908–1986) and her attention towards the embodied existence with its discourses and practices of the lived experiences of being a woman. Beauvoir’s statement: “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman”34 is a way to frame performativity as bodily acts and practices. It also entails a specific research interest in establishing theory in lived experience. Butler presents Beauvoir’s account of gender as examples of “stylized repetition of acts” and as such gendering as a concrete and historical appropriation, interpretation, and therefore also possible as reinterpretation of the biological sex as gender. So the individual may be constrained in its course of action (its agency) but never entirely. Butler seems to follow Parsons’ idea of action as system, where the agent is object and not always able to direct and control its own acts. Acts, when specified “As a given temporal duration within the entire performance, ‘acts’ are shared experience and ‘collective action’”35 are something that maybe observed in second order, as mentioned earlier. The problem for any theory on agency is how to negotiate between constraint and freedom – constrained by social norms and freedom as an autonomous will to counter norms. In her Excitable Speech,36 Butler draws on Austin and Derrida to point at the linguistic functioning of performativity. Here it is the concept of iterability that plays an important part, and enables Butler to specify elements of her concept of performativity. Gender as performatively produced indicates that it is a recycling of a set of conventions, a forced recitation of norms, and thus not something that the subject invents freely, neither does it mean that the subject is entirely subjected37 to norms. Performativity should thus accentuate the restriction of the scope and possibility for action, but not to such a degree, that it prohibits any actions that allow norms to be overcome. This, Butler argues,

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is a deconstructionist position where materiality is interrogated. “To free it from its metaphysical moorings in order to understand what political interests were secured in and by that metaphysical placing and thereby to permit the term to occupy and to serve very different political aims” (Butler, 1993, p. 8ff). If performative acts succeed, they do so because “action echoes prior actions, and accumulates the force of authority through repetition or citation of prior and authoritative practices” (Butler, 1993, p. 51).

Conditions for change: melancholy or performativity In a systems theoretical perspective this dilemma between determinism and voluntarism needs to be understood as a reflection of movements created in hyper-complex society, where the individual psychic system reacts to the constant irritation that emerges from observing how a personal life and horizon is drifting apart from society. In other words, how the personal life in systems of interaction (the laboratory and experimental field for communication) and how social life in a hyper-complex society of social systems, appear as two distinct spheres. As countermeasure, we invest ourselves and our lives in organisations. They build environments with inclusion and rules to guide. This might be one of the reasons that work life has become so important in zones of affluence, that careers serve as monitors of development, and why being unemployed exerts such heavy strains upon the individual. If one experiences one’s life determined by such constant irritations, a wish for changes and possibilities to express one’s own individuality, grows into a hope for wilful actions. In order to communicate changes we have to be precise in terms of what social systems we address with communication about change. This is, as I see it, not captured by Butler’s term melancholia. For her melancholia is concerned with “ungrieved loss”. So, drag performativity (males dressing up as females and vice versa) is a heterosexual melancholy. Butler (1993) identifies in body that matters the foreclosure of homosexuality as that which provides the normative heterosexuality with such force: the renunciation of homosexuality is a loss of same-sex love objects. So a strictly straight woman is the truest lesbian melancholic. When performing her clear gender identification (her role as a woman), she mimes the woman she “never” loved, and “never grieved” (Butler, 1993, pp. 235–236). Responding to the role of the heterosexual woman is an act of interpellation (after Althusser’s idea, that it is by submission to power that the subject becomes a subject). In this sense the subject is not autonomous, but always dependent on the process of subordination. The child’s primary attachments and “impossible” loves are foreclosed and can never be fully seen, they have to be denied and become unknowable, only to reappear as melancholic grieving. Performativity is a cultural ritual that reiterates social norms. However, it is not, according to Butler, so that conventions, norms, and social institutions only are operating statically to reinforce existing powers, but iteration may also be an opening towards change, as it is of a social nature. Here I concur with Lloyd (2007, p. 125), as she points at the problem of these generalisations: Butler, in my view, still pays insufficient attention to the exact power relations and to the specific social and political institutions or practices that underpin and shape actual acts of iteration and resignification. [. . .] Perhaps the principal reason for this weakness in her theory is that her conception of the social is simply too narrow and undifferentiated. [My elision]

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We find many different pointers in the direction of a necessity to understand the frame for speech acts, and the enunciations of gender as related to norms, institutions, or other such social entities, but further investigation of these interdependencies – or rather interpenetration – is often scarce. It is significant that in Butler’s writing the term “the state” is at best ambiguous (Lloyd, 2007, p. 130). Sometimes the state is conceptualised as judiciary, as Court, as Judge – somehow expression of a law. Alternatively, the state compasses conflicting institutions, practices, pronouncements and discourses. Butler does specify38 that the multiplicity of institutions with different interests and thus the state, is not reducible to law, and the multiplicity provides sites for political resistance. From a systems theoretical point of view it essential to remark that the difference between state and society emerged in the middle of the 19th century. When the mercantilist and commercial political system broke down, it became necessary to discuss how and to what extent the state should be a regulatory force in problems of distribution. Hegel saw the state as the “sublated” result, as Aufhebung of the dialectic of history. Still, the new demands on understanding society could not content itself with this description of reality. The state was instead positioned at the side of the distinction, which had to decide how the distinction should be drawn, how it should be respected, and how it should be effected. The difference state/ society was a first step towards a distinction between the individual and society, however, it was never openly declared or theoretically conceptualised,39 but it meant in fact, that society did not consist of individuals, and hence could not be described as such. The bodily and mental existence of the individual had to reside in an external position to society. This is an inevitable consequence of the functional differentiation of society into separate systems. The individual could not be cast as a member of only one functional system, but had to be able to participate in all the different systems. This meant that social inclusion had to be considered in a new way, and that new values arrived in the semantic: e.g. freedom and equality, but also that the individual achieved a new status, which also meant new names like “subject” or “person” and “individuality” (as it is suggested in Figure 6.8. It was not until the Freudian theory of unconsciousness was developed and circulated, that the individual finally found a way to complete the semantic of the “subject” or “self” or “person”. Freud showed how the subject could be seen as a difference to itself. But the concept of “society” did not find any comparable and satisfying form. The consequences of the semantic of the “subject”, was an immense need for self-interpretations, and interpretations of the “modern”. One saw a past that did not commit one’s actions, and one saw a future that was not decided. This could be interpreted as an immense opportunity or as dismal and scary, which led to heavy ideological controversies: liberalism versus socialism, voluntarism versus determinism, anarchism versus everything. Today we experience a gradually darkening horizon for the future. This leads to an increased pressure on the political system (and also other functionally differentiated systems) to take decisions. This pressure and the growing despondence is one of the major political concerns today. It could be translated into our theory of performativity: the need for the individual to negotiate how roles should be performed according to personality. When Butler suggests that gender is connected to the iteration of performative scripts, and it is iteration that opens up for possible changes, one conclusion could be to point at the importance of sensitising the analysis of roles or scripts as relative to the functional differentiated system, or other social systems, in which they appear.

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The need to look for alternative futures is dependent on how we represent the past in our own present. It is not given what may qualify as “emancipation”, “empowerment”, or “liberation”, but the need to understand living conditions in a zone of affluence, to confront the dangers inherent in these conditions, and to develop the ability to see alternatives and navigate under the very special conditions in a world society have never been more pressing. Part of the stories to be told and the concepts to navigate by must include performativity: the question of how we negotiate the distinction between person and role. Experiments with the letting the distinction collapse, or to make one of the two vectors dominate, are played out in theatre performances. Lately in attempts to include the spectator in the imaginary reality, as in “immersive theatre forms”.

Notes 1 Gascoigne, Neil and Thornton, Tim (2013) Tacit Knowledge. Durham: Acumen, p. 2. 2 Book VI, Chapter 6 of the Nicomachean Ethics. 3 Luhmann, Niklas (2011) “Über ‘kreativität’”. In Gumbrecht, Hans-Ulrich (Ed.) Kreativität – ein verbrauchter Begriff? München: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, pp. 13–20. 4 Barba, Eugenio (1979) The Floating Islands. Gråsten: Drama. 5 Baecker, Dirk (2005) Kommunikation. Leipzig: Reklam, p. 68. 6 Baecker, Dirk (1996) “Die adresse der kunst” (The Address of Art). In Fohrmann, J. and Müller, H. (Eds.) Systemtheorie der Literatur. München: Wilhelm Fink, pp. 82–105. 7 Fischer-Lichte, Erika (2004) Ästhetik des Performativen. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, p. 59f, p. 127f. 8 Boenisch, Peter M. (2014) Directing Scenes and Senses. The Thinking of Regi. Manchester: Manchester University Press. 9 Pavis, Patrice (2013) Contemporary Mise en Scéne: Staging Theatre Today, Translated by Joel Anderson. Abingdon and New York: Routledge. (In French 2007). 10 Jameson, Fredric (2010) The Hegel Variations On the Phenomenology of Spirit. London/New York: Verso. 11 Žižek, Slavoj (2013) Less Than Nothing: Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism. London and New York:Verso 12 Loxley, James (2007) Performativity. Oxon: Routledge. Shepherd, Simon (2016) The Cambridge Introduction to Performance Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wirth, Uwe (Ed.) (2002) Performanz. Zwischen Sprachphilosophie und Kulturwissenschaft. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Parker, Andrew and Sedwick, Kosofsky Eve (Eds.) (1995) Performativity and Performance. New York and London: Routledge. Carlson, Marvin (1996/2013) Performance. A Critical Introduction. New York and London: Routledge. Kjølner, Torunn (2011) “Teatralitet og performativitet, to sider af samme sag?” (Theatricality and performativity, two sides of the same coin?). In Szatkowski, Janek et al. (Eds.) Performative Former (Performative Forms). Aarhus: Peripeti, pp. 11–33. 13 Shepherd, Simon (2016) The Cambridge Introduction to Performance Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 174–183: “How Performance Studies emerged”. 14 Goffman, Erving (1959) The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Doubleday: New York. 15 Goffman, Erving (1974) Frame Analysis. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 16 Meyrowitz, Joshua (1990) “Redefining the situation: extending dramaturgy into a theory of social change and media effects”. In Riggins, Stephen (Ed.) Beyond Goffman: Studies on Communication, Institution, and Social Interaction. New York: Mouton de Gruyter. 17 Luhmann, Niklas (2001) Einführung in die Systemtheorie. Heidelberg: Carl-Auer Verlag, pp. 20–27. 18 Parson, Talcott and Shills, Edward (1951) Towards a General Theory of Action. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 19 The American sociologist C. Wright Mills (1959) The Sociological Imagination. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 25–49. Mills is perhaps the first, most influential critic of theories that aims at formulating abstract theoretical understanding of social life. Mills criticised his fellow American sociologist Talcott Parsons and his attempts to create an abstract understanding of social systems.

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20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39

See also Talcott Parsons (1951) The Social System. New York: The Free Press; and Talcott Parsons and Edward Shils (Eds.) (1951) Toward a General Theory of Action. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Luhmann (2002), pp. 143–156. Turner,Victor (1986) The Anthropology of Performance. New York: PAJ Publications. Carlson, Marvin (1996) Performance. A Critical Introduction. New York and London: Routledge. (Revised edition 2013). Carlson (1996) Performance. A Critical Introduction, p. 198. Rorty, Richard (1982) Consequences of Pragmatism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Conquergood, Dwight (1991) “Rethinking ethnography: towards a critical cultural politics”. In Communication Monographs 58, pp. 179–194. Nietzsche, Friedrich (1984/1878) Human, All Too Human. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, p. 51. Sartre quoted by Carlson. Wilshire, Bruce (1982) Roleplaying and Identity. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Gurvitch, Georges (1956) “Sociologie du théâtre”. In Les Lettres Nouvelles (vols. 34–36). Turner,Victor (1982) From Ritual to Theatre. New York: PAJ Publications. Carlson (1996) p. 165. Loxley (2007) Performativity, p. 113. Lloyd, Moya (2007) Judith Butler. Cambridge: Polity Press, pp. 36–48. Beauvoir, Simone de (1983) Second Sex. Harmondsworth: Penguin, p. 295. (Original French 1948). Butler, Judith (1988) “Performative acts and gender constitution: an essay in phenomenology and feminist theory, in Theatre Journal 40 (4), pp. 519–531. Butler, Judith (1997) Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative. London and New York: Routledge. Here inspired by Foucault’s concept of assujetissement (subjectivation). Butler, Judith (2002) “Is kinship always already heterosexual?” In Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies, 13 (1), pp.14–44, p. 27. Luhmann, Niklas (2002) Die Politik der Gesellschaft. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, p. 215.

7 ANALYSING POIETICS Eugenio Barba and Odin Teatret

Odin Teatret – and four motives for the choice In Holstebro, a small town in Jutland, Denmark we find Odin Teatret. After its start in Oslo 1964, it found in 1966 a permanent residence. Situated an hour’s drive from the University of Aarhus and its Department of Dramaturgy. We have had an outstanding opportunity to cooperate with and follow the work of Eugenio Barba. It has resulted in a number of books, conferences, workshops, and other collaborative projects,1 thanks to Odin Teatret and their openness and hospitality.

An enigma I saw my first performance with Odin Teatret in 1973: My Father’s House. It was a chilly spring evening in another small Danish town (Horsens). The audience was placed on benches with an aisle between them, where the actors played. Beside me sat an elderly couple. From their whispering I understood that they felt very estranged by the performance. However, during the intense performance their whispering stopped, and when we left the theatre I heard him say that he had felt like crying, because the accordion was so sad. As a young student of dramaturgy I myself had been moved, and challenged by the fact that theatre could be like this: a theatre that spoke “to each spectator in a different and penetrating language”.2 The performance made its connection with me through the way it was filled with elements of sensuality and revolt. No clear stories were told, the acting style was strange. The intensity in music and the simultaneity of actions proved to be overwhelming. The challenges from the poietics of the performance forced me to try to come to terms with the language of the performance. It was, first of all, a challenge in terms of the multiple and simultaneous use of all theatrical elements. How could I even begin to make an analysis of a performance that produced so many different meanings? No simple hierarchies, no single and unifying plot, no immediate coherence to cling to. I was confronted with an anarchistic and order-dissolving order. It presented a paradox that I had no idea how to describe or analyse. I was faced with a double challenge: one was personal and the other was professional. At that specific time in

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my own life, as a young man recently moved into a new phase of his life, I felt connected with the performance and its constant revolt against all the forces of repression and tradition. In addition, as I was a student of dramaturgy, it became a professional challenge to try to come to terms with this cryptic performance. It rapidly became clear that any attempt to reduce the complexity would be like an act of violence. In the following years, I kept returning to Odin Teatret and their performances. I was constantly inspired and disturbed both by their poietics and by their working methods. Whenever I tried to focus my analytical work, I discovered that the performance escaped most of the analytical concepts I had appropriated during my studies and attempted to apply. It made the idea of interpretation seem void. I could try to describe my own experience of the performance, but when I did, it became obvious that such a description was unavoidably connected to my personal biography and private associations. The performance invited the spectator to create meaning, the meaning was not manifest, and so it had to be selected by each individual spectator. This special type of art confronted the spectator with him- or herself in the act of perception. I saw the performances from my perspective, how could that ever be “objectified” or generalised? I was on equal terms with all spectators, and even if I had placed myself on a chest full of footnotes,3 it would make little or no difference to the outcome of my analysis. When a work of art provokes science in such a way that art renders customary analytical devices obsolete, it rocks the epistemological foundation of science. The events of that chilly spring evening made a lasting impression on me. I saw a puzzle, and did not know how to solve it. The performances challenged existing analytical theories, and demanded development within science. This, of course, is the first motive for my choice: a personal and professional interest in this enigmatic theatre.

International impacts The reflective theory we are about to analyse is written by a man of many talents. He is both a scholar and an artist. In order to appreciate the work we need to identify its status. The book is not presented as a scientific paper or a dissertation; it is an artist’s attempt to describe central elements in the artistic processes in an extraordinary kind of theatre. The book is an art system’s internal reflection on a specific poietics and it furthermore focuses on how to conceptualise dramaturgy. It is not a scientific paper with footnotes, exact references, and clearly stated hypothesis. It is a reflection of the poietic hierarchy at work in the rehearsals and performances. Such books are rare, and it is even rarer that they present a coherent theory on dramaturgy, which allows the reader to discover “logic” in the artistic processes. It is by establishing many diverse programmes or poietic hierarchies with new relations to “tradition” that the art system evolves and maintains a dynamic relationship with society and its complex reality. Only a few artists combine scientific practices with their art, and even fewer write about it. Eugenio Barba (1936) has received several doctorates (honoris causa), including the University of Aarhus, and his research in modern theatre worldwide (ISTA International School of Theatre Anthropology), is impressive and innovative. This is the second motive for choosing Eugenio Barba’s book.

A rare and comprehensive reflection theory Eugenio Barba started his experiment with the Odin Teatret 200 years after Lessing. In society and in the art system much has changed. The subsidies in Nordic cultural politics have

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made it economically possible – though not in any way lucrative – to conduct long-standing artistic experiments, subsidies that have to be supplemented by the theatre’s own revenue. “Reason” is no longer the blessed light; darkness has crept into the rays of enlightenment, casting shadows. In order to appreciate the scope of the project called Odin Teatret it is important to understand the main features of the construction: We are dealing with a theatre that has existed for close to 50 years, and it is driven by director Eugenio Barba and a group of actors who have participated, some of them from the very beginning. The daily training and the production of performances take place within firm daily routines and discipline. The production of performances can last years, and the performances are constantly adjusted while they are in performance. Odin Teatret travels worldwide with its performances. In addition, many other projects emerge from Odin Teatret. I have mentioned ISTA, International School of Theatre Anthropology, founded 1979, which studies and compares diverse acting traditions from around the world. Of great importance are the Odin Teater weeks that every year draw many international participants to workshops, demonstrations, and performances in Holstebro. This places Odin Teatret in a category of its own. The dream of many Romanticists and members of the historical avant-garde of making life and art come together is in many ways fulfilled by Eugenio Barba’s masterpiece: Odin Teatret. This has been made possible only because life and art are established with unprecedented patience, rigour, love, discipline, and freedom. Of course, there have been variations in the over 70 performances, there have been different focuses over many years, but there is also an astounding consistency in the artistic ideas and expressions. The following analysis is not an attempt to evaluate the historical or cultural political importance of Odin Teatret. It is an endeavour to redescribe the dramaturgy at work, in the house of Odin as expressed by Eugenio Barba. Barba and Odin Teatret constantly provide a profound self-reflection. This is very rare in theatre companies, let alone in a company with a 50-year history. Thus, it presents itself as a third and obvious motivation for my selection.

A third wave of poietics in modernity I tried, in 1989, to describe the performance of the Odin Teatret with a concept of a theatre of simultaneity,4 and I compared it with theatre of more conventional dramatic and epic forms. Barba did not make any straightforward reversal: it was not like Brecht turning a dramatic form into an epic form. When that happens, the reversal becomes bound to that which it reverses. The old “major” of the dramatic form is substituted by the “minor”: the epic form of theatre. In the 1970s, it was as if the former minor had become a new major. The idea that dramaturgy could only either be dramatic or epic, either open or closed, either masculine or feminine was not satisfying. It could not in any way capture the poietic form of Odin Teatret, where the spectator was not only confronted with the intensity of the theatrical language, but also with the fact that his or her own perception of the performance is unique and the product of the spectators own selections of understanding. It pointed to the heart of the communicative act. I even dared to present the idea for Eugenio Barba; he gave me a friendly smile, and said that there might be something there, but it was only a small fragment of the performance and its aesthetic, that could be described in this way. Now 30 years later, I do acknowledge the fact that there was more to it, than could be summed up in my first attempt. To follow the work of Odin Teatret was a unique chance to witness, at close range, the development of one of the very influential

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new “traditions” in late-modern theatre. We witnessed at close range an experiment with a paradigmatic shift. In an article from 1992, I argued that theatre science would have to acknowledge and take into consideration the epistemological turn in theory of science,5 and make a discernible shift from thinking in identities to a difference-theoretical thinking. Post-structuralism was then already one of the many contemporary scientific theories that arose partly as response to new forms in art. In terms of theatre art, I suggested to consider the dramatic form of theatre as we trace it in the evolution of the bourgeois drama from Steel to Ibsen, as the first wave of modernity. When the wave broke, the foam created new directions for theatre as in “Sturm und Drang”, “Romanticism”, and “Naturalism”. When the wave took land Ibsen, Herder, and Strindberg appeared. The second wave of theatre in modernity took the shape of a historical avant-garde, the force and energy inside the wave made it break very fast into Surrealism, Futurism, Dadaism, etc. The waves spread out into Epic Theatre, Theatre of the Absurd, of the angry young British men, and American introspection of the salesman. The third wave started in the 1960s, a long and slowly rising wave of a new theatre with paradigms of yet another form of modernism, characterised by self-reflectivity, indeterminacy, and contingency. In some theories, this shift is seen as an epochal transgression of modernism into post-modernism. Within theatre science, particularly since the 1990s, it has been en vogue to proclaim a turn in the representational mode towards a postdramatic theatre (Hans-Thies Lehmann, 1999); and in the aesthetic realm as such: a turn to performativity (Ästhetik des Performativen, Erika Fischer-Lichte, 2004).6 To anticipate the final chapter of the book, we are riding on a fourth wave, near its breaking point, and it looks like “immersive theatre” and a “new-realism” are two of the many new poietics. I am critical of the tendency to think of the post-modern as a shift in epochal terms. And we will discuss the postdramatic and the attempts to privilege this theatre form as the avantgarde of avant-gardes. Here it is sufficient to state, that the theatre performances of Odin Teatret can be seen as an example of a theatre form that indeed inherits elements from the historical avant-garde but transforms them into performances dominated by the third wave’s self-reflective dissemination of meaning. One might point at the way in which some balances in the poietics shift during the many years of work. In Oxyrhyncus (1985), which will be analysed briefly later on, you will find a performance with quite a lot of coherence. In some of the performances (e.g. Talabot (1988) and Chaosmos (1993)) Eugenio Barba experiments with a form that plays almost joyously with making the contingency of meaning manifest. In these performances, the actors are set free to improvise, although within a strict (latent) order. This is as close to a pure poststructuralist deconstructive perspective the Odin performances ever get. The oeuvre of Odin Teatret displays an ambiguity, which we also find in the theoretical work of Eugenio Barba, and it makes it abundantly clear, that one should not search for any one-to-one relation between the two. Whilst the belief in the biological as the latent order – with supremacy in terms of determining life – is clearly expressed in the theoretical writings of Barba during the 1970s and 1980s, it could be argued that Barba in his later theoretical work gradually reduces some of the metaphysical elements and emphasises post-ontological theories. A closer analysis of the self-reflective theory will demonstrate this point and allow us to connect the reflective theory with our theory of communication and dramaturgy; thus providing me with the final motivation.

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The Gospel According to Oxyrhyncus. Notes from a spectator I have seen the performance four times. I present a few fragments of the notes I made after each visit, and stipulate how the dramaturgy can be experienced. One image from the performance keeps haunting me. Torgeir Wethal playing the false Jesus stabs a baby in the face with a sharp dagger. The dagger reappears from the white wrapping presenting a baby, and, on its pointed end, a piece of bread, which is offered as another host. It is a murder, it is the bread transformed to the image of the body of Jesus, a mock ritual performed by a false prophet. Yes, Jesus was murdered and stabbed with spears. Yes, the transubstantiation is an important central element in the mass and its ritual commemorating the fundaments for the Christian faith: the re-entry of Jesus as a deity appearing in human flesh. It is all mixed up in a fake ritual. The performance was at my first view (pre-premiere) structured in parts resembling those of the Holy Mass. The ambiguity of the image on the level of the organic dramaturgy is combined with the narrative dramaturgy where belief and violence constantly clashes. My personal selection of understanding was a long process, beginning with the shudder witnessing the action, reappearing in my memory afterwards, poking to my own associations. As child, I was raised in the Catholic Church. My father played the organ at mass, but was by the local priest denied to join in the communion as he had married a Danish woman, who would not convert. Father had survived years in a German concentration camp, as he fought against both German and Russian troops. This all presented itself to me as a web of memories and feelings connected to my relations to my father. Blood appears in many forms, reminding us of the blood of Jesus. The actors drink it, but also spit into the chalice. There is a hunt for the chalice. Hunting the religious trophy includes the willingness of many of the figures to spill blood, either others or their own. A permanent uneasiness creeps into me – what values are worth fighting for? Antigone buries her brother. She follows her own rules, not those of society. But she is confronted by the law. An early revolutionary, and beside her Joan of Arc, on fire, a Christian warrior prepared to give her life for her religion. The necessity that drives Antigone is a belief in following the rules of the Gods, and not those of men, should they stand in her way. She is obliged as an individual. Hegel’s first “spirit” of mankind. When are we to follow our own ideas, and when do we have to join in the war? Would I know? The senselessness of the Christian ritual and its sacraments, echoes in me and stirs up memory from childhood, when I served as “ministrant”, assistant to the priest. The injustice done by the Catholic Church towards my father. It is all whirled up as associations during the performance. I feel I cannot stay with the associations, because new actions demand my attentions. However, a certain mood has been inserted in me. It follows me during the entire performance. When reflecting on the experience of the performance, I later realise that it addresses some of my own wounds. An unarticulated anger towards the church as institution, and an never-ending personal contemplation over the need to act, the need to believe in a cause, and to stay in solidarity with those unfortunate; but in the next moment doubts, grave doubts as to what it is that informs such action? To find a rock solid platform for reason and action scares me even more. There are no Evangelists for me. No clear-cut enemies, only latent structures that I believe exist. How can I know? I also delve into relations between my father and me. His personal involvement as officer in the Polish army during the first year of World War II and later his actions in the resistance movement, siding with those companions who did not trust the Russians, and consequently fought both sides. Finally, his arrest and years in concentration camp. What did all that violence do to him? And to our family?

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The third time I saw the performance, I decided to try to stay closer to my own experiences and associations, not to let myself be dragged by the tempo in the performance. It proved to be a difficult task. Room for contemplation was difficult for me to find. The constant music, and/or screaming sounds from the actors invaded my mind. Suddenly I saw a new pattern (I do believe that some changes had taken place in the performance, but could not say for sure). The extremity of violence. Could the Mexican robber be excused for his conduct, could Joan of Arc? How about the Jew, wandering with his own hopes, disengaged, misinformed, without a country to dwell in, was she/he a passive force of violence or a victim? I remembered my father’s stories about the wealthy Jews of Warsaw. Swords and daggers are constant followers of all actions. When are we supposed to take to weapon? In the spectacular scenography of Luca Ruzza, the weapons kept appearing and disappearing in mysterious ways. Again and again the movements of the actors were combined with violence and weapons. When reason gives in, violence takes over. Just as I never found mental space to contemplate, our history seems to be driven by violent forces, disabling moments of calm reasoning. The performance became very dark indeed. I did not manage to see it again. What I have tried to give a glimpse of here, are the fragments, associations, and feelings that point in the direction of my personal understanding of the performance, the “evoked” understanding. It is an attempt to show how perceptions, emotions, and cognition/memory are constantly challenged and disturbed by the communication in the performance. This personal selection of understanding of the communication in the performance is unpredictable, dependent as it is on my own personal biography. What the dramaturgical analysis may achieve is to point at the horizon of meaning operating in the performance. To create such a horizon we need to be able to describe how the operations (actions/light/sound etc.) create structures. In Barba’s terms how the weave is made, and the bios of the work constructed. It was in the wake of this redescription it dawned on me, that one of the possible ways in which to reconstruct dramaturgy, could be formalised in a theory of the recursive interdependence of the three selections of communication. The selection of information is informed by an idea about the form and the expected understanding of the spectator. The selections mutually force each other into preferring specific kind of selections. All works of art have their own distinct preferences for specific selections of information. The selection of information reduces the possible kind of utterances, and it all points at the kind of understanding which would be privileged by the chosen elements of information.

Dramaturgy in Odin’s house The book on dramaturgy and directing has its own dramaturgy. It is composed in a way that makes the reader aware of a multiplicity of voices in the text. It is structured by several storylines. Some of these are concerned with presenting a coherent theory of dramaturgy; others are dedicated to the unfolding of an autobiographical dimension. The voices in the text are indeed several. Eugenio Barba writes like the scholar with concern for precision and coherence. However, the artist constantly interferes with modifications and supplements. You get the feeling you are listening to a friend, telling you about his life and aspirations, and while he is at it, he, for good measure, throws in a theoretically consistent corpus of concepts and relations. As a reader, you are confronted with the voices of actors from Odin Teatret, and voices of scholars and friends in observation of, and in dialogue with Barba. In this way, the book reflects some of the fundamental values inherent in Odin Teatret’s poietical programme.

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The plurality of voices creates a polyphony that you as reader must listen to with utmost care, especially because they form a weave of arguments that function in a web of complementary positions. It is a theory of dramaturgy constructed from the artists’ point of view. To put it in terms of the “postdramatic theatre”: it is the reflection of an “auteur” on the “devising” practices involved in the production of a performance working with the actors and without a text as the final point of reference. It describes some of the rules in rehearsal processes. These rules are carefully constructed in order to arrive at a performance that makes it possible, and in fact necessary, for the spectator to confront him- or herself in the meeting with the performance. The spectator is challenged by a performance, which is so complex that each spectator has to choose his or her own way of reducing this complexity. How this is done depends on the biography of the spectator and is thus unpredictable. The structure of the dramaturgy, however, can be described. Barba makes it clear that the essentialist question, “what is dramaturgy?” is a rather useless question. To search for an answer to questions of this type, is to search for an essence, a core that could produce the link between a whole and its part. It is much more fruitful to ask how dramaturgy works. Therefore, Barba asks himself: “As a director, how did I interfere in the actor’s actions?” (p. 9). Barba underlines that his book is a subjective book; it is about personal experiences, knowledge closely linked to his own biography and those of his companions. It is not possible for anyone to put into practice Barba’s way of directing. Therefore I cannot, nor do I wish to, pass on a style, create a school or a method, or – to use a word I don’t like – define a personal aesthetic that others might share. (p. xv) It is not immediately comprehensible why the words “personal aesthetic” bothers Barba. We are dealing with an aesthetic in the sense of a programme of art, and it is personal, as Barba emphasises. It is unique and must be understood as such. However, to describe a hierarchy, a poietics, or a personal aesthetic might be seen as a closure, rendering the organic and artistic process as something stagnated and finite. Nonetheless, writing a book about directing and dramaturgy calls for definitions and methods, and it is not easy to pass this on, without clarifying goals, preferences, and concepts. The uneasiness about such a project might have to do with a deeply rooted conviction about the instability of truth and the fear of unequivocal meanings. The need to clarify is instantaneously followed by a wish to avoid closure, to obscure or cross over. Consequently, Barba would like to destroy the house with the personal architecture, burning his house, as the subtitle of the book suggests. It is a gesture that characterises Barba’s reflections: the architecture of the house of Odin is unique, the glimpses we get of it reading the book, should, according to Barba, best be forgotten, so new buildings can be erected, new ideas unfolded. It maybe would have been better never to write the book, to have burnt the house. In a country of speed, this disseminating gesture would be the obvious. A constant deterritorialising (Deleuze) would prevent stagnation. Luckily, Barba decided to write it, even though it took time, he accepted the need for cognition, to describe how differences differentiate, how a différance (Derrida) is always at work. In this sense, Barba follows a strategy of dissemination, which is a difference-theoretical option. In anticipation of the concluding discussion of the epistemological stance in Barba’s work and the concept of complementarity, it is however possible to argue that elements in both the reflective theory

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and the artistic practice of Odin Teatret could be seen as a version of a “post-Romantic Romanticism”. According to my colleagues Niels Lehmann and Steen Sidenius7 another way of describing Barba’s aesthetic hierarchy could be as “post-Romantic Romanticism”. Romantic notions could be seen in the suspicion towards the capability of language to represent reality in a straightforward manner. The Romanticists privileged art, because it was able to express reality in a not-straightforward way, art could express the ineffable, or with a change in sensory system, as Klee once said, “Art does not reflect the visible, it makes visible”. (note 6, p. 175) The conclusion that Lehmann and Sidenius arrive at, based upon their analysis of Barba’s poetological writings from the 1970s through to the start of the new millennium, is that they find proportionately larger numbers of quotes that tend to emphasise a more classical ontological stance, where “the dialectical movement is at the heart of life”. So, when Barba “claims to have knowledge of the dialectical rules governing life, he reinstates being in the becoming”. Romanticists searched for a deeper kind of truth, representation as such is not being attacked, but they searched for an improved form of representation. Now, PostRomanticists have given up the quest for truth, be it from rationality or from art. They insist upon the inevitable transformation of things into differences, no timeless essences, no being, but instead an endless becoming. (p. 178f) I acknowledge the thrust of the analysis, but the following analysis of the dramaturgy and the semantics of Barba will argue that we may be confronted with a possible internal contradiction in Barba’s work. I will read this as a complementarity, which accounts for an intra-domain8 difference between on the one hand: the strategy of dissemination applied in the performances, and on the other hand: the search for the “arche” difference, “différance” in the theoretical foundation. I maintain that the plurality of threads in the weave of Barba’s dramaturgy attain the colour of post-structuralism. On their side, Lehmann and Sidenius would argue that we are confronted with an inter-domain collision: between a (post-) Romantic thinking in identities, and a theoretical thinking in differences post-structuralist epistemology. Discussions like this are what science is about: how to arrive at truthful descriptions. It is an unending process, which keeps the autopoietic system of science alive. Every new element is a new starting point for the production of further elements. Every end is a new beginning. In this conclusive inconclusiveness, the works of Eugenio Barba has been a constant challenge, a test that applies a maximum of stress to scientific theory.

Bios – a paradigm First, it is important to recognise, that dramaturgy for Barba is not to be understood as a literary composition. It has to do with a process of weaving and growth of a performance and its many levels in order to arrive at a result with some very distinctive features. He explains the complexity of the concept dramaturgy by presenting three different levels of organisation that

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may help us towards a closer understanding of how dramaturgy functions. Barba explicitly points to biology as a paradigm for both the theory on dramaturgy and the performance, a living organism with different parts, levels of organisation, and mutual relationships between parts and organisation. It was this “biologist way of thinking” that helped Barba understand his own work. It described how different and overlapping logics could exist simultaneously. It was also a way to describe a concrete reality, that could not be isolated and placed on the lab table, but which existed as structure, as “logic.” Cells functions as a base for tissue, organs, and finally the organism, and each level develops its own logic as the relations between the parts and the levels are under evolution. It is not a mere technical analogy between organisms and performances that inspires Barba, but the biologists’ way of understanding a complex system. In the works of Barba, we find clear traces9 of the biologist influence from the early 1980s. If one regards an organic system (i.e. the human body), it is necessary to distinguish different parts of the organism (i.e. heart, liver, blood) but also to explain how these parts are able to coordinate their actions. In order to understand this, biologists examine levels of organisation (i.e. cells, tissue, organs). So the unity of a living organism can be seen as a wide range of organs, constituted by different kinds of tissue, and at the base: the level of cells. For me, the performance too was a living organism and I had to distinguish not only its parts, but also its levels of organisation and, later, their mutual relationships. “Dramaturgy”, then, was a term similar to “anatomy”. It was a practical way of working not only on the organism in its totality, but on its different organs and layers. (p. 9) When a performance was about to reach its final state in the rehearsal process, when the dismantling and reassembling of scenes and sections were about to find its imminent end, and the performance was taken over by the actors, Barba describes it thus: The actions, the single cells, had melted together and formed tissues, organs, systems, a living organism which thought with an autonomous will and whispered stories different from those I had intended. (p. 58) The performance is regarded as a living organism, which communicates (p. 24). When attending a performance by Odin Teatret it soon becomes very clear that their works of art challenge the spectator in a special way. Barba sees art as opposed to a “stony sky called ‘reality’”. Art is a possibility to superimpose illusions, ideals on the raw reality. He calls it superstitions: that which is above, something that can crush or attract and elevate. Superstitions should not be shared, Barba argues, but experienced in “the personal and incommunicable microcosm: the country of speed, my body-in-life” (p. 14). This is summarised in the following sentence: Bios means “life”: the actor’s bios which penetrates the spectator’s inner world; the performance’s bios which is confronted with the meaningless logos of history; the bios of the theatre as rebellion and transcendence, as the embodied presence of individual superstitions, beyond diversion and art. [. . .] Can these living actions, which are embedded in fiction, turn themselves into a path towards the origins of life? Towards the origins of the injustices of the world? Towards the origins of our many identities?

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This formulation places the concept of bios at the centre. This is the closest we come to an understanding of what it is Barba inherits from biology. Any more explicit iterations of the biological logic, the way it is understood by Barba, are hard to come by. Therefore, as part of my scientific experiment, I will attempt to present a redescription of “bios” as it appears in Barba’s theoretical work. The organising principle for the performance is, according to Barba, best expressed as a logic that presents itself as a texture: On the one hand, we have the dramaturgy of the performance as plot, as a weaving of different threads in a concatenation and simultaneity of different actions or episodes; on the other, we have the simultaneous presence in depth of different layers, each endowed with its own logic and peculiar way of manifesting its life. (p. 10) Barba consider dramaturgy as something that exists in the three-dimensional weave of signs, sounds, and actions in a space that constitute a performance.

Three levels of dramaturgy In this sense, the performance can be regarded as an organic system (first level). At the same time, dramaturgy functions by means of surprise and turns that make the spectator wonder. For Barba it is important that the performance avoids any univocal simplicity, but presents images that are ambiguous, contradictory, and that overturn evident causal relationships. However, a simple chaotic overturning is not enough. Chaos is boring. On the second level of dramaturgy, there must be a sense of coherence in the performance as well. Coherence towards what? Asks Barba, and answers: “towards an image, an association, a memory – towards an ever-present shadow which should not be too detectable in the performance” (p. 12). The latency of meaning should attract the spectator and make him an active part in the selection of understanding (third level). The complex work of modern art can be seen as a ritual, as something offered to the spectator for the private, yet public, enjoyment; a ritual that has no meaning in itself, but makes it possible for the spectator to create his or her own unpredictable meaning. This third organisational level relies on a specific dramaturgy of the actor, the director, and the spectator, and the purpose is to make the spectator “live a change of state”. After my first reading of Barba’s book, it made a deep impression on me, to recognise, in the description of the three levels of dramaturgy, the three selections of any communicative operation according to the theory of communication presented in Chapter 5. The level of the organic dramaturgy is concerned with “composing and interweaving the dynamisms, the rhythms, and the physical and vocal actions of the actor in order to stimulate sensorially the attention of the spectator” (p. 10). Barba works with the composition of actions, costumes, objects, music, sounds, lights, and spatial features. In furtherance of our concept of communication we would, according to the systems theoretical dramaturgy, speak of dramaturgy as concerned with selections in the operation of communication. Therefore, the organic dramaturgy would, in our terms be the selection of “form”, of utterance. It is work with form. The level of the narrative dramaturgy, is the level of organisation where “the intertwining of events which orientate the spectators about the meaning, or the various meanings, of

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the performance”. Here it is work with characters, stories, texts, events, and iconographic references. We would describe the narrative dramaturgy as concerned with selection of “information”. It is working with creating possible information in form. Finally, the level of the evocative dramaturgy is “the faculty of the performance to produce an intimate resonance within the spectator. It is this dramaturgy which distils or captures the performance’s unintentional and concealed meaning, specific for each spectator”. This level is singled out as different from the other two as far as it is seen as the goal: the performance’s way of “touching the personal superstitions, the taboos, and the wounds of the spectator” (p. 10). We would agree that it is special, as the evocative dramaturgy deals with the selection of “understanding”. The evocative dramaturgy may result in a “change of state” for the spectator. In the following chapters of Barba’s book, these three levels of organisation serve as guidelines for illuminating the dramaturgy of Odin Teatret. The chapters provide the reader with concrete examples drawn from the artistic processes and theoretical statements. The chapters are interspersed with intermezzos where other voices mix in, and with a line of biographical material. This rich texture affords complexity to the theoretical project; a complexity that a general theory of dramaturgy must be able to handle and reduce in a convincing way. First, let us take a closer look at each level.

Organic dramaturgy The main elements in the organic dramaturgy are actions, scores and subscores, vocal actions, space. An action, as defined by Barba, is the smallest change of tonicity in the torso of the actor (p. 34). Barba insists on this action as a “real action” (p. 99), not in the sense realistic, but in the sense that it radiates an impulse in a minute dynamic form within the whole organism, that could immediately be sensed by the spectator. This produces an effect of immediateness (p. 26). The change of tonicity catches the attention of the spectator. But the movement is so small, that it is impossible to select information from it. It is in this sense “pre-expressive”. It is not yet possible to reach an understanding. For example, the actor had slapped someone, but the director had changed it into a caress. Although the actor moulded the dynamic design as if to caress, she kept the original tensions of striking a blow. The real dynamic information was thus retained, but appeared in a different form. The spectator’s kinaesthetic sense (or empathy) recognised the dynamics of striking a blow, but this sensorial information did not correspond to what he was seeing: a caress. (p. 26) [my emphasis] This illustrates a main point of the strategy of communication applied in the work of Odin Teatret. In the theoretical terms of the communication theory presented, it is this minute displacement, which makes the spectator react. She perceives a motion, when she tries to select information out of the form; she becomes aware of a peculiar contradiction. Something in the form directs her to select the understanding, that the specific movement is a caress, but at the same time, the form seems to point her in the direction of selecting the understanding, that it is a blow. In a way, Barba deconstructs and reconstructs the communication in such a way, that we need to readjust our perception. Did we see what we saw? We thought we saw a caress, but it might have been a blow: thus, the selected form

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carries with it (at least) two sets of information, and we are made aware of our perception; we perceive our perception. Eugenio Barba asks his actors to improvise a score, a sequence of real actions, that each has their own beginning, climax, and conclusion. This score can use many different starting points: a text, an image, sensorial associations, or a melody. The actions could be treated in many different, complementary ways. It is a question of how and for whom the form creates information: I could model it following contradictory categories: as pure dynamism (dance) or as carrier of a clear meaning for me, yet ambiguous for the spectator. I could turn it into a rhythmic entity or into an “open” action that the spectator would have filled with his own specific sense. I could treat it as a vague associative sign or as a clear conceptual expression, as a stimulus of energy or as a narrative indication for me and/or the spectator. It depended on the circumstances and on the web of relationships and references in which I inserted this action. (p. 34) Therefore, I would conclude, for Barba action is not in itself a bearer of meaning it is a form of vitality, and as such not immediately carrying information. Neither are vocal actions, scores, or the use of space. Actions should maintain their ambiguity, and this achieved by “disseminating them into layers of light and darkness”. How can this metaphor be interpreted? Maybe by pointing at light as manifest, and at darkness as referring to the latent. The shadow becomes a metaphor for something that blocks the light. Therefore, an action must be manifest, but if, within it, one could perceive important latent material, the action would create a vague associative sign. If only a very small portion of the action referred to latency, it would be a clear conceptual expression. How is this dissemination of meaning achieved?

Narrative dramaturgy Eugenio Barba emphasises that the different dramaturgical levels did not help him to solve the problem of how to develop them artistically, but they helped him to “oppose the performance’s univocal nature and the plot’s explicit relationships.” It is central for the aesthetics of Odin Teatret to avoid linear causality in plot and actions. Why? One might wonder. The development of dramatic narrative form since the early 18th century culminates in a form where central characters are in conflict that may or may not be resolved (Lessing). Spectators have since Ibsen learned to look for the backstory wound: the psychological causes explaining the main character’s behaviour. When the wound is defined, we feel satisfied, and the story now generates a clear meaning. The “change of state” as the aim for the evocative dramaturgy, has to do with a specific approach to the construction of meaning; it has to do with overturning obvious relationships and blending them into ambiguous and contradictory sequences. For Barba it is important to be able to “demolish, disarrange, and destroy logics and links” that seemed too obvious. This is made possible in the rehearsals only by establishing constraints, obstacles, and rigorous rules. The actors have to be able to improvise, but also to repeat the improvisations and fixate them as scores. Overturning could not stand alone as a poietic principle, as Barba finds it important to work with an emotional coherence towards the

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“not too detectable shadow”, which should always be present in a performance (p. 12). The performance should give the spectators a shared sense, but at the same time a “different confidence” specific to each spectator. How can this overturning be constructed in rehearsals? We learn that “Disorder” and “Error” are the two crucial factors. “Disorder is the irruption of an energy that confronts us with the unknown” (p. 17), and I certainly felt confronted in my first meetings with performances of Odin Teatret. What was felt to be an absence of logic in a nonsensical and chaotic work, proved to establish its own logic of bewilderment. To experience Disorder (with capital D), is to be given a chance to break the chains of habit, of norms of social, psychological, religious, and sexual nature. Disorder does not concern the categories of poietics, claims Barba (p. 19). It should be read as a leap into another ontology: “It happens when a different reality prevails over everyday reality”. This is clearly a statement insisting on two worlds, two different ontologies. In a post-ontological perspective, there is but one shared world: a world that may be cringed by observations, which create marked and unmarked spaces, but never causes a creation of another reality. Barba continues to insist that no method exists by which to achieve Disorder; we realise that Disorder is a question of breaking rules in our observational practices: Generally, when in my work I have tried to lean on safe rules, I was penalised for my naivety. If I resigned myself to the idea of a craft deprived of rules, I was paid for this naivety with failures that were just as drastic. What is there, then, between rules and absence of rules? Between law and anarchy? If we think in the abstract, the answer is nothing. But practice has taught me that there is something there, simultaneously combining the rule and its negation. (p. 19) This something is error. Errors come, according to Barba, in two forms: “Solid Errors”, that are measurable and can be brought back into rules and order, and “Liquid Errors” that presented themselves as something “wrong”, be it a scene or a mistaken structure of a performance. Nevertheless, the fact that these errors were so blatantly “wrong” indicated that they might represent a parallel path. Liquid errors proved to be the right wrongs. So here, either selection of variations is made according to their ability to produce new liquid errors (cognitive structure, in our vocabulary) or as solid errors, to re-establish the existing order (normative structure). The narrative dramaturgy is a special dramaturgy in the sense that it is constantly informed by the need for overturning the obvious and by the longing for ambiguity or undecidability. The concept “knots” became a valuable tool for Odin Teatret. A “knot” is “simultaneous actions which negate each other, giving life to a powerful and irrational image” (p. 99). This “synthesis of contradictory information in a convincing sensory form” was important as a method that helped create the ambiguous images of the performance. The necessity of separate subscores and the elaborate artistic work in composing a performance is closely linked to the idea of avoiding univocal causality and the plot’s explicit relationships (goodbye Lessing), in order to achieve an “incongruous coherence”. Barba is the creator of many paradoxical statements. We might see the technique of a paradox to declare something we usually consider as opposites, to be a unity. So here, we are confronted with a coherence that includes its own opposite: incoherence. The term suggests a “third” possibility: that is the excluded third:

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something that could, at the same time, be coherent and incoherent. It makes you wonder: what might that be? In order to dissolve the paradox, one must establish new oppositions to relieve the paradox. It may be an order with a specific resilient pattern incorporated in it. Nevertheless, is that not just another paradox: “disordered order”? In short: the game of creating paradoxes illustrates the point we made on observations. All observations are based on a paradox (Luhmann, GdG, p. 1134 / Vo.l 2 p. 239). To observe something we need a distinction that we apply in our operations (cognitive or action based), but these distinctions cannot be reflected as a unity. If you try to reflect the distinction by the distinction you are using to observe, you mercilessly end up with an ultimate paradox: the difference is sameness. To construct a performance that activates each spectator in a different way demands a very complex dramaturgy. It is not just a question of overturning every known order of classical dramaturgy, which would only lead to chaos, which is rather uninteresting. Therefore, there needs to be coherence. The performance consists of a manifest level: the actual physical elements and movements, sounds and gestures of the actors. However, in the performance there should also be a shadow. Something that reminds the spectator of something by its absence: If we only see the shadow, we can only guess at what casts it. The shadow is the bait waiting to be devoured in the mind of the spectator. Where there is light, the shadows make darkness. The darkness becomes visible as an effect of a latency, hence Barba’s use of the metaphor of the empty ritual. We are dealing with a paradox: Coherent incoherence. Let us see how this paradox is de-paradoxicalised in Barba’s text. The manifest is created in such a way, that it should point at latency. This is, however, the very act of the imaginary reality. It is created to point at reality, but reality is not accessible as such. This ambition can only be met, if the logic is attached even to the smallest bit of communication in the actors’ scores. Imagine a man reading a newspaper, his eyes follows the lines and his hands are turning the pages, but at the same time, his body is possessed with another tension: that of following the flight of a bird. The rhythm of the eyes moving along the lines of print and of turning pages was the equivalent of the action and rhythm of following the flight of the bird. Thus the actor succeeded, in practice, “in negating the action while executing it”: a good antidote against illustration, emphasis or the vacuity of an action. [. . .] [T]hese contrasting tensions acted on the spectator’s nervous system and perception, causing a slightly unfamiliar impression, which brought the actors’ action to life and thus prevented it from being the object of a mechanical hasty look from the spectator. (p. 57 [my elision]) A score should be composed by such disturbing “real actions”. The spectator recognises the “reading newspaper” picture. If she also receives the contrasting tension, then the first immediate perception is disturbed: it could be read differently, he might be reading, but his body tells us something else it at stake: it is as if he wanted to leave the space and follow a line of flight, as Deleuze named it. To be able to perform this double task requires an extraordinary control by the act or of body, timing, rhythm, and flow. In rehearsals, Barba, as director, works on the level of actions with the intention of cleaning the material brought forward by the actor. It is cleansed for superfluous, redundant, and “obese” material. To describe this element of the poietical hierarchy in terms of the presented theory, it becomes clear that Barba is working on a simultaneous de- and reconstruction of communication. By selecting

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and making distinctions between information and utterance, we try to reach a selection of understanding and interpretation. Barba experiments with creating a communicative form so complex that it in fact makes the spectator aware of an uncertainty: what we immediately perceive might not be sufficient, we need to take an extra look; it might be that something else was meant. The work of art lives by undecidabilties, in Barba’s poietic this undecidability connects to all layers of the performance. Thus, the spectator experiences his own experience. Our communication in daily life seldom focuses on the perception of things. Art, as suggested, has the possibility to make us aware of our perception: to perceive perception. The “organic dramaturgy” and its “narrative” brother are for Barba the idea of a performance that orchestrates a flow of stimuli that are: both necessary and unpredictable, which attract or repel the spectator’s senses. They are artistic forms and biological signals addressing the reptilian and limbic part of our brain. Sensuality and sensorial incitements hound the animal nature of the spectator. [. . .] The living roots of the performance are not a literary text, a story to be told or my intentions as director, but are a particular quality of the actors’ physical and vocal actions: presence, scenic bios, organic effect, seductive persuasion, body-in-life. (p. 24f) When one communicative operation of this kind is linked to another, the director has to make a balance between the manifest and the latent levels of communication. Barba explains how the artificiality of the score and the organic processes that shakes the score is equivalent to the coherence of an “external discipline” and the “dark forces” (p. 32), which makes it mysterious. So when combining actions, Barba appraises recursively the effect of each action to those preceding and to those following. This happens in the narrative dramaturgy. Here, the information emerging in the organic dramaturgy must be combined in forms that maintain the ambiguity of the single “real actions”. An action is always an interaction. This is not a play on words, the consequences were evident. Its external manifestation interacted with the inner one (the subscore). As director, I applied myself to exploiting the actions’ complementarity and to consolidate their ambiguity by disseminating them into layers of light and darkness. (p. 34) The distinction in this quote between score and subscore, between the external and the inner manifestations, between manifest and latent, between light and darkness are all dichotomies used to reformulate the paradox of “disordered order”. In communication theory, the definition of subscore is an utterance with more than one information attached to it. Perception is a normally latent prerequisite for our actions in everyday life. To evoke the latent and make it manifest is what art might be able to do. This can only be done by referring to the third dramaturgy of evocation, which influences the spectators’ interpretation and understanding. However, the way in which the latent becomes manifest is the distinguishing factor of a poietic hierarchy. We need to be able to redescribe this in terms of operations and structures. In his poietic hierarchy, Eugenio Barba insists on ambiguity, dissemination, and as we shall soon see: complementarity.

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Evocative dramaturgy In order to make this last point stand out, it is important for Barba to stress that actors, director, and spectators have their own “executions,” their own dramaturgies. The spectators have their similar personal selection of understanding of the work in reception. This should make it clear, why Barba stresses the fact that “the eyes and the logic giving sense to the performance” belongs to all three. A performance able to give each spectator his or her own meaning, and at the same time the shared feeling of overturning the world as we know it, could, according to Barba, be described as an empty ritual. Empty in the sense that the performance does not convey one simple meaning, but in fact several meanings. Barba describes how his imagined (implicit) spectator is in fact several: A child carried away by the euphoria of rhythm and wonder, but unable to appraise symbols, metaphors and artistic originality; Knudsen, an old skilled carpenter, who knew how to value small details; the spectator who thought he did not understand, but danced sitting on his seat; a friend of mine who had seen many of my performances, and lived again the pleasure of recognising what made him love them, and at the same time was bewildered by distasteful scenes; the blind Jorge Luis Borges, who enjoyed the least literary allusions and the thick layer of vocal information; the deaf Beethoven listening to the performance through his eyes, appreciating the symphony of its physical actions; a bororo from Amazonia who envisaged it as a ceremony for the forces of nature; a person I loved and whom I would like to be proud of me and my actors. (p. 184) This multitude of implicit spectators, Barba explains, is a conscious act to explode the “unity” of the audience at the director’s mental level. The performance, with its many layers, should be able to speak to all our senses, rationality, and logic should meet their limits, left to their own perception spectators have to select an understanding, but that can only happen if they are prepared to invent their own laws of interpretation, trust their own associations, invest them in the process of selection. If the performance succeeds in doing so, the spectator might experience a “change of state”, from being to becoming-an-other. The body-in-life is seen as becoming, not as being. A permanent process, unending and ever in transition: Bios. Another result of the clash between communication and consciousness came as the result of an error. In my second reading of Barba’s book, I suddenly wondered why, on page 12, Barba mentions “perspectives” in the part where the three levels are described. I thought I might have misread the text, and overlooked something. That maybe Barba made a distinction between levels and perspectives. Therefore, I read it again, and could suddenly see that maybe the empty ritual could be perspective on the level of the evocative dramaturgy. I could even construct a nice cross-tabling of the idea. When I returned to Barba’s text, I realised I had made an error. After some further scrutiny of my table I realised, that this error contained an obvious logic: if dramaturgy is a science of communication of communication, there have to be a re-entry of communication in communication. Figure 7.1 illustrates the dramaturgy of Odin Teatret.

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Utterance (form)

Information

Understanding

The utterance must Understanding is made DYNAMIC

ORGANIC

allow several manifest only as a

form of utterance

REAL ACTION

informations to coexist shadow of coherence in polyphony

Information must

Understanding is

NARRATIVE

always consist of

OVERTURNING

relative to the

information

several contradictory

NON-CLOSURE

spectator, not to the

informations.

information

EVOCATIVE

Utterance must provide

Information is hinted

changing state of

powerful and irrational

at, the individual

images

spectator can choose

THE EMPTY RITUAL understanding FIGURE 7.1 

S election of utterance, information, and understanding in the dramaturgy of Odin Teatret  Szatkowski

Barba is of course aware that the attempt to analyse communication is indeed a process of selections. In the reality of the performance, the narrative dramaturgy engraved itself on the organic one and the two were inseparable. But during rehearsals I could practically and conceptually separate them in two adjoining roads. Thus these two paths were simultaneously present each with its own logic, and started to collaborate in an unplanned way, combining precision (necessity) and chance (unpredictability). (p. 98) Therefore, the demand on information was not to expose one clear story, but provide means to entangle many different storylines (threads) in the narrative. In the rehearsals, Barba takes great care not to dismantle the integrity of each actor’s organic material. This is where the “knots” become paradigmatic in the sense that a “synthesis of contradictory information in a convincing sensory form” (p. 99) was developed. In terms of understanding, it should be clear that information and utterance must avoid any simple manifest meaning to occur. The latency of meaning in the empty ritual is the prerequisite for spectators’ changing states. Here we are close to the values at work inside the performances and the poietics of Barba. If neither religion nor our myths of heroes are able to provide meaning, but seems to lead us into one violent spell after another, how can we then orientate ourselves? The wound I found myself

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confronted with was the basic question of how to confer meaning to a meaningless world. A question, which modernity has forced us to confront, continuously and with ever-growing intensity. Modernity has also produced an abundance of reassurances, displacements, distractions, reliefs as outlets for any agony we might experience in association with the paradox, which we persistently try to conceal: meaning can only confer meaning to itself. Meaning is what we make of it. What Barba tries to do is to confront us with this dilemma, without finite solutions. At this point, it should be clear how dramaturgy functions in the poietic hierarchy in the house of Odin. It is a concrete example of the abstract theoretical statements where we saw dramaturgy as the reflective theory coordinating recursively the values of art entangled in production and reception of a given work, and the methods and techniques applied in training and rehearsal.

Semantics However, by redescribing Barba’s theory of dramaturgy in three levels as an operative way of identifying the three selections in communication we have only reached the first step of an overall understanding. According to the presented theory of dramaturgy, we now need to investigate the semantics in the reflective theory. When analysing a reflective theory we are especially interested in semantics, i.e. the linguistic reservoirs of condensed meanings that are used to regulate relations between director and actor, actor and spectators, organisation and society. To put it a bit more concretely: in theatre, as well as in any other organisation, decisions are made continually. Decisions are the autopoietic operations that produce an organisation.10 In the moment just before a decision is made, there are many possibilities for actions and experiences to choose, but once a decision is made there are certain specific expectations chosen, and they regulate all future action or experience in the organisation. If no decisions are made, the organisation will evaporate. Therefore, when a director asks an actor to behave in a special way, the decision maker decides what kind of behaviour is considered meaningful in the artistic process. The actors need to accept this meaning. How does the director/organisation make this acceptance meaningful? It goes without saying, that power is included in all of these decisions. If you want to stay a member of the organisation, you must accept the rules, or risk exclusion. Given that the relationship is not based on a pure power relation, there must be other types of arguments. Spectators could be considered “guests” in the organisation. In theatre, no one is forced to join a performance. So how will the theatre organisation persuade the spectator to use her time and money on visiting a performance? What is the offer? What is the semantic attached to this line of reasoning? Our analysis will probably elucidate how a given theatre conceives itself vis-à-vis other theatres and society. Let us continue the investigation of the dramaturgical principles at Odin Teatret.

Poietic hierarchy and semantics Semantics should be understood as a form of communication that condenses certain words, values, meanings and confirms them as something, that should be remembered. Semantics are structures that identify important meanings. Semantics are prerequisites for the evolution of ideas. Semantic structures are mechanisms that supply observations and descriptions of evolution of systems with appropriate differences (Luhmann, GdG, p. 538f and p. 979f / Vol. 1, p. 325 and Vol. 2, p. 240). When analysing reflective theories it is important to note, that semantics

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are dependent on the functional system with which they are connected. In our case, the arts system develops a reflective theory that, when it is at its best, combines intelligible reasoning on art and theatre with a controlled sensibility towards possible variations, a willingness to test consistency, and openness towards controversies. It should be noted, once again, that a reflective theory cannot observe the central difference it uses itself. It cannot observe itself without a paradox collision. When observed from a second order it is possible to point at the initial difference. That is what the scientific operation and observation aims at. The scientific theory observes how ideas are set in motion, and follows the evolution of ideas to describe the continued reconversion of society. Just as a performance creates values by the self-imposed indeterminacy, so does semantics in a reflective theory. I am not suggesting that the works of art and their reflective theories always will present the same values. In many cases, there will be differences. The spectator’s personal selection of understanding cannot be predicted. However, we insist that it is possible to describe some of the potential horizons of meaning, in front of which values are shown in their communicative forms. I have worked with many artistic processes and projects where the inherent poietics wanted to stimulate indeterminacy. My experience is however, that such poietics fail, if they are not able to choose and focus upon one decided undecidability. The recursive process of both creation and reception will suffer from the lack of such a decision. It is important to know, what it is that should be indeterminate. Therefore, the following discussion of the poietic hierarchy of Eugenio Barba is determined to investigate the semantics of the reflective theory, and discuss how the performances shapes the horizon of meaning, and accordingly the values at work. If the above summary is an acceptable description of the main features of the three levels of dramaturgy in the house of Odin, it is now time to establish a redescription of the inherent logic from a systems theoretical point of view. In our redescription, we first need to decide on some of the most important semantic reservoirs. This is not done easily. It forces the researcher to experiment with different suggestions, and try them out to evaluate their extension and function. In my first attempt, many years ago, I tried to qualify the concept of simultaneity. It proved to cover only a fragment of the semantic. In this reading, we will suggest that our investigation concentrates on three central reservoirs of semantic: one is the understanding of BIOS, the other is WOUNDS, and the third is RELIGIO/faith. For each of the three reservoirs, it should be discernible how the concepts influence the dramaturgy, and thus the relations between the agents in the organisation, and between the organisation, the agents and their spectators.

Bios In living systems, life is possible because the biochemical structures in a cell makes operations that functions as programmes (the enzymes) for rebuilding structures and creating new operations. This circular and recursive framing means that systems are determined by their structure. The biochemical structures that permit the cell to live are concrete operations in the cell. The cell is created as living system by these system-specific operations. Life is in this sense a biochemical invention, a circular self-producing system that due to evolution over time has created many diverse creatures and other systems, all out of one circular, autopoietic mode of operation. This is only possible because such operations build systems. Operations create structures. Now, why do we need these specifications? They are necessary in the development of a general dramaturgical theory because we want to avoid the ontological claim that it is “the way of the world”; that structures “exist” that “produce similarities everywhere”, while that

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is “how nature is created”. Claims, to which Barba, in some cases, is on the verge of subscribing. Autopoiesis can be generalised, in the sense that living systems, social, and psychic systems each have their distinctive and different basic operations. Social systems operate with communication, not with chemical or physical phenomenon.

Wounds Let us address the concept of the wound. Together with concepts like “shadow” and “dark forces” it suggests a reading of Jung. Barba points at him once: Thousand and One Nights, Freud’s psychoanalysis, Jung’s analytical psychology and cultural anthropology all show how narration – mythos in Greek – may help to save the life of the individual and a society. Men and women, children and adults, all need stories to orient themselves in the world. (p. 88) Jung’s idea on wounds, shadows, and dark forces was established with the purpose of describing how our consciousness works. According to Jung, there are dark spots in our memory that we tend to avoid. These spots become shadows. If we do not confront our shadows, they will grow stronger, darker and threaten to dissolve an otherwise coherent consciousness. The shadow is between darkness and light. He who dares to step in between his shadow and the darkness, will discover the light. To confront a person with his Shadow is to show him his own light. Once one has experienced a few times what it is like to stand judgingly between the opposites, one begins to understand what is meant by the self. Anyone who perceives his Shadow and his light simultaneously sees himself from two sides and thus gets in the middle. (Jung, 1970)11 It is not my intention to follow this trail in order to determine how much Jung has inspired Barba. However, I do claim that wounds and shadows are concepts connected to the formative idea behind The Empty Ritual. Our own stories get a chance to be told, exactly because the performances of Odin Teatret do not offer any explicit stories. On the contrary, we are vehemently denied any causal relations. Therefore, we as spectators must find our own stories, and actively join the creative process ourselves. That means to be prepared to confront our own wounds and maybe perceive the shadow and then the empty ritual may lead to a glimpse of light. It is important, Barba emphasises, to understand that: dramaturgy is not a single technique, but merges the different techniques of the theatre. And, finally, dramaturgy identifies with the person who does the merging, with his or her biography. (p. 215) Hence, the biographical story weaved into his book on dramaturgy. In this way, an important point is made: there will be no Odin Teatret performances when Barba no longer directs.

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“Tradition doesn’t exist. I am a tradition-in-life” (p. 203). The special flavour of the performances depends on the creator and his personal biography. As director, Eugenio Barba has the final cut. His are the choices that establish the performances in all their ambiguity. Often, at the origin of a creative path, there is a wound. In the exercise of my craft, I have revisited this intimate lesion to deny it, question it or simply be near it. It had little to do with aesthetics, theories, with the wish to express myself or to communicate with others. This wound necessity has acted as an impulse to remain close to the boy I was, and from whom time removed me, pushing me in a world of constant change. (p. 1) Where the concrete wound and its conscious components has nothing to do with aesthetics or a wish to express, the assumption of its existence and function within the artistic process is indeed a matter of poietics and theory. The premise that in artistic creation there must always be an impulse, something that informs the wish to speak, is an assumption Barba accepts and refutes in this paragraph. The wound is there, and it will always be there, as it is an integral part of our consciousness. Whether it is turned into an impulse for the artistic process is another matter. We do get, however, the clear picture that an art without the wound necessity, will lead to indifference. When art is made out of necessity and not as mere obligation, it is driven by the energy generated in the process of consciousness confronting memory. When we remember, we actualise feelings connected to the past, but our here-and-now feelings also evaluate the feelings from the past. Is it a pleasant or an unpleasant memory? Barba’s theory on dramaturgy contains a very exact description of the prerequisites for an artistic process: The main “fertile zone” of an artistic process can only be entered by the gateways of memory. It requires us to register our present feelings towards the past situations and its emotions. “Memory no longer belongs to what we were; it is no longer sentiment, but flesh and blood. It is an integral part of what we are and will be” (p. 173). If we manage to let memory become an active part of ourselves, we have entered the “humid zone” that separates the “cold” distanced way of remembering from the “torrid zone” of the creative process. We only reach the torrid zone in rare cases. As I understand it, the humid zone allows us to confront our memories and register how our feelings at present moment react towards the memories and the past feelings connected with them. If a memory is unpleasant, we tend to turn away from them, eager to obtain pleasure and not pain. In the torrid zone, however, we confront ourselves with the feelings that cannot so easily be evaluated. Here “extremes meet in an embrace. . . . We are dazzled, seduced and sometimes burnt.” (p. 173). It is the zone of the wound. When we enter the torrid zone, we do not know what is going to confront us. It might be pain. It might be pleasure. The wounds are stories which do not wish to be told. Whenever we try to tell them, they turn their backs on us and distance themselves. [. . .] Our wounds refuse to be danced or mimed. Perhaps they know their destiny is elsewhere, to be poured into another story, the smokescreen which allows us to evoke and conceal them at the same time. (p. 173)

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Wounds are not to be presented, they must remain latent, but they evoke other stories in which they can disappear. To steer the creative process toward the torrid zone, where the important artistic material is accumulated, and then to sculpt the final complex stories, is the director’s craft. It is not pure coincidence that ignites unexpected meanings, unintended connections and clusters of images that surface from time to time and questions us on things about which we do not want to speak. We have to increase the probabilities, especially the unexpected ones, and work meticulously in order to materialise them. (p. 175) Up to this point, the creative process can be described to a certain extent in theoretical frames. But when the artistic process of generating material and composition merges with the biography of the director, it becomes a unique poietic expression. When Barba tells the story of a young boy, who at ten years of age witnessed his father, an Italian fascist general die, who later on is educated in military academies and boarding schools, we get a glimpse of the young boy in Barba’s memory. The boy, who began his wandering years at 15, and sailed the world, worked in Norway, studied in Poland with Grotowski, and ended in a small town in rural Denmark to create a world-renowned theatre. This story is in itself an adventure. How this story with its wounds, shadows, and dark forces is merged with each single day of rehearsal, with every minute of a performance is of course impossible to analyse. However, this is what constitutes the fragrance of a performance by Odin Teatret. Maybe it would have been better to describe dramaturgy, not as a weave, but as a perfume, Barba reflects (p. 202). The metaphor of the perfume demonstrates an impossibility: the connection between analysis and process doesn’t exist. Only a chemical analysis can establish which elements are present in a perfume, and chemical analysis doesn’t resemble the operations to create it. (p. 205) The performance is indeed an “intense indivisible unity”, a compact communication, we called it earlier. It is important to be clear at this point: Barba is absolutely right in pointing at the impossibility of analysis to reach a description of each operation and the choices involved in it. That would require us to access the consciousness of the actors and director. However, another structural connection between analysis and process does exist.

Poietics and its semantics at work in rehearsal In order to illustrate how these general ideas are active in the minor details of the rehearsal process, let us take a closer look at one example concerning the administration of rules in the rehearsal process. As director, Barba has to test each action on his own sensorial system. His wounds and shadows are merged into the process. It has important consequences for the creative process and the power structures in the rehearsal. Barba is convinced, that the “true tragedy for an actor, is not being able to find in his director an individual to whom he can offer his total trust” (p. 205). During rehearsals on the performance, Salt, Eugenio

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Barba works with Roberta Carreri. She is to speak some lines from a novel that function as inspirational material. In order to arrive at an expression that avoids “recitation” as well as “conditioned reflexes”, Barba suggests an elaborate scheme: The texts are to be spoken in Italian in the performance. Roberta Carreri is asked to translate the Italian texts into English. She should then make an improvisation on a theme given by Barba and fix it. Then overlay the English text on the fixed improvisation, adapting physical impulses to vocal ones. Finally, she should use the resulting rhythm, intonations, and melody for the Italian text. This scheme was a way to challenge an actor, who had her own strong identity, and had found her personal style. Working together for many years, it is unavoidable that actors from time to time develop mannerisms and clichés. How can the director shatter the clichés of an actor who possesses intuition, experience, a capacity to guide herself and is partially aware of her mannerisms? . . . In recent years, some of the actors have a tendency to discuss, explain and justify. But I could see their mannerisms and felt obliged to protect the spectator from the déjà-vu. On the other hand, I was incapable of saying directly: you have already served up what you are showing me, in a different sauce, in such and such performances. I strove to give stimulating tasks, but after years and years of work in common my proposals were not always effective. Then I became impatient and irritated. Later I was always unhappy, as if I had slapped a defenceless person. (p. 78) With reference to another example Roberta Carreri says: I have made the character to escape from my own clichés an help Eugenio to break with his but the truth is, Eugenio does not seem to be interested in breaking his clichés, quite the contrary he confirms them and strengthen them. (p. 106) What is at stake here? Why is it not possible to say directly that mannerisms are at work? It seems that something should be kept latent, something that cannot be made manifest. Why, and for what reasons? In the terminology of the systems theoretical dramaturgy, it is obvious that a theme is made unavailable for the communication in the social system, here including director and actor. With regard to the consciousness of the psychic system, it is a question of why something is latent. We need to distinguish between a) what is unknown, as a result of it not being made a theme for communication, and b) what is unknowable because it is impossible to know (as Aristotle could not know of computers and hence not communicate about them). However, there is a third form of latency. It is knowledge that is latent c) because, if revealed, it would destroy structures or unleash considerable restructurings. The prospect of this blocks consciousness in the psychic system and communication in the social system. This structural latency is potentially explosive. So what do we have here? Is it a latency that stems from a well-known, repeated procedure, which merely makes the theme of mannerisms unimportant? I do not believe so. In the above quote, Barba registers a shameful irritation, the matter is important, so, the latency must be due to functional and structural causes. The experienced actor knows that when Barba asks for new material and responses, it may be

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because he is unsatisfied, but it might also be because he just had another idea. The actor on her side cannot know what happens inside the psychic system of the director. However, if the director were to state openly, that these new suggestions for improvisations are caused by mannerisms, this would clearly suggest that his expectations had not been met. Why then, is latency so important? It may be due to the fact that the structural basis for the rehearsal process consists of a very delicate balance of power and mutual trust. Barba has, as director, the privilege of assembling the performance. He works with each actor individually (at first) and the agreement is that each actor places his or her material at the director’s disposal. They have their own inner stories and motivations, which make their score. Barba has his story as director that is constructed with different spectators in mind, but also from his own personal impulses. For the actor to invent and fix material, never knowing how it is going to be used, calls for an immense mutual trust and loyalty. The actor deposits some of their freedom with the director. This explains why actors trying to discuss and justify might jeopardise the delicate balance. The structural necessity behind the idea of the ordered Disorder and the consequential power structure cannot be negotiated in every rehearsal, if at all. It must remain an implicit law, a rule, and a taboo. So if Barba started to argue and justify his judgement, so could the actors. It could well be that Barba’s own judgements were infected with mannerisms, seen from the perspectives of the actors. For Barba that would include a necessity to adjust his poietic hierarchy. Consequently, such judgements must be avoided. The need for a tacit understanding of the basic structure is communicated beneath the surface of this little incident. The poietic hierarchy is not opened up for crucial changes. The major project that Barba undertakes is to create an artistic communication that changes the spectator’s state of mind. What does that mean? What kind of states are we talking about? Eugenio Barba suggests that the performance should be “touching the personal superstitions, the taboos, and the wounds of the spectator” (p. 10). Let us explore what it means for the spectator to look for the challenge in opening or reopening “wounds”. I am sure that theatre will always have men and women among its spectators who will look for the indirect exposure of wounds similar to their own. Or wounds which, although apparently healed, have an obscure need to reopen themselves. (Barba, 2010, p. xvi) In this quote, Barba combines wound with aesthetic experience. Wounds are not normally combined with pleasure but with pain and repulsion. How is the function of addressing the wound conceived? I wanted my performance to inflame the memory of the spectators and caress a wound in that part within them which lived in exile. The spectator had the right to be cradled by the thousand subterfuges of entertainment, by the pleasure of the senses and the stimulation of the intellect, by emotional immediateness and aesthetical refinement. But the main point was the transfiguration of the ephemeral performance into a virus which took root in him, provoking a particular way of seeing: an upside-down look, one which was addressed towards the interior. [. . .] Disorder (with a capital D) irrupts, and the performance becomes an empty ritual because it has burst its chains: theatrein-liberty. (p. 185)

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One notices the metaphoric language of inflammation, wound, and virus. The Disorder should be like a disease that affects the perception of the spectator and permits a travel with theatre-in-liberty. The spectator might thus experience a change of state, from a “healthy”, normalised perception of the world, towards the “illness” of the upside-down perception. Here the theatre seems to serve a purpose of transfiguration and liberation. The spectator’s inner exiled experiences, should become a fertile soil in which the new “upside-down” virus could grow, maybe resulting in a new perception of the world. It is in order to achieve this that the performance must have the particular form and the actors act in those specific ways. Dissemination of meaning removes from the spectator any “easy way out” (that is, unless we are dealing with a “lazy spectator”); confronted with himself he must trust the performance and consult his own wounds.

An organisational view If we step up a level in generalisation, the incident could be described as an example of how Odin Teatret, as an organisation, has developed its own rules. The decision that Eugenio Barba as director has the final say in the composition of a performance, is a rule that establishes a clear set of expectations to both actor and director. The director makes the decisions and the actors are addressees. Any discussion of this rule would unleash an endless discussion as to who was right about mannerisms being at stake. Endless, because decisions in the end will prove paradoxical: meaning is a mechanism that is self-referential. The paradox of the art system: “And art is art, because it is art (or because someone says it is art)” is a way to blur the ultimate paradox: meaning refers to itself as meaningful. Organisations develop their own semantics in order to make communication possible, and to avoid this ultimate paradox. At Odin Teatret we find a situation, where “in recent years, some of the actors have a tendency to discuss, explain and justify”. However, they should not doubt their director, because for Barba it is a “true tragedy” if an actor, is unable “to find in his director an individual to whom he can offer his total trust”. It could be reiterated as a confirmation of the semantics of expectations addressed towards actors and directors implanted in the organisation. An organisation needs to know how to express its own raison d’être. For a theatre, it is important to be able to explain what its spectators may experience, and how the performance could make a difference that makes a difference. Let us therefore make another investigative detour on our way towards an analysis of the semantic constructions.

Values of art in the house of Odin One of the reasons why the book on directing and dramaturgy has been in the making for 14 years is, according to Barba, that he started imagining dramaturgy as a theatrical technique (p. 215). However, dramaturgy is much more: The dramaturgy doesn’t concern only the composition of a performance. It is a struggle not to be expelled from the present and the refusal of hell. Hell would be to feel at home in my time. (p. 211) [My italics]) Theatre should reveal itself as Disorder: as an “irruption of an estranged and intensified reality which upsets the points of reference of my daily existence” (p. 210). Theatre is a tool . . .

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to make incursions into zones of the world which seemed beyond my reach: incursions into unknown lands which characterise the vertical immaterial reality of the human being; and incursions into the horizontal space of human bonds, of social circles, of the relationships of power and politics, in the daily reality of this world in which I live, and to which I don’t want to belong. [. . .] On one side, the external world: with its rules, vastness, incomprehensible and seductive zones, its evil and chaos; on the other, the inner world with its continents and oceans, its folds and alluring mysteries. (p. 210) [My italics] In this paradoxical double movement of withdrawal and attack, of incursions and irruptions we find the basic artistic impulse behind Barba’s theatre. Art – here theatre – furnishes tools, paths, and alibis for these incursions, that allows artistic work to irrupt and shake the spectator, and his or hers habits, superstitions, values, and points of references in the daily reality. This is what art should do, according to Barba. It is the positive value on top of the poietic hierarchy. My dramaturgical hypothesis is that there might be contingency and uncertainties, but in a work of art, there will always be a certain uncertainty that keeps appearing, a necessity that informs the broken stories, the polyvalent metaphors. It has to do with certain beliefs about the world as expressed in the work of art. In Barba’s work and in his reflective theory, the world appears as meaningless and malevolent, as a place that is painful and unrewarding. It is accompanied by a reoccurring impulse to insist on one kind of complementarity: within goodness, you will always find evil. Within evil, you will meet goodness. The world is in this sense unreliable and unpredictable. We have routines, schemas, and habits for our behaviours and actions that all contribute to reduce the complexity of communication. For Eugenio Barba it is important that art deliberately disturb these habits, in order for the spectator to see the world in a new way.

An empty throne Our origins are to be found in what moves away from us. They don’t come before, but afterwards. They don’t belong to the past, but to the future. (p. 190) In this paradoxical way, origins become future. For Barba, origins are for instance the hundreds of groups in South America who insist on creating another young theatre, deeply inspired by Odin Teatret. Origin is a mental state. It is linked to transition, to the need to refuse to belong to a culture, a nation, an ideology. Transition is the permanent path of de-familiarisation and extraneousness. [. . .] Transition is the consequence of an instinct which is present only in a few. My origin is this: the instinct to separate myself from my native home, from the ideas that gave certainty to my parents, from the criteria giving sense to my actions and from the prejudices I call values. [. . .] Origin is not “something” or “somewhere” from which I move away; it is a hive of dark forces which I stubbornly stay close to. The maîtres fous of the twentieth century theatre remained close to their origins using the art of fiction (p. 208)

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Theatre has during its many thousands years of existence developed many different ways to address society. At times theatre was tolerated as entertainment for nobility and plebs, but actors were considered outcasts. Lessing and Schiller called for theatre to be the court that judged the vices and injustices of their time. This possibility is no longer at hand for theatres. Their voices are not strong enough. In Barba’s words: Theatre no longer possesses a voice capable of reaching the ears of an entire city. It doesn’t frighten anyone as a possible enemy of power and public morality. And no reasonable person expects that its effectiveness can stir up a general change of mentality. (p. xix) In the 20th century theatre “seemed destined to perish” because of this inadequacy. However, some theatre people managed to make the surrounding society recognise theatre as a cultural good to be protected. Our profession is art, they claimed, and managed to get it subsidised and safeguarded as a valuable national legacy. On the other [hand], while this change of mentality was taking place, a few men and women established archipelagos of small autonomous theatrical islands. [. . .] It is a negligible minority, capable nevertheless of opening its own path into new territories and escaping the customary enclosures of commercial theatre and traditional artistic performances. (p. 111) This was the great reform of the 20th century, “the theatre’s ‘big-bang’” (p. 202). The generation of many small theatre laboratories took shape, and formed a theatrical tradition where no single form could claim to be the most important. Many small nomadic traditions were generated. They didn’t belong to a culture or a nation. A totem was at the origin of each of them, an actor or a director who, borne by a deep personal need, had invented superstitions and techniques to give life to it. These superstitions and techniques were embodied in individuals. They travelled, proliferated by contagion and spread the “plague”, indifferent to frontiers, fashions and impositions of history. (p.202) From Stanislavski to Grotowski they created an “island of freedom and a shelter from the spirit of the time” (p. 202). This is the tradition to which Eugenio Barba and Odin Teatret belongs. A totem was an object (as an animal or plant) serving as the emblem of a family or clan and often as a reminder of its ancestry, a person or a thing representing an idea. I have often told my actors that a magnificent performance doesn’t change the world, but a performance which leaves one indifferent and seems generated by indifference makes it uglier. [. . .] A mediocre or indifferent performance doesn’t make the world more obscene than it is. For the spectators, nothing is removed or added, and it soon fades from their memory. But a lukewarm commitment remains indelible in my and

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my actors’ nervous system. [. . .] If I dilute my longing for excellence, I erode and impoverish my working process, the capacity for discovering energies buried within me and reacting to the surrounding reality. In such case, the tepid work tarnishes those who perform and accustoms them to indifference of the world. (p. 1) The idea behind Odin Teatret is to produce performances that speak to the world in a special tongue. A language of theatrical excellence, powered by the experiences of the exiled, a language that speaks to each spectator (not the audience, seen as a broad mass), in a mixture of all senses, with music, costumes, words, movements, and sounds, which presents a perfume of illusions and a magical Disorder. It is not translatable into univocal causal stories, but demanding of the spectator a creative effort to connect and develop individual meanings. The language is incoherent, it disseminates meaning yet it creates associations. The values and preferences in the work of Eugenio Barba come across quite strongly: the work of art should avoid unequivocal enunciations. In order to achieve this, certain ways of working with the actors in the rehearsals are preferred so the surface of the performance becomes an ambiguous, empty ritual, allowing the spectators to construct their own images and meanings. The dramaturgy is used as a tool to avoid closure, but simultaneously to build complex actions into sequences of elusive order. We have seen that the effect of the ambiguous work upon the spectator could be described as a chance to perceive perception. A nomadic clan and its totem, wounds, dark forces, and superstitions: an empty ritual. This is the image of a theatre and its raison d’être. But what is it all about? In the exact middle of his book, Eugenio Barba makes an ironic gesture towards classical dramaturgy, i.e. the concept “midpoint” or Gustav Freytag’s “höhepunkt”, where the tragic hero’s luck changes from “steigerung” to “fall”. Barba asks the question: For a theatre, that follows such a path towards an aim and a centre, for a theatre “which knows that it is pretending and does not pretend to know [;] what is the centre?” The answer comes in form of a story about an Italian missionary Jesuit and mathematician, Matteo Ricci, who in 1601, after 20 years of preparation in China, finally enters the gates of Peking in order to meet Him, who is at the centre of the Celestial Empire. Together with thousands of others he performs all the rituals: He advances towards the throne, kneels and bends down, touching the earth with his forehead. For a second he lifts his eyes: the throne is still empty. He has been unlucky. The emperor will appear to the bows of the others. (p. 122) But, no, none of the many thousands meets the emperor: “an empty throne – the centre”. This story, Barba declares, explains everything, yet, he is unable to say why. Buddhist wisdom has it, that he who seeks must be led into a radical self-identification with the empty nature of reality. The universe is a continuously floating unity, where everything exists in dependence upon everything else around it. Now, whatever superstitions we might want to deduct from this, one thing remains clear: the centre is empty. There is no such thing as a finite signifier, no last reference.

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Religio, faith – to bind back (. . . to God) Now, our final question to the semantics in this dramaturgy is what type of symbolic generalised medium is used to shape this semantic? What makes the actors hand over part of their freedom to the director? How does the director explain to himself and his actors that these are the necessary expectations to actions and way of experiencing? I have throughout this presentation quoted extensively from Barba’s book in order to share its language and images. We must now attempt to suggest a reading of the semantic applied here. My hypothesis is that the semantic incorporated in the poetic programme of Barba’s theatre is closely linked with the symbolic generalised medium we find in the religious system.12 It is undeniable that I have integrated my private experiences in the artistic work. By turning them into theatrical fiction, today I can affirm that the intensity of this process of transformation has transformed me into another person. Theatrical experiences are not of the same quality as religious ones, yet they belong to the same species. (Barba, 2010, p. 111) [my italics] Let us try to understand in what way theatrical and religious experiences could be said to belong to the same species. First, it is important to emphasise that in this discussion, religion should not be associated with miscellaneous esoteric or arcane systems of belief, as we know them from the religious system and its diverse programmes, i.e. Catholicism, Protestantism, Buddhism, and Hinduism, but religion should be understood as a generalised form of meaning. Here, I follow Niklas Luhmann when he designates to religion a specific way of observing. As we have seen, observation is only possible when a distinction makes an indication possible. This provides us with an observable “marked space”, and leaves us with a vast “unmarked space” into which the “ending horizon of the world withdraws”, it remains transcendent. The transcendence accompanying all that we can comprehend thus shifts with every attempt to cross the boundary with new distinctions and indications. Never within reach, it is always present as the opposite side to everything determined. And this very unreachability “binds” the observer, who also escapes observation, to what he can indicate. In whatever cultural guise, the reconnection of what cannot be indicated to what can be indicated is religio in the broadest sense of the term. (Luhmann, GdG, p. 232 / Vol. 1, p. 139) In Latin religio means to tie (or bind) back, and where religion is concerned, back to a God. The idea to bind what cannot be indicated to indications is found at the core of the semantic structures in Barba’s performances and in his concept of dramaturgy. Let me illustrate this point by recalling some of the central formulations in the reflective theory. The centre, the empty throne could be seen as an example of an indication: the throne, binding back to what cannot be told, or indicated: the meaning of the Celestial Empire. At the very centre of a structure is the initial difference that generates the structure. We cannot observe this difference; it is the blind spot in every operation. Matteo Ricci was confronted with the paradox of all religions, you simply have to believe, because you will never see it for

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yourself; never have absolute proof or certainty. We are made aware that our longing for the final meaning, will never be met. Towards this, you can adopt several different attitudes: you might find that you are left with no other option than to jump in to the deep of the “70,000 fathoms” Kierkegaard mentions,13 and start to believe! Or, you might prefer to accept the fact that meaning is relative to the differences we use to conjure up meaning. Then an unavoidable relativism sneaks in. You might enjoy that and follow the lines of flight in an upbeat tempo in deterritorialising, disseminating meaning (post-structuralism: Derrida, Deleuze). Or, you might accept relativism, yet recognise the necessity of reducing complexity for local purposes (i.e. pragmatism, Richard Rorty or systems theory, Niklas Luhmann). In our second order observation of the reflexive theory, we are able to observe that the central values in a semantic could always be replaced by another. The values are contingent. In Barba’s text the empty ritual, wounds, superstitions, and dark forces are metaphors pointing at the unobservable. We should not speak about our superstitions, says Barba. They have to remain latent, to stay in what we cannot see. The manifest performance then, might bind us back to these beliefs. We saw how wounds, for Barba, are important impulses in the creative process. Wounds are stories that can be evoked and concealed at the same time. Wounds are a re-entry schema, which remain unobservable even though the performance text evokes them. They are personal and as such, they must remain latent, they cannot be communicated in the rehearsal process. The director’s artistic decisions must never be challenged or questioned by the actor. Hence the inability to discuss “mannerism” in the rehearsal process. The actor must trust the director 100%, she must believe in the director. Unfortunately there are no objective criteria to measure the quality or the efficacy of the organic effect in theatrical actions. The actor must trust the director’s reactions. What is inert for me could be alive for another director and vice versa. (p. 67) In other words, directors’ judgements are contingent; they could always be made differently, although not by this specific director. Therefore, the organisation Odin Teatret expects the actor to behave in such a way that the decisions of the director in the rehearsal process should not be doubted or discussed. There are no guarantees, no objective way to qualify the director’s call for “real actions”. The actor must therefore rely on the director in order to be a part of the theatre, and so the actors did, “they were even prepared to surrender their autonomy, mixing it intimately with mine and that of their colleagues”. The work in the rehearsal room was like a “defenceless child that had to be protected from private conflicts”. At Odin Teatret, dramaturgy didn’t only embrace the techniques to compose a performance. It also involved a web of motivations, relationships, tacit norms and superstitions: an environment-in-life. (p. 206) This web describes the symbolic generalised media that enables work at Odin Teatret appear meaningful. It is by replacing empirical logic ways of observing the world with the web of poietics as a new frames, which gives Odin Teatret power to generate meaning in the

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world, to let the unobservable be bestowed with meaning. What the religious system calls “faith” – in order to part the world into believers and non-believers – is here a web of expectations and “superstitions” that determines inclusion in the organisation. This then, is our answer to the question to the kind of symbolic generalised media that informs the semantic of Odin Teatret: it is the symbolic generalised medium of faith – as we find it in the religious system. The main motive for directors’ and actors’ actions and experiences is the belief in the web described above. It is openly admitted: this cannot be argued within empirical or logical terms. This also implies that any critique of empirical/logical kind is invalid and without legitimising power. We showed how the spectator must accept the part that is intended for her. She must be prepared to invest her own wounds in creative adaption of the performance. It also means that spectators are divided into those willing to accept and trust the performance’s secrets and volatile orders, and those who distrust it. The spectators are split as Believers and Unbelievers (the lazy spectator). The constant dissemination of meaning in the performance denies any traditional dramaturgical pleasures of careful designed set-ups and pay-offs, no causality in logical terms is possible. As spectator, you must be prepared to invest yourself in the creative process. One could rephrase the dramaturgy of an Ibsen play that invites you as spectator to look for the “backstory wound” in the past, in the fable of the play, and say that Odin Teatret invites you to find backstory wounds in your own past. By doing so, the spectator is activated in the process, and she may experience a “change of state”. Inflamed by the upside-down viruses affluent in the performance’s language, the spectator might become another person, willing to break with own habits, schemas of everyday routines, and superstitions. Thus confirming the central idea of the performance: that through the “rite of passage”, through wounds and shadows, it is possible to see the light: the empty throne. No empirical or logic causality will lead you to the same cognition. In this way, the spectator herself must bring meaning to the performance, and to the work of Odin Teatret. She does so by believing that there is a meaning with the performance/the organisation that transcends the performance and the organisation itself. Or, to put it in relational terms: the implicit “spectator that creates meaning” is expected to bring meaning into the organisation and the performance. It is the semantic of religio at work. When the metaphor of the totem is applied to the “small tradition” of nomadic companies engaged in “the third theatre”, it is another way to express the symbolic generalised media of religion. In front of the clan we meet a totem, if not a wooden representation of the animal coupled with the clan, then the person blessed with an idea that provides the theatre clan with its identity. The totem serves as reference for the participants. The “third theatre” is a row of totems, the “maîtres fous” of 20th-century theatre. The masters and their special ways help theatre to survive and prove meaningful in society. In the arts system the initial code splits the world in imaginary realities and reality. How can we know that imaginary reality offers us anything that reality doesn’t already give us? The initial difference creates meaning for the arts system, it can refer to the necessity of an imaginary reality, and it can develop different aesthetic programmes to decide how this imaginary reality should be composed in order to be most efficient. As the arts system observes the world with the difference imaginary reality >< reality, it is unable to observe this difference. This is a paradox. A paradox that covers the ultimate paradox of meaning: that meaning can only point to itself as meaningful. It is meaningful because it gives meaning! The functional differentiation uses diverse

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types of “smaller” paradoxes to cover this ultimate paradox. The symbolic generalised media allocates meaning and form to the functional system. For a long while, art and theatre were supposed to function as enlightenment of the world, now we find another type of semantic at work. What are the advantages of observing the world (here art) through the symbolic generalised medium religion: faith? The answer is that the religious system functions in a special way: it includes the ultimate paradox in its own de-paradoxicalisation strategy. Where all other systems cover the ultimate paradoxes with other paradoxes – be it the system of law (legal/illegal), the financial system (payment/no payment), or the health system (healthy/sick), the religious system confronts the ultimate paradox, the empty throne, by accepting, that we cannot know, and hence we need to believe. A revelation is a glimpse of the transcendent, of the unobservable, and if you have seen the unobservable, you return to the immanent world of observables and can now determine what is meaningful and what is not. Religion states it clearly: we cannot know that God is there, we cannot see him and the way in which he creates meaning, as God is transcendent. Therefore, when we observe the mundane world we have no way of knowing whether there is meaning or not. This religious paradox is solved by re-entries, with Jesus as a master example. He is a semantic tool to help believers. The distinction immanent >< transcendent is entered into itself on the “inner side” of the distinction. So “transcendent” appears in the immanent. By doing so, it is implied that the transcendent can be observed in the immanent; thus, what under normal circumstances could not be observed might now be observable. Jesus is a “re-entry”, he belongs to both sides at the same time. He is man and he is God. God can now be observed. Jesus invests meaning with meaning in the sense that he condones the ultimate difference a specific meaning. When the Christian Church celebrates communion we remember Jesus as human and yet a deity. We drink his blood and eat the bread, the body of Jesus, and incorporate the divine transcendent in our mundane and human body. We need rituals to help us believe, to be able to get a glance of the meaning of meaning. Now, is Jesus a man or a deity? We cannot decide it. This paradox is quite simply the price every religion must pay to solve the ultimate paradox of meaning. Religion makes us see, that only by accepting a paradox are we able to get a glimpse of the transcendent, and thereby get meaningful meaning into the world. The religious must accept faith as premises for all their expectations towards actions and experiences of the world. When all this has been said, it is important to avoid any conclusions, as far as Odin Teatret and Eugenio Barba are concerned, of the kind that would establish equations between any dogmatic traditional religion, and the work of Odin Teatret. The point made here is that what we find in the performances and in the organisation, are semantic structures that function in a way parallel to those of the functionally differentiated system: religion. Traditional religion is dogmatic and closes meanings beforehand, using Holy Scriptures, Holy Institution, sacraments etc. The religio we find in the theory of Barba is reflexive. Barba is very careful not to identify any traditional religion, only discreet hints at Buddhism (Zen) as a possible excluded “third”. He does not want to privilege any special “superstition” or any particular kind of wounds. This is what the spectator is confronted with: she has to look into her own reservoir of wounds and beliefs, examine her own way of constructing meaning-in-life. The re-entry figures in the dramaturgy are: 1) the “upside-down” virus that changes cognition; 2) an elusive order in Disorder provided by “knots” of ironic actions with ambiguous meanings, and

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3) an empty ritual, in which, we discover an indication of the transcendent, that provides us with our own power source to confer meaning to a meaningless world. What we claim to have identified is the semantic structuring of the poietic hierarchy in the works of Eugenio Barba; it is his version of the dramaturgy of dramaturgies. In his book, Barba exposes the architecture of the “house” of Odin Teatret. He does so out of a sense of duty to repay his debt to the former masters and his collaborators.

Weaves of tradition The last step in the method of our theory of dramaturgy is an attempt to establish threads to investigate relations to Tradition. This could be done in many different ways. Here, I have chosen to conduct the search for threads of tradition by demonstrating how bits of semantic structures from other former and contemporary poietic programmes, find their way into Barba’s poietics, where they create a tension. My hypothesis is further that Barba uses the concept of complementarity to overrule these tensions, whereby he eliminates the problem of incompatibility.

Cognition Where Lessing insisted upon pity as the only passion available for the spectator, he also carefully avoids telling his audience how they should react upon their pity. Lessing did not believe in theatre that had the state as object: “The state is much to abstract a concept for our senses”.14 He wanted the moral impact on the spectator to be rooted in the feelings. It is an ancient European dualism: reason >< feeling, and we have lived with it since Plato. Lessing fights the dualism as best he can. Lessing believed it was possible to change the audience’s moral perception by appealing to their pity and empathy, without involving truth in the matter. Has this any influence on our reading of the reflective theory of Eugenio Barba? I do believe so. If we carefully avoid any simplifying comparison of two theories more than 250 years apart, we might recognise a parallel in terms of how a performance is supposed to affect the spectator. Barba insists on talking to the spectators’ senses through the wounds displayed in the performance, and the personal wounds actualised by witnessing. Barba carefully avoids any clear messages in the performance in terms of suggesting what the spectator should do with this disturbance. His hopes are that by keeping the wounds alive, and inseminating a grain of the upside-down way of observing the world, they will enable a “clandestine revolution under the open sky”. Lessing found that pity might open the spectator towards evaluating the socio-political circumstances and their impact on the spectator. Lessing was pointing at bourgeois families; he fabricated stories that could show tragic fables. The figures appearing in Barba’s theatre are rare mixtures of archetypical elements in history, they tell no explicit stories, and so, on this level we identify an immense difference between the two aesthetic hierarchies. But the similarities are hidden in the common belief in stimulating the spectator in the sensitive area of her consciousness, and through “pity” or “Disorder” to provoke the cognition. The liberty that Barba addresses is not necessarily morally good. Barba frequently hints at the dark forces, which might uplift or destroy us. So, even though some formulations might appear to coincide, even though the inheritance from Kant still linger in our concepts of the aesthetic, it is important to recognise the differences

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in values and outlooks. Barba puts it differently, but the “upside-down” perspective is also a “tool” for our perception of the world. It goes to show how an evolution of reflection theories can be observed and accordingly how similarities and differences can be brought forward to shed light upon different poietic hierarchies.

Irony In a fairy tale, Barba says, pure anarchy establishes an upside-down view and a world of confusion. It is a world that children love, but which doesn’t love children. There they are abandoned and overpowered. They experience naked reality: anxiety and fear interspersed with flashes of unreasonable justice (p. 21) In this very elegant formulation of the semantic of fairy tales, Barba confirms the clash between “naked reality” that produces fear, and the fantasy that provide “unreasonable justice”: the upside-down trick. We know that the early Romanticists used the fairy tale as one of their preferred art forms. Art was, according to the Schlegel brothers, an effect of the imagination. Art was seen as progressive “universalpoesie”, a universal force that could never finalise itself. The Romantic poetry is a progressive universal poetry. [. . .] The Romantic poetic is in becoming, yes, that is its real nature, that it is eternally in becoming, and never to be completed.15 In this sense, Romantic art could never finalise its own justification nor could it be systematised. Universality in Romantic perspective implies that it is not just something that applies to art, but also to life. Romantic art, according to Schlegel, wants to make poetry alive and sociable, and life and society poietic: “Will die Poesie lebendig und gesellig, und das Leben und die Gesellschaft poetisch machen” (p. 182f). As the modern process of reconversion of society is gathering strength, the process of enlightenment displays enormous consequences, and as a reaction against this, Romantic art questions the progress and its one-sided reliance on reason and intellect. In Romantic art the concept of irony, becomes a central tool in the attempt to destabilise this whole machinery of modernity. F.v. Schlegel’s famous dictum “Ironie ist die Form des Paradoxen”16 points out that irony is not only an attempt to say one thing and mean another, but also exists as a paradox aesthetic function, highlighting the contrast between universality, non-closure, and fragmentation. Irony is not a concrete message, but an utterance that makes the receiver hover in the air because of a unique displacement between poietic associative expressions and discursive narrative elements. This is also the paradox: two elements that we normally treat as mutually excluding each other are treated as a unity. Hence, the Romantic preference for fragments: something that is simultaneously a totality and an infinity. Closed but never-ending, another paradox. The joke is another preferred artistic expression, it is a micro-cosmos: “a pointed flash of lightning of unity of unity and the eternal in the finite”.17 This very brief summary demonstrates how the Romantic concept of art is the first self-reflective modern art concept. This has great influence on the ideals of how art should function: it should

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no longer concern itself with classical mimetic utterances; on the contrary, it should create its own reality. The autonomous imaginary reality of art. In this sense, the work of art is appreciated as a self-referential system of signs. The fairy tale, to come back on track, is a privileged Romantic form, here the reader must engage in the fictional universe, find its hidden meanings in the complex weave of semiotic elements, and from that point return to the real world. The reader must exert all his imaginative powers in order to engage with the Romantic work of art. This enables the Romantic work of art with the possibilities to counter the rationality of daily life; time and space can be annulled; figures can become animals; inanimate things can speak, and metamorphoses can happen. Here we do recognise several elements from the reflective theory of Barba. The idea of art as an unending becoming, the preference for the fragment, and if you consider the concept “knots” as an ironic gesture, a joke, this could be threads in the dramaturgy of Barba that has the colour of Romanticism. Knots are concrete physical gestures that provide the spectator with an immense amount of possible information. Many different understanding may be selected. There are different kinds of irony: the stable irony, where you do not doubt that you have to select one of its possible contents as the correct. Fairy tales may have quite simple moral endings, where you may find solid ground after a short confusion. But the unending irony is of another quality altogether: here the irony continues, one ironic statement is followed by another, and it is suddenly no longer possible to end this game. Meaning keeps disappearing in front of you. The performances of Odin Teatret have the quality of unending irony: the performances stimulate the imagination with their extra-daily elusive orders and hidden meanings.

Post-Romantic Romanticism or post-ontological ontology If the identification of a religio-dimension in the aesthetic hierarchy of Barba and the Odin Teatret, is valid, we are confronted with a paradox in a work of art insisting on dissemination of meaning, with a religio-semantic based on an insistence on transcendence to a “world beyond” placed in a non-existing world of ideas. Is it possible to insist on binding back to this unnameable sphere of superstitions and burning winds, in order to create meaning in the existing world? To part with metaphysics means to part with the distinction existing/non-existing. There is no hidden order, no God, no truth out there, waiting to be discovered. Alternatively, are we dealing with an attempt to do two things at the same time: to pursue a Deleuzian flight from territorialisation, and while we are at it, to pursue a Derridean investigation of the conditions of possibilities to escape from metaphysics at all? The first position would find in Barba’s poietic hierarchy a post-ontological ontology (or with Lehmann and Sidenius a post-Romantic Romanticism), and accordingly lead us to the conclusion that the concept of complementarity could not be brought to cover this dilemma. The second position would be one of complementarity: we do not have any epistemological chance to decide whether we should prefer Deleuze to Derrida. It would be different means for different purposes. If we accept that this domain has been developed to the degree where it offers an epistemological alternative to positivist metaphysical science, we must first consider whether the dilemma we have presented in Barba’s aesthetic hierarchy is an inter- and/or intra-domain dilemma. If we consider it an inter-domain dilemma (between two epistemologies: thinkers of identity and thinkers of difference), we would have to follow Lehmann and Sidenius in their conclusion that we are dealing with

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a post-Romantic Romanticism. Mainly because the thought of bios at the centre of life, would count as a rock-bottom secure closure of any discussion, it would count as an origin. The semantic we have shown is at work in Eugenio Barba’s reflective theory on dramaturgy, points at “religio” and the way it is used in producing art, give us an example of how elements from one domain are at work. In the post-ontological domain of difference, we might see an internal dilemma in the very fact that the book has been written, and not burnt with the house. Barba’s constant search for ways to describe acting and theatre is indeed an attempt to find the differences that makes a difference. His performances are constant offers of lines of flight, and they may provide a glimpse of life in a land of difference. Niels Lehmann describes the problems of contingency inside a thinking in differences: On the one hand, a full acceptance of contingency seems to be necessary if it shall become possible to jump between the different perspectives. Profound territorializations should be avoided and no conceptuality should be allowed to obtain a status beyond its fundamental deconstructablity. On the other hand, it is important not to become overly anxious about conceptual closure. If we are to get at the differences that make a difference and see various philosophies of difference as different means for different purposes, we shouldn’t hesitate to produce operative closures that may work as momentary reterritorializations.18 To see different Pragmatic uses (Rorty) we need to see the differences (Luhmann). We need the revolutionaries (Derrida and Deleuze) to radically attack our habits and break horizons and open into undiscovered territories, we need the evolutionary thinkers (Rorty and Luhmann) to bring momentary stabilisation in order to settle new local territories. Barba produces performances that indeed break habits and open other horizons; the performances do not invite many moments of reterritorialisation. Here we are offered constant lines of flight. When Barba describes his work, it is difficult unambiguously to decide whether we have left the realm of metaphysics for good or not. Is the belief in bios a substitute for the Gods?

Notes 1 See Centre for Laboratory Studies (from 2002): www.odinteatret.dk/research/ctls.aspx. Visited 2 March 2018. Andreasen, John and Kuhlmann, Annelis (Eds.) (2000) Odin Teatret 2000. Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, Acta Jutlandica LXXVI:1. Christoffersen, Exe (1993) The Actor’s Way. London: Routledge. Christoffersen, Exe (Ed.) (2004) Why a Theatre Laboratory, Peripeti. Aarhus: Nr. 2. Christoffersen, Exe (2006) Teaterhandlinger. Aarhus: Klim, pp. 441–473. Risum, Janne (1994) “The Castle of Holstebro”. New Theatre Quarterly 38, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Risum, Janne (1996) “The crystal of acting”. New Theatre Quarterly 48, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 340–355. 2 Barba (2010) On Directing and Dramaturg, p. i. 3 Bredsdorff, Thomas (1986) Magtspil. Europæiske Familiestykker. København: Gyldendal. 4 Szatkowski, Janek (1989) “Dramaturgiske modeller. Om dramaturgisk tekstanalyse”. In Christoffersen, E., Kjølner, T., and Szatkowski, J. (Eds.) Dramaturgisk Analyse. En Antologi. Aarhus: Aktuelle Teaterproblemer, pp. 9–85. 5 Szatkowski, Janek (1993) “Et dramaturgisk vende, perspektiv for teatervidenskaben. Dramaturgiske modeller og forestillingsanalyse (A dramaturgical turn. Perspectives in theatre science, dramaturgical models and performance analysis)”. In Hov, Live (Ed.) Teatervitenskapelige Grunnlagsproblemer. Oslo: Universitetet i Oslo., pp. 116–142. 6 Fischer-Lichte, Erika (2004) Ästhetik des Performativen. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.

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7 Lehmann, Niels and Sidenius, Steen (2000) “Postromantic Romanticism. A note on the poetics of the third theatre”. In Andreasen, John and Kuhlmann, Annelis (Eds.) Odin Teatret 2000. Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, Acta Jutlandica LXXXVI, p. 175. 8 Intra-domain applies to conflicts within the same epistemological domain, where inter-domain conflicts are between two mutually excluding epistemological paradigms. 9 Barba, Eugenio (1994) En Kano af Papir. Indføring i Teaterantropologi. Gråsten: Drama, Chapter 2 and 3, p. 149. 10 Luhmann, Niklas (2000) Organisation und Entscheidung. Wiesbaden: Westdeutscher Verlag. 11 Jung, C.G. (1970) Civilization in Transition, Collected Works, vol. 10. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 12 This reading inspired by Aakerstrøm Andersen, N. (2013) Managing Intensity and Play at Work: Transient Relationships. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing Incorporated and Qvortrup, Lars (2011) Paradokshåndtering og ritualproduktion – tro som vidensform. København: Forlaget Anis. They are excellent examples of innovative ideas as to “applied Luhmann”, a discipline, which Denmark is internationally well ahead in. The central source is of course: Luhmann, Niklas (2005) Religion der Gesellschaft. Berlin: Suhrkamp Verlag. 13 Kierkegaard, Søren (1845) Stadier på Livets vei. SKS (collected works) vol. 6, p. 411, Søren Kierkegaards Skrifter Bd. 1–28, 1997–2013. København: Gads Forlag. In Danish: “Aands-Existents, især den religieuse, er ikke let; den Troende ligger bestandigt paa Dybet, har 70,000 Favne Vand under sig”. 14 Lessing, G.E. (1767) Hamburgische Dramaturgie, part 14. English Translation: http://mcpress.mediacommons.org/hamburg/. “Ein Staat ist ein viel zu abstrakter Begriff für unsere Empfindungen”. 15 Schlegel, F.v. (1958ff.) Kritische F. Schlegel Ausgabe. (Ed. Behler, E. et al.) Paderborn. Quote is from Bd. 2, p. 182f. It is Athenäumsfragment #116: “Die Romantische Poesie ist eine progressive Universalpoesie. [. . .] Die Romantische Dichtart ist noch im werden; ja das ist ihr eigentliches Wesen, dass sie ewig nur werden, nie vollendet sein kann”. 16 Schlegel, F.v. (1958ff) Bd. 2, Lyceums-Fragment #48, p. 153. 17 Frank, Manfred (1989) Einführung in die Frühromantische Ästhetik. Vorlesungen. Frankfurt am Main, p. 294f.: “ein punktuelles Aufblitzen der Einheit von Einheit und Unendlichkeit im Endlichen”. 18 Lehmann, Niels (2004) “On different uses of difference. Post-ontological thought in Derrida, Deleuze, Luhmann and Rorty”. In Cybernetics and Human Knowing 11 (33), pp. 56–80, p. 79.

8 POSTDRAMATIC THEATRE

Reviews and discussions of Hans-Thies Lehmann’s project illustrates how, when observed from Australia or America, the postdramatic could be described, as Denise Varney does, as being a problem solely for the European “regi-theatre” and its “art festival circus”.1 Some of the questions that might usefully be asked are whether postdramatic theatre involves not so much a paradigm shift from a European status quo, but a recognition of what was always a globally diverse art form. The diversity model would recognise that the pressures on European dramatic theatre are not just internal or stylistic, but arise from post-colonial, hybrid, feminist and community theatre practices. A further question is the extent to which, beyond the subsidised festival circuit and the fringe, postdramatic theatre has changed the way theatre is made and viewed. Alternatively, Elinor Fuchs claims that the postdramatic is a theory of epochal scope devoid of references to social and political theory.2 Here is a vast epistemic theory, every bit as “epochal” as the “postmodern” Lehmann rejects on precisely that ground. Yet Lehmann doesn’t exactly argue this thesis in the book; he merely drops the suggestion, leaving the reader in a distracting, if thoughtprovoking, search for amplifications and implications. One implication: If in fact the “dramatic” is destined – like Foucault’s image of “Man” – to be erased like a face drawn in sand at the edge of the sea, then all the social and political theorizing of the past quarter century so notoriously absent in his essay could be seen as mere flotsam on the ineluctable tide of an aesthetic life expectancy. (p. 179) George Hunka discussed postdramatic theatre as:3 Attempts to define a critical vocabulary and landscape for what has variously been called performance, performance art, installation art, and so on. More simply, it’s theatre, but

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a theatre which decentres the text as a defining element in the production and reception of theatrical experience, rendering the text or the play as an element neither more nor less central than movement, light and set design, sound or multimedia. [And] One might argue that the performance history of the avant-garde since the 1960s has led to a series of clichés and tired tropes, such as the seemingly inescapable presence of the simultaneous video reproduction of on stage events, just as afflicting to a transgressive aesthetic as any reliance on the dramatic text as controlling, meaning-making sign. (p. 125) Finally, the book has also created heated debate in Germany, as Bernd Stegemann4 even attacks it now after 20 years, and claims that the postdramatic theatre coming out of the avant-garde affirms an “all-monopolizing relativism”, and that “today the zenith of this form of theatre has been crossed.” He refers to the amount of seminars, meetings, and publications dealing with still more specialised items of the performative turn. This he continues, is an indication of the usual movement of: An art that emerges as a disturbance from the outside, only to advance towards the centre, where it is analysed by scientists and taught as a canon. The art that today emerges at the periphery is again vehemently interested in the social reality. Those who produce it have all been through the education of the postmodern and are familiar with all the tricks. Nevertheless, their distaste for the political randomness is clearly detectable. (Stegemann, 2015, p. 134) [my translation] The main point for Stegemann is that the discomfort vis-à-vis the undeterminable and the confusion shaped by all the polar opposites we are confronted with, is robbed of its social dimensions, and turned into “relative experiences of the subjects” (Stegemann, 2013, p. 34), with the consequence that the subject must be conceived as contingent. “The rehearsal of contingency is also the efficient utility for the development of the flexible employee”. These critical remarks serve as a reminder of how arts craving for the new makes poietic changes appear in a tempo that science seems to have difficulties in living up to. It is further a clear signal of what happens when dramaturgy as science and as a reflective theory appears in non-reflected mixtures, when poietics are mingled with poetology. Finally, it goes to show how different self-descriptions of society emerge in the dissimilar redescriptions of dramaturgical forms. In the name of global diversity and post-colonial, hybrid, feminist, and community theatre practices, it might be answered that the art system in a world society responds to “pressures” or irritations in diverse ways. In zones of affluence and pampering, it reacts in other ways than in zones of (post-) colonial distress, as I demonstrated in the introductory chapter. If we accept the broad definition of postdramatic theatre, I would find it difficult to argue that the effects were restrained to fringe theatre and subsidies festivals. It has had an important impact on – at least – the European way of educating and training actors and directors. It is a precise observation that Lehmann argues for an epochal shift in paradigms, and that the postdramatic emerges as a new genre, with its own recognisable methods and styles, of which you can of course grow tired, as the new form enters centre stage. In terms of the theory of dramaturgy presented here, it is the mixture of dramaturgy-α and dramaturgy-ς, that provides some opacity.

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Postdramatic ambiguities There are indeed ambiguities in Hans-Thies Lehmann’s book, which makes it hover between the essay and the scholarly work attempting to describe a new aesthetic paradigm in contemporary theatre and at the same time privileging it over other forms. The reviews point their praise and critique in many different directions, illustrating how in a world society different observers compare using distinctive perspectives. It is important to avoid a Eurocentric as well as an anti-Eurocentric approach. Within the perspective of a world society, the discussion of what to call the baby: Postdramatic or Performance, or Regietheater gives little or no meaning. The central issue here is a discussion of the function of art in a global, mediatised neoliberal world society. Hans-Thies Lehmann (1999) presents his position on this, and finds answers in what he describes as an aesthetic paradigm privileging a poietic dominated by undecidability, non-linearity, non-hierarchical structures. I include the discussion here because an observation of how Lehmann observes may prove instructive in our search for a theory of dramaturgy. My argument is that Lehmann privileges an aesthetic, which communicates by dissemination of meaning, but does so based upon an only vaguely sketched epistemological basis of classical dialectics insisting on unity combined astonishingly with a post-structuralist position where thinking in differences is the radical landmark. Let us therefore take a closer look at how Hans-Thies Lehmann constructed his approach. Lehmann makes a note in the introduction to the English version of the fact that he has primarily used performances he has personally seen, and this in itself always produces biases. Elements from the British fringe theatre and the American avant-garde are thus fewer than the European examples. It is an imbalance, however, as Lehmann states, one we have to live with. What Lehmann hopes for is that the reader will be able to transfer and translate mutatis mutandis what is developed here to other works in theatre. The international resonance of the book makes me hopeful that this will also be the case for Anglophone theoreticians, student and practitioners of theatre. (p. ix) As nobody has seen all theatre performances selection is unavoidable. The central question to address is how the observer selects and how he observes. In order to come to an answer, we need to read in search of those distinctions that serve Lehmann’s observations as leading differences. A careful study of the prologue, the chapter on “drama”, and the epilogue will provide the first steps.

For a slow, centred, and deep perception What are the stakes for Lehmann? Obviously, he cares about theatre in times of media streams and mass media, and the danger of theatre losing its status. New theatre forms may often be difficult for an audience to grasp. Further, Lehmann marks the distance between literature, text, and theatre. We recognise this as an old dilemma for theatre science, as many theatre/performance departments have grown out of literature departments to which a certain distance therefore were required. Lehmann sees the dilemma as more nuanced. He creates a difference between a “simultaneous and multi-perspectival” speedy form of passive surface perception of data and images, which is superficial yet comprehensive, and the much

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slower “centred, deeper perception” that reading literary texts or watching performances requires. This form of perception is laborious and cumbersome, as it takes time to release active energies of imagination. Theatre requires a lot of costly activity of many living people; it cannot meet the laws of marketability and profits. Yet theatre survives as an element in the cultural sector. Why? According to Lehmann, it is because theatre has understood the importance of bodies in “real gathering”, where performing and reception takes place in the here and now. Behaviour on stage and in the auditorium in the “theatre situation” is “a joint text, a ‘text’ even if there are no spoken dialogue on stage or between actors and audience” (p. 17). That this given characteristic of theatre has been used, reflected on and turned into content and theme in the scenic practice in theatre since the 1970s is to Lehmann the main reason for the survival of theatre. He argues that we are witnessing a profoundly changed mode of theatrical sign usage, which he labels “postdramatic”. [T]he new theatre text (which for its part continually reflects its constitution as a linguistic construct) is to a large extent a “no longer dramatic” theatre text. By alluding to the literary genre of the drama, the title “Postdramatic Theatre” signals the continuing association and exchange between theatre and text. . . . In no way does this involve an a priori value judgment. (p. 17) According to Lehmann the theoretical analysis of newly produced “scenic discourses”, has been “wholly unsatisfactory”. Drama-analysis has to change to the perspective of theatrical reality.

An aesthetic logic of theatre Hans-Thies Lehmann offers a theoretical analysis of a new “aesthetic logic of theatre” that exists in a field of “real socio-symbolic practice”. He wants to reflect the theatrical development in the 20th century, and to provide a conceptual analysis and verbalisation of the experience of the often “difficult” contemporary theatre. Such an affirmation will “always involve ethical, moral, political and legal questions in the widest sense” (p. 18), but it will also “expand our preconceptions of what theatre is or is meant to be” (p. 19). Therefore, Lehmann is faced with the question to be answered by any affirmative aesthetic logic: how do we recognise what makes it truly contemporary? The goal was not to find a conceptual framework that accommodates everything. The task in each case was to decide whether an aesthetic attests to true “contemporaneity” or whether it merely perpetuates old models with technical accomplishments. (p. 20) Art, states Lehmann, cannot develop without references to earlier forms. It is only a question of the level, consciousness, explicitness and special manner of reference. Nevertheless, one has to distinguish between the recourse to earlier within the new forms and the (false) appearance of the continued validity and necessity of the traditional “norms” (p. 27 [my italics])

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This notion of “true ‘contemporaneity’” I would suggest, could be seen as a legacy from Szondi and Hegel, and it rings of idealism. It depends on a distinction between “true ‘contemporaneity’” and continuation of old models. Szondi’s distinction between “attempts to rescue” the old form, and the “solutions” that are examples of the new forms. This distinction was presented in Szondi’s work on the theory of modern drama from 1956.5 Where Szondi privileged the epic theatre of Brecht, Lehmann privileges the postdramatic theatre of a Robert Wilson et al. Lehmann quite rightly points at the impossibility of erecting new “ideals” as universals in times of heterogeneous diversity, and to claim large-scale causal developments in art. Instead we have to accept that today no “paradigm is dominant”. How does science react when confronted with such plurality? Lehmann dismisses any purely descriptive and additive listing of empirical elements, as that will only lead to atomising historical archiving. No positivist strategies will solve the problem. Neither will what Lehmann terms “pedantic specializations”. “These in themselves, however, can be no more than increasingly laboriously packaged pieces of data collection, no longer of interest or support even to theorist from neighbouring fields” (p. 20). Finally some branches of theatre studies apply “the much called upon interdisciplinarity”. Here Lehmann finds traps luring the scholars who under the banner of interdisciplinarity end up theorising and constructing large strategies of categorisation, often evading the core: “the aesthetic experience itself in its unprotected and unsecured experimental character”. Lehmann makes no specific references to the analyses, or theoretical works he has in mind, so a more concrete debate on these judgements must rest. As an alternative route, Lehmann suggests a double path: On the one hand, following Peter Szondi, I want to read the realized artistic constructions and forms of practice as answers to artistic questions, as manifest reactions to the representational problems faced by theatre. In this sense the term “postdramatic” – as opposed to the “epochal” category of the “postmodern” – means a concrete problem of theatre aesthetics. . . . On the other hand, I will claim here a certain (controlled) trust in a personal – or, to quote Adorno, “idiosyncratic” – reaction. Where theatre caused me “shock” through enthusiasm, insight, fascination, inclination or curious (not paralysing) incomprehension, the field marked by my experiences was carefully surveyed. However, only the course of the explication itself will justify the leading selection criteria. (p. 21) This double path takes Lehmann onto winding roads. A personal journey through contemporary theatre landscapes, and a theoretical endeavour to justify to the theatre and performance sciences the conclusion: we are confronted with a new aesthetic logic, a new paradigm in theatre, that Lehmann labels “postdramatic”. This should be articulated in a useful way for researchers, students, and artists. Helping this paradigm to reflect itself and articulate its own peculiarity. Let us follow the next steps in Lehmann’s prologue in order to understand how “post” and “dramatic” is defined, and what is meant by “paradigms”. The key problem lies in the distinction between postmodern as an epochal category and postdramatic as concrete problems of theatre aesthetics – or, perhaps on the lack of concepts for their interaction.

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Dramatic theatre Lehmann categorises several centuries of European theatre under the label “dramatic” as something clearly distinct from non-European forms of theatre, and at the core of European theatre in modern times. These traits reach “beyond the validity of a simple genre classification” and are intimately connected to what we [Europeans, by implication] have come to think of as theatre. This includes “imitation” and “action/plot” and the attempt to unite audience and stage emotionally and mentally resulting in an affective recognition and solidarity by means of the drama. These are traits inseparable from the paradigm of “dramatic theatre”. Further, Lehmann states that dramatic theatre is subordinated to the primacy of the text. No matter what kind of technical dramaturgical devices: Choruses, narrators, play-within-plays, asides, and many others, they were all under control of the text, and incorporated in the “theatre of dramas”. The fictive dramatic cosmos was meant to represent the world, i.e. a totality. This involved creating an illusion “abstracted but intended for the imagination and empathy of the spectator to follow and complete the illusion” (p. 22.) This does not exclude the incomplete and the discontinued, as long as it can be perceived as a model of the real. This is why even the historical avant-garde, according to Lehmann, may have made revolutionary innovations, but “largely maintained the essence of the ‘dramatic theatre’”. What is this “essence?”, one may ask. Lehmann answer is text and forms of perception. I would suggest that we are confronted with a specific form of cognition, resting on a belief in the identical. What Lehmann’s postdramatic theatre points at is a form resting upon dissemination.

Media society as caesura “Dramatic theatre ends when these elements are no longer the regulating principle but merely one possible variant of theatrical arts” (p. 22). Lehmann suggests that the end of dramatic theatre may be attributed to a “caesura” namely the upcoming of “the media society”, where social communication changes “under the conditions of generalized information technologies”. We observe how Lehmann is alert to the danger of asserting such caesuras. Mainly because there may be a “danger in overestimating the depth of the rupture” with a paradigm that has had a long existence, but “the obverse danger (especially in academia) of perceiving the new always as only a variant of the well-known seems to threaten with yet more disastrous misjudgements and blindness” (p. 23). Could Lehmann’s idea of the historical avant-garde as a variant of “dramatic theatre” be included as such a misjudgement? The concept paradigm, we are instructed, is not of the Kuhnian tapping, where a shift in paradigms within natural sciences means a clear-cut new beginning, but for Lehmann paradigm merely indicates that a plethora of authentic artistic testimonies of the times develop their own (new) yardsticks. They have to use elements from the “old” paradigm, so how do we determine the “authentic” elements of the new? When are we able to judge “postdramatic” in the case of the single artwork? Lehmann refers us to a constellation of the elements: One thing is certain: today a Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, who could develop “the” dramaturgy of a postdramatic theatre, is unthinkable. The theatre of sense and synthesis has largely disappeared – and with it the possibility of synthesizing interpretation. Recommendations, let alone prescriptions, are no longer possible, merely

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partial perspectives and stuttering answers that remain “work in progress”. The task of theory is to articulate, conceptualize and find terms for that which has come in to being, not to postulate is a the norm . (p. 25 [my italics]) With this illuminating quote, we understand that postdramatic theatre is not one dramaturgy, but many. However, would that not require a variety of dramaturgies to be presented? Is the book on postdramatic theatre not just the same as synthesising interpretation? We come closer to the scope of Lehmann’s project, and to an understanding of how he inherits Szondi. The thrust of the project is towards a description of some common denominators in contemporary theatre. When Lehmann calls it a paradigm, it might be to distance himself from other terms like genre or tradition. In the above quote Lehmann argues against a synthesised prescriptive dramaturgy. However, the poiteic hierarchies of the new are partial and stuttering, and in that situation dramaturgy needs concepts to articulate the new. How then to conceptualise postdramatic theatre? The old form has largely disappeared, and the new form apparently resists prescriptions, only leaving partial perspectives and stuttering answers. How then to conceptualise the “postdramatic” theatre? Does the task not require transparency in the way in which the new typology is constructed? Seen from a systems theoretical perspective, the precise question to address to any such construction is “Who uses what kind of criteria to compare forms of art and for what purpose?”.

Paradigm and/or genre? We know from the evolution of art theory, that the idea of cataloguing art forms in genres or traditions have found many very different ways. The concept of genre has been appraised with enthusiasm and met fierce condemnations. Critics have pointed to the imminent danger of normative judgements of taste, and all self-reflective dramaturgies would have to concede to this critique. Critics would also point to the fact that any such categorising will inevitably reduce the complexity of the single work of art. However, if you want to find similarities between works of art, how many points of comparison will you need? In addition, how do they emerge? How many points are needed to judge a work of art inside or outside of a genre, or tradition? Is it not so, that the most interesting works of art are those, which escape categories? Are there any hermeneutic values in the discussion of genres? Finally, there is the danger of “models” or fixed standards of genres, which may reduce sensitivity in the analytical reception of works of art. Confronted with a work the analytical process may be reduced to laying down the criteria and checking them, only to be able to place the work in an “appropriate“ box of genre or category. The theories of dramaturgy need to address all these, and many other, relevant problems. We will demonstrate how the art system needs a way to determine “newness”, and so will any scientific theory of dramaturgy. This involves comparison, and Lehmann leaves us curious as to how his established paradigm is different from “the” dramaturgy of the postdramatic. How does Lehmann compare?

Postdramatic theatre In the epilogue, Lehmann returns to the relation between the postdramatic theatre and “the political”. Not to trace “sociologically determined causes and circumstances” to the new

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theatrical modes – which would have meant applying any old deterministic Marxist basis/ superstructure model – but to show how relations between politics and postdramatic theatre might be construed – which indicates a relational model – where sociology does not determine aesthetics. We are informed that “power” is increasingly organised as microphysics in a web, where traditional politicians hardly have any power over the economico-political processes (p. 175). Lehmann clearly takes a distance to some positions: for one, the belief that postdramatic theatre might further intercultural or multicultural understanding. As “most artists also view their ‘own’ culture from a certain distance, occupying very often a dissident, deviant and marginal position within it” (p. 176). Another ill-advised position is a return to what Lehmann terms “immediate morality”, that sees itself as independent of the political world. The idea of the theatre as a “moral institution” (Schiller) will suffer, as it is will not able to really believe in itself. So what might theatre do? Artistically deconstruct the space of political discourse as such – in as much as the latter [the political discourse] erects the thesis, opinion, order, law and organically conceived wholeness of the political body – and to show its latently authoritarian constitution (p. 177) Here Lehmann refers to Julia Kristeva for the point of view that the political is that which sets the measure, the law of the law, a posit of power applicable to all. Therefore, she sees the political as a sphere of confirmation, affirmation, protection, where things might either be modified or abolished. Lehmann draws the consequence of this: he sees “an insurmountable rift between the political, which sets the rules, and art, which constitutes, we might say, always an exception: the exception to every rule, the affirmation of the irregular even within the rule itself” (p. 178). We might readily agree to the differentiation of political system and art system. However, this is a prerequisite for all art forms. Lehmann acknowledges this, and ascertain that all art, not just political art, has an essential “transgressive moment”. What is transgressed, you might ask, and according to Lehmann art privileges: the individual par excellence, the singular, that which remains unquantifiable in relation to even the best of laws – given that the domain of the law is always the attempt to calculate even the unpredictable. (p. 178) This way to describe the subject position in modernity is well known. The single subject remains resistant to all laws, even the best, because of the “unquantifiable” rest. As I read this, it may be the influence from Kristeva6 and her Lacan-inspired psychoanalytic terminology, where she privileges what she calls the “semiotic” (what Lacan termed the “imaginary subject”), over the “symbolic”. The “semiotic” Kristeva conceptualises as desires and their articulation, and the “symbolic” is meaning and representation, the political and the law. The revolution of the poietic language in modernity is that it ceases to be “art”, but emerges as the energies of desires that moves the subject. Kristeva points to the function of poietic language: It is as if, after the emphasis Freud placed on the subject’s impossible coincidence with himself in sexuality, a return toward the practice of the text were necessary to recall

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not only that “poets” had already discovered this impossibility but also that, as the precondition of their practice, the contradiction inherent in the signifying process is the precondition of all practice. Consequently, poetry ceased to be “art” and claimed other functions: showing the heterogeneity that works on all practice and furnishing every disappearance of meaning with a signifying device and practical scope. This theoretical move has been heavily discussed. To instal a split in the subject between desire and law leaves the subject with a permanent longing for the “real” (Lacan), as there is a constant “rest” or lack between the imagined “full” personality of the subject, and the partial demands called for by the law, the symbolic order of socially sanctioned roles. This lack can never be fulfilled. The subject can never coincide with itself. The post-structuralists claims, as Kristeva in the above quote, that the split, or should we say the difference, between the imagined and the symbolic is a prerequisite for and inherent in all signifying practices. Derrida termed the always already installed difference différance. The consequence of this theoretical position is a genuflection for dissemination: a constant dispersion of meaning. A systems theoretical understanding of difference insists on another way to cope with meaning, namely by installing distinctions as the privileged theoretical tool. Lehmann never explicates the epistemological choices he makes, and hence his classification of the postdramatic cannot engage in an internal, self-reflective discussion as to why this post-structuralist position is preferred. Theatre, says Lehmann, would hardly have come about without the hybrid act where an “individual broke free from the collective, into the unknown, aspiring to an unthinkable possibility”. Theatre therefore has to dispose of laws, to interrupt and suspend the designating political function. In this, the theatre becomes political. As theatre, so Lehmann states, can only ever be ambiguously “real” even when it draws close to real, it attributes performances with a row of “now”-intensities, an event, and a presence. In this sense, theatre is not performative but an “afformance” art, i.e. an art that is pretending to perform, the somehow performative in the proximity of performance. Theatre, we would claim, is one way to construct an imaginary reality. Postdramatic theatre reacts towards the “inflationary dramatizations of daily sensations that anaesthetize the sensorium”, and the dramatic imagination has its part in this condition. Hence, postdramatic theatre assumes “a human being for whom even the most conflictuous situations will no longer appear as drama” (Lehmann, 1999, p. 182). As science have further de-dramatised reality, it becomes important for postdramatic theatre to present us with an image of omitted images of conflict. Society has hardly any “capacity to ‘dramatize’ the uncertainty of its really founding and fundamental issues and principles, which are after all deeply shaken” (p. 183). Further mass media communication distorts or even dissolves the “bond between perception and action, receiving messages and ‘answerability’” (p. 184). Under these conditions, postdramatic theatre tries to withdraw from the reproduction of “images” into which all spectacles ultimately solidify. It becomes “calm” and “static”, offering images without reference and handling over the domain of the dramatic to the images of violence and conflict in the media, unless it incorporates these in order to parody them. (p. 184)

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The political form of perception This leads Lehmann to the conclusion that theatre becomes political in the form of perception. So he states: “The politics of theatre is a politics of perception” and an aesthetic of responsibility (or response-ability)” (p. 185). This means that a “mutual implication of actors and spectators in the theatrical production of images” moves into the centre of the postdramatic theatre and this should, according to Lehmann “make visible the broken thread between personal experience and perception” (p. 186). Theatre “does not attain its political, ethical reality by way of information, theses and messages; in short: by way of its content in the traditional sense.” It needs to shock, disorient by amoral and asocial even cynical events. Nevertheless, out of the postdramatic position Lehmann manages to identify an intense message to its audience.

Dramaturgy in the postdramatic theatre Within this frame Hans-Thies Lehmann then provides a broad panoramic view of examples of the postdramatic theatre, and he shows convincingly how theatre forms have indeed changed in the way both text, space, time, body, and media are presented in works of Kantor, Grüber, and Wilson. It allows Lehmann to develop a list of important parameters that he terms “postdramatic theatrical signs”. In order to be able to discuss this list – and Lehmann explicitly warns against using it a checklist (p. 82) – we have to understand how Lehmann interprets the concept “sign”. The term “theatrical signs” in this context is meant to include all dimensions of signification, not merely signs that carry determinable information, i.e. signifiers which denote (or unmistakeably connote) an identifiable signified, but virtually all elements of the theatre. For even a striking physicality, a certain style of gesture or stage arrangement, simply by the dint of the fact that they are present(ed) with a certain emphasis, are received as “signs” in the sense of a manifestation or gesticulation obviously demanding attention, “making sense” through the heightening frame of performance without being “fixable” conceptually. (p. 82) This is important as the (im-) possibility for the theatrical sign to retreat from signification is at the core of the paradigm. Postdramatic theatre articulates another implicit thesis concerning perception, synthesis is cancelled, and the open and fragmented perception is thus privileged. The insistence on dissemination should mimic the chaos of everyday life, and is in that sense a quasi-“naturalistic” form, but in reality it is the only authentic manner in which theatre can “testify to [the fact that] life cannot come about through imposing an artistic macrostructure that constructs coherence (as is the case in drama)” (p. 83 [my italics]). This is a very self-assured observation, telling us the truth about life as ungovernable and unpredictable. Theatre according to Lehmann has to affirm this by intensifying the restlessness of the subject and its individuality, its permanent lack of coherence. This comes close to an ontological statement, as it privileges a truth about life and a corresponding dramaturgy, which lives in partial structures, rather than whole patterns. “Synthesis is sacrificed in order to gain, in its

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place, the density of intensive moments”. Instead of synthesis, postdramatic theatre creates “synaesthesia” which becomes “an explicitly marked (1) proposition (2) for a process of communication (3)” (p. 84). Lehmann (p. 85) states that the postdramatic “performance text” is dependent on a sign usage and communication, which provides: More PRESENCE than representation More SHARED experience than communicated More PROCESS than product More MANIFESTATION than signification More ENERGETIC impulse than information By analogy, we could prolong this list converting Lehmann’s 11 parameters to similar dualisms: More PARATAXIS than hierarchy (#1) More INDECIDABILITY than coherence (#1 and 2) More SIMULTANEITY than linearity (#2) More SENSORY-AESTHETIC perception than knowledge as information (#3) More RHIZOME than surveyability (as in Aristoteles “synopton”) (#4) More MUSICALISATION, VISUALISATION, PHYSICALITY than dramatic theatre (# 5, 6, 8) More COLDNESS than psychology and moving fortunes (#7) More CONCRETE PRESCENSE, and IRRUPTION OF THE REAL than illusion (#9, 10) More PARTICIPATION in a DIS-APPROPIATING SITUATION than in any (media) event (#11) To judge a theatre performance “postdramatic” you would have demonstrate that it lives up to some (or all?) of these parameters in order to qualify as “new” and relevant for contemporary society in its political function. Could this not qualify as the definition of a genre? What kind of theory are we confronted with here?

A scientific theory or a reflective theory? If you will accept this redescription of Hans-Thies Lehmann’s project, we may enter into a discussion with the position. Before we do so, let us recall that the book came out in 1999. Its broad international reception has made it a title regularly appearing on the reading lists of many universities (my own included). We have seen similar waves spreading out from books like Peter Szondi’s on modern drama and the epic theatre in 1956, where the theatre of the absurd is dismissed as an attempt to save the old dramatic form. In 1961, Martin Esslin provided his arguments for how Beckett, Ionesco, Genet, Pinter, and others under

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no circumstances could be categorised as followers of a neither dramatic nor epic theatre, as they were opponents to the didactics of Brechtian theatre.7 Lehmann establishes the difference between the dramatic theatre and the postdramatic theatre as main distinction. This is not, according to Lehmann, any odd difference, but a difference between to paradigms; a word carefully chosen to avoid concepts like genre or epoch. Nevertheless, the historical teleology of this shift is constructed as an (Hegelian) evolution from pre-dramatic over dramatic to the postdramatic. By widening the concept of the dramatic theatre to include even the historical avant-garde, it illustrates in a very thought-provoking way, how a redescription of an episode in art history is dependent upon the position from which it is carried out. It is evident that such a paradigmatic shift is in need of different explanations. Lehmann is careful to present his explanations as not sociologically determined; nevertheless, he seems to identify what he terms a caesura with the shift in media matrixes in a “media”-society. Caesura is not to be understood as an epochal change, since that would mean we were “post” modernism, which, as I totally agree, our society is not. So where the epochal for Lehmann seems to indicate a change in the form of society, we are instead confronted with a shift in forms of perception. Lehmann argues that in the “media-society” certain forms of perception are developed, that stimulate a speedy, superficial yet comprehensive perception. Postdramatic theatre creates another form of perception altogether. This requires a theory of perception where the interpenetration of psychic and social elements are described. We might readily agree that art has the capacity to make its observers perceive their own perception. Lehmann declares that it would be tempting to discuss the different models offered by phenomenology and perception theory to explain “the process of global perception (synaesthesia)” communicating across the senses (p. 85). Within the postdramatic theatre Lehmann demonstrates that a variety of different aesthetical forms exists, however Lehmann are primarily occupied with an identification of a row of common features (see the list above), that marks significant trademarks of the postdramatic. We would like to supplement this with any possible differences, which may disturb the construction of the paradigm. Lehmann does not suggest how such distinctions could be made. I would claim that Lehmann in his attempt to formulate the paradigm of the postdramatic partly over-generalises the dramatic paradigm, and partly loses the sensitivity towards the inherent differences in the postdramatic. In his own way, and contrary to his own implied epistemology, Lehmann works towards identities.

Questions of epistemology This leads us to the fundamental question, that of the epistemological stand of Lehmann’s observations. It is a scientist, who observes, even though he signals “essay”, the scope of the impressive work, and its method of argumentation points at theory. There is an ambiguity (deliberate?) throughout the book, as to the exact status of the results. Observed from a systems theoretical perspective the blurred lines are significant. Our hypothesis is that we are confronted with a text that functions as a theory constructed upon a scientific basis of observations of artworks and their implied art system’s internal reflective theory. There’s only one problem: the epistemological base for the observations is somewhat opaque. In order to investigate the hypothesis, we have to observe what kind of criteria are used to compare forms of art and for what purpose. Lehmann gave us two leads. The one connected to a

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reading of theatre performances as “answers to artistic questions, as manifest reactions to the representational problems faced by theatre”. Secondly, the choice of objects for the study followed a personal or idiosyncratic observation: “where theatre caused me ‘shock’ through enthusiasm, insight, fascination, inclination or curious (not paralysing) incomprehension”. As a theatre scientist, Lehmann has observed a broad variety of numerous theatre performances. He has chosen to trust his experiences and used the sensation of “shock” as criteria to qualify his selection of works to consider. These performances are then analysed as examples of how contemporary theatre (or should we say part of it) solves problems of representation. Finally, Lehmann states: “only the course of the explication itself will justify the leading selection criteria” (p. 21). It is not entirely clear what this means. If the investigation of the chosen works of art will expose an “explication”, which eventually will justify the two aforementioned criteria, i.e. the judgement of taste and analytical practice of the researcher, it amounts to a circular argument. I would suggest seeing the paradox embedded in Lehmann’s argument as a case of the interconnectedness between enclosing of problems and problem solutions. Lehmann addresses the problem of representation for contemporary theatre, i.e. theatre asks itself how to represent life, and it answers by producing performances. How are the problems formulated? A new media matrix stimulates one kind of perception, which is described in negative terms. Postdramatic theatre reacts by making theatre performances that instead provide the spectator with a perception of “shock”, which then is considered as a solution to the problem. There are two remarks to be made here. One is to point to the fact that the art system is entirely dependent on this kind of “innovation”, it constantly needs to create new works of art as a difference to what already exists. The art system reacts forcefully to any signs of stagnation. If no works of art created irritation or shock that would be a signal to the art system immediately to begin processes of evolution. Such self-irritation is the result of the difference between the art system’s code of reference and its programmes of preference. The irritation hides a fundamental paradox: the unity of the distinction between system art and its environment is in itself a paradox. All attempts to dissolve the paradox will have to employ equally paradoxical forms. Lehmann thus searches for solutions to a problem that has already been solved, probably in order to find out what kind of problem it was that has found its solution (how does art provide something no other system in society can?). The way we formulate a problem serves to define the possible solutions. Alternatively, as we have it here, the tested solutions (theatre forms where text is subsumed by performance) serves the adjustment of the definition of the problem (art needs to stimulate perceptions of “shock”), in order to let the new analytical approach (the postdramatic dramaturgy) appear as solving the problems. My second remark is concerned with the question of the status of the results of an investigation conducted by the idiosyncratic selection of performances. It strikes me as an eclectic mixture of critical discourse (Adorno, Szondi) blended with post-structuralist colours (Lyotard, Kristeva, Deleuze, and Guattari). Not that eclecticism could not work, but even within an eclectic approach, there is a need for self-reflection. Is it possible, that the “criteria of selections” appeared in the recursive scientific process of the investigation? It must mean that Lehmann is able gradually to explain in depth how he was shocked by what. The result is the above list of parameters. What we would call a generalised poietics of the selected performative works of art. In other words, Lehmann’s results amounts to a specification of a “genre”. From the quotes given, it appears that Lehmann would not consider the concept

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of genre to cover the enterprise, thus the term paradigm. Nevertheless, we are confronted with the same questions, as any theory of genres would have to deal with. What are the most important parameters that qualify a genre, how must they be met, and how many parameters will suffice? All 11 or just some of them? Again, it is striking that Lehmann works with paradigm as his heuristic tool. I find it interesting that Lehmann is able to expand the dramatic theatre paradigm as he generalises upon the notion of “identity” – a mode of thinking looking for wholeness, closure, and identifiable unity. Given this is an correct assumption, we are not surprised to find Lehmann identifying the opposition of the dramatic as something, which constantly seeks differences, dissemination of meaning. It goes without saying that no one makes analysis out of the blue, Szondi has inspired the reading of the dramatic paradigm, and it is only thanks to an overall notion of the identical that Lehmann is able to expand the field of the dramatic theatre to include Szondi’s hero and anti-dramatic pioneer, Brecht. I am total agreement that Artaud and Brecht both worked on a project of cognition of unity; only they worked in two diametrical opposite directions, Artaud looked for the (phenomenological) revolution of consciousness, Brecht for a (political) revolution of society. It is evident that post-structuralist thinking has its grip on Lehmann. The postdramatic paradigm could thus be the result of applying post-structuralism as the epistemological ground. Or, is it the Zeitgeist appearing in both art and science? We would suggest a closer inspection of how thinkers of difference differ.8

To observe It might seem like a question of what came first: the chicken or the egg . . . It is a circular self-referential paradox. We need to find a theoretical way out of this. One possible option is to elaborate the concept of “observation”, which evades the classical dichotomy subject/ object, which characterises Lehmann’s subjective take on objectively given artworks. Lehmann accepts that there is an “insurmountable ‘rift’” between art and politics (p. 178). The same kind of “rift” exists between art and science. I would like to describe this in the following way: Lehmann observes from a system of science, and as such, he is forced to choose between the many different epistemologies that exist as programmes for way to describe “truth”. What Lehmann observes are elements in an art system, works of art, and his scientific observation allows him to identify a “paradigm”. He does so in order to help this paradigm to articulate itself, to be understood, i.e. he develops a theory that enhances the self-reflection of the paradigm, by its artists and spectators. He demonstrates how the dramaturgy of different works of art (be they situationistic or performative) creates meaning. What Lehmann identifies in his analysis of the postdramatic theatre, is centred at forms of perception. I would prefer to address this as expressions of certain values. Values understood not as essences but as functions that are inherent in every act of communication. What are the inherent values in a poietic programme that addresses parataxis, undecidability, coldness, and simultaneously presence, physicality and participation? Is the mere ambivalence in itself a major value? To survive in a contemporary world of uncertainty the spectators are provided with effects of realness and liveness that point in the direction of “the real” in the performative. The postdramatic thus lives by presenting the impossibility of representation in a world that no longer allows itself to be portrayed. The postdramatic theatre makes values dependent on the individual spectator. This gesture, I would claim, has as

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consequence that a post-modern subject on the one hand accepts its de-centeredness and alienation, and on the other hand interprets this as freedom. Values are then decoupled from their function; they become effects produced in a constant stream of new experiences with its frenzy of possibilities for a subject that floats as a disconnected element in the waters of an incomprehensible world society. Hans-Thies Lehmann offers a careful and comprehensive analysis of what in the terms of this book could be called different poietic hierarchies; he identifies central elements in the common poietics of such hierarchies, and provides examples of how the dramaturgy combines poietics with poiesis and aisthesis, the act of creation and reception. His attempt to validate this as a change in paradigms rests on a generalisation that indicates special values: those of dissemination of meaning. It is a construction of a monolithic size. What Lehmann provides with his book on the postdramatic theatre, is a fine example of scientific questions to art systems internal reflections. It could be addressed as questions: is this what the artists creating work inside this special poietic want to express? As such, it works as an enhancement of an art-system internal reflection theory, as it coherently argues for the specific relevance of a dramaturgy in the poietic hierarchy. Postdramatic theatre is a clearly value-based approach to a “genre” and it provides its reader with arguments for its contemporary functions. On the other hand, poetologically, we need to observe the postdramatic as one amongst many simultaneously existing poietics and dramaturgies. Seen from a scientific point of view we need to construct the art theory, which allows us to identify the inherent values in many different poietics. Do you believe in objectivity, I hear my reader mumble in her/his doubtful mind, has that not been abandoned long ago as an idealist conception, a heritage from the natural sciences? It seems impossible to work within a system of science without acknowledging the plurality of epistemologies on offer, and thus an unavoidable relativism. The way we handle this relativism is important. Relativism is not “anything goes” nor coincidental, neither is it an unliveable idea of an endless relativism, as Stegemann seems to indicate in his critique of post-structuralism and the postdramatic.9 Relativism is the ability to choose and to accept that your choice could have been made differently. It is a way to handle contingency. Behind the distinction between reflection theory and scientific theory is the need to acknowledge that reflective theory as a poietics is dependent on consciously explicit, and some implicit values relevant to the art system. The question is whether one may inherit Szondi without the normative Hegelian dimension, and Adorno without his intransigent insistence on the non-identical, so clearly apparent in Lehmann’s project. I believe the answer is yes. We need to think in differences, but have to decide how to work with them. A scientific art theory should be able to observe and identify values at work in the works of art as poietic hierarchies, which presents different dramaturgies as alignments of poietics and poiesis/aisthesis. Comparing these different poietic hierarchies in what we will call a second order observation may result in a scientific theory of dramaturgy. The scientific theory will observe how Lehmann observes, gaining important clues as to what a scientific theory of dramaturgy should look for. The main point of course being, that such a scientific observation must be a first order observation as well, with its own blind spots, i.e. the epistemological distinctions used to observe. Epistemology is the reflection theory of science. Science thinking about how sciences functions in society. This is not an endless regress, but relativism understood as an unavoidable epistemological paradox that requires us to make a choice and take decisions. As systems theory suggests: it all depends on how you begin, therefore, draw a distinction and observe observers.

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Words to the concept “culture” The concept of postdramatic theatre relies on the observation of performances and the way they stimulate our perception, even to the point of producing new forms of perception. I agree with Hans-Thies Lehmann, that as researchers we need to trust our own selections of understanding the communication in the artwork. We might disagree on the way in which we evaluate the results, but let that rest. An important question to discuss is the idea of how perceptions can be affected and structured in new forms. I have argued that our consciousness relies on the correlation between perception, emotion, and cognition, which are autopoietic operations in a closed system. Consciousness can be “disturbed” by communication, which is an autopoietic operation in a social system. The distinction between system >< environment is in cultural theories often considered invalid. The culture is seen as a structure of knowledge, which has its material existence in everyday action and communications. The agent is relying on this often implicit knowledge. Therefore, the individual is embedded in this knowledge structure, and the knowledge structure only appears in form of actions. When we discuss the function of art “from the inside” of the art system, we are observing the poietics, the works of art, the artists, the spectators, and we see this as an expression of cultural values. A look from the “outside” on the concept culture could provide an extra dimension.

Bourdieu What happens when someone observes art? Not much, some would claim. You may enjoy or get irritated; you have spent some money, killed some hours of your surplus time. Or, with Bourdieu10 you have accumulated some cultural capital, which distinguishes you from others. The denial of lower, coarse, vulgar, venal, servile – in a word, natural – enjoyment, which constitutes the sacred sphere of culture, implies an affirmation of the superiority of those who can be satisfied with the sublimated, refined, disinterested, gratuitous, distinguished pleasures forever closed to the profane. That is why art and cultural consumption are predisposed, consciously and deliberately or not, to fulfil a social function of legitimating social differences. (p. 7) Due to the subterranean disposition towards conflict and battle in Bourdieu’s theory, it sounds as if the society is permeated by a constant struggle to improve one’s position in social fields. This is, one has to admit, contradicted by countless studies of social mobility, showing very limited changes, if any. Bourdieu show us how the battle with distinctions could be seen as fight over what should be considered “the legitimate taste”, and those who possesses this exquisite taste is the bourgeoisie, the ruling class. If taste is the ultimate function of a class struggle it remains to be clarified how a struggle over distinctions in taste could be considered a social conflict. What remains clear in the work of Bourdieu is how taste contributes to a clear distinction between groups, and at the same time solidifies the group from the inside. The strength in Bourdieu’s analysis remains the imaginative analysis of how meaning is produced in the perspective of the agent, and how this meaning looks entirely different

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when observed from a social perspective. If a child in a worker family decides not to start higher education, because he does not believe that he will succeed, then his expectations are the result of what he believes to be cause and effect, in addition he directs the interpretation in an inward direction towards his individual capacities, and not outwards towards the social inequality. He might believe that his act is meaningful, but is it? Is it not a self-fulfilling prophecy? It is the “rule” in society that children of parents with lower education are heavily underrepresented in higher education. The disbelief in success with higher education is thus ascribed to deficit in his own capacities, and not to social inequality. What for an external observer looks like an objective result of social forces is for the young man a decision he has made himself. The force in Bourdieu’s concept of habitus is thus to establish a connection between what for the single agent is meaningful rules and habits, while the social differentiation of resources passes unnoticed behind his back. The founding question in the work of Bourdieu is an investigation of what is latent in forms of praxis and their cultural self-descriptions. His answer is “an economy”. Not in the trivial sense of production and economy, but as a battle in fields of power, where stabilisation or changes of the relation between powers, and access to scarce resources (as in any economy) where these are unequally distributed. Fields of investigation has been politics, religion, education, media, economy, and art. By generalising different forms of capital (besides the economic): cultural, social, and symbolic Bourdieu makes otherwise incomparable fields functionally equivalent. There is a clear ring of Gallic rhetoric and fanfares in the quote above. However, it has its own empirical truth. In the preface to the English translation, Bourdieu readily admits that his book is French. In terms of content, but in form too. The cultural production in different fields always depends on the laws of “the market” in which it is offered. These laws functions as “illusions” (Luhmann calls it a blind spot). Religion has to insist on faith in belief and has to create the sinner in order to save him; politics has to believe in an idea of the representative; media in the possibility of the true narrative; economy in the (improbable) idea of the subjects behaving as someone who rationally maximises utility, which enables the trivial economic theories to flourish. It is also a mark of theoretical equivalence between Luhmann and Bourdieu. In order to understand the theoretical basis for the quote, another dimension of the specific French approach must be mentioned. In Bourdieu’s book on the judgement of taste, there is a clear critique of Kant, and an attempt to avoid the idealism and revert the discussion of aesthetics to a question of the structure of social classes in society. Bourdieu wants to show how the mental structures associated with art associate with social structures. Art is as field designated by its own primary illusion: that it produces a fervour that can only please if it enables reflection. Kant, as father of this aesthetic, maintained that one should differentiate between a “Taste of Reflection” and a “Taste of Sense”, between what gratifies and what pleases. He also insisted upon differentiating between disinterestedness and the interest of reason (p. 488f). What Bourdieu’s sociological studies demonstrates, is that the “pure taste” or “pure gaze” is a construction of disgust. A disgust for the simple and ethical enjoyment of lower (working) classes, and an attempt to validate a special way to meet art. Bourdieu11 quotes Kant: “we regard as coarse and low the habits of thought of those who have no feeling for beautiful nature . . . and who devote themselves to the mere enjoyments of sense found in eating and drinking”. When Bourdieu emphasises the semantics of Kant, it stands out how crude

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and vulgar taste “immediately satisfies the senses” but is “mediately displeasing” to reason. “We demand both taste and feeling of every man, and granted some degree of culture, we give him credit for both”. It aggregates to an idea that culture has to be learnt, and it includes negation of “enjoyment”, which is considered inferior, coarse, vulgar, and venial. The “sublime” is on the contrary an affirmation of the cultivated and their sublimity, as they are satisfied by the refined, distinguished, disinterested, and free pleasures. The opposition between nature and culture, between barbarism and ethical purity of culture, Bourdieu points out, is only the demarcation to one side. On the other side, culture has to be protected from civilisation. Bourdieu quotes Kant: To a high degree we are, through art and science, cultured. We are civilized – perhaps too much for our own good – in all sorts of social grace and decorum. But to consider ourselves as having reached morality – for that, much is lacking. The ideal of morality belongs to culture; its use for some simulacrum of morality in the love of honour and outward decorum constitutes mere civilization. (p. 492) Therefore, neither the brute and common people, nor the nobles and their luxury are in possession of the pure aesthetic. Bourdieu concludes that the latent social relationship is present, if you want to see it. To reduce Kant’s text by claiming that this is the truth about it, would be false, just as a reading that would reduce it to the phenomenal truth. The main point is that culture and pure aesthetic are concepts with a hidden doubleness that contain a demarcation of art fitted around a special group in society. What Bourdieu sets out to examine, is whether the taste in empirical studies of different social groups should not once again corroborate a hypotheses that “fine art” still is a matter for the well-educated. Those with access to the cultural capital do not, as less educated people, have difficulties in observing modern, experimental art. The less educated are in fact alienated from forms that have no other functions as to point at the art itself as autonomous and contemplative. Even though Bourdieu’s empirical results are more than 40 years old, it is significant that many of the observations on the inequality of access to experimental art are still issues in today’s art system. Cultural practices are still clearly relational to educational level and social origin. We may consult statistics and confirm that the audiences attending to art are indeed homogenous groups (high incomes, long educations, urban, women overrepresented). However, some will claim that the distinction between low and high art have long been subverted by mass media, and the fact that today it is perfectly normal for any member of an audience to mingle between very different types of art: the lover of classical theatre may enjoy visits to a rock concert. Within the “lower” enjoyment, it is indeed possible to irritate, to destabilise the natural enjoyments. The fact that within “low art” we do find distinctions between what amounts to good and bad might suggest we need to address the question in different terms. No doubt, art has an effect upon the habitus of the individual. However, as art cannot be reduced to simple dichotomies and its function in society may be more complex than serving only as a social differentiating mechanism, we might handle the question of art in an alternative way. Culture has roots in social structures and history, and no universalising perspectives on culture can hide this fact. As society’s memory, culture provides to possibilities: Culture can

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use the past and the future as objections against the present society, only to discover that memories turn into mythology, and promises degenerate to ideologies. Alternatively, we might attribute society with past and future, in order to preserve the present for us in this society (Baecker, 2000, p. 189).12

Social and cultural studies If the art system, as we have come to know it, is observed from a sociological point of view what is retrieved? It strikes me, that we are often confronted with some of the consequences of the cultural split between social sciences and humanities. It is a reciprocal scepticism between scientific fields. Sociologists believe (and to a point quite correctly) that humanities deals with soft and subjectivist hermeneutics of aesthetic qualities, and that their research results therefore have limited, if any, importance as input in a sociological theory. On their side . . . humanities scholars [were] sceptical of social scientists’ attempt to rid their research of any evaluative component and the sociological commitment to rigorous empirical methods and a scientific approach to the study of society. Moreover, the association of art with the fine arts and the elite world that this implied was seen as incompatible with the egalitarian goals of sociology.13 I believe it is fair to say, that this unproductive and self-protective attitude between researchers of different fields has prevailed far too long. Scientific research in a hyper-complex society has to accept the need for collaboration between separate fields and traditions. Humanities needs to adapt a theory of meaning, and create tools to analyse how meaning is generated, which makes it possible to enter into collaborative research and thus expand the usability of results. The major question is how to overcome the differences in epistemological approaches. Alexander and Bowler argue: The “cultural turn” in the social sciences has for several decades now called attention to the centrality of culture in everyday life. It rejects the conceptualization of culture as secondary to other dimensions of social life, including the economic, and insists on the recognition of culture as constitutive of society and social relations. It underscores the importance of scholarship emphasizing the crucial role of culture, including the arts, in the creation, legitimation, and reproduction of structures of power and domination. For scholars of the arts, this turn represents a challenge to the marginalization of art in social research and a commitment to the future development of the field. (p. 4) The position expressed in the above quotation quite rightly exposes the importance of “Cultural Studies”. It started in Great Britain in the 1950s with Richard Hoggart14 (1918–2014) and Raymond Williams15 (1921–1988) and its main intention was to accentuate a shift in the political ambitions in cultural policy from a democratisation of a high culture to the cultural democracy, where all kinds of cultures were given equal rights. Culture should not be understood as the perfection of absolute and universal values, but as a social memory of many different social groups, that was to be studied without

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priority to any of them. In the early phase of Cultural Studies focus was on culture as a diversified signifying system that constituted central parts of society. This position grew rapidly and was influential in both USA and Europe. The focus in the above quotation is on power structures and domination. The relation between ideology and culture was, when Cultural Studies began, influenced by Althusser and the idea of structures that could dominate others, and Gramsci’s hegemony as ways to study how some groups in society could maintain power over other groups. When this eventually connected with Foucault and his studies of discourse and its relation to power structures in society, the first cycle of evolution in Cultural Studies was concluded.

Four concepts of culture At least four main concepts of culture should be distinguished. The normative concept of culture as we have met it in Kant, was based upon Enlightenment, and suggested that human sociability was built upon reason and moral. Culture was the civilised form of life. The holistic concept of culture, as we find it in the first cycle of Cultural Studies, defined as culture the historically specific totality of forms of life in a collective or community, seen as distinct from other collectives. This is the knowledge based concept of culture one finds in the theories of Erving Goffman, Bourdieu, and Foucault, where all of our everyday social practices both communicative and non-communicative are enabled and constrained by collective patterns of meaning in (mostly implicit) structures of knowledge. We meet the structure of knowledge for instance in Rancière’s “partition of the sensible” where the sensible is partitioned by what is unthinkable as social practices and actions, and what is enabled. Finally, the difference theoretical concept of culture, as in Niklas Luhmann’s theories, where culture functions as social memory in a functionally differentiated society, where art, science, health, law, education, etc. functions with their own meaning and knowledge schemata. The differences between the German and the English and French versions of social theory, is worth a short detour. With inspiration from Wittgenstein and French structuralism, we find for instance Pierre Bourdieu and Anthony Giddens as important figures in the sociological theory of knowledge-dependent social practices, which we will refer to as cultural theories as suggested by Andreas Reckwitz.16 We have seen how Luhmann has both psychic and social systems operating with meaning. The cultural theories sees social practices as results of collective schemata of meaning that as implicit knowledge enables and restrict actions. Meaning is of central importance for both theories. However, with a difference.

An epistemological difference As the above short introduction to the concept of culture indicates, there are differences that might make a difference for the theory of dramaturgy. When we suggest to replace “action” with communication, and when we insist upon supplementing Luhmann’s concept of the psychic system with an admittedly sketchy theory of consciousness, it is in order to make our dramaturgical theory able to manoeuvre in the gap between the meaning and knowledge based, and the difference theoretical based concept of culture. Dramaturgs are constantly involved in communication of ways of communication. Every analytical effort has to imply the point of comparison of different communications. Does it matter, whether we observe communication of communication in light of meaning and knowledge patterns,

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or in terms of functional differentiation? The basic idea of knowledge patterns only exists if observable in everyday practices is clear enough. What we observe can then be used to analyse the knowledge pattern that enables, restricts actions in daily life, and functions as rules. Rules are not external sanctioned norms, but a pre-conscious implicit knowledge as traces in memory. They function as knowledge about methods “how to” and schemata for interpretations of “how to go on”. The “invisible” knowledge exists only in the reality of actions and inversely are real actions only possible because of the agent’s possession of implicit knowledge structures. Direct observations of regularities in actions allow the construction of not direct observable generative rules. That requires a distinction between praxis and structure, where praxis is contingent on time and context, and generative rules in knowledge structures are resistant to time, and context, as they exist across time and contexts. Bourdieu’s concept of “habitus” illustrates how knowledge structures observable only in the real actions in time and context, have to be stabilised in time and condensed in context-independent structures. The individual enters a cognitive order, which first then is constituted. Knowledge patterns are social, above time and the individual, and yet simultaneously existent in the agent. Where the theories part, is on the usefulness of the schema inside >< outside. If knowledge structures are incorporated in the individual as implicit and (pre-)conscious, then the relation between society and the individual is built in to the theory on beforehand. In this sense “subjective” motivations and actions are always dependent on the social entity of knowledge that is inscribed in the individual agent. Therefore, any ideas of a difference between an internal consciousness and an external social world has to be rejected. When Luhmann instals the difference between consciousness (the psychic system) and communication (social systems) it is in an attempt, as I see it, to sharpen and sensitise the analytical concepts. There is, admittedly, a strong line of philosophy of consciousness inherent in Luhmann’s position, Husserl is an inspiration, however also criticised, and the omission of an elaborate theory of consciousness (a job for psychology) makes the position open for critique. My point is, that Luhmann with the leading difference system >< environment does make a distinction between inside and outside. But as Luhmann establishes an operative systems theory, the concept of operations (observations by distinction and indication), which are able to connect to other operations in sequences of system building, makes the inside outside distinction something beyond any classical subject/object or body/mind distinction. The mere fact that time makes it possible to change from inside to outside, from Alter Ego to Ego, from present to past, is part of system/environment distinctions logic. Interpenetration is an explanation of how psychic systems and social systems are able to make themselves available for the other in their difference from each other. The important analytical aspect is the precision towards functionally different fields of knowledge, and different types of systems, each with their operations: consciousness and communication.

The concept of culture – the vilest of all concepts The concept culture was introduced at approximately the same time as Romanticism evolved. Culture as something different from nature was no longer enough, the new emerging modern society needed to be able to describe what was on the inside of culture, in order to be able to decide what culture was, and which culture to accept and which to decline. Culture appeared to compare regional and historical differences. The point of comparison

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was Eurocentric and was focused on ideas and values. Luhmann suggests that the early phase of the concept of culture created a discourse, which filled a symptomatic function: to demonstrate that even extremely different things (cultures) or themes (e.g. identity) could be compared regardless of the difference. This sameness of the different was fascinating and allowed the demonstration of how the “identical” was “different”, and “different” could be recognised as the “same”, as long as you design the comparison only on this cognitive interest. However, why would you do that? Apparently because it was a cognitive interest that was able to process highly complex matters, at the end on the level of world-society.17 This prevented seizing the opportunity to establish a more complex description of society based on other cognitive interests than that of identifying the sameness of the different. It leads to a second phase in the evolution of the concept of culture. The function of the many cultural themes included a double meaning: they mean what they mean, but also always something else. This appears particularly clear when this “something” has to be qualified as “absolute”, “unconditioned”, “transcendental”, or “unreachable”. Because of this, argues Luhmann, a new “culture of suspicion” evolved in the 19th century (Marx, Nietzsche, Freud), where the leading question was “what lies latent under the cover of cultural themes?” Culture, concludes Luhmann, has the function of bestowing society with a memory, which allows it “to accept the present as result of the past and as point of departure for connecting operations” (p. 368). Most fall into oblivion, only very little is condensed and reconfirmed in such a way that it can be reused. It has to be kept latent that culture is a function of selection, not to reinstate the already forgotten. Luhmann finds the concept “culture” to be one of the vilest concepts ever invented.18 With this seldom and stern outburst Luhmann signals central values are at stake. In my view this is related to Luhmann’s own “suspicion” that the humanistic fallacy, i.e. the tendency to see the individual (later to be named “subject” and still later “person”) with its perceptions, opinions, and actions as both unique and at the same time alike. Evidently, this necessitates an ability to formulate in which regard they are equal. The answer is covered with the concept of “freedom”. From nature, we are born as free and equal individuals. When the individual becomes the centre of its own world, whether as subject or person, then the need arises to explain how social order is possible in spite of the individual subjectivity of the human being. The solutions had to include either a “social contract”, reciprocal reflexion, or some “transcendental” residual, neither of these assumptions leads to a theory of society. Man is from now on both an individual and humankind. The distinction between subject and world makes the world disappear as an unmarked space. The other side of the individual human being is on the contrary other human beings (Luhmann, GdG, p. 1024 / Vol. 2, p. 269). This fusion of world and subject, of the individual as both singular and collective creates confusion, at the exact places where a theory of society should be. The self-confident subject exercised its power to speak on behalf of mankind. When world becomes environment, it is a consequence of the idea that world can only be understood from the perspective of the subject. The concept of “society” was then connected to a system of human needs and eventually to the corporate business system and its illusions of the rational consumer and the inevitable need for growth. Modern society needs to find other ways to describe itself.

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The concept “culture” managed in parallel ways as the concept “subject” to convince in a time of transition. The stratified society provided a stable point of reference be it of birth or origin, of religious affiliations or family relations. With the new social order where every individual was now included in society, how then could society be held together? How could each and every single being out of the several billion avoid the feeling of insignificance? The concept of subject and individual, the comparison of different cultures leads to the conclusion, that every subject is able to find all the necessities and impossibilities (those which before were placed in “nature”) in itself, and that these necessities can be posited in the same form in everybody else. The construction error lies in equating subjectity [Subjektität] with generality and in attributing this equation to the self-given consciousness. Individuality is conceived of, not individually, but as the most general per se – in this regard too – letting subject and object coincide, namely the concept of individual (which is, of course, a general concept describing all – individuals) with the individuals themselves. But in principle this makes any communication superfluous. (Luhmann, GdG, p. 1028 / Vol. 2, p. 271f) The concept of culture was also correlated with ideas and values that were valid “a priori” as in freedom and equality, and in the enforced use of the collective-singular “individual”. Society was conceived as a society of subjects. Freedom and equality were posited as rights. As soon as these human rights were communicated, it became obvious that “equality” neutralised the power of descent and extraction, only in order to let the new functional systems create inequality. What was even more important was the way in which culture compared. What the concept of culture did, was to read the past with carefully chosen distinctions, which then provided the frames within which the future could oscillate. These distinctions provided the forms that decided what out of something specific could be the alternative future possibilities. As none of these distinctions are given as the ultimate “primary distinction” (as earlier ones like being/non-being, Sein/Nicthsein, logic as truth value, scientific truth, or moral) it seems that a limitless number of self-descriptions are possible. When culture becomes a memory of society it functions as a filter, which decides what frames of variations we can imagine for our future. This filter needs to be cleaned up, which means we need to differentiate between distinctions, and follow up on their consequences; if not, we will end up in an endless and increasingly speedier dissemination. The suggestion in systems theory, is to experiment with holding on to one distinction (system >< environment) knowing it can never be the only or ultimate distinction, long enough to follow it to an end, where results can be given in communicative forms, allowing contradiction or endorsement. This provides society with an immense richness of structural logics. Some traditionalists call it pluralism or relativism. It is perhaps wiser to see it as a question of how, given these historically produced circumstances, any stability may be obtained in the observational second order. First order observers have to observe with their own values and see the world as it is, as ordered and with unequivocal marks or features that might be described correctly or falsely. Any second order observer has to renounce this logicontological assumption.

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He has to assume that the world tolerates diverse observation, so that what it shows on the basis of different distinctions cannot always be eliminated as an error of observation. If we set out from the general theory of recursive operations, we can formulate this problem as addressing the “eigenvalues” of the system. The relatively invariant world of objects and the regularities (expectabilities) of its variation now become observable as “eigenvalues” of the system that constructs them. The problem becomes more acute if we include observations of latency. We can then know that agreement about phenomena is no longer attainable, and that forms of language have to be developed to enable communication to continue nevertheless. A starting point could be the transition from concepts of substance to concepts of function. (Luhmann, GdG, p. 1124 / Vol. 2, p. 332) It is important to understand that a second order observer is not a “better” observer, merely another. Further, that any system (be it psychic or social) observes by its own values, but that does not mean communication ends. It merely has to shift from essences (art is . . .) to questions of function (how does art function). Now, if “culture” is an invention of a society that has become so complex that it forgets and remembers more and more, and needs a mechanism of sorting and selecting, then it is of greatest importance to be able to communicate about what the culturally fashioned memory means for society. To sharpen it a bit more: if freedom is not understood as it has traditionally been, as absence of coercion, be it from state or capitalist orders, then another definition is needed that departs from the fact, that freedom is an artefact of self-descriptions (psychic or social) and attributions of causalities (Luhmann, GdG, p. 1032 / Vol. 2, p. 274). Freedom, in a catchphrase, is the ability to envision something diverse, out of the ordinary. If we use freedom in this sense, zones of affluence are very unfree. These questions are perhaps some of the most important to keep in mind, when we try to approach the function of art, and its eigenvalues. Recursive systems are systems where the same operation (e.g. communication of observation) are repeated upon its own results (communications or observations). As a recursive system like art keeps producing new forms – poietic hierarchies as we have named them – it could appear that the function of art would be indeterminable. Eigenvalues are temporary stabilities, where only minor variations occur, and where specific values stand out. The temporary stability is not unchangeable but it is, for a limited period, not provoked by observations to a degree, where it becomes unpredictable. In a society, such periods are often tranquil, and ordered. Phases of interregnum may appear where old orders are disturbed, on the verge of collapsing and new orders are not yet available. Unpredictability suddenly becomes the new “order”. How does art (and society) react to the unstable and unpredictable? Luhmann’s suggestion (GdG, p. 1145 / Vol. 2, p. 347) is to work with a stable distinction over time, in order to obtain results. “The question can only be whether attitudes have changed towards distinctions or, if one thinks in terms of objects, towards differences”. Post-structuralism as we meet it in the thinking of Jacques Derrida and Gilles Deleuze works with the concept of dissemination.19 Luhmann refers to Derrida’s critique of ontological metaphysics, and suggest it can be read as: an objection to overestimation of the present as the locus of the presence of being, proposing instead a more strongly time-related analysis. What occurs operationally is the notching of a difference in a world that tolerates this and makes “recutting” possible.

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This takes places through “writing” [Schrift]. But since it is a difference, it cannot last but has to be shifted from moment to moment. Différence is différance. This in turn implies that the relationship between past and future constantly shifts without it being possible to understand this shift as spatio-temporal movement in an existing world of being. (Luhmann, GdG, p. 1146f / Vol. 2, p. 347) It seems to follow, that we have three possibilities: We might choose to live with constant shift from moment to moment and consider it an unalterably condition in life. If we want to use the past or the future as objections against the present society, we will experience the degeneration of memory to mythology and of hopes to ideology. Alternatively, we might insist on attributing past and future to our present society and thus reserve the present for our presence in society, “Then it would once more be decisive how we act from moment to moment”. Maybe this is inherent in the search for immersion and a “new realism”, which we will discuss in the next, final chapter. Baecker20 proposes the concept “culture” as a position that is placed inside society but anchored outside society in the psychic system. Luhmann describes culture as the modern society’s form of autopoiesis: “society observing itself within itself against itself” (GdG, p. 864 / Vol. 2, p. 164). It allows us to mark a difference between our situation and what we detect as determinations. In this sense, we might observe artworks as autopoietic systems directing communication to be observed as communication of differences, some of which are value-based.

Notes 1 Varney, Denise (2007) “Review of H.-T. Lehmann postdramatic theatre”. Performance Paradigm 1 (3), May. 2 Fuchs, Elinor (2008) “Postdramatic theatre”. Review in The Drama Review 52 (2) (T 198) Summer, pp. 178–183. 3 Hunka, George (2008) “Charting the postdramatic (review)”. PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art 30 (2), May, pp. 124–126. 4 Stegemann, Bernd (2013) Kritik des Theaters. Berlin: Theater der Zeit. Further: Stegemann, Bernd (2015) Lob des Realismus. Berlin: Theater der Zeit. 5 Szondi, Peter (1956) Theorie des Modernen Dramas. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. 6 Kristeva, Julia (1974) La Révolution du Language Poetic. Paris: Gallimard. Translated to English by Margaret Waller (1984) Revolution in Poetic Language. New York: Columbia University Press, p. 216. 7 Szondi (1956) Theorie des Modernen Dramas and Esslin, Martin (1961) The Theatre of the Absurd. New York: Anchor Books. 8 Lehmann, Niels (2004) “On different uses of difference. Post-ontological thought in Derrida, Deleuze, Luhmann and Rorty”. Cybernetics and Human Knowing 11 (33), 2004, pp. 56–80. 9 Stegemann, Bernd (2013) Kritik des Theaters. Berlin: Theater der Zeit, p. 119 f. 10 Bourdieu, Pierre (1979/1982) La Distinction. Critique Sociale du Jugement. Paris: Edition du Minuit. Translated to English (1989): Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. London: Routledge, p. 7 Introduction. 11 Bourdieu, Pierre (1979/1982) La Distinction. Critique Sociale du Jugement, p. 489. 12 Baecker, Dirk (2000) Wozu Kultur? Berlin: Kadmos, p. 189. 13 Alexander,Victoria D. and Bowler, Anne E. (2014) “Art at the crossroads: the arts in society and the sociology of art”. In Poetics 43, pp. 1–19. This issue of Poetics is dedicated to articles on sociology of art, and provides a fine survey of themes, methods, and problems in sociological research into arts. 14 Hoggart, R. (1957) The Uses of Literacy: Aspects of Working Class Life. London: Chatto and Windus. 15 Williams, R. (1958) Culture and Society. London: Chatto and Windus.Williams’ earlier work on theatre and drama has been of central importance in the early phases of Department of Dramaturgy at the University of Aarhus. Drama from Ibsen to Elliot (1953) and Drama in Performance (1954).

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16 Reckwitz, Andreas (1997) “Kulturtheorie, systemtheori und das sozialtheoretisch muster der innenaußen-differenz”. In Zeitschrift für Soziologie, vol. 5, October, pp. 317–336. Stuttgart: Enke Verlag. 17 Luhmann, Niklas (2008) Schriften zu Kunst und Literatur. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, p. 361. (Ed. Niels Werber). My translation. 18 The self-description of the art system has been obstructed by the concept “culture” . . . “einen der schlimmsten Begriffe, die je gebildet worden sind”. Luhmann, KdG, p. 398. 19 Lehmann, Niels (2004) “On different uses of difference. Post-ontological thought in Derrida, Deleuze, Luhmann and Rorty”. 20 Baecker (2000), p. 180.

9 IMMERSION OR NEW REALISM?

Immersive theatre In the poietics of the postdramatic theatre, the spectator is confronted with works of art where no explicit stories with important fix points in past or present are being told. Instead, the burden of creating both meaning and understanding is placed heavily upon the single spectator. In the first two decades of the 21st century, we have witnessed the rise of wealth of theatre performances experimenting with different poietics that insist upon an “inclusion” of the spectator in the imaginary reality of the performance. In the wake of this, several scholars have dealt with analysis and critique of this new approach to theatre.1 The main challenge for the analysis of an “immersive” dramaturgy is to describe the way in which the spectators and artists are included in the performance, and what values appears. From the already existing body of scholarly work, it seems that this challenge is closely coupled to different appreciations of the strategic elements of immersion. Is immersive theatre a continuation of the postdramatic theatre or a new “genre” under construction? That would be the classical way to try to investigate the new phenomenon in order to decide whether it is a rescuing attempt or a solution of new challenges to art from evolution of society, as we have seen it presented by Szondi (1956) and Hans-Thies Lehmann (1999).2 I would suggest another approach. To examine the roots of the concept of immersion and redescribe how it enters and re-enters in the concepts connected to art and theatre. Based upon observations of the semantic contents of the concept, I would then suggest elements in a dramaturgy of “immersion”, which functions as values differentiating the “genre”. We have shown how the art system – including theatre – is stabilised by variation. Whenever a “new” phenomenon appears, it creates disturbances. This “uncertainty” has to be dealt with inside the art system, and we may observe it from the science system. When we (as scientists) observe immersive theatre as an evolution inside the art system, we contribute by analysing, conceptualising, even naming the “new”. According to the proposed theory of dramaturgy, we do so with the purpose of describing how meaning is created in this form and its poietics. We also observe how other scientists have observed immersive theatre. The purpose is to stimulate reflective theories in the community of immersive theatre artists and

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dramaturgs, but also to experiment with the attempt to redescribe immersion with dramaturgical concepts, in order to observe communication in other functionally differentiated system (e.g. managerial strategies in the commercial system or educational strategies in the educational system) based upon immersion. When we attempt to “stabilise” a new media form, we are aware, that this will always also function as a motor for evolutionary variations, and further the acceleration.

Concepts of immersion The attempt to explain how this form has emerged as an actualised possibility – amongst an endless horizon of otherwise possible forms – has to describe the many roots of the phenomenon working in simultaneity in an interlinked network. One way to start is to describe some of the forces inherent in the semantics connected to “immersion”. With the proper warnings not to take this as admissible scientific evidence, only as a help to illustrate the uses of the word, it appears that the story of immersion should be told as one of an evolution from astrological observations of times of sun, moon, and planets disappearing (immersion) and appearing (emersion). It is observations upon which understanding of variation of night and day, winter and summer, eventually challenged the concept of our planet Earth as the centre of the universe, and the movements of planets. The idea of the sun disappearing into darkness, and rising again next morning refreshed and renewed, by analogy linked to the bodily experience of immersion into water. Therefore, the use of baths (hot and cold) as remedies for curing and refreshing the body were topics of early medicine. The study of water and its ability to make for instance salt “disappear” leaving no visual signs, and waters ability to transform from solid to liquid to air, made this vital element an image of transformation. These experiential, perceptive elements in the physical nature observed by consciousness related to natural causes could be transferred by analogy to the sphere of religion. The heated debates upon what kind of practices to be used in baptism, explains the expansions of the early uses of the word immersion. Figure 9.1 explains the peak around the 1650s and 1720s. Should the body be totally immersed or could a few drops on the forehead do? The religious practice was a concretisation of the body and spirit being immersed into the Kingdom of God. The visible, sensuous experience should commemorate what could

FIGURE 9.1 

“Immersion” number of times appearing in books in English from 1600–20083

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not be seen or encountered in physical form. It was a “binding back” of the concrete to the transcendental and invisible Kingdom. In this – brief – history of the concept, the next transformation we observe is connected to the rise of modernity. An example of this transformation is the use of immersion as a concept used in the educational system, referring to the technique of learning foreign languages by “immersion” in the culture where the language was spoken. Now immersion involved communication. We identify the specifics of presence, participation, and interactivity to be important elements in this basic educational strategy. You have to be present in the specific culture, to take part in everyday life, and interact, i.e. communicate with the “others”. The next evolutionary important step can be linked to art. Whether as “illusion” or “imagination” we register the idea of an imaginary reality as a “possible world”, in which we can experience empathy. In many languages we find empathy described by words equivalent to “living into” – Einleben German, indlevelse Danish, but in French (as in English) you will need to redescribe it: le fait de se mettre à la place de quelqu’un: the effort of placing yourself in the place of somebody else. The theatre of illusion with its transparent fourth wall made it possible to immerse into the imaginary reality, “as if”. With the experiments of the historical avant-garde Dadaist, Futurist, Surrealist inventions tried to reverse the differentiation of the art system. As we know, not very successfully. The important conclusion was that the idea of art as a revitalisation of life became a “new” element if the art system, as we have suggested earlier. It shows what is meant, when we say that the operations of system can only function inside the systems. If they could function outside the system, it would mean that the distinction would disappear. It was what the historical avant-garde hoped for, but modernity is cruelly and irreversibly modern. We have not yet reach a social point where de-differentiation is possible. Other forms of making immersion a possible strategy within art could be exemplified by Jacob Moreno (1889–1974) and his 1920s experiments with improvisational theatre: Stegreiftheater, sidewalk theatre, a “Theatre of Spontaneity”. It was forerunner to the psychodrama experiments where re-enactments of scenes from autobiographical life were used to stimulate self-reflection. All this began with Moreno’s unique combination of psychoanalysis and sociology, which he started with his work with prostitutes in Vienna 1913–1914. We could mention Bertolt Brecht’s Lehrstücke from the 1930s as another attempt to make theatre, by letting groups of youth experiment with performing texts with specific didactic and political form and content to be scrutinised. In England and the USA of the 1930s the influence of a pragmatic approach to education stimulated experiments with implementation of improvisational and production strategies from theatre in schools. The idea of letting pupils learn by producing plays is a tradition that can be followed back to schools of the Middle Ages, where the elder boys in the Latin schools were given specially written plays to perform. Some in Latin, some in their mother tongue to be performed at the market or in front of the church. This tradition continued and Rousseau mentions with admiration this way of allowing “immersion” of body and mind.4 The first evolution of drama and theatre in schools took upon itself to expand the methods from producing plays, to framing improvisational plays and games, which build upon children’s own play activity. The evolution of the improvisational strategies and methods of immersion was vivid. In the 1960s it led to experiments

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with “teacher-in-role” improvisations, where the teacher framed an imaginary reality, where pupils all had roles to play and the teacher improvised together with pupils, thus able to stimulate absorption, engagement, and sincerity in the improvisation. One of the few mentions of this root of immersive theatre is Sterling and McAvoy (2017).5 They demonstrate how the semantics of immersive theatre practitioners have common traits with those of important drama-in-education first movers. Sterling and McAvoy argue that it might benefit the development of immersive theatre strategies to consult the methods and ideas from both theatre-in-education and drama-in-education when planning successful audience immersion (p. 105). A strategy some teachers found far too manipulative, while others produced exemplary work, based on the fact that immersion could at any time be replaced with emersion, from acting in the imaginary reality to situations with reflection and self-reflection. Sterling and McAvoy could perhaps have furthered the discussion even more by presenting some of the controversies in the drama-in-education movement. What could art do inside schools? Was art not supposed to be something you experienced, and not a pedagogical tool to teach other stuff? The debate on instrumentality is clearly recognisable in the debate around immersive theatre today. Were teacher-in-role strategies not strict manipulation? What kind of aesthetic knowledge could be implemented in the educational use of drama and theatre? Moreover, could the political dimension be introduced into these arty educational strategies? No wonder that Margaret Thatcher quickly drained this area of public funding. Outside of schools and educational systems, the 1960s also saw the dawn of a LARP – movement. Live Action Role Play is a multifaceted activity, for some it started with systematised roleplaying games around a table, with programmes and dice throwing. For others it started in the woods with costumes and weapons of wood or plastic and a game master. Industry was quick to pick up on this and produced manuals, costumes, and other accessories for the movement. It was an important forerunner to what we now experience as strategies of immersion in digitalised form in computer games and/or in virtual reality. The new media matrix emerging out of military and industrial experiments with internal webs turned in the 1990s into an explosive evolution of computers and programmes connected by a World Wide Web. The evolution was – apart from the extreme technological developments – fed by community interests and the rapid and uncontrolled industrialisation of the internet programmes (e.g. Facebook, Amazon), where both colossal amounts of pornography and an escalating gaming industry contributed. From here on, introduction of virtual realities became a new possibility for immersion. The gaming industry develops ways to guide the player into the fictional universe. For instance, by building an avatar to represent the player in the universe. How much story and how much pure action? Is it possible at all to give the player the impression of “creating his or her own story”, when in fact everything has to be designed before the game starts? How important is interactivity with other players in the universe, and with (semi-)autonomous agents inserted into the game? Science has described and analysed computer games and their strategies of involving the player in narrations, universes built as massive multiplayer platforms. Millions of users together in an imaginary virtual reality, even though they are separated in space throughout the planet. The player identifies with an avatar as a representation of him- or herself in the imaginary reality. For a lot of different reasons research has shown: some use the games for the combat action, some for the interaction, some for the

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FIGURE 9.2 

 uantic Foundry is a market analysing company. Here is the generalised version of Q their “Motivation Model – what makes gamers game?”

mastery of the game, some for achievement and others for immersion, finally some observe to discover the workings of the programmes.6 Just to set all this into a proper perspective. It is estimated that in 2018 there will worldwide be approximately 2.5 billion video gamers, providing a 90 billion US$ market.7 When audiences have experienced the digitalised immersion, will they then be more willing to conduct such experiments in “real life” theatre? According to the present amount of companies and performances, the answer, for now, seems to be yes! Finally, where art from an early beginning had to fight for its autonomy and protect the borders against other influences, art today “flows over” into other systems, the work of art melts together with other types of events, as in commercial installations and Human Resources management. In immersive theatre, the “centrifugal art” also influences the position of the artists. It is both the spectator and the involved theatre artists who have to find a stance on the new platform. The artist now becomes “director” of aesthetic experiences, where moods and sensual stimulations invite the spectator to become co-creator of the artwork. What does acting in an immersive theatre demand of the actor? Acting for an audience and with an audience require distinctly different techniques.

Trends in the scholarly work on immersive theatre I suggest that at least two lines are appearing in the scholarly work on immersive theatre. As the amount of work is growing quickly, I am sure the some of my observations will be corrected by further work; nevertheless, it might prove productive to point at two different approaches in the contemporary literature. As the aim is to exemplify how tools of dramaturgy could contribute to the theoretical work, I am not going into a detailed debate, where several other points of conflict could be detected. That means, alas, that the differentiations inside the two major lines are left behind, for later elaboration and clarification. I make a distinction between theories of immersive theatre that are based upon immersion as a first order observation in a ludic state of mind, in a Deleuzian sense of deterritorialisation, with ethico-political implications. In another line of theories, immersion is regarded as both a social phenomenon functioning as a neoliberal affective power in both micro-physical and macro-political dimension, and as possibility to immerse in affective relations, but in a second order observation.

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Immersion as ludic deterritorialisation Immersive theatre unfolds around experiments with the spectatorial positions. One line of scholarly investigation focuses upon how the new positions might have both ethical and political implications, and how the interplay of media opens up new “Aesthetics of Emergence”. Here is a quote from the foreword to a group of enlightening articles, published in 2017:8 We prefer to unfold different and constantly shifting relations and capacities for the process of spectatorship. The ever-shifting notion of spectatorship might point to the borders and possibilities of a new scopic regime, a visual (sub)culture that privileges the individual point of view over the objective vantage point, that transgresses dichotomies (active/passive, body/mind, master/student) by ravelling in an interplay of opposites, and which opens up an ethical space of relating, rather than an objectifying process of understanding.9 The editor’s foreword describes a theoretical horizon from Spinoza, Deleuze, de Certeau to Rancière and The Emancipated Spectator. In the sense that the body and the brain are what it takes to think – and that includes affects and being affected – our cognition is expanded beyond thinking in cause and effect to an affective and fluid state of mind. In immersive theatre, the spectator’s body is “triggered” in its capacities, practices, and actions. As the quote demonstrates this ends in a position where the individual point of view is installed instead of an objective vantage point and the objectifying process of understanding. The new vantage point is thus one that transgresses dichotomies and opens what is described as an ethical space of relations. It almost sounds like this could be a new normative prescription for the poietics of (immersive) art. If we read in Josephine Machon’s Immersive Theatres, we will also find Deleuzian inspiration behind concepts of immanence, immediacy and intimacy, corresponding to “the ludic logic of sense” (Machon, 2018, p. 108). Machon’s conversations with the artists provides important material to investigate the semantics of the different poietics, and indeed many references to intimacy, immediacy, and the importance of the individual perspective corroborate some of the theoretical explanations. Machon focuses upon the “in-its-own-world”-ness with a “contract for participation”. The cognitive and bodily immersive process in the “possible worlds” is in Machon’s perspective an intensification of dissemination in the ludic breaking down of boundaries: between the real and the imaginary to provide a perception of hidden states, of the ineffable [. . .] beyond the bounds of conventional communication, making the intangible lucidly tangible. This can affect an unsettling and/or exhilarating process of becoming aware of the fusion of senses with interpretation. Cognitive processes are disturbed, which causes the individual to experience the ideas and states of the performance in the moment. This can assure that the audience participant in the work holds onto that moment and recalls this feeling corporally in any subsequent interpretation of the work. (p. 106) It is live, and it is lived. It is synaesthetic. Machon suggests describing immersion on a scale that moves from a state of simple co-presence and absorption in an augmented space to the

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full and deep “total immersion” where “an uncanny recognition of the audience-participant’s own praesence in the experience” (p. 63). Here praescence describes the simultaneity of being and sensing in the live(d) experience (p. 43). The recognition of praescence is uncanny because it is an understanding that includes the individual’s own contributions of affective relations. The recognition of “this is happening to me”, and “it is me who makes it happen” (to quote Gavin Bolton)10 can be directed in several directions – if it is turned inward towards the psychic system itself, it may provoke an endless process of introspection, where mirrors are mirroring the self. If the uncanny recognition turns outward, it needs to enable a second order observation of how psychic and social systems frames the specific forms of consciousness and communication in the present. The question is how dramaturgies of immersion enables such complex understanding. Is it a “gift” implicit in immersion? Machon celebrates this intensity, and in terms of political implications, she refers to Rancière11 for insisting upon that there are no direct road from looking at a spectacle and understanding the state of the world. No direct road from intellectual awareness to political action, what occurs in the critical art, “is a shift”. The passage is taken from an account of how “critical art” works by defining a straightforward relationship between political aims and artistic means. Rancière refers to Brecht. The means in critical art consist of producing “strangeness”, provoking a rupture in ways of seeing, and an examination of the causes of that oddity. I continue the quote from Rancière where Machon stops: “is a shift from a given sensible world to another sensible world that defines different capacities and incapacities, different forms of tolerance and intolerance”.12 Such shifts or breaks, says Rancière, are processes of dissociation between what is sensed (as in perception) and what is making sense (as in thought and meaning). “Such breaks can happen anywhere and at any time. But they cannot be calculated” (Rancière, 2009, p. 75). Rancière’s argument continues with a critique of “critical art” and refers to artwork that works by montage of “Disney animals turned into polymorphous perverts”. Here the rhetorical gesture is supposed to make the spectator aware of “being apart” (distanced from the work) but at the same time “being together” namely in the new community of the enlightened. Rancière decrees the failure of this model, and then he concludes: “From its failure many contemporary activist artists draw the conclusion that no meditation is required; that the work can be the direct presentation of another form of community in which artists are directly fashioning new social bonds” (p. 76). What does that mean in terms of immersive theatre? Is the centrifugal art and its entrepreneurs merely a continuation of a misunderstood form of “critical art”? Or, is it a prolongation of postdramatic theatre? It presents an important discussion of the poietics of immersive theatre.

Immersion for an emancipated spectator/actor Gareth White enters the discussion of immersive theatre from another angle. The reflections are based upon White’s experience in an immersive theatre performance.13 We are set a task: to design the deliberative processes of our democracy. I’m nominated as one of three who will speak for “The Plains”. I feel the responsibility, not to the fictional country, but to the group of people who sit with me. Some of them embarrass me with their full-on commitment to the story (they are not actors, after all); others are silent, observing; others are trying to reason with the facilitating actors, wrestling with the structure and pace of the game as much as with the

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difficulty of the subject matter. I feel a responsibility for solving the problem, evading its traps, presenting a better solution than the dilemma ostensibly allows. I feel the fifteen people in my group. I feel the presence of the other two groups, with their conflicting given circumstances but their common desire to give a good account of them-selves. I feel the attention of the actors, with their scripts that seem to urge us into conflict with each other. The pivotal point for White is that immersion and participation functions because of the “spilt” that exists since the spectator even as a participant has a distance to the immersed universe. White’s inspiring article14 on immersion in “the forest of things and signs” is a confrontation with Rancière. Not a rejection, but an attempt to let Rancière disturb the thinking on immersive theatre. In the following long quote, White argues with himself, and reaches a conclusion on the effectiveness of affective relations: My experience of Early Days (of a better nation) illustrates some of these complexities. I fear that at one level the piece failed to respect the intelligence of its audience in straightforward terms to the extent that it restricted the options open for interrogation of the problems it raised. My feeling at the time, and my reflection since, was that it rushed participants into making decisions, simplifying the problems of nation-building and of democratic process in order to make a game of them. It might have replicated modern democratic politics in this way, intensifying it through the failed-state scenario over a two hour playing time. However, the pressures  – of self-consciousness and embarrassment as well as frustration  – brought to bear by this game structure may also have been instrumental in creating the immersion that I experienced in the moment of the performance, enhancing the affective, intersubjective ground from which my own understanding of my experience arose. At a further level of consideration, the challenging – and at points frustrating  – nature of this participatory performance demanded that I attempt to exercise my will, and apprehend myself as a subject with a will, rather than experience the performance as a lesson through which I was guided by the performance makers. The performance did work to produce a form of consciousness in my carried-away immersion in the event, as well as evoking intensities of feeling and energy for action, all of which is implicitly censured by Rancière; and yet its very difficulty and discomfort continues to provoke me to re-think and re-assess it, and to re-assess my wilful attempts to assert myself within its game structure. (White, 2016, p. 32 [my italics]) The means by which the immersive theatre involves the spectator is in fact “implicitly censured” by Rancière and his poietics. However, White felt that the performance, even in this flawed example, managed to produce a “form of consciousness” co-produced by the “carried-away immersion” and feelings of self-consciousness, embarrassment, and frustration. I believe it is important to think of the embarrassment as a reaction to performativity: how do you as participant make it clear, that you are “in role”, or is the acting style a “less is more” where no clear marks of “acting” is the best? Or is it important that we are unable to distinguish, that it is the fusion of the “role” and me? It reflects in questions as to what “self” is becoming self-conscious: The “me” of the psychic system (the participant) or the “me of a figure” portrayed by me. In any dramaturgy of immersion, I believe that such questions has to find clear answers. Either in negotiation in the event, or in the framing of the event.

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I believe that White comes close to the important point when referring to a “form of consciousness”. I will try to pursue that line of thought by thinking in forms of communication. When White involved himself as spectator-participant, and later as scholar in the discussion with Rancière, two different poietics clashes, and what does a second order observation (poetological) of that clash allow us to observe? I find it refers us to a difference in poetology with regard to the very construction of concepts of consciousness and communication. Gary White’s article (2016) is titled “Theatre in the ‘forest of things and signs’”. The title refers to Rancière’s vision of cognition with a Rousseau-like simplicity. The human animal learns everything in the same way as it initially learnt its mother tongue, as it learnt to venture into the forest of things and signs surrounding it, so as to take its place among human beings.15 Learning to communicate as we have tried to describe it, is not, and has never been, a lonesome matter. The “forest of things and signs” is another poietic metaphor for world as unmarked space. White is clearly inspired in his book16 by Heidegger’s distinction “earth” and “world”. Where earth is what we have called unmarked space of reality, and world is the marked space that appears when we observe reality with distinctions. I believe that this is an important epistemological choice for poetology. This is also the background for White when he argues that Machon’s use of Rancière seems to overlook his critical stance towards forms of immersive theatre being empowering per se. In fact, Rancière might have an altogether different poietic in mind. White explains: His [Rancière’s] proposal is that a renewed respect for the distance between the spectator and the performance is akin to an emancipatory education, which allows the learner to have their own independent encounter with the world, and to learn from it on the basis of their own experience and intelligence. (p. 25 [my italics]) It is based on this reading of Rancière that White starts to examine the potency of immersive theatre. He does so by entering into a (self-) reflection of an experience with a piece of immersed theatre where he argues for a distance, which exists and leaves the spectator on his own. White wonders whether it might be that the experience in the immersive theatre production was in fact a way “to bring the spectator into an intimate relationship with what the theatre makers want to share with them, and thus they stultify”. The ignorant schoolmaster17 does not apply or transport his knowledge to the pupils. He insists upon letting the pupils discover and define their own relationship with the object (a text) and explore it without depending on others. White’s objection is aimed at the question of what kind of “text” is included in the immersed theatre performance. The multitude of meanings emerging in the immersive theatre makes for a more complex object that a text on a piece of paper. “[A] spectator’s independent decision making will bring them into many different relationships with these texts and with other people; authorship will appear and disappear moment by moment, as will ‘masters’ who may appear to manage the participant’s experience” (White, 2013, p. 28). White suggests a way to conceptualise the immersive theatre experience, in a

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way that saves it from the accusation of being oppressive and stultifying. He suggests that the immersive theatre environment functions as a “negative intersubjectivity”, where the influence of the Other as encountered by the subject is oppressive and stultifying. Seen in this way, the metaphor of the stultifying pedagogue does not have to be opposed to the idea of a body-based intersubjectivity. Understanding arises from things, signs and people, but there is a potential for a subject’s understanding of itself to be negatively impacted by certain kinds of encounters with other subjects: for the encounter to serve only as a reminder of the subject’s own apparent ignorance. (p. 29) When entering into the forest of things and signs, the subject will surely meet negative impact, which will influence the understanding of the self of the subject; one possibility is of course that this will remind the subject of its own “apparent ignorance”. White finds a central quality in the immersive theatre situation where you as participant is enabled to exercise your will, and apprehend yourself as a subject with a will. The special experiential doubling inside the framed imaginary reality provides The irreconcilable but unavoidable contradictions in immersive performance belong to the participant who is both in the work and a spectator of it, and the artist who is simultaneously the work’s creator and the spectator to what each participant makes of it. (White, 2013, p. 31) This way of interpreting the position of the participant makes it possible for White to clarify the potentials in immersive theatre. When the participant is left alone to respond. The capacity to make independent and active choices is not “in the work”, but in the participant/spectator and his/her potential for subjectivation. “Participatory performance respects the spectator when it requires the exercise of will, and thus provokes the experience of subjectivation”. Gareth White identifies an important poietic value in the experience of subjectivation. It is also a controversial point, as we shall see in a while. Here is White’s conclusion (p. 32): Independent response to performance activity is possible whatever the manipulation of that activity: if our interactions, our active responses and even our emotions are manipulated, we will at some point have the capacity to reflect on them as objects of experience, to give them distance and treat them as part of a performance text. To imagine that emancipating a spectator necessarily requires respecting an absolute distance from a performance is to ignore the proximity and manipulation that inheres in any performer-audience relationship. When closeness is part of the theatre’s text, then bringing us closer to the text is not a stultifying gesture – it does not stand between us and the text. The assumption of intelligence in this situation is the assumption that the spectator-participant can read this text – read themselves as part of the text, and read the theatre maker’s manipulations too. The poietics of Rancière and White are at a crossroads. White argues that the participant “at some point” will have the capacity to reflect, and the reflection is a consequence of

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the closeness of the theatre, and also of the “assumption of intelligence” in the spectatorparticipant to “read” the text, themselves as part of the text, and the manipulations in the artistic framework. It is White’s focus upon the “split” position of the participant as spectator and actor, which guarantees the “emancipated spectator” as able to observe in both first and second order, in self-reflection and in reflection over the “theatre maker’s manipulations”.

Immersion as experience machines in a neoliberal world In what Josephine Machon identifies as the total absorption, White clearly marks as a place of independent response for both first and second order observations. From a third position, Adam Alston18 discusses immersive theatre as “experience machines” with immersion and “productive participation” that demands more feeling, more action, more Romanticism celebrating imaginative creativity. Alston adds the political dimension of neoliberal economic structures into his analytical perspective. Alston’s critical perspective is “beyond” in the sense that it investigates what is “outside the physical boundaries of an immersive environment” either because it is meant to remain outside, or because it just seems to be on the outside. Alston aims at expanding the scholarly perspective on immersive theatre to include questions as to whether intensification of audience immersion, participation, and productivity is “laudable? Is it empowering? What kind of politics exists in immersive theatre performances that claim no political agenda” (p. 4)? Alston has his own agenda: to protect, embolden, and encourage forms of immersive theatre that frustrate the Romanticisms of involvement and observes the political and ideological aspects of the narcissistic longing for self-exposure and self-development. Alston thus takes a stand in favour of a special poietic for immersive theatre, as a consequence of an epistemological choice. He states (p. 57) that he applies theory drawn from biology and systems theory in order to discuss what an “emancipated” capacity for translating an aesthetic world might mean for the immersive theatre participant. Alston finds that it is not just a forest of things, acts, and signs; it is not just the personal significance for the individual audience member. It is rather “the appearance of personal significance and its attachment to the audience’s productive engagement as a narcissistic participant ensures that a peculiar enhanced productivity remains intact, as that which ought to be adhered to as an immersed audience member” (p. 56 f). With reference to Machon, Alston finds that the observation of immersiveness is “thoroughly and deeply concerned with a prevailing passion for living for the moment, where you, the audience, take centre stage – where you are the stage” (p. 63). I would add with the terminology of Sloterdijk that immersive theatre appears in the zone of affluence and in forms that make it easier to live in the unburdened and pampered life, enhancing the effect of individualism and the self-worth. Alston however, has an eye for the opposite possibility, where the immersive theatre confronts the navigation in zones of relief, by placing the audience-participant in an environment clearly inviting participation, but frustrating the spectator by denying any interaction. In the performance The Architects (by shunt)19 the audience is invited to join in an immersive experience, they arrive an hour early to a theme bar, they are invited to join a cruise ship, and the audience is then told what they have been part of, thus actualising a backstory realised in the fiction. Part of the material is based upon Greek myth, told in glimpses between blackouts, thus the audience has to try to connect stories, bring puzzle pieces together, as the concrete participation part is limited.

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It places the audience in a position where they observe how “pleasure seekers” have partaken and immersed themselves. In Alston’s words, shunt encourages the audience to question the terms of participation in relation to the motives that drive the desire to participate. They present and pastiche neoliberal capitalism and/in the experience economy not as something in which the self might find some kind of fulfilment, but as something that presents an obstacle to fulfilment (p. 177) Pointing back to Rancière’s comments: is this a last “turn” of a critical art in times of experience economies pampering the audience with offers of self-realisation? Or is it an attempt to establish a poietics in immersive theatre that is not so much about perfecting itself, as “it is a question of exploring chartered, re-chartered or uncharted territory in ways that remain responsive to the politics of form, and open to the possibility of failure” (p. 225)? Alston acknowledges the powers of the immersive theatre, he indicates a pattern in the poietics of immersive theatre, where some mirror neoliberal productivism and experience economy, and others – under the risk of marginalisation – use immersion to question the desire to be immersed.

Dramaturgies of immersion Could immersion be constructed as a power structure related to communication in a situation-specific subjectivation? In an article by Mühlhoff and Schütz (2017)20 immersion is conceived as a specific quality in the completion of an affective relation. They refer, in the German version, to examples from immersive theatre, experience economy, educational simulation of patterns in everyday activities, in military training, and in Human Resources management. In the English version, Mühlhoff and Schütz are not specifically concerned with immersion in the immersive theatre production, but in generating a generalised concept of immersion, in the German version they discuss an immersive theatre experience. I would like to use those observations and compare with my own experiences from the same performance, in order to find elements to dramaturgies of immersion. A central inspiration for Mühlhoff and Schütz has been Spinoza (in a Deleuzian perspective) who claimed that the individual appears in the process of individuation, where it manifests different ways of affecting and being affected. The dynamic relation between affecting and being affected evolves in the immanence of a situation and a given relational setting. In this construction, immersion is a capacity to enter relations of affecting and being affected. Immersion is a specific mode of affective involvement which is characterized by a spectrum of subjective experiential qualities ranging from uneasiness, to absorption, up to the complete amalgamation of one’s temporary “being” within an intensive meshwork of augmenting or diminishing, positive or negative affective relations. (Mühlhoff and Schütz, forthcoming 2019, English version, p. 6) Then as a social theoretical concept, immersion appears as a “micro-dispositif”. This borrows from Foucault’s “dispositif” a heterogeneous ensemble of elements, constituting a whole – that is, a “system of relations” of these elements. The individual has potentia, power, to affect;

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and in the structure of a joined movement, the individual experiences reciprocal modulations and resonances. “In general it is impossible to say A is affecting B but not B is affecting A. In a Deleuzian terminology, this is to say that affecting and being affected is always forming an open process, a process of becoming”.21 There are many parallels between Mühlhoff and Schütz and the presented theory of dramaturgy. Luhmann’s distinction between psychic systems and social systems is also a reflection of Spinoza – although underexposed in Luhmann’s work. To understand how affect and being affected is part of a relational communicative structure would bring us very close to the concept of communication we have presented. Affect is a major player in communication. The German version presents an example of immersive theatre SIGNA22 Ventestedet and includes several reflections over the kind of immersion presented. As I have visited the same production, I will enter into a discussion in some detail with the observations, at the same time trying to sketch the outline of a dramaturgical analysis. Here is the invitation to the event, taking place in Copenhagen 2011: You have changed lately. You don’t know whom you can trust anymore. Nothing seems to be, as you know it. You are confused. You need help. Therefore you have been called for observation in the psychiatric waiting place; The Laguna, for a five hour psychological screening. Maybe you are anxious about the examination. This is completely normal but it is important that you understand the importance of attending. We here at The Laguna, will do our best to make your day pleasant. In return, we hope that you will have an understanding of the pressure that we, and the health care system as a whole, is subjected to and that we will do our best to fight the pandemic that threatens to bring Europe to its knees. The Laguna, is a temporary residence where psychiatric patients can stay for up to a year. The institution is managed by the doctors Peter & Lizzie Wächter and it houses approximately 25 non-violent patients primarily of Non Danish European descent. Our facilities include; a cantina, kiosk, creative workspace, computer café, music therapy room, TV-room and activity hall. Professionally trained staff mans the The Laguna around the clock. Upon arrival, you will receive instructions about your stay, along with information regarding your treatment. Thereafter you will be asked to change into patient clothes. Your personal belongings will be kept in a locked wardrobe. Please bring cash for the cantina. During your stay you will participate in different tests and activities with your co-patients. With this frame, SIGNA has made a first contract with the participating spectator. From a dramaturgical point of view, I am offered a glimpse of a background story of a European pandemic and a state of mind: “confused”, in need of help. I have been “called for” so maybe I am not here voluntarily. A time-frame of five hours is announced, and the space I enter is supposed to be a “psychiatric waiting place” – waiting for what, I wonder. Further information is given as I enter the building. The Laguna is established by a German couple, both doctors, Wächter (German for watchman or guardian) and to assist is a group of nurses (male and female) who have the responsibility for a group of in-patients (all performers). I meet Dr Wächter together with a group of four other guest-patients. He asks us how we are doing. When polite and non-descript answers are provided (I’m OK, or I’m just bewildered) Dr Wächter discards the answers – this has nothing to with feelings – and he then he cuts himself, while asking questions about sexual preferences and activities: how often do you masturbate? Do you prefer men or women? etc.

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Here is a quote from the participant Theresa Schütz:23 As I did not want to answer the questions, he [Dr Wächter] pointed me out, and asked me, with haughty enjoyment as he looked around in the circle, if I had problems with my sexuality. I feel uncomfortable, I notice that I blush. (p. 6) I do indeed understand this reaction. Because, when you answer, are you in role or yourself. You do not know how the other guest-patients observe you. This is a first level of ambiguity. I had decided to act “in role” as an individual who had changed during the last four months, now I/my role found himself to be into all sorts of sex, with all sorts of people, and enjoying it! I got a nod from Dr Wächter, as he disclosed to the group that this was a specific and often encountered symptom of the disease. Did my “performance” come through to the others as such? Did they find my way of handling it embarrassing? In the sense of White’s embarrassment when he encountered the far too eager participants who went all in? After a row of encounters with different groups and activities, the mood of the performance changed. Sound shifted from ambient music to a disturbing sound setting. In this new mood we witnessed an in-patient naked, drumming, hunting after another equally naked inpatient as in trance or as in a ritual, the drummer throws himself on the girl, she tries to push him away, maybe it is not a ritual. He continues and tries to rape her right there in our midst. Let me quote from Mühlhoff and Schütz another anonymous observer (female): I consider intervening. As I am conscious of the theatrical frame, I feel myself torn apart: Should I play along as I either look at or look away, not doing anything, or should I intervene? Around me, I observe A. and S. who stands unparticipating and bored. I cannot endure it. On an impulse, I actively prevent the rape. Performed or not, I simply could not watch and had the desire to do something about it. Shaking my head over the people around me, nevertheless an inner satisfaction of having done the right thing. (p. 7) Here the ambiguity refers to the question of participation – to “disturb” or not to disturb the “performance”. Mühlhoff and Schütz see it as dynamic affect and the reflection may turn into a consideration of the way the individual participant’s socialisation has coupled patterns of values with capacity for acting and reacting. In the event of my own participation, I followed through “in-role” as the patient with a now diagnosed severe case of the disease. I had to choose what kind of reaction my role would demonstrate. Should it join in the fun of sex (even though it was clearly marked as a rape) or just slowly walk closer to inspect the details, or play the role of Jack Nicholson in the cuckoo’s nest and incite the guest-patients to riot against The Laguna? . . . This was the point in the performance where I realised that whatever I/my role did, it would not alter or negotiate the dystopian universe of empowered patients. In the end, I retreated and blended in with the observers. I had time to reconsider my choices. What made me abandon the “role”? I did have a vague notion of experiencing something similar in earlier SIGNA productions. I believe it was an experience of double bind. You could react or you could watch, whatever you did, you would feel judged – if I reacted, I knew it would not change the dramatic fiction, it would only be a curl of the

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surface, pushing the other guest-patients a bit. If I did not react, I would have to face up to the position of the voyeur. I found that I have had enough double bind in my life. Much later, I came to see the populist liberal political movement with its xenophobia, nationalism, and reborn Christians, as a gigantic double bind manoeuvre. The choice to enter into a selfpsychoanalysis or a second order observation of affective communication – is that “entirely” my choice? Or, are the dramaturgies of immersion able to stimulate the one or the other or both? i.e. is the affective potential in immersive theatre able to provide an experience of affective relations, and at the same time make this noticeable? Alston argues that in some poietics of the immersive theatre it is only possible to experience what you yourself contribute, thereby promoting a narcissistic and aestheticised border crossing, and that there are other poietics, which in their strategies of immersion enable a critical self-reflection of how political affective governing functions in ordinary daily life.

The dramaturgical contracts in immersive theatre Mühlhoff and Schütz argue that the continued addressing of the participant in immersive theatre challenges the participant to respond as spectator to an art performance, in casu, also as patient to be diagnosed (role), and as subject (person) with specific singular affective dispositions. The experiences in immersive theatre (as in the SIGNA performance) might make the participant react against the affective regime, not ever wanting to be affected like that again, a reaction against affect-political governing. In perspective of the theory of dramaturgy, let us take a closer look at the performance Ventestedet. The frame around imaginary reality of The Laguna is marked by space, time, costumes, light, sound, smell, and the actors (partly) improvised performances. To enter this imaginary reality is to agree to a contract, I accept the fiction of The Laguna, and I am willing to be a part of it. This is of course the ultimate precondition for any immersive experience; I am prepared to be affected, am I prepared to affect? The next level of the dramaturgical contract is concerned with the way in which I become a part of the imaginary reality. Is it negotiable? Or, are there rules to be discovered? Are there limits for interaction with the imaginary reality? And will my actions change anything in the overall structure of the event? In my view, this is where differences in immersive poietics emerges. If this improvisational frame is left unspecified, it either overloads the consciousness of the participants, or instals them in the only possible position left in that kind of immersive theatre: the voyeur, as an included (spectator) excluded from involvement. If, on the other hand the improvisational frame is over-specified, in terms of specific instructions as to roles and dilemmas, the immersiveness is at risk to run into stultification of the spectator. Let us take the matter a bit further. As agent in a framed improvisation, you simultaneously perform and observe. You do not stop being spectator, as you constantly observe the other agents (be they performers or fellow participants). What you observe are the enunciations appearing in the universe in which you are immersed. In your selection of information/utterance/understanding, your consciousness has to oscillate inside a web of relational reflections. Referring back to Figures 5.3 and 5.4 [consciousness and communication] in Chapter 5, this can be explained as follows:24 1) You observe in first and second order as participant (you-as-you = person/role) the enunciation of a performer, of other participants-in-role, and of other participants

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(without clear marks of acting). The communication is thus referring to the imaginary reality (The Laguna). Here you are using your own personal values, and your own ideas of how to be a guest in the art system (your role). You reflect upon the communication of the actor in order to decide what understanding concerns the imaginary reality, and what understanding concerns the “codes” of behaviour in the improvisation. Each enunciation thus carries information and utterances referring to two different cognitive fields. You also observe the involved social systems here the art system, the organisation SIGNA, the health-system (The Laguna and its functions). You use your own personal values in this row of first order observations to decide how to perform. 2) You observe in first and second order as participant-in-role (you-as-figure “NN”) the enunciation of performer, participants-in-role and other participants (non-committed). Here it is the values that your fictional figure acts upon, that determine what the figure understands (as you understand it). You need this reflection in order to decide how your figure should act and react to events in the imaginary universe. The communication of performers and other participants-in-role is observed and understood in relation to the possible meanings produced in the imaginary reality, and to allow your figure to enter into this negotiation of meaning. It is also observed and understood as a negotiation of possibilities in the improvisational framework, its programmes. Again, you observe the social systems predominantly the health system as represented in the imaginary frame, but now with the values pertinent to your figure.

Personal Values

PERFORMATIVITY

ROLE as patient in a Health system

ROLE as guest in organisation SIGNA ROLE as guest in Art system

PERSON

FIGURE 9.3 

PSYCHIC SYSTEM Embodied Embrained ROLE Embedded Enacted

Three levels of performativity  Szatkowski

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Your FIGURE’S VALUES

PERSONAL VALUES

ROLE as patient in a Health system

PERFORMATIVITY

ROLE as guest in organisation SIGNA ROLE as guest in Art system

PSYCHIC SYSTEM Embodied Embrained Embedded Enacted

FIGURE 9.4 

Performing performativity – figure values challenges personal values  Szatkowski

The switch between first and second order observations, need time, as we discussed it in relation to poiesis. One important point of disagreements between different immersive poietics seems to connect to question of how to enable the switch: a) by full powered immersion, relying on reflections after the event, or b) as immersion with planned episodes of emersion, or c) as frustrating the very act of immersion. It is my suggestion that a differentiation of immersive theatre poietics, could find pivotal poetological elements buried here.

Emersion in immersion? From my many years of practicing and researching drama-in-education I recognise these positions. In order to provide a single example of what the openly established immersion with episodes of emersion could look like, I will describe an episode in a long session with participants framed in a collective improvisation supported by teacher-in-role. I will spare you the long version of the six-session process drama exploring gender roles in Denmark from the 1920s an onward, but instead focus on the 1950’s investigation, where I as “game master”, had provided a set of sketchy roles to be evolved by the participants. We had class and gender differences as focal points. The improvisation took place at a family party celebrating a child’s baptism. With a couple of “secret” instructions to some of the participants, tensions were secured. Apart from that, the game master had no clue as to what might happen. I had for several months been occupied with experiments that would allow for interruptions of the “normal” social-realistic style of improvisation that were the theatrical forms often used in

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such improvisations. Many unsuccessful attempts later, I tried to introduce an improvisation in the last part of the event, with the following rules: When an character sat down in a certain chair, the lighting changed, to a spotlight only on the chair, music stopped, and all the other participants were to “freeze” in their positions. From that chair, the participant-in-role could share the thoughts of the role, in an improvised monologue. When done, and the character left the chair, the lights and music changed back. It did not work as well as I had thought. At the end of the improvisation we emersed and discussed, and in the discussion it dawned on me, that my instructions, my framing of that episode had not been precise enough. The participants were left in doubt as to how they should react to the communication of thoughts. Therefore, when I repeated the episode, I took time to explain that when the other participants-in-role stopped and listened, they were listening as participants! The understanding they selected from the communication belonged to the participant, and not to the role. It meant, that they were allowed to use the understanding in the following improvisations to tease out new meanings in the event, but only in ways not directly related to the thoughts shared. It was an exercise, which should make it clear how all members of the group had to keep the double focus on participant and participant-in-role during the improvisations. The consciousness with a split focus provides an oscillation between immersion and emersion. In terms of performativity in immersive forms, consciousness is heavily loaded. The psychic system engaged has to perform on several layers: As participant in an art event, you have decided to join a very specific kind of art. Your personal values have encouraged you to take part in an experiment, and you are now in role as guest in an experimental art performance. How much are you prepared to fill out of that which you believe is expected of you? When you decide to enter into the immersive environment your performance is tested. You might choose to observe or signal that you are bored or shake your head, communicating “this is too much”. If you choose to engage yourself in “playing a role”, a new level of performativity emerges. Now you have accepted to join in, and your personal values are once again activated in the attempt to decide how your role should act. Now you are gradually exploring the role in communications with performer and other participants-in-role. If the immersive theatre frame allows it, you might arrive at a point where you have a feeling of your role, which allows you to investigate the role’s conflicts between its person and role. This level might be what some refer to as total absorption, I would suggest that it is not, and agree with Gareth White, that even in the last level of performativity, there is a distinction. Let me return to Ventestedet by SIGNA. When I as participant (in and out of role) reflect upon the event, I get the impression of having been led through an experience with a health system that functions based upon its power of definition and hierarchical structures. The power to define “disease” requires a concept of “health”. I entered as healthy person, an experienced the process of diagnosis and oppression. I was in many ways humiliated, embarrassed, and disturbed by the events, and my subjection. I choose to detach myself at some points, in need of time to reflect. The immersive environment allowed for that, but never enabled it. The activities and uncertainties were deliberately dispersed throughout the event. I was “governed” in a relational affective process, and the only stable variable was my consciousness. Confronted with so many performative enactments of my consciousness in diverse communications, it inevitably led to self-reflection. For each of the many reflections on the psychic and social systems and their values at work, it demanded a response from my own values. It is an endless oscillation between inside and outside. Between self-reference and other-reference.

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The most important lesson to be learnt by the artistic praxis and scholarly reflection on immersion is perhaps that of a crisis between psychic and social systems. Why, one must ask, is it in the first two decades of the 21st century so important for art to “emancipate” the spectator and set him or her free to bind everything back to themselves? Is it just another step in the escape into the subject? Is it a double bind manoeuvre that places the individual as precondition and interesting in its extension in different extreme positions, and at the same time neutralises the individual in relation to the social systems. The individual is “free” to act, and “bound” by the social structures. Another approach would specify the urge after immersion as a sign of a specific desire: to be able to investigate the paradox of all observations: the observer is not observable (Luhmann, GdG, p. 1081 / Vol. 2, p. 305), and neither transcendental nor post-structuralist observations provide answers that assist further communication. What is an alternative road is to accept that values in first order govern cognition and action, in second order we observe how values function: the semantics of values can be observed in communication, where values are communicated indirectly, we do not communicate about values but with values. We take values for something given, in no need of questioning. An observation of second order replaces the distinction of good and bad, of what to accept and what to dismiss, with the distinction enforced values >< communication. In The Laguna the doctors communicate with values: they are in possession of the truth about the disease, which makes them superior. They possess the power to decide sickness and health and provide the appropriate treatments. We do not question the idea of health as an unquestionable value. We are reminded of questions like “is it a sign of health to be sick in a sick society?”. The possibility to forms of immersions that allow such cognitions to emerge or irrupt might point to ways of navigating in a functionally differentiated society of affluence. Based upon observation of possible difference in dramaturgies of immersion, I propose four poietics.

FIGURE 9.5 

Four poietics in immersive theatre  Szatkowski

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Immersive theatre may value participation as a possibility to surround the spectator holistically, and allow free movement in the tangible universe of installations. As spectator, you are invited to join in the experience as participant. You may occasionally be granted a one-onone meeting with an actor-performer, but it is not the dominant form of communication. Some of Punchdrunk’s performances25 could provide an example of this kind of poietic hierarchy, where the exploration of rich environments for clues to a story has produced a huge success. Other Punchdrunk performances experiment with markedly different poietics. In the didactic immersion, it is not the play, but the game that dominates the immersive structures. Here interaction is carefully planned and structured around dilemmas as we saw it in the performance discussed by Gareth White (2016, p. 22), Early Days of a Better Nation by Bottwell and Mees. The primary values in this dramaturgy of immersion are affective relations between the interacting participants, which arises as result of a concrete dilemma presented in the imaginary reality. This simulation is effective because it tests personal values and agencies. When you as participant enter an immersive theatre experience, certain expectations are alerted. When Alston describes the work of shunt their poietics are clearly concerned with an investigation of immersion as experience machines in order to deconstruct them. The longing for immersive experiences are met, but also countered, thus inviting an emersion from the affective dynamics. This position demands participants to distance themselves – in this case from immersion – and in that very gesture join the community of the conscious critical. Finally, a dramaturgy of immersion aligns the poietics of affective immersion with interactivity, where emersion is programmed for the benefit of sharing second order observations. Some would fear that such emersion could ruin the affective relations in the immersion, but it need not be so. In some of the works of Rimini Protokoll26 as for instance, the World Climate Conference (2014) was a simulation of such a conference where the participants were representatives of 196 nations, and had to negotiate reduction of emission of CO2. To make such a frame with different poles with values applied to the chosen dramaturgical strategies is of course only meant as instrument to stimulate the debate, and provide a possible starting point for further inquiry. There are no normative judgments attached, but obviously each of the four positions provides for markedly different kinds of affective immersive experiences.

Lob des realismus In his dissertation from 2001, Bernd Stegemann27 wanted to develop a method for the analysis of playtexts. Stegemann adapted the concept of “communication”, “event”, and “action” from Niklas Luhmann and his systems theory, and demonstrated how these specified concepts could be used to observe and interpret four carefully selected playtexts. The most interesting results of the entire experiment are connected with the micro-analytical exploration of Goethe’s Iphigenia in Tauris (1779) and Schiller’s Wilhelm Tell (1805). Between the two texts the French Revolution had altered societies in Europe. Stegemann succeeds in demonstrating how action and community are bound together by two very different sets of values in the two playtexts. Goethe praises Iphigenia and her ability to communicate the respect for human life and the political and moral consequences of any disrespect. Schiller wants to celebrate action, even political violent actions, but only in his own sentimentalised and idealised universe of harmony and solidarity. When Stegemann applied the tools of systems theory, he was able to

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demonstrate how this emerges in specific patterns in communication between the characters. Some of these patterns are connected with the difficulties the figures are confronted with, an under the given circumstances they have to rely on media for unusual communications, i.e. symbolic generalised medias like “love” and “power”. The symbolic generalised media attributes action >< experience in different directions to the two parts communicating. In the symbolic generalised medium “love” one figure acts in a certain way in order to make the other experience love. Therefore, when Iphigenia in act I, scene 2 is confronted by Arkas with demands from the King, Arkas insist that Iphigenia should act in such a way that the King will feel he is loved (Stegemann, 2001, p. 170). Further, the analysis demonstrates how Goethe constructs the dramatic situations so that Iphigenia manages to persuade the King not to act, and at the same time avoids acting herself. These situations are then linked to the structure of the fable in order to construct the non-action as an important moral action. Schiller wrote Wilhelm Tell in 1804, and the text deals with the founding of a new community based on the killing of the tyrant. Tell is a lone, naive man of actions, his decision to kill the suppressor is described as a dialectical movement between individual and community. Stegemann’s redescription of the dramaturgical structure in the text makes it observable how Schiller applies the Kantian imperative, and how the concept of moral is founded in the nature of the human being. The spectator is supposed to receive a direct understanding of this. Wilhelm Tell addresses the audience in a final monologue just before the fatal attack. Here, Tell takes the last steps from a naive and uncommunicative consciousness into a community of sentimental consciousness. He laments the loss of his former lonesome idyllic world, from which he is now, and forever will be, separated. Schiller wanted to separate the defence for the killing from two, equally disqualifying, positions. Tell does not murder out of personal revenge. Tell does not murder for the benefit of the group because the group cannot, according to Schiller, possess the final moral obligation; that belongs solely to the individual. The group cannot act as if it had the moral right. A community may coordinate decisions, qualify the debate, but it cannot take moral responsibility for the truth, it cannot change the truth, as that is the prerogative for the single human being. Stegemann here explicitly points at how Schiller uses the symbolic generalised medium “truth” as model for communication from stage to audience. Stegemann then changes to Brecht, Heine Müller, and Botho Strauss. The analytical depth in theses readings is not at the same level. However, some important conclusions are substantiated. The concepts of action in early modern society were closely related to a definition linking action to the will of man. Action and subject is united. Drama and theatre disclosed how action serves or overturns social order. When community depended on the moral obligations resting in the individual, a major shift occurred when this was no longer the case. As disintegration of individual and society began with modernity, reflections on social order were badly needed, and they focused on the question of how societies are kept together. The radical change in sociological reflections appears after the two world wars. How can we describe society today in all its complexity? The goal of the epic theatre and its perspective was to present the society as made by human beings with oppositional interests, as the means of production were unevenly distributed, which led to all following injustices. This form of drama is unable to see, that its basic theory of society is not unconditionally true. (p. 183 [My italics])

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Brecht applied a rather simplistic theory about society and its inherent objective antagonism, and his theatre could not reflect the fact that its own theory of society might not be unconditionally true. The epistemological conclusion must point at the “relative”, and as we have argued, this is not the equivalent of an endless abyss, but on the contrary, a reminder of thinking in values and relations. What Heine Müller did, was to point at the contradiction that appears when dogmatic ideology should be the will of the people. Stegemann describes Heine Müller’s text from 1961 Die Umsiedlerin, which was heavily criticised by the socialist party followed by strict sanctions towards author and director. Stegemann argues that when it was no longer possible to describe the changes in social mechanisms ruling society, with the tools of communication that we use to understand daily interaction, then crisis for the modern drama begins (p. 141). If we are no longer able to understand how society is governed by using concepts taken from daily interaction how does modern drama then represent or present society to society, Stegemann’s dissertation was an attempt (probably the first) to apply systems theory to dramaturgy. In his recent books,28 Stegemann offers a critical survey of what he defines as postmodern theatre conventions including use of everyday experts on stage etc., and he concludes that claims for a new theatre poietics have to imply a realism, where the analysis of contemporary capitalism serves as inspiration to create new forms of communication in the public sphere. Stegemann insists upon an urgent need for theatre to take leave of the postdramatic paradigm, and maintains that time has come to reinstall representation and theatrical situations that provide opportunities for an audience to confront themselves with their class status and consciousness. It is done with the following remark on how the postdramatic has inherited the avant-garde an affirmed an all-embracing relativism: However, it seems that the zenith of these forms of theatre [the postdramatic] has been exceeded. The amount of seminars and publications on still more specialized problems of the performative, is presumably an indication of the usual movement of an art; it comes about as a disruption from the outside, then it slowly advances to the centre, and finally it is analysed by scientists and taught as canon. The art that rises today in the periphery is once again vehemently interested in social reality. Those who produce this art, have been through the full educational program of postmodernism and are thus on intimate terms with all the tricks. However, their discomfort with its political randomness is evident.29 Stegemann draws on several critical positions from neo-marxists (e.g. Agamben and Badiou) and identifies some of the crucial points in the artistic development, where different lines of evolution could have been taken, and now needs reinvestigation: from Lukács to Brecht and Slavoj Žižek. His argument contains important reflections on how society has lost the interest in asking questions about the individual and his/her class relationship, how political correctness and an “economy of feelings” have made it virtually impossible to investigate new ways of realism. From the mid 1980s neoliberalism gave important political openings to support globalisation. Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher helped to provide the legal conditions whereby finance and media could move unrestricted all over the world. Reagan’s “open sky” policy made it possible for the mass media organisations via satellites to transmit across borders 24/7 to multimillion audiences. From 1980 another new element entered the production of goods.

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It became obvious that in order to increase growth on the market, new products had to be invented in a constant flow, further, the exponential spread of internet-related communication and trade provided whole new markets to some degree independent of the production of physical goods. In terms of cooperation, each employee had to be in contact with a still larger number of other employees, and networking was seen as means to make collaboration more effective. In short, capitalism became dependent on knowledge. The cognitive capacity of the employees became the new immaterial capital. Cognitive capitalism accumulates capital through the use and exploitation of the immaterial cognitive and cooperative work with information and knowledge. The main point is the fact that employees now provide not only their manual labour but also have to invest all their mental faculties as well. The know-how becomes the most important raw material. It follows that it is no longer sufficient for the employers to make their employees love their work, they must now be able to invent the meaning in what they are doing,30 as it appears in contemporary managerial literature. Here the company provides frames for the employer, who is supposed to know why the job producing toys for children (Lego) gives meaning apart from providing owners and shareholders with profit and high interest rates. The meaning must be “invented” by the employee, “binding back” religio to some transcendent truth thus providing the immanent with meaning. Cognitive capitalism together with the international abandonment of debt to be guaranteed by reserves in gold in 1971, were indications of capitalism entering its third phase. It is the exponential growth of debts that has provided the possibility for a financial capitalism to make us all, individual citizens and national states included, into slaves of debts; now 99% of the population is either without assets or indebted to 1% of the human race. This since the year 2000 has led to the absurd situation in USA and Europe that the total growth in production is only equivalent to the new accumulated debts!31 Inside the art system, different reactions to the global financial, climatic, and political phenomenon are traceable. The deliberative democracy is under heavy pressure, so attempts to give voice to people and their concerns, can be developed in audience-involving projects including citizens on stage, as those telling the stories, as participating in the creation of the work, as immersed in the performance etc. In another direction, opposite that of “theatre of immanence or immersion”, we find a movement towards a revitalisation of realism. Bernd Stegemann32 criticises the “postmodern” trends in contemporary theatre: What once was recognised as a modern feeling of estranging solitude is now, through the paradoxical sensuality of the performance, reconfigured as an aesthetic event. The confusion confronted with undecidability, and the discomfort experiencing inconsistent opposites, are deprived of its societal dimension, and reconfigured as experiences relative to the subject, and as such only to be understood as contingent. The practice of contingency is also the efficient profit of the flexible employee. His arguments for recapturing a new realism stress the need for new analytical instruments applied in the creation of theatre. As long as the performative part of theatre is measured against the representative parts, art can only find its own importance in an ever-increasing complexity of its own formal elements. This look is turned inwards. New realism is a reaction against this deadlock. If the theatre wants to explore the line of fractures it needs to understand how the secret of 40 years of uninhibited growth of financial industries has been converted into

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a powerless acceptance of an alternative-less truth, a belief in a duty to return gigantic debts and still continue a blind belief in growth. Theatre must find, according to Stegemann (2013, p. 160), ways to perform, that makes this daily performed action turn against itself: action should not be understood as performing of realities with contingent and endless possibilities, simultaneously negating the very action as “performed”. Action should be seen as something with an end in mind, other than the mere performing of itself, and it should be possible to recognise an intention, that leads towards possible conflicts.

Lob des realismus – the debate Parts of the internal dramaturgical debate in Germany over the concept of a “new realism” is collected in a volume33 where playwrights, directors, critics, dramaturgs, philosophers, and sociologists contribute. It encircles a row of internal disagreements but at the same time invigorates the urgency for a theatre in globalised and mediatised times to reflect on how to deal with the polar oppositions in a world society. Playwrights are situated in a doubly difficult situation by the postdramatic downscaling of the text and new demands of texts with “realism”. It makes Kathrin Röggla34 wonder what it might mean to be a playwright today. She feels uncomfortable with the debate, and insists upon a realism that begins in language. To be a playwright “is still to contradict yourself in productive ways (that means not in random but in subversive way to undermine social coercion) – even though it might sound pathetic it has a lot to do with realism”. Dialogue in communication is an everyday tool. No wonder we observe new playwrights abandoning dialogue in favour of other forms, poetry, monologues, text landscapes etc. Can social coercion be undermined by confronting the quiet acquiescence of “we cannot change it, and there are no alternatives”? Directors like Milo Rau, Armin Petras, Simon Kubisch, and Thomas Ostermeier contribute to the discussion with distinct voices and poietics. Where Milo Rau with a quote from Godard35 insists on a realistic art, as “art that forces and toils reality in order to make reality spit out the imaginative, the utopic and the coming” (p. 69). Rau has worked worldwide as sociologist, activist, author, film, and theatre maker. He sets up situations like a meeting in the middle of a civil war in Congo for 1,000 participants from the opposition, where they conduct a trial against the government. This calls forward the critic, Laudenbach, who in Rau’s performance Empire (2016) finds the performers themselves (not the roles) to be both touching and funny, but also obscene. “it is obscene and disrespectful towards the victims. In the name of an ideology of authenticity it works with calculated effects and voyeurism of violence” (p. 139). Alexander Kluge is less blunt in his comments about Rau’s poietics of realism when he declares, “The theatre of Milo Rau belongs to reality itself. And also to a functioning resistance towards false realities. [. . .] Milo Rau presents a counter-publicity (Gegenöffentlichkeit)”. Kluge adds that this does not supersede theatre. In theatre, the freedom from necessity allows the detours of the mind, and this poietic is the poietic of theatre, and the marketplaces and the boulevards. Theatre is “the temple of imagination”, and it is a “memory” that reminds us what is worth remembering, worth telling and joining. Finally, Kluge36 summarises a realistic theatre as a theatre where “weapons of perception and weapons of articulation can be forged” (p. 65). Kluge warns against any realistic theatre where imagination becomes

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instrumental and memory betrayed. The coldness makes one shiver, and that applies even to some of Brecht’s theatre, that Kluge otherwise holds in high esteem. Is realism a style or a method? Bernd Stegemann refers to the debate on realism between Lukács and Brecht in the 1930s. For Lukács realism was a style you could admire and study in novels by Balzac and Tolstoy. For Brecht realism was a method that could utilise any style in the representation. Brecht wanted to make the structures of economic and political contradistinctions visible. As these structures were a net so tight that the single deed was only a small tear, then it appears as if the dependency could only be broken at the price of self-destruction (p. 196). In this case, a reproduction of reality is of no use. Stegemann argues that what for Brecht was a method has become a new style in the postmodern theatre. On the one hand as a display of the performative, Schausein des Performativen and the surmised authenticity of the amateur; and on the other hand the formalistic and virtuosic exposure of alienation, that only exposes alienation without any kind of analysis of it in reality. The postmodern art in theatre has performed an astounding somersault. “The denial of representation of reality had led to a renaissance of naturalistic methods” (p. 201). How should the contradiction between a universal dimension of freedom and the real individual inequality be possible, if the performative play negates the mimetic potentiality? If an identity between performer and performed is the only possible solution (the homosexual character can only be played by a homosexual), then art has fallen back into political and moral compulsory poietics with taboos and ideals of identity as a result. The major question remains: how do we acknowledge reality? In Stegemann’s crusade, the creed of the postmodern is “There is no reality, only interpretations of it” (p. 205). Crusaders have a tendency to simplify, and to violate their own creed and values. Here Stegemann falls behind his own position. To insist that no reality exists is absolutely ridiculous. Even the most thickheaded postmodernist would have to retract such a statement, when he is knocked on his head. What we need to acknowledge is that reality as an unmarked infinite complexity is unreachable without observations. It all depends on how we begin. Sociologist Wolfgang Streeck37 diagnoses an Unbehagen an der Globalisierung as a process that reached a critical point in the years after 2008 and the financial crisis. Here the quantity of “losers in globalisation” turned into a quality of public protests. This process has had such an impact on the political system, that it needed explanations. At the height of the process of globalisation, the successful merger of a cosmopolitan industry of culture and consciousness and a neoliberal expansion of capitalistic markets ensued a common discourse of internationalist enthusiasm. When the new anti-globalist political parties gained power in national political systems it inescapably led to destabilisations of accustomed ways of building governments. The “old” traditional parties experienced a recess in members and votes, where the new parties were growing in both. This is often declared a deadly process for democracy, and both right and left wing parties are joining in a new favourite discipline of bashing with the concept populism. Globalisation has sharpened the internal conflicts between nations in the world society. Populism is now a polemic collective name for a new opposition that builds upon nationalistic alternatives to the internationalisation avowed without exceptions. The opposition from the new parties includes the blaming of so-called “elites” regarded as out of touch with “us” the common man. The old parties and the liberal press have a tendency to see populism as a cognitive problem: “The followers are supposed to be people who demand ‘simple solutions’ because they do not understand the real complex solutions”

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(p. 182). What does a national government do, when it acknowledges that a considerable number of the electors insist upon less international provision and more concern for its own population? Is a protest against your own workplace being exposed to an untamed global competition under the threat of exportation of capital or production facilities to foreign countries, or by borderless importation of cheap labour from other countries, necessarily racism? Maybe international and national solidarity between employees in the 21st century is motivated by the everyday experiences of groups or regions sinking down under the radar of the liberal public. The destruction without replacements of national institutions for economic redistribution and the excessive overload of the final financial politics of money and central banks has made capitalism ungovernable (p. 189). From this glimpse of the debate on realism, I propose a conclusion that entails the necessity to reflect – once again – the distinction between poietics and poetology. On the level of poetology, we learn that the autopoiesis of the art system thrives on exactly these kinds of disturbances. When new forms appear they generate an unrest, an uncertainty as to whether this is art, and/or whether it is “good” art. It also shows us how the same work observed by a critic and an author/filmmaker/philosopher, generate different valuations. To prescribe a new poietic is a function of an artist. Demands or wishes may be made by other observers, but in the end, it is only works of art that formulates the poietics. The wish for a new realism is understandable given the actual order of our world society. To point at alternative ways to describe this situation, is of outmost importance. Crusades like Bernd Stegemann’s is one important and effective way of speeding up the evolution of internal reflective theories. Stegemann has chosen to do it by pointing at the values at stake in the current cultural power struggle. In his latest book, this has turned into an essay on a dramaturgy of the political. As such, it is both an exemplification of how concepts from a theory of communication and dramaturgy are able to grapple with other functionally differentiated systems, and it is an exemplification of a distinctive way to describe reality. Whether we call it realistic or not, does not matter. It is thought-provoking and ought to be read by any dramaturg in search of new poietics.

The ghost of populism “We are all spectators to the tragedy of populism”.38 With inspiration from e.g. Luhmann,39 Luc Boltanski,40 and Jan-Werner Müller41 Bernd Stegemann describes how debate in the public opinion, Öffentlichkeit, öffentliche Meinung, permanently displaces values and schemata. The public opinion is further constantly challenged by the paradox of democracy as liberal democracy. The liberal situation claims citizens as individuals who own property, and a personal biography where the competence to obtain and protect social relations and economic values are of outmost importance. The social world is for the liberal citizen the condition for his efforts. Or as Margaret Thatcher said “there is no such thing as society”. The democratic situation on the other hand is based upon another vision of human kind. Here humans are considered independent of their property, education, ethnicity, and social capacities; it is a general definition of equality in value and right to let her or his voice be heard. Bernd Stegemann has provided an inspiring analysis in his latest book42 of the political dramaturgy of populism. He applies a Luhmanian understanding of the political system and of communication, and the main argument is that populism appears in a struggle for “powers

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of definition” in the public opinion. This is a power balance beyond the political events on the day-to-day basis. The social space, the public opinion influences who counts as the people, and what kind of questions they are allowed to decide upon. The basic form of political address in a democracy tries to avoid the distinction “us” versus “them”, but those present are members of a common social world. This is based upon an idea of equality amongst human beings. Each individual has the same worth independent of wealth, gender, ethnicity, or age, and have equal rights to lift their voices. This is the democratic ideal. The liberal ideal on the contrary comprehends the human being as citizen. As such, the citizen possesses property that consists of personal qualities, social relations, and economic wealth. The competence to acquire and protect property is decisive for the worth of the individual and a part of the subjective biography. Stegemann concludes: “The illiberal equality in democracy is in opposition to the liberal freedom of the unequal. Both forms of address exist simultaneously in modern democracies” (p. 17). Freedom can be used to address the freedom of the employer to demand “flexible” laws regulating work conditions, and generally to insist upon freedom from state regulations. This distinction between democratic and liberal communications, between capitalists and employed, and the consequent partition of the population in capitalists, citizens, and precariat43 creates the frontiers in public opinion and they are continually shifting. When those who lose their jobs due to globalisation, those who experience their wages being dumped by cheaper labour being imported, react against this, they accuse the liberal and globally oriented “elite”. The “elite” reacts by claiming that such populist reactions are populistic. The main problem: that liberalism (and in an extreme “neo”-version) is undemocratic, and that globalisation has used the “open society” and democracy to systematically destroy whatever good the welfare society may have achieved (Stegemann, 2017c, p. 9). It all disappears in the contemporary political system. The populist political movements in the USA (Trump), England (Brexit), and in the EU, could be seen as a reaction against the globalisation. The “old” liberal (including social democratic) parties have adapted the liberal discourse, and reason and progress is equated with globalisation and capitalism. The oftenheard explanation of populism is to see it as a deficit in understanding (due to class, education, or other factors) of the complex world order. This is nowhere near a satisfying conclusion. Stegemann analyses right wing and liberal populism, and demonstrates the strategies in their political forms of address. The liberal populism is by far the most complicated discourse of a ruling class, where a robust synthesis of atomised subjects in a capitalist economy, guided by a “postmodern moral, which express itself in word games and political correctness” (p. 130). This serves to make the political interests invisible. The right wing populism is simpler, and relies on old worldviews, with no analytical understanding of the liberal economy. Instead is a hatred towards the globalised world and the “elite” an important force, which have an ugly and hardening effect on culture as it often enforces nationalistic and racist impulses. The left wing, Stegemann suggests, should see itself necessitated to imitate the populist form of address. Not in order to mock or degrade, but with the intention to reach out to those who have lost in the global competition and address the felt everyday experience of inequality, providing concepts to address it (p. 132). As an example of how the “directing” of meaning, communication, and senses appears in everyday life, I find Stegemann’s essay very inspiring. I beg to differ on some of the conclusions for the left wing strategies, but that is not a matter of sciences but of politics.

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“The illiberal equality in democracy stands in opposition to the liberal freedom of the unequals. Both forms of appeal exists simultaneously in modern democracies” (Stegemann 2017b, p. 17). Those with power to influence the schemata and values in the narrations in the medium of the public opinion, in order to legitimise their own interests, are able to decide upon what limits of what can be said, they decide the partition of the sensible, Rancière would say. Now, the connection between forces in society and schemata in the public opinion are far too complex to be dominated or changed by one narrative. Stegemann identifies dominant schemata in postmodern politics. Semantics powered by resentment, political correctness, worries over identity are all elements in populism. Trump as president, England wanting to leave the EU, parties all over Europe building upon nationalism and religion, accusing the old party “elite” of being responsible for globalisation taking away jobs, allowing immigrants and fugitives to cross borders in high numbers. This offensive display of political partisanship calls for “explanations”. For the liberal bourgeoisie it means that their time as rulers has ended. They can no longer present their claim for more freedom for the individual as a “social critique”. The attribution of “populism” is one way to react. We do recall Hillary Clinton’s description of Trump-electors as “deplorables”. The liberal narrative of capital, welfare, and globalisation as tantamount to freedom, reason, and progress is in acute danger of being attacked and the hegemony being undermined. The only position left is to maintain that the narrative is far from party interests, but instead pure reason confronted with complex problems of a world society. Therefore, those who protest against the liberal narrative are unknowing and unable to fathom the deep complexities. It could be interpreted otherwise. Those protesting against the liberal narrative actually experience the effect of globalisation, see themselves as victims, and losers, far below the horizon of the elite, and could have a right to be heard. Only the resources by which this happens are so far away from the kernel of the political paradoxes that they are unable to contribute to any effective deconstruction of liberal and right wing narratives. Stegemann connects political correctness to populism in the following way: political correctness began in the seminar rooms of North American and European universities in the 1960s. Words may harm, communication is a battle, and the male/white/heterosexual language excluded and included in coercive ways. The aggression in the language should be countered by regulation of language and attitudes. It does, however, take quite an amount of aggression to get the right words into, and the incorrect words out of the minds of people. What happens in a society where a special group of people get the power to decide the rules for what can be said . . . and what can be thought? Political correctness does not see their position as one of power, but instead that of the victim! Political correctness was on the one hand emancipation of massively suppressed minorities; on the other hand, it implied that all victims had the moral right to complain their status. Now, who decides who is allowed to be victim and make demands, and who is not? This “blind spot” of political correctness is protected by a moral consensus that only the victim can decide what offends. Thus, the victim has the power to differentiate between friends and enemies. That makes the position of the victim attractive. You are the master of your own identity, whereas the perpetrators are united in a group identity. Stegemann refers to a performance by Milo Rau, where first an African actor in a monologue tells her story of being adopted by a Belgian couple, and how she experiences that she nearly always is engaged because of her skin colour. In the second part of the performance

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she is thus placed in the background, silent, while a sympathetic white woman tells her story about her work in developing countries. As the story gets deeper into the conflicts of aid in third world countries, and asks the questions of who benefits the most from the aid? We do know that what goes from the rich world to the third in terms of aid comes back ten- or hundredfold in terms of cheap raw material and interests on loans.

Wide-range theory of dramaturgy What the two examples of dramaturgies of immersion and dramaturgies of “new realism” should make clear, is the that a comparison between strategies inside each new theatrical form, and between different theatrical forms, can help stimulate the debate on what values are framed. It is not the purpose of dramaturgy-ς to choose or to privilege, that is alone the task of artists and dramaturgs working in the art system on their own strategies with each their dramaturgy-αs. The poetological conclusion in a dramaturgy-ς is concerned with observing differences in actualised values. To construct a theory of dramaturgy that is able to compare positions like those of immersive theatre and a theatre of new realism we need an understanding of the post-ontological. Going post-ontological44 means to abandon many traditional philosophical questions as we identify a one-world theory. Additionally, it becomes clear that in order to distinguish between different theories of difference, we need to be precise in our description of what kind of difference is preferred: dissemination or distinction? Finally, we need to clarify whether the theory in question is leaning towards “reduction” generalising irreducible last elements and an understanding of elements and their relation (Derrida and Luhmann), or towards a more “holistic” understanding of multiple worlds as a gesture describing the force of difference, discovering worlds within worlds and new vocabularies (Deleuze and Rorty). Figure 2.1 illustrates this. Post-ontologically it remains clear: there are no absolutising answers to the constant struggle between reduction and holism. No possible unification making the distinction obsolete. In terms of a theory of dramaturgy, we need to make it clear, that it starts from a post-ontological position. That it has to choose a perspective inside that position. No laws – out there – can be said to predetermine this choice. It is indeed contingent. I advocate the necessity for a “wide-range” theory, but perhaps for other reasons as those floating in the newspeak of business (and university) management. Here it is amazing how words like “innovative”, “internationalising”, and “interdisciplinarily” pop up with very high frequency. They are words with broad semantic fields, but their efficiency is probably mostly due to the way in which they manage to connect to a tantalising fear of competition on knowledge, power, and resources, implicitly threatening the non-believers with disempowerment and impoverishment. We all want to be world leaders in a cognitive capitalism. We all want to show how exactly our discipline within science can provide knowledge into the new order. We are not able to reverse the novel situation; we cannot turn our backs on the legitimate demands from the coming generations of students at the new mass universities. They too must be met with research-based knowledge. We cannot ignore our commitments as researchers in humanities to contribute to create descriptions of society and society’s values to society, presenting ideas and concepts that may allow us to fathom, observe, and describe more paradoxes tomorrow than today. One possible consequence to be drawn from these facts is to experiment with the development of a wide-range theory. It is a call for a theory

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that is able to retort, intensify, and qualify the debate on the values immanent in society. In this endeavour, a new theory on dramaturgy might play its own modest part.

Recursive creation in art and science I am a firm believer in what I have termed the recursive creation as a motor in all evolution. It is possible for both science and art to try to “control” the intransparent. The question is how do we come to know, what we do not know? The unknown, the invisible, and the indeterminate are modulations of a memory, that recalls without any unequivocal precision and that forgets, and a future that is unknown and oscillates between expectations and visions.45 There is only one way to “control” this intransparency, and that is by allowing oscillations to occur and trying to learn from that. The basic idea of the recursive movement between past and future could be described as four main positions of knowledge seeking in science or art. What we know, marks a border to the unknown. The recursive movement across that border may follow different schemata. Figure 9.6 suggests four schemata: 1) By destabilising known forms, to release media and experiment with transgressing into unknown ways of coupling unknown combinations of media to unstable forms. 2) To find ways to investigate specific new couplings of media in forms in order to evolve alternative ways to understand what we do not know. 3) To interrupt known schemata of how we build knowledge, in order to free resources and provide new variations in our formalised ways thus connecting observations and arguments along new schemata. 4) To consolidate by experimenting with binding observations to new leading differences, temporarily stabilising the expansion of new knowledge inside one schemata.

FIGURE 9.6 

Recursive creation in four ways  Szatkowski

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The autopoiesis in works of art or in theories of science is dependent on “irritations”, either from other systems or from system-internal disturbances. Looking back upon the evolution of dramaturgical theories, I believe to have demonstrated how all four positions have been at work in both poietic hierarchies and in scientific positions in poetology. Works of art present values at work in communication. In the way of communicating these values, other values guide the poietics (dramaturgy-α). Poetology (dramaturgy-ς) observes these differences. No poetology is “value-free”; the illusion of objectivity has been shattered long ago. The basic schemata used in my attempt to provide a theory of dramaturgy has been to consolidate by binding observations to a leading difference: system >< environment. In doing so I have made a choice – it is contingent – and I am sure, that other experiments will be conducted. Transparency in the theoretical and methodological choices is one way to “control” intransparency. Recursive creation is another, a fundamental operation of consciousness in communication.

Notes 1 Here are just a few, often quoted, out of the many: Machon, Josephine (2013) Immersive Theatres. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. White, Gareth (2013) Audience Participation in Theatre: Aesthetics of the Invitation. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Alston, Adam (2016) Beyond Immersive Theatre. Aesthetics, Politics and Productive Participation. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Frieze, James (2016) Reframing Immersive Theatre – The Politics and Pragmatics of Participatory Performance. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Biggin, Rose (2017) Immersive Theatre and Audience Experience – Space, Game and Story in the Work of Punchdrunk. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Stalpaert, Christel, Pewny, Katharina, Coppens, Jeroen, and Vermeulen, Pieter (2018) Unfolding Spectatorship Shifting Political, Ethical and Intermedial Positions. Ghent: Academia Press. And some articles of importance for the following discussion: White, Gareth (2016) “Theatre in the ‘forest of things and signs’”. In Journal of Contemporary Drama in English 4 (1), pp. 21–33. Reason, Matthew (2015) “Participations on participation. Research the “active” theatre audience”. In Participations: Journal of Audience and Reception Studies 12 (1), pp. 271–280. Mühlhoff, Rainer and Schütz, Theresa (2017) “Verunsichern, vereinnahmen, verschmelzen – eine affekttheoretische perspektive auf immersion”. Working Paper SFB 1171 Affective Societies May 2017. In an abbreviated version in English: Mühlhoff, Rainer and Schütz, Theresa (2018) “Immersion, immersive power”. In Slaby, Jan and von Scheve, Christian (Eds.) Affective Societies – Key Concepts. Routledge 2019 (forthcoming). 2 Szondi, Peter (1956) Das Theorie des Modernen Dramas (1880–1950). Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag. Lehmann, Hans-Thies (1999) Postdramatisches Theater. Frankfurt am Main:Verlag der Autoren. Translation by Karen Jürs-Munby (2006) Postdramatic Theatre. Oxon: Routledge. 3 What the y-axis shows is this: of all the uni-grams (words) contained in Google sample of books written in English, what percentage of them are “immersion”? The graph tells us that in 2008 you would find the word immersion four times in every million words. By checking out examples from the books, you get a notion of the semantic uses of the word. 4 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques (1762) Emile ou De l’éducation. In English: Rousseau, Jean-Jacques (1921) Emile, or Education. Translated by Barbara Foxley, M.A. London and Toronto: J.M. Dent and Sons; New York: E.P. Dutton, 1921). https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/2256 Visited 1 November 2017. 5 Sterling, Pamela and McAvoy, Mary (2017) “Art, pedagogy, and innovation: tracing the roots of immersive theater and practice”. In Machamer, Josh (Ed.) (2017) Immersive Theater. Engaging the Audience. Illinois: Common Ground Research Networks, pp. 93–108. 6 https://quanticfoundry.com/audience-profiles/ visited 1 January 2018. 7 www.wepc.com/news/video-game-statistics/ visited 1 May 2018.

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8 Stalpaert, Christel, Pewny, Katharina, Coppens, Jeroen, and Vermeulen, Pieter (2018) Unfolding Spectatorship Shifting Political, Ethical and Intermedial Positions. Ghent: Academia Press, p. 18. 9 Stalpaert et al. (2018), p. 18. See also Machon (2013), p. 108f. 10 Bolton, Gavin (1979) Towards a Theory of Drama in Education. London: Longman. 11 Machon (2013), note 7 p. 288. Rancière, Jacques (2009) The Emancipated Spectator. London/New York:Verso, p. 75. 12 Rancière, Jacques (2009) The Emancipated Spectator, p. 75. 13 Early Days (of a Better Nation) was written by Tom Bowtell and directed by Annette Mees. It was co-commissioned by Warwick Arts Centre, National Theatre Wales, and Battersea Arts Centre and first performed at King’s College, London, in 2014. The Battersea Arts Centre run in spring 2015 took place at the Four Thieves pub. 14 White (2016), p. 22f. 15 Rancière (2009), p. 10. 16 White (2013), p. 232f. 17 Rancière, Jacques (1991) The Ignorant Schoolmaster: Five Lessons in Intellectual Emancipation. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Translated by Kristin Ross. First published in French 1987. 18 Alston, Adam (2016), p. 2. 19 http://cargocollective.com/nigelandlouise/shunt-2011 visited 1 January 2018. 20 Mühlhoff, Rainer and Schütz, Theresa (2017) “Verunsichern, vereinnahmen, verschmelzen – eine affekttheoretische perspektive auf immersion”. Working Paper SFB 1171 Affective Societies 05/17. In an abbreviated version in English: Mühlhoff, Rainer and Schütz, Theresa (2019) “Immersion, immersive power”. In Slaby, Jan and von Scheve, Christian (Eds.) Affective Societies – Key Concepts. Abingdon: Routledge. 21 Mülhoff and Schütz (2019) “Immersion, immersive power”, p. 7. 22 See SIGNA homepage https://signa.dk/projects?pid=73871. 23 Mühlhoff and Schütz (2017) “Verunsichern, vereinnahmen, verschmelzen – eine affekttheoretische perspektive auf immersion”. 24 Referring back to Figures 5.3 and 5.4 this is illustrated in the following Figure 9.3. 25 www.punchdrunk.org.uk/the-drowned-man/ visited 1 October 2017. 26 www.rimini-protokoll.de/website/de/project/welt-klimakonferenz visited 1 October 2017. 27 Stegemann, Bernd (2001) Die Gemeinschaft als Drama. Eine Systemtheoretische Dramaturgie. Wiesbaden: DUV. 28 Stegemann, Bernd (2013) Kritik des Theaters. Berlin: Theater der Zeit. Stegemann, Bernd (2015) Lob des Realismus. Berlin: Theater der Zeit. Gronemeyer, Nicole and Stegemann, Bernd (2017a) Lob des Realismus – Die Debatte. Berlin:Verlag Theater der Zeit, pp. 169–193. Stegemann, Bernd (2017b) Das Gespenst des Populismus. Ein Essay zur politischen Dramaturgie. Berlin: Theater der Zeit. [All quotes in my translation]. 29 Stegemann, Bernd (2015) Lob des Realismus. Berlin: Theater der Zeit, p. 134. 30 Kure, N. (2011) “Arbejdslivets meningsfulde meningsløshed – om religionen som kodning af relationen mellem medarbejder og organisation” (“The meaningful meaninglessness of work-life – on religion as codifying the relation between employees and organisation”). Working Paper. http:// pure.au.dk/portal/en/publications/arbejdslivets-meningsfulde-meningsloeshed--om-religionensom-kodning-af-relationen-mellem-medarbejder-og-organisation(d10895ab-0d4e-4f9b-9543f1a432a6efa8)/export.html.Visited 1 March 2016. 31 Metz, Markus and Sesslen, Georg (2012) Kapitalismus als Spektakel. Berlin: Suhrkamp Verlag. 32 Stegemann, Bernd (2013) Kritik des Theaters. Berlin: Theater der Zeit, p. 34 [My translations]. “Durch die paradoxe Sinnlichkeit der Performance wird das vormals als Entfremdung bezeichnete Gefühl moderner Vereinzelung zu einem ästhetischen Ereignis. Das Regime des Sinnlichen wird hierdurch neu aufgeteilt: Die Verwirrung im Angesicht des Unentscheidbaren und das Unbehagen im Erleben unvereinbarer Widersprüche werden ihrer gesellschaftlichen Dimension beraubt und zu relative Erlebnissen von Subjekten umgestaltet, die sie dadurch als Kontingent begreifen müssen. Die Kontingenz ist dann auch der effizienten Nutzen für die Entwicklung des flexiblen Mitarbeiters”. 33 Gronemeyer, Nicole and Stegemann, Bernd (2017) Lob des Realismus – Die Debatte. Berlin: Verlag Theater der Zeit, pp. 169–193 [All quotes in my translation]. 34 Röggla, Kathrin (2017) “Negativer realismus”. In Gronemeyer and Stegeman (2017) Lob des Realismus – Die Debatte, p. 39.

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35 “Realism does not mean to present something real, but that the presentation itself is real”. Rau continues: that a situation emerges that carries with it all the consequences of reality, a situation that is morally, politically, and existentially open (p. 69). Rau, Milo (2017) “Buchenwald, Bukavu, Bochum. Was ist globaler Realismus”. In Gronemeyer and Stegemann (2017) Lob des Realismus – Die Debatte, pp. 66–77. 36 Kluge, Alexander (2017) “Tschukowskis telefon. Umwege zur Realismus”. In Gronemeyer and Stegemann (2017) Lob des Realismus – Die Debatte, pp. 55–65. 37 Streeck, Wolfgang (2017) “Die wiederkehr der verdrängten als anfang vom ende des neoliberalen kapitalismus”. In Gronemeyer, Nicole and Stegemann, Bernd (2017) Lob des Realismus – Die Debatte. Berlin:Verlag Theater der Zeit, pp. 169–193. [All quotes in my translation]. 38 Stegemann, 2017b, p. 11. 39 Luhmann, Niklas (2000) Die Politik der Gesellschaft. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag. 40 Boltanski, Luc (2010) Soziologie und Sozialkritik. Berlin: Suhrkamp. 41 Müller, Jan-Werner (2016) Was ist Populismus? Ein Essay. Berlin: Suhrkamp. 42 Stegemann, Bernd (2017c) Das Gespenst des Populismus. Ein Essay zur politischen Dramaturgie. Berlin: Theater der Zeit. 43 Standing, Guy (2011) The Precariat. London: Bloomsbury Academic. 44 Lehmann, Niels (2004) “On different uses of difference. Post-ontological thought in Derrida, Deleuze, Luhmann and Rorty”. In Cybernetics and Human Knowing 11 (33), pp. 56–80. 45 Luhmann, Niklas (2017) Die Kontrolle von Intrasparenz. Ed. Dirk Baecker. Berlin: Suhrkamp Verlag.

INDEX

Numbers in italics refer to figures and tables. Abramovic, Marina 175–176 absolute values 1 abstraction, systems theory 64–65 action: and actors 169, 172–173, 173; and agency 169, 180–181; ancient Greek Philosophy 102–103, 104–105, 106; communication 133–134, 137; Cultural Studies 29–30; Odin Teatret 195, 196, 199; poiesis 160–163 actors: and action 169, 172–173, 173; immersive theatre 254–258; mannerisms 207–208; Odin Teatret 209; working with the text 37; see also performance actuality 79 Aeschylus 96, 103, 104 aesthetic logic of theatre 225–226 aesthetics: beginning of modern times 107–114; culture and pure aesthetic 239; philosophy 5, 94–107; postdramatic theatre 224, 225–226 affect (immersive theatre) 259 affective attunement 134–135 affirmative style 11–12 agency, and action 169, 180–181 aisthesis 4–5; evolution in artistic work 163–166; performativity 175; poietic hierarchy 87, 91, 236; science on 110; spectators 119 akon 102 Ali, Mayson 23 alphabet, new media matrix 148–149 Alston, Adam 258 Alter Ego 143–144, 165 Althusser, Louis 29–30, 241 American dramaturgy 11; see also United States analysing poietics see Odin Teatret

ancient Greece 4, 95–107 ancient Rome 106–107 anti-intellectualism 14 Antiquity 108 Archer, William 43–44 Aristophanes 96–97, 105 Aristoteles 4, 100–105, 119, 139, 153–154 Arnold, Matthew 43 arousal (consciousness) 128 art: aesthetic logic of theatre 225–226; aesthetics in the beginning of modern times 107–114; ancient world 95–107; difference from what already exists 1; dramaturgical theory 2; how do we recognise art 85–86; immersive theatre 252, 254; meaning of 86–88; novelty 86; and observation 65–66; poiesis 152–163; recursive creation 277–278; Romanticism 114; selfreflection in dramaturgy 34–42 art as system 3–6, 84–85; aesthetics in the beginning of modern times 107–114; function of 88–94; immersive theatre 250; from philosophy and aesthetics, to poetology 94–107; poetology on poietics 115; rules in 85–88 art festivals 222 art theory 59, 84, 228 Artaud, Antonin 235 artist activists 37 Athey, Ron 175 audiences: forms of storytelling 47; immersive theatre 41–42, 253–258; Roman times 106–107; see also spectatorship Australia 24–25, 47–48 autopoiesis 69, 74–75, 136–139, 204, 273

282 Index

autopoietic system 132–133, 156 avant-garde (1890–1930): changes in poietics 188; forms of art 4; imaginary reality 49; postdramatic theatre 223, 233 baby communication 134–135 backstage style 168–169 Baecker, Dirk 246 Bairlein, Josef 41–42 Bal, Mieke 117–118 balancing (perception) 127, 128 Barba, Eugenio 185; bios 192–194; book on dramaturgy 190–192; an enigma 185–186; international impacts 186; notes from a spectator 189–190; reflection theory 186–187; semantics 202–209; third wave of poietics in modernity 187–188; three levels of dramaturgy 194–202; values of art 209–217; weaves of tradition 217–220 Baumgarten, Alexander Gottlieb 110 Beauvoir, Simone de 180 Behrndt, Synne K. 45, 46–47, 51 Benhamou, Anne-Françoise 14 Berliner Ensemble 13–14 Bhabha, Homi K. 26–27 Bicker, Björn 37 biological perspective 193 biology of the actor 38–39 bios: Odin Teatret 192–194, 203–204, 220; systems theory 69 Blair, Rhonda 123–124, 125 Blast Theory 42 body sensing (perception) 127, 128 Boenisch, Peter M. 54–55, 164–165 Bohr, Niels 59–60 Boltanski, Luc 273 Bourdieu, Pierre 237–240, 241 Brazil 25–26 Brecht, Bertolt: biographical details 45; critical art 254; dramatic theatre 235; Messingkauf dialogue 45; notes from rehearsals 14; poietics 4; realism 272; society 269 Brechtism 13 Britain: Cultural Studies 28; dramaturgy in 14; immersive theatre 250–251; performance and dramaturgy 45–48; revolution 15, 16; revolution in theatre 42–45 Bühler, Karl 139 Bürgerliches Trauerspiel 13 Butler, Judith 180–182 Call Cutta 40–41 Canada 23–24 Carlson, Marvin 174, 176–180 Carreri, Roberta 207–208 cast see actors Castelvetro, Lodovico 107

Catholic Church 56 causality 30, 64 censorship: Iran 22; Poland 20; Soviet Union 18, 21 centrifugal force 34, 59 children: communication 134–135; play 103–104 China: cultural revolution 18–19; dramaturgy in 19–20 Christianity: Erasmus Montanus 145–146; Odin Teatret 189 city-states, ancient Greece 105–106 classical dramaturgy 212 clichés, acting 207 Clinton, Hilary 275 Coetzee, Marié-Heleen 26–27 cognition: aisthesis 163–164; consciousness 126, 126, 129–130; Luhmann's view 65; Odin Teatret 217–218; and perception 146–147; theatre studies 123–125 cognitive capitalism 270 cognitive structures 4, 157–158, 158 Colbert, Jean-Baptiste 110 collective art form, theatre as 37–38, 92–93 collective body 39–40 colonisation: decolonialisation in ex-communist countries 21–22; and globalisation 15; intercultural dramaturgy in Australia 25; post-colonial dramaturgies 23, 27–28; South Africa 27 comedy, ancient Greek Philosophy 95–96 communication 132–134; aisthesis 4–5, 163–165; art 85–88; art as system 3–6, 90–91; Barba, Eugenio 193; Canadian plays 24; and consciousness 3; consciousness as medium for 130–132, 138, 144–148; culture 241–242; and dramaturgy 143–144; immersive theatre 259–260, 262–263; language 136–137; Luhmann, Niklas 130–131, 137–139; meaning 76–80, 141–142; new media matrix 148–149; Odin Teatret 195, 198–199, 200–202; ontogenetic perspective 134–135; operation of 139–141; organisations 141, 142; performativity 5–6, 167; phylogenetic perspective 135–136; psychic systems 131–132, 134, 136–138, 140–144; science and art 2; social systems 133–134, 141; society as 80–82; state of mind 208; values 139; voyeur or spectator 149–150 communism: China 18–19; English Revolution 16 competitive style 11–12 complementarity principle 59–60, 219–220 complexity in systems 69 Confucius 19–20 consciousness: arousal 128; cognition 126, 126, 129–130; and communication 3; emotions 126, 126, 129; forms of vitality 128; immersive theatre 255–256; as medium

Index  283

for communication 130–132, 138, 144–148; model of 125–127; perception 126, 126, 127; performativity as 171, 171–172 conservatives, English Revolution 16 contemporaneity 225–226 contingency 65, 90, 114, 220 convergent cognition 158 Copenhagen School 115 corpuscular >< wave 59–60 cortex centres 128 creativity: in art 152; structure and chance 159–160 critical art 254 critical theory 65 critical-intellectualism 14 cultural capital 237–240 cultural hybridity 46–47 cultural performance 177 cultural revolution, China 18–19 Cultural Studies 28–30, 240–241 culturalism 29 culture: epistemological perspectives 241–242; four concepts of 241; post-colonial dramaturgies 23, 27–28; social context 237–241; theatres 211–212; as vile concept 242–246; see also individually named countries culture of skill 112–113 Dabek, Agata 20 Damásio, Antonio 127, 129 de Certeau, Michel 14 decolonialisation, Russia 21–22 Deleuze, Gilles 191, 245, 260 democracy 32–33, 272–273, 274–275 Denmark 33 Derrida, Jacques 191, 230, 245 description, and interpretation 115–116 descriptive poietics 116 determinism, vs. voluntarism 180–181 devices, poietics 115 differences: contingency 220; culture 242–243, 245–246; observation 70; performativity 167–168; plurality in Barba's dramaturgy 192; thinking in 58–61; wide-range theory 276 Dinger, Hugo 122, 123 directing: art as system 4; contemporary context 165; emergence of term 164; Odin Teatret 191, 209, 214; working with the text 37 Disorder, Odin Teatret 197, 208–209, 216–217 disordered order, Odin Teatret 197–198, 199 distinction, systems theory 70 divergent thinking 158 documentary theatre 26 dogmatism 216–217 Dolezel, Lubomir 116–117 dramatic theatre 227, 235; see also postdramatic theatre

dramaturgical contracts, immersive theatre 262–264 dramaturgical societies, performativity 50 dramaturgies of difference 12; see also differences dramaturgs: as choosers of plays 44–45; who needs them? 35–40 dramaturgy: in the 21st century 6–7; and communication 143–144; definitions 51; of immersion 259–276; postdramatic theatre 231–232; science and art 2; three levels of 194–202 dramaturgy-α 6; epistemological expansions 58; performativity 166; poietic hierarchy 118; wide-range theory 276 dramaturgy-ς 6, 54; epistemological expansions 58; performativity 166; poietic hierarchy 118; wide-range theory 276 Dries, Luk van den 38–40 Durkheim, Emile 169 Eckersall, Peter 24–25 economic inequality 32–33 education: immersive theatre 250–251; playwriting courses 11; value-transversal 57–58 Ego 143–144, 165 emersion 264–267, 266; see also immersive theatre emotional coherence 196–197 emotions 126, 126, 129 employment: cognitive capitalism 270; globalisation 274 England: dramaturgy in 14, 45–46, 48; immersive theatre 250–251; performance and dramaturgy 45–48; revolution 15, 16; revolution in theatre 42–45 English Revolution 16 Enlightenment: aesthetics 108, 110–113; Erasmus Montanus 145; functionally differentiated society 17; science of art 108, 110–111; systems theory 77 entertainment, as dramaturgs role 36–38 Epic Theatre 13, 174, 268 epistemological expansions 58 epistemological perspectives: alternative dramaturgies 47; cognition 123–125; plurality 49; postdramatic theatre 233–235; postRomantic Romanticism or post-ontological ontology 219–220; science 46; science system 142; value-transversal 57–58 Erasmus Montanus 144–148 Error, Odin Teatret 197 Espada, Margarita 25–26 Esslin, Martin 232–233 Etchells, Tim 47 ethics, and action 102–103 ethnicity, South Africa 27

284 Index

Euripides 96, 103, 104, 105 Eurocentrism 224, 243 evocative dramaturgy 195, 200–202, 201 Exemplary Theatre, The 44 experience machines 258 Fabre, Jan 38–40, 175 feelings, and emotions 129 feminist theatre 46 Fermentation 42 Fichte, Johann Gottlieb 113–114 film studies 123–125 Fischer-Lichte, Erika 49 Flavius, Josephus 42–43 fluidity of dramaturgy 14 form: meaning as 78–80; premodern philosophy 95–100 forms of art 3–4 Foucault, Michel 40 France 13–14, 15, 17 freedom: and aesthetics 111; Romanticism 114 French Revolution 17, 113 Freud, Lucian 182, 229–230 frontstage style 168–169 Fuchs, Elinor 222 Fuchs, Peter 64 functionality in performance 166–167 functionally differentiated society 17, 241, 266 gaming industry 251–252, 252 Gehrt, David 144–145 gender: feminist theatre 46; performativity 179–182 generalisation: systems theory 64–65; and universalisation 50 genres theory 234–235 geo-dramaturgical 39 Germany: art of dramaturgy 34; Brecht, Bertolt 45, 46; dramaturgical societies 50; dramaturgy in 12–13; revolution 15 Giddens, Anthony 241 globalisation: and colonisation 15; dramaturgy 6–7; as ‘foam’ 10; and nation 7–8; neoliberalism 269–270; nirvana or cosmos 8–9; political systems 32–33; populism 272–273; relief and stress 10–11; terrestrial 9–10; value-transversal 57–58 goals, and means 169 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 267–268 Goffman, Irving 168, 178 Grand Theory (Parsons) 169 Granville Barker, Harley 43–44 groups, collective art form 37–38 Gurvitch, Georges 179 Habermas, J. 76–77, 78 Hall, Stuart 29

hamartia 106 Harvie, Jen 124 Havelock, Eric A. 97–98, 99, 100 hearing (perception) 127 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 42, 93, 164–165, 182, 189, 226 Heidegger, Martin 50, 256 hekon 102 Hermann, Max 122–123 hermeneutic approach 49, 58–59, 116, 228 hermeneutical arch 117 Herodotus 96 heterosexual melancholy 181 Hippolytus 102 Hirata, Eiichiro 12 Hoggart, Richard 240 Holberg, Ludvig 144–145 Homer 99 homosexuality 181 Horace 106–107 Humboldt, Alexander von 142 Hunka, George 222–223 Husserl, Edmund 50 hybridity 27, 46–47, 175 identity 1; performativity 180; political correctness 275; postdramatic theatre 235; see also national identity illusion: immersive theatre 250; performativity 167 imaginary reality: art as system 84, 85, 89–91; avant-garde 49; as code 55, 89, 118; immersive theatre 41, 250, 251–252, 257, 263; Odin Teatret 215–216; performativity 177–180; poietics 114, 118–119; premodern philosophy 95, 98, 103; value-transversal 56 immaterial dimension 14 immersive theatre 41–42, 183, 248–249; concepts of immersion 249–259; dramaturgies of immersion 259–276; and postdramatic theatre 248; spectatorship 248, 254–258; wide-range theory 276–278 implicit knowledge 4, 130, 160, 237, 242 implied knowledge 119, 152, 153, 159, 163 improvisation 264–265 indication, systems theory 70 individuals, and society 182 inequality 32–33 infant communication 134–135 information: Alter Ego 144, 165; communication 3, 80, 103, 138, 140; consciousness 130–131; dramaturgy 88–89; Odin Teatret 195, 196, 201; organic dramaturgy 201 innovation: in art 152; postdramatic theatre 234 interactivity: forms of storytelling 47; immersive theatre 41–42; systems theory 67 intercultural dramaturgy 25 interdisciplinarity 226

Index  285

inter-domain dilemma 59–60 interlink 7 ‘intermediales Szenografie’ 41 international impacts, Odin Teatret 186 internet, new media matrix 149 interpretation, and description 115–116 interpretative systems 48–49 interstitial spaces 27 intersubjectivity 77 intuition in art 152, 160–163 invisibility, and observation 113 Iphigenia in Tauris 267–268 Iran 22–23 Irigaray, Luce 180 irony 114, 218–219 irreducible non-satisfaction 25 irritations: conditions for change 181; recursive creation 278; science and art 1 Jakobson, Roman 115 James, William 122, 177 Japan 11–12 Jelinek, Elfriede 35–36 Kant, Immanuel 110–113, 119, 238–239 katharsis 106 Kluge, Alexander 271–272 knowledge in art 152 knowledge structures 167, 241–242 Krämer, Sybille 79–80 Kristeva, Julia 180, 229–230 labour, cognitive capitalism 270 language: communication 136–137; meaning 77, 79, 80; metalanguage 117–118; performativity 167; poietics 115, 116–118; political correctness 275; postdramatic theatre 229–230; and reality 136; terminology in dramaturgy 164; theatrical excellence 212 latency 65, 207–208 Latin America 25–26 Lehmann, Hans-Thies 222, 224–236, 248 Lehmann, Niels 60–61, 192, 219–220 Leibnitz, Gottfried Wilhelm 79, 125–126 les flics du sens 13, 14–15 Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim 43, 115, 120, 186–187, 217–218, 227 Lévi-Strauss, Claude 29 liberals: democracy and populism 274–275; English Revolution 16; political economy 18–19 life see bios liminal concept 42, 179 liminoid 179 literary theory 116 Little, Ruth 47–48 Live Action Role Play (LARP) 251

lived life 167 living systems 47–48, 69 Lloyd, Moya 181–182 lob des realismus 267–268, 271–273 local systems, universalisation 52–53 Lollike, Christian 144–148 Luckhurst, Mary 42–43, 44, 45, 51 ludic deterritorialisation 253–254 Luhmann, Niklas: art as system 93; communication 130–131, 137–139, 260; culture 243, 245–246; invisibility and observation 113; novelty of art 86; performativity 170; populism 273; positivism, critical theory, and postmodernism 65, 82; Romanticism 114; socialist/liberal 18; society as communication 80–82; systems theory 2, 66–80; universalisation 52, 53 Lukács, György 272 Lutterbie, John 123–124, 125 McAvoy, Mary 251 McConachie, Bruce 124–125 McDermott, Phelim 47 Machon, Josephine 253–254, 256, 258 maîtres fous 37–38 mannerisms, acting 207–208, 214 Mao Zedong 18–19 material dimension 14 Maturana, Humberto R. 74–75 meaning: of art 86–88; communication 141–142; dramaturgs role 35–36; expansion of dramaturgical theories 55; and language 136; as medium and as form 75–80; narrative dramaturgy 194–195; Odin Teatret 202, 214–216; society as communication 81–82; systems theory 2; universalisation 52 means, and goals 169 media: immersive theatre 251–252; new media matrix 148–149, 163–164; postdramatic theatre 224–225, 227–228, 230, 233 medium, meaning as 75–80 melancholia 181 melancholy 181–183 memory: culture as 243, 245; emotions 129; Odin Teatret 205; recursive creation 277–278 metalanguage 117–118 Meyrowitz, Joshua 168–169 micro-physics 59–60 Middle Ages 108 middle stage concept 168–169 migration, cultural hybridity 46–47 Mills, Charles Wright 169 mimêsis: affective attunement 135; ontogenetic perspective 134; premodern philosophy 4, 95–100, 103–105, 106; value-transversal 56 mise en scène 164

286 Index

modernity: aesthetics in the beginning of modern times 107–114; art as system 84, 120, 160; forms of art 4; immersive theatre 250; new media matrix 148–149; political system 32–33; self-reflection in dramaturgy 32; society as communication 81–82; society described 268–269; theory of society 66; third wave of poietics 187–188 Moosavi, Marjan 22 morality, postdramatic theatre 229 Moreno, Jacob 250 Moscow Circle 115 Mühlhoff, Rainer 259, 261, 262 Mukarovsky, Jan 116, 117 Müller, Heine 269 Müller, Jan-Werner 273 multiculturalism 28 multidirectional expansions 34, 59 Munro, Allan 26–27 narration, forms of storytelling 47 narrative dramaturgy 189, 194–195, 196–199, 201 nation state 17; and political system 17–18; public money 36–37; socialist/liberal 18–19; see also political power; welfare state national identity 7 nationalism 272–273 nature, Romanticism 113–114 neoliberalism 54, 269–270 neo-marxism 269 neurons, consciousness 126–127 new art 86 new media matrix 148–149, 163–164, 251 new plays: ancient Greece 105–106; Canada 24; dramaturgs role 44; Russia 21 new realism 271–273, 276 newness see novelty Nielsen, Ida Grarup 144–145 Nietzsche, Friedrich 179 non-secular societies 22 Nordic countries 33 normative poietics 116 normative structures 4, 157–158 Novalis, Georg Philipp Friedrich Freiherr von Hardenberg 114 novelty: of art 86; performance 175–176; poiesis 156, 160 observation: art as system 90, 93; culture 245; first and second order 93–94, 141, 160–163; immersive theatre 262–263; indication and distinction 70; and invisibility 113; Luhmann's view 65–66; performativity 170; poietic hierarchy 119; postdramatic theatre 235–236; science and art 2; society as communication 81–82; systems theory 64–66, 69 Odin Teatret 185; bios 192–194, 203–204; book on dramaturgy 190–192; an enigma

185–186; international impacts 186; notes from a spectator 189–190; reflection theory 186–187; semantics 202–209; third wave of poietics in modernity 187–188; three levels of dramaturgy 194–202; values of art 209–217; weaves of tradition 217–220 Olivier, Laurence 44 one world society 7–8; see also globalisation ontogenetic perspective 134–135 operational systems theory 2; see also systems theory operative couplings 74 organic dramaturgy 189, 194, 195–196, 201 organisations: art as system 93; communication 141, 142; conditions for change 181; Odin Teatret 209; performativity 172–173; systems theory 67 origins 210–211 other reference, systems theory 70–71 overturning 196–197, 198 Parsons, Talcott 169–170 participation in art 259, 262–263; see also immersive theatre partition of the sensible 55, 165–166, 241, 275 Pavis, Patrice 32 perception: and cognition 146–147; communication 138; consciousness 126, 126, 127; culture 237–240; Odin Teatret 195–196; postdramatic theatre 224–225, 231, 233, 237–242 performance: Barba, Eugenio 193; as concept 174–176; and dramaturgy 45–48; functionality 166–167; immersive theatre 260–262; of performativity 175–176 Performance Studies 176 performative turn 49, 176, 223 performativity 5–6; Carlson, Marvin 174, 176–180; as concept 166, 167; determinism or voluntarism 180–181; evolution in artistic work 166–174; imaginary reality 177–180; immersive theatre 263, 264, 265; or melancholy 181–183; realism 270–271, 272; as system-relative 170–171; universalisation 49; value-transversal 56 person, distinction from role 168, 170–171, 171, 172–173 phenomenology: immersive theatre 42; thinking in differences 58–59; and universalisation 50 philosophy: aesthetics in the beginning of modern times 107–114; from philosophy and aesthetics, to poetology 94–107 phylogenetic perspective 135–136 Plato 4, 96–100 playwright development in Canada (PDCC) 24 playwrights, postdramatic theatre 271 playwriting courses 11 pleasure, art as 103, 107

Index  287

pleonasm 7 pluralism 244 plurality: epistemological perspectives 49; and universalisation 50 poetology: from philosophy and aesthetics, to poetology 94–107; on poietics 115 poiesis 4; Aristoteles 153–154; art 87; autopoiesis 74–75; evolution in artistic work 152–163; systems theory 69 poietic hierarchies: art as system 88, 91–92; culture 245; different hierarchies 12, 236; directing 163; evolution of dramaturgical theories 278; imaginary reality 118–119; Odin Teatret 186, 199, 202–203, 208, 219; postdramatic theatre 236; process and structure 159; recursive movements 40; semantics 202–203; values 55, 87, 160–163 poietics: ancient Greek Philosophy 98, 100–102; art 87; arts 91–92; contemporary context 165; forms of art 3–4; immersive theatre 42, 248, 253, 266–267; poetology on 115; postdramatic theatre 223; of Romanticism 113–114; third wave in modernity 187–188 Poland 20 polis, ancient Greece 105–106 political context, postdramatic theatre 228–229, 231 political correctness 275 political economy 18–19 political power: nation state 17–18; public opinion 273–275; segmented societies 15; stratified societies 16 political system: challenging expansions 32–33; and nation state 17–18; partition of the sensible 165–166; populism 273–275; structural couplings 74 political theatre movement 46 politicity 164 populism 272–276 positions for the spectator 150 positivism 65 post-colonial dramaturgies 23, 27–28 postdramatic theatre 38, 54, 222–223; ambiguities 224–236; culture as vile concept 242–246; and immersive theatre 248; meaning of 225; Odin Teatret 191; perception and culture 237–242 post-epic theatre 13 postmodern theory: criticism in theatre 270; hybridity 46–47; Luhmann's critique 65, 82; performance 175–176; realism 13, 272; third wave of poietics 188 post-ontological ontology 219–220, 276 post-ontological theories 60 post-Romantic Romanticism 192, 219–220 post-structuralism: cognition 125; Cultural Studies 30; culture 245; performativity 49, 180–181; poietics 116–117; postdramatic theatre 54, 234–235; post-epic theatre 13

potentiality 79 poverty 32–33 power, immersive theatre 259–260 power, political see political power Prague School 116–117 praxis 152, 153–154, 161 práxis 154 pre-modern theatre 4, 94–107 printing press 157 process, and structure 159 Propp, Vladimir 115 psychic systems 69, 72, 73; art 85–86, 87; communication 131–132, 134, 136–138, 140–144; immersive theatre 265–266; performativity 171–172 psychology, role in dramaturgy 123 public money 36–37; see also welfare state public opinion 273–274 Putin, Vladimir 20 Quirt, Brian 23–24 Qvortrup, Lars 79 race, South Africa 27 radical constructivism 65 Radosavljevic, Duka 14 Rancière, Jacques 55, 164–165, 254, 255, 256–258, 259 rationality: Enlightenment 110; evocative dramaturgy 200; premodern philosophy 96, 100, 153–154; Romanticism 113–114 Rau, Milo 271–272, 275–276 Reagan, Ronald 269–270 realism 270–273 realist representations 13 reality: art as system 85–86, 89, 90–91; Barba, Eugenio 193; and causality 30; expansion of dramaturgical theories 55, 58; and language 136; mimêsis 97–98; performativity 178; systems theory 69; see also imaginary reality Rebellato, Dan 124 Reckwitz, Andreas 241 recursive creation 4, 155, 277, 277–278 recursive movements 4, 23, 40 recursivity 154–156 re-entry see bios reflection: observation 161, 162–163; Odin Teatret 186–187; postdramatic theatre 236 reflective theories: arts and science 35; poietics 4; postdramatic theatre 232–233, 236; post-Romantic Romanticism or postontological ontology 220; semantics 202, 203; universalisation 52, 53–54; see also selfreflection in dramaturgy Regietheater 164–165, 222, 224 rehearsals: biology of the actor 38–39; mannerisms 207–208, 214; poietics and its semantics 206–209; working with the text 37–38

288 Index

relational perspective 54–55 relativism 244 religion: ancient Greek Philosophy 101; Erasmus Montanus 145–146; Odin Teatret 213–217; praxis 153–154; semantics 213–217; valuetransversal 56 representation: nation state 17; performativity 167; postdramatic theatre 269 restitution, dramaturgs role 36–38 revolution 15, 16, 18–19 revolution in theatre 42–48 Richardson, Jonathan 109–110 Ricoeur, Paul 117 Riders Spoke 42 Rimini Protokoll 40–41 ritual, dramaturgs role 36–38 Roeder, Anke 34–35, 49–50 Röggla, Kathrin 271–273 role theory 168, 170–171, 171, 172–173, 178–179 roles see actors; directing; dramaturgs; playwrights Romanska, Magda 7 Romanticism: culture 242–243; irony 218–219; poietics of 113–114; post-Romantic Romanticism 192 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 250–251 Rudnev, Pavel 20–22 Russia 18, 20–23 Russian Formalism 115, 116 Saussure, Ferdinand de 115 Schechner, Richard 167, 179 Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph 114 Schiller, Friedrich 55, 211, 267–268 Schiller, Leon 20 Schlegel, Friedrich 114 Schütz, Theresa 259, 261, 262 science: of aesthetics and art 108, 110; cognition 124; difference from what already exists 1; dramaturgical theory 2, 55; function of system 89; postdramatic theatre 232–233; recursive creation 277–278; reflective theories 35; of theatre 50; universalisation 48–49, 53, 54 science system, epistemology 142 scientific theory of dramaturgy: epistemological expansions 58; poietic hierarchy 118–119; poietics 115 seeing (perception) 127 segmented societies 15, 66 self-imposed undecidability 3 self-irritation, societal 1 self-reference: art as system 90; systems theory 70–71 self-reflection in dramaturgy 32; art of dramaturgy 34–42; challenging expansions 32–34; communication 144; performativity

176–177; a revolution in theatre 42–48; Romantic concept of art 218–219; state of the art 34; thinking in differences 58–61; universalisation 48–58 semantics, Odin Teatret 202–209, 213–217 senses: aisthesis 4–5; cognition 129–130; perception 127 Shakespeare, William 11 Shanghai, China 19 Shepherd, Simon 167 Shklovsky, Viktor 115 ‘shock’ 234 Sidenius, Steen 192, 219–220 SIGNA productions 260–262, 265 simultaneity, theatre of 187 skill, culture of 112–113 Sloterdijk, Peter 9, 10, 17, 258 smelling (perception) 127 social class 238–240 social context, culture 237–241 social sciences 240–241 social systems 69, 72–73, 73; communication 133–134, 141; conditions for change 181; immersive theatre 266 socialism: English Revolution 16; political economy 18–19 societal complexity 133–134 society: as communication 80–82, 136–137; and culture 243; and individuals 182; modernity 268–269; systems theory 67; theory of 66 sociology 65 Sophocles 104 sound: Erasmus Montanus 146; and language 136 South Africa 26–27 Soviet Union 18, 20–21 space, and poiesis 160 spectatorial positions 253–254 spectatorship: cognition 217–218; communication 149–150; immersive theatre 248, 254–258, 266, 267; Odin Teatret 189–190, 194–203, 215; performativity 174; postdramatic theatre 235–236; see also audiences; observation Spinoza, Baruch 139, 259, 260 spontaneity 250 Sprinkle, Annie 175 stage designers 37 staging, contemporary context 165 state see nation state state of mind 208 Stegemann, Bernd 12–13, 223, 267–268, 269, 270–271, 272, 273 Sterling, Pamela 251 Stern, Daniel 128–129, 134–135 storytelling 47 Strategic Action 77 stratified societies 16, 66

Index  289

Strong Communicative Action 77 structural couplings 73–74, 75, 93 structuralism 115, 116–117 structure: and chance 159–160; poiesis 156–160, 157; and process 159 Sun, William Huizhu 19 symbolic generalised medias 268 symbolism 55, 229–230 Syria 23 systems theory: (!) drawing of systems theory 67–69, 68; causality 64; communication 138, 139; conditions for change 181; culture 243–245; expansion of dramaturgical theories 55; immersive theatre 267–268; Luhmann, Niklas 66–80; observation 64–66; partition of the sensible 165–166; performativity 170–171; society as communication 80–82; theoretical construction 2; thinking in differences 58–59, 60, 60–61; see also art as system Szondi, Peter 13, 226, 232, 248

transcendence 213, 216 transience of form 77 trauma 12 Troubelyn, Jan Fabre 38 Trump, Donald 275 truth, value-transversal 56 Turner, Cathy 45, 46–47, 51 Turner, Victor 170, 179 Tynan, Kenneth 44–45

tacit knowledge in art 152 taste, cultural capital 238–239 tasting (perception) 127 tax systems 33 technology: immersive gaming 251–252; new media matrix 148–149, 163–164; printing press 157 text: dramaturgs role 37; Erasmus Montanus 145–146 Thatcher, Margaret 269–270 ‘the sensible’ 55 Theatre Regulation Act 43 theatre science: cognition 124–125; Hermann, Max 123; Odin Teatret 188; universalisation 48–49 theatre studies 123–125, 226 theatres: as cultural good 211–212; public money 36–37 theatrical performance 177 theatrical situations, postdramatic theatre 269 theatricality 166 theoria 154, 161 Theseus 102 thinking in differences 58–61 third wave of poietics 187–188 time, and poiesis 160 Todorov, Tzvetan 115 totems 215–216 touching (perception) 127 tradition 217–220 tragedy, ancient Greek Philosophy 95–96, 99, 104–105

values: of art 209–217; artistic hierarchies 55; communication 139; culture 237–241; poiesis 160–163; recursive creation 278 value-transversal 56–58 Varney, Denise 222 Ventestedet 260, 262, 265 Verfremdung-effect 46 vitality 128 voluntarism, vs. determinism 180–181 voyeurism 149–150

uncertainty: art as system 85, 90; communication 3; immersive theatre 248–249; Odin Teatret 199, 210 United States: dramaturgy in 11; immersive theatre 250–251; populism 275 unity 50 universalisation 48–58 utterances: Alter Ego 144, 165; communication 3, 80, 103, 138, 140; consciousness 130–131; dramaturgy 88–89; Odin Teatret 194, 201

Ward, Julie Ann 25–26 Weiler, Christel 48 welfare state: Japan 12; pampering relief 10–11; political system 32–33 Wever, Max 169 White, Gareth 254–258, 265 Wiens, Birgit 40–41 Wilhelm Tell 267–268 Williams, Raymond 28–29, 240 Wilshire, Bruce 178–179 women’s movement 179–180 world dramaturgy 7 world society: dramaturgy 6–7; postdramatic theatre 224; universalisation 52; see also globalisation wounds, Odin Teatret 204–206, 208–209, 214, 215 Wundt, Wilhelm 122 zig-zag method 117 zone of affluence 11–12, 25, 183, 258