Theater to transform the world

If theater is deeply political, it is because it is engaged and participatory: it responds to the urgency of the times, by treating the spectator as a citizen and by making the stage an inclusive social space. A look back at revolutionary potential.

How can theater become an effective means of reflecting society, but also and above all contributing to its transformation? This is the question posed Not Just A Mirror: Looking For The Political Theater of Todaya stimulating collection of texts on contemporary theater, which questions the reforming and revolutionary potential of theater, and proposes to reinvest a word, “politics”, which has somewhat lost its meaning. This word can take on different meanings, depending on the contexts exposed throughout the testimonies, forums, exchanges and reflections presented here.

Because it is this question that arises, once the volume is closed: what does “politics” mean in “political theater”? We circle around the word, we circle it: each time it supposes a radical and anti-bourgeois commitment (neither extreme right nor populist), without affiliation to any party line. But it also implies a response to the urgency of the present time and a position in relation to the pressing social, environmental and cultural questions that this raises. It also includes a reflection on the common, being- or thinking-together, and encouragesempowermentto the spectator’s “becoming-citizen”.

Against the pessimism of the credo “There Is No Alternative” (TINA), the collection invites us to compare approaches, to put them in resonance, in order to map and inventory some of the new political practices of current theater.

Think collectively

First concretely political aspect: coming together to question ourselves together. The notion of collective is found at all levels, from the table of programmers and the chorus of artists requested, to the troupes or theater groups presented and the assembly of spectators.

Not Just A Mirror is published by House on Fire, a network of European stages which brings together ten programmers to accompany or produce shows and events tackling hot topics (political, economic, social or environmental). The collective addresses questions that arise in a unique way in each of the member countries and attempts to see how an artistic approach can echo citizen concerns and transform theater into a space for critical exchange.

This constellation of European scenes responds to the group of artists in action, signatories of this volume. It is in educational (but not didactic) prose that they express their questions, their desires and explorations, but also their rage, their doubts and difficulties. Passionate and convinced, all express an energizing fury which invites us to combat disengagement and restore momentum.

By means of a clear statement, each of the testimonies contextualizes, weaves theoretical analysis and the description of examples, challenges the reader – as artists do on stage. Supporters of a “postdramatic” theater, the authors advocate a participatory approach, considering the spectator as a co-author or, rather, as a “spect-actor”, to use Augusto Boal’s term, fully invested in the performance of the show.

Theorized by the German critic Hans-Thied Lehman, postdramatic theater was born from the rejection of classical bourgeois theater, based on the interpretation of a pre-written text, the highlighting of a staging and the valorization of the play of actors caught in dramatic situations. He inherits avant-garde practices born at the beginning of the XXe century: Antonin Artaud’s theater of cruelty, Dada and surrealist creations, or Soviet agitprops, among others. Developed in the 1980s-1990s, this theater seeks to arouse emotions through suggestive creations which base their stage writing on transversal practices combining acting, text and narration, with different means of expression such as dance, image arts (photography, cinema, video), musical compositions, new technologies. This assumed transgression of genres goes hand in hand with a redefinition of the status of author and director, but also that of the public, whose critical inventiveness is constantly called upon.

Theater (at) lively

The collective experience at the theater aims to reinvent the polishedin order to create an ephemeral community of citizens within which a living word can circulate. Like the “conversations” included in the volume, political theater wishes to provoke free and spontaneous speech. Hence Carol Martin’s reflections on the theater of reality which, through trial plays for example, makes the documentary representation of lived experiences a political act. This mode of analysis and reconstruction (reenactment) of real or historical events echoes the forum theater invented by Boal, which proposes to “probe reality” through representation, to offer the “concrete analysis of a concrete situation” (p. 73), in order to provoke action “in reaction to current political and economic situations”.

Arousing consensus and dissensus, political theater invites debate, gives right and voice to contrary speech. Thanks to an agonistic pluralism, it makes the stage the open space of a collective and collaborative imagination as much as the place for the expression of conflicts and oppositions. In this sense, he defines politics as a form of experience, a true “sharing of the sensitive” (to use Jacques Rancière’s words). Committed and participatory, he strives to create situations live – both alive, real and in public –, to develop a performative stage reality to give the spectator back their autonomy (agency). “What we find there is our reality, and we must respond to it,” says Judith Malina (p. 88). Everything is there: political theater refers each person to their will, their capacity and their power to act.

John Jordan conceives of the theater as a barricade, that is to say “a space for dialogue and the instrument of an insurrection” (p. 108). The direct theater he defends is interventionist, committed to changing the state of things. Some of the contributors, originating from the former Eastern bloc or African dictatorships, are in fact in touch with delicate political news and, distrusting institutional theater, call for urgent theatrical action. Being alert, on the lookout, on the alert: they use a whole vocabulary of war or hunting which defines this theater in direct contact with the hyper-contemporary. Thus some authors claim to be part of the various occupation movements (Square occupation movements), such as Occupy, Los Indignados, Aganaktismenoi or the Arab Spring and the Green Revolution, as well as their calls for “real democracy now!” » (Real Democracy Now!).

Conversely, Margarita Tsomou and Vassilis Tsianos focus on the aesthetic character of these citizen demonstrations. Both consider the dances and rounds that these protesting communities form, in the squares of Europe and elsewhere, as the festive reactivation of the ancient demos ; real “cultural performances” (p. 98) which create “dancing communities”. This is why political theater dreams of itself as a lively theater: a vibrant and living theater, animated with a lively intensity and receptive, reacting in an epidermal way to the urgency of the moment; a provocative and incisive theater, which wishes to affect deeply.

Desire for theater and theater of desire

Heir to the avant-gardes of the early XXe century (futurism, constructivism, Dadaism, surrealism, agitprop) and those of the 1960s-70s (performances, conceptual art, installations), contemporary political theater is firmly anchored in a modernity in movement, making its forms the reflection of a changing world. Hence the frequent use of different media (television, press, Internet, photo or video images) and the demand for hybrid shows. Just like their elders, today’s creators claim creative activism – or “artivism” – to highlight our need for investment.

Both development and inventory, Not Just A Mirror stands out as a manifesto. It is a real call to gain momentum, to get moving again, to reinject desire. Through their optimism and their hopes, the author-creators demonstrate their deep confidence in the reforming power of the theatrical experience, in its capacity to arouse awakening, awareness, and commitment. Everyone dreams of a theater that is constantly updated, permanently impermanent, which makes the stage an inclusive socio-political space.

Their enthusiasm may seem utopian, their desire to transform theater into a “social practice” idealistic. However, it is a question of making the scene a “place of friction”, of “mobilizing desire” (p. 165). It’s about working for “a future that is no longer what it was,” as John Jordan puts it. To reform a civic future. It’s about rushing towards the next place, the one that doesn’t yet exist; another place, common and festive, which reinvents democracy.