42 UDC 82.09-2:792 UDC 792:82.09-2 DOI 10.51937/Amfiteater-2022-1/42-53 The paper discusses how the metadramatic modalities of simultaneous deconstruction and reconstruction of the fictional universe figure in two contemporary plays: Pascal Rambert’s The closure of love (2011) and Tim Crouch’s The Author (2009). The discussion reveals that the two much-acclaimed plays belong to a resilient self-reflective line of dramas questioning the closure of representation that starts in the early modern period with such classical pieces as Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Calderón’s The Great Theatre of the World. Keywords: closure of representation, deconstruction, metadrama, Shakespeare, Calderón, Rambert, Crouch Lada Čale Feldman is a full professor and the chair of Theatre Studies at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb, Croatia. Her areas of research are theatre, performance and gender studies. Her books in Croatian include Play-within-the- Play in the Croatian Theatre, Zagreb, 1997; Euridices turns, 2001; Femina ludens, 2005; Dreams are not to be trusted, 2012; and Beyond the Stage, 2019. She also co-authored (with M. Čale) In the Canon, Studies in Doubling, 2008, and (with A. Tomljenović) the Introduction to Feminist Criticism, 2012. She co-edited several special issues of journals and numerous collections, among them, in English (with I. Prica and R. Senjković), Fear, Death and Resistance: Croatia 1991–92, 1993, and (with M. Blažević) Misperformance: Essays in Shifting Perspectives, 2014. She has received four awards for her essays and books. Her entry on “Misperformance”, co-authored with M. Blažević, appears in Bryan Reynold’s Performance Studies: Key Words, Concepts, and Theories, 2014. lcfeldma@ffzg.hr 43 Deconstructing and Re-constructing the Fictional Universe: On Two Opposite Examples of Contemporary Metadrama Lada Čale Feldman Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb My aim is to discuss the relevance and resilience of dramatic theatre – the one relying on the playtext preceding a theatrical production – from the perspective of its internal, inherited modes of theorisation and autopoietic rejuvenation, which seem to spite its supposed demise in the era of the postdramatic, of the no longer dramatic or of the post-post dramatic text. An insight into the way these modes are employed in contemporary playwriting could, I believe, bring us closer to understanding how it happens that the dramatic text is currently bouncing back and striking with a vengeance at all the attempts to reduce it to a purely linguistic and literary entity and to divorce it from the actualities of the stage, which have always guaranteed its structural specificity, even when it was considered to be just one of the “literary types”, to use Benjamin Bennett’s words (27–56). Contemporary playwrighting does its best to parallel and engender postdramatic performances by its own attempts to break free from “the closure of representation”, as the invariant structure of Western theatre, which Artaud attacked and Derrida famously theorised as being metaphysical in kind. The endeavours to escape from this structure have, however, endangered the very notion of drama, for they often take the shape of either “lyric” or “epic” strategies of “de-dramatization”. As Liz Tomlin, however, pointedly argued in her foreword to Vicki Angelaki’s collection of essays on contemporary British theatre, before one discredits dramatic theatre as being irredeemably predicated upon totality, closure and temporally progressing a fictive cosmos enclosed in a pre-existing play-text, one should first reflect upon the historical accuracy of this definition, let alone acknowledge a respectable dramatic tradition of self-reflexive critique. Contemporary playwrights revive such self-reflexivity, for instance, when they explicitly refer to crucial instances of the very medium of theatre – to authors, plays, actors, audiences, playacting and spectating, as well as to the spaces, i.e., ontologies, that these agents and actions are supposed to occupy. As opposed to Tomlin’s emphasis on modernist predecessors, such as Pirandello and Genet – whose metadramatic confrontations with the “real” certainly figure among 44 the most intriguing disruptions of the aforementioned invariant structure – I will here go further back into the history of dramatic theatre. Following, namely, David Roberts’s considerations regarding the way Derrida’s discussion of Artaud could serve as a basis for the establishment of the two basic types of metadrama, I will show that the two early modern prototypes that Roberts singles out – Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Calderón’s The Great Theatre of the World – could indeed be used as models for understanding my two chosen extreme points in contemporary metadramatic experimenting. Unlike Lehmann and other performance scholars who, to put it like Julia Jarcho, seem to “exhibit a kind of selective amnesia when it comes to Derrida’s critique” (4), Roberts reminds us of how suspicious Derrida is of the Artaudian dream of escape from the closed circle of representation. According to his version of Derrida’s thesis, the traditional theatre Artaud wants to abolish implies “the dominance of the word” and “the primacy of a founding logos, which endows the scene with the following elements: an author-creator, absent, distant, armed with a text, who supervises and controls the meaning of the representation”, making the “actors enact the will of an invisible master before an audience of spectators, consumers, voyeurs” (37). Derrida, however, also warns that Artaud’s theatre of the unrepeatable gesture and self-presence is impossible since repetition remains unavoidable; all theatre can do to undermine the afore-described theological structure is to “lay bare what the circle [of representation] contains” to represent “the limit of representation” by re-presenting the representation (Ibid. 37–38). Based on such premises, Roberts introduces his two types of metadrama, which he differentiates according to the opposing strategies they use in order to undermine the fatal closure. Both types stem from the inherent possibility of dramatic theatre to question its own limits by foregrounding the spatial duality it implies since “every play […] opens a space of play and represents the world as play” (Ibid. 38). The first type of metadrama, the “self-critical” one, inserts the limit of representation within its own play-as-world in the form of an inset play – for example, the well-known “Mousetrap” in Hamlet, which appears to be ordered by an invisible and unreliable Ghost-in-the-machine. The other, the “self-affirming” type, exemplified by Calderón’s The Great Theatre of the World, projects the limit out, into the world-as-play, by making the Author behind the scene appear out front as the All-mighty God who both runs and watches the show and who ultimately grants salvation or damnation of any actual audience watching Calderón’s play. To summarise the ideological stakes of this opposition, let me finish its all-too-short explanation by again quoting David Roberts: […] the one uses reduplication to internalise the origin and causality of the scene, the other to externalise origin and causality. […] Theologically and historically the two types point in the opposite directions: the play within the play anticipates through 45 introversion the modern recession of origin, that is, the paradox of self-implication; World Theatre looks backwards to reaffirm through extroversion the medieval closure of meaning whose outcome is the allegory of self-explication (38–39). The two contemporary examples that, in my view, make us recall these two types of self-reflexivity are Pascal Rambert’s Clôture de l’amour (2011) and Tim Crouch’s The Author (2009). I chose these two metadramatic plays since both of them, interestingly, bear in their titles some marked associations to Derrida’s commentary of Artaud and to the previously described “invariant structure” of the Western theatre: while the first one seems to allude to the closure of representation, the second one invokes the centrality, if not the God-like position of the author. Although the French title of Rambert’s play was translated into English as The Closing of Love or Love’s End, I will insist on the allusive impact of the original title, which uses the same word – clôture – as Derrida does to describe the paradox of Artaud’s ambitions. In my view, Rambert’s play thus intentionally connects the crisis of love with the crisis of representation and culture in general and with the crisis of theatre in particular. My choice of Rambert’s play could be justified as well by the sheer amount of resonance it provoked, for, unlike Tim Crouch’s The Author, which toured mainly in the Anglo-American world, The closure of love – as I would translate Rambert’s title – has already gained the status of a transnational phenomenon, having so far been performed in more than twenty different languages all over the world, from Brazil and the United States via Slovenia, Croatia and Italy to Egypt, Russia, China and Japan. However, in contrast, to Crouch’s much-discussed and – for many critics (Bottoms, Rebellato, Henke, Delgado-García and others) – truly seminal play, the performing enthusiasm for Rambert’s text has so far not been matched by serious scholarly analysis of its planetary appeal. 1 So, why, precisely, The closure of love? Let me repeat that closure here is an ambiguous word, signalling both the self-containment of a universe and, at the same time, the end of that universe. In a wish to both denounce and announce the closure of the representation, to end it, to abolish it, and in the same stroke to revive it on his own terms, meant for Artaud, as Roberts reminds us, to inaugurate a pure theatre of presence, devoid of any hand that would govern it from the outside – to establish, in a word, pure immanence of life – and of death. In such a theatre, the actor becomes a martyr permitting his or her own destruction to become a spectacle proving the immanence of negation. 2 Artaud imagines a variety of techniques by which to assault, 1 The only exception I am aware of is a monographic issue of the journal Parages, no 7, 2020, in which one can find inspiring essays on Rambert as playwright and director, only, however, incidentally mentioning the play, and not interpretively engaging in its analysis. The journal itself is published by the National Theatre of Strasbourg, one of the regular sites of Rambert’s collaboration, so the issue devoted to Rambert is more of a tribute to the home author than a scholarly publication. Nevertheless, there are in this issue some interesting remarks by the editor Frederic Vossier, Claudine Galea, as well as the actors who initially appeared in the French version of the play, Stanislas Norday and Audrey Bonnet. 2 It is insightful to consult in that light a recent monograph by Kimberly Jannarone, Artaud and his Doubles, 2015. She reads Artaud’s text in the historical context and finds numerous correspondences between his obsessive motifs and metaphors on the one hand, and the fascist rhetorics on the other, especially when it comes to his repeated exposure of “the omnipresence of evil, the foulness of the body and the need to systematically employ cruelty and terror” (1). 46 benumb and confront the audience to imminent death: raging against the theatre of his time. He expresses disgust not only for “psychological” dilemmas but particularly for the whole cheap sentimentalism and verbalism of bourgeois domestic dramas. Pascal Rambert appears at first glance to be doing quite the opposite. In The closure of love, he writes a logorrheic play for the age-old apparatus of the théâtre à l’italienne that claustrophobically and obsessively addresses precisely the trials and tribulations of a typical modern bourgeois marriage. Lacking, however, in dialogic stichomythia, The closure of love consists of what appear to be two subsequent monologues but are, in fact, two monomaniacal “narrative” voices forced into a “dramatic” clash. As if Rambert, faced with the current trend to represent the world as broken into a Babylonian multitude of narrative ontologies, tried to test the form of drama, to put its current implosions to their utmost limit, to constrain this obsession with self- narration to be deployed within the common space/time of what Badiou would name the “Two scene” (29), of the archetypal and yet so modern drama of sexes. In so doing, Rambert, however, emphasises the need for the characters to also stay patiently silent for almost an hour each, to listen to the other and to respond to the other exclusively via their bodies, to silently provoke inadvertent dialogic punctuations – disruptions, hesitations and modifications, or indeed, additional momentum – within the monologic texture of the other’s speech. The dialogic clash here is not verbal; it takes place between one’s language and the other’s body. Rambert’s actors address each other by their proper, everyday names since the play’s protagonists are “in fact” – that is, in the possible world, the fictive universe of the play, just as much as in the actual world of its enactment – actors. In a move much closer to Artaud’s poetics than it may seem, Rambert collapses fiction into the living and breathing, embodied actuality of the stage: the space of the play and the world-as-play are here one and the same space. His imaginary actors are, namely, caught in the midst of a rehearsal of an unknown play, perhaps a play on love as well, perhaps the very play they are, qua empirical actors, already actually acting in. Facing the fatal separation, the man and the woman thus, to express it through a proper paradox, seem to be what they actually are – two beings actually suffering from painful linguistic blows that their characters emit into each other’s bodies and, yet, beings who, in the very here-and-now of their irreducible, intimate performing selves, are, again, “just acting”, as if, even after the break-up of the couple, they would still be ready to start the rehearsal and the play anew. Indeed, whenever the play is re-played, the actors all around the world call each other by their proper names 3 , confronting their personal bodies and existences to the respective translations of 3 The use of the proper names of the actors tends to reappear in contemporary theatre as a mode of indicating “authenticity” (as the discussion after my paper was delivered at the conference sufficiently proved). It is, nevertheless, a dramaturgical device like any other, which additionally blurs the already confusing semiotic status of theatrical names and the ontological status of fictional entities they refer to. I cannot enter into that intriguing discussion here, but it is certainly one worth pursuing along the lines suggested by Michael Y. Bennett (see Literature). 47 the play, so that this blending of sameness and difference in repetition works on the global level as well. By its very re-configured repeatable unrepeatability, Rambert’s The closure of love reverses and exacerbates the pivotal paradox Derrida detected in Artaud’s writing by creating a meta-play, a play within the play, endlessly repeated in the-almost-same mise-en-scène, but always with different actors, different embodiments, different contexts of “the world as play”. However, contrary to the violent scene of parricide that Derrida proclaimed to be necessarily haunting the stage Artaud so desperately wanted to clear from God’s repressive presence, Rambert’s play, and its never-ending differential movement, is opened up to the terrifying encounter of sexual differences, to the desperate search for an Irigarayan “way of love”, for a way out of its fatal closure, which, like the closure of representation, results to be founded on what it declaratively tries to eschew: the metaphysics of self-presence, the mirage of the Real and the idea of Truth. To replace the originary scene of parricide with the troubling and yet eventually amorous “Two scene” already means to challenge the violent logic lurking behind Artaud’s ambition to abolish God. As opposed to all the critics of Rambert’s piece who praise the play for its universality – either willingly disregarding or completely missing the way in which it poses the question of sexual difference – I argue that the aforementioned meta-theatrical impact depends precisely upon allegiance to a revision of history and the blind alley in which the dominant culture of love seems to be still stuck, from the woman’s perspective. There are striking differences in Rambert’s play in how the male character and the female character use language and address the issue of love. It is the man who announces the inevitable closure, the impossibility of a common future, the exhaustion of a certain concept of love. For Stan, the love relationship he is in is now nothing else but the endless repetition of the same, of the theatre of love as the worn-out theatre of representation, the theatre of the sentimental fiction, built upon something occluded: the hidden, cruel truth of negativity which should now finally be revealed, spelt out, brought out in the open. It is the Other, the woman, who is accused of holding too firmly to this fictional, worn-out, sentimental notion of love, of desperately ignoring and pushing away the negativity, of impeding the necessity for it to come out finally and of pressuring the man to continue along a common path. However, according to Stan, what is this hidden truth of love, the repressed ground of its stale theatrical illusion? Clearly, Stan’s concept of love is impregnated by psychoanalytic terms, which formulate the relation to the other within the logic of Hegelian recognition and Lacanian desire. It is a logic that sees desire itself as grounded on the work of negativity, the unsignifiable Real, which marks the gap or lack in the constitution of the subject, allotting it to the gaze of the other, making it crave for something behind the other’s gaze – a logic, by the way, 48 governing the metatheatrical structure of the exemplary psychoanalytic tragedy, Hamlet (Armstrong 6–29). To falter for a moment in his destructive move, to recollect how love works, to recognise the Other, means for Stan, therefore, first and foremost, to evoke Audrey as an outstanding actress, the extraordinary screen and mirror to his own narcissism, and to project onto her the desired fulfilment of his own lack, proving the destructive logic of desire, whose constitutive insatiability produces the mirage of the foreclosed Real. Incapable of ever reaching its goal except in death, it can only produce a debasement of being into disposable things, objects and substances. Therefore, despite Stan’s intermittent nostalgic reminiscences of the lost love, the break-up will soon degenerate into an anticipated dispute over separate items that hold for him, ironically, particular sentimental value. Stan’s speech is forcefully “modern”, or should we say “postmodern”, steeped in quotations of clichés, ironic or not, in English jargon words like “turn-over” that pollute the French original with contemporary techno-managerial vocabulary, globally spread to kill meaning and communication. Such abuse of language can only lead to war. Perhaps it would not be such a terrible outcome if there were no children around: in the middle of Rambert’s performance, just before the moment in which the man and the woman switch their sides on the proscenium, as also their speaking positions, a chorus of children enters as if interrupting the rehearsal and reclaiming the stage. Not all of these children are Stan and Audrey’s children. Yet, let us recall the modern “recession of origins” that David Roberts ascribes to the first type of metadrama, which stands for the psychoanalytic plunging into the deep recesses of our memory. We could then say that the entire audience identifies with their children, who thus stand for all the children in the world. However, the table turns here, and the woman starts to talk back, to prevent the man from simply exiting. Her way out is radically different, for she re-frames the meta- reference to the theatre to serve the right for the Other to answer and to inaugurate the perspective of the Two, especially since the break-up, any break-up, is never exclusively personal. It always somehow affects the entire world. In the temporal scheme of the play, just as in one of the histories of civilisation, the woman arrives second, indeed, she has been forced to cultivate, as Nietzsche would say, “the instinct for a secondary role” (69). The second part of the play will therefore be given over to this internal supplement of the man’s logorrheic onset, that is, to her revision, to her refusal of the closure, to her challenge of the logic of the same, to her mimesis, her parody, her echo of Stan’s speech, to the deployment, that is, of the most cherished Irigarayan strategies of deconstruction and dislocation of all closures – of thought, of sexuality, of identity and, above all, of human becoming and of love as its horizon. The woman’s counter-attack will, as a matter of fact, make the man listen to himself since it will mock his defilement of language and especially the very word war, let alone the 49 grandiosity of the role Stan assigned to himself in it, sneaking out as the deserter from the battlefield of love, caring little for what this war, the war of words, will produce for their children, as for all the children of the world. Her recollection of their love has nothing to do with splitting the ego, desires and projections but instead with joining seemingly disparate facets of life in daily work, regardless of who or what comes first. Audrey, therefore, debunks Stan’s notion of the Real, both in love and in the theatre, as resting on violence and destruction, on an unacknowledged – Artaudian – fascination with death and cruelty. The body, her body, is for Audrey neither a thing to be exposed, displayed and debased, nor a mirror or a screen for Stan’s “flamboyant exteriority”, but the endangered locus of their common becoming and transcendence, which here replaces the emblematically empty circle, the O of Ophelia’s lap, the castration anxiety that according to Philip Armstrong lurks behind the epistemological failure of Hamlet’s “Mousetrap” (Armstrong 20–25). From this locus, Pascal Rambert’s equally humiliated woman will make another attempt to call the man back. Although she cannot help but see in the two of them the inheritors of Masaccio’s touching interpretation of the Expulsion of Adam and Eve from Eden, the woman prefers to cast herself as Eurydice, “holding out her white hand”, “walking with the man in a common dream”, “coming back to life creating and procreating”, opening up the temporality of the Two, rather than the substantiality of the one. The man will not join her, but the play will still end on an ambivalent note since the finales of their respective speeches make both man and woman acknowledge the need to continue their work as actors, that is, to continue repeating the play, and, to do so, as all the lovers of the world, over and over again. As opposed to the internal reduplication and never-ending repetition endorsed by the intensely lit space of the play in Rambert’s Clôture de l’amour, disturbed only for a moment by the uncanny irruption of children reminding the couple who is the unacknowledged internal audience to their theatrical display, Tim Crouch’s The Author, as I have already suggested, represents metadrama’s potential for extraversion, inaugurated by Calderón’s The Great Theatre of the World. Now, I am far from suggesting that Tim Crouch’s post-postdramatic Author longs for a medieval faith in the unshakeable ground of God’s “true presence”, but the structure Crouch envisaged, and the topics discussed by his characters, certainly do invoke a parallel tradition which, just like Rambert’s piece, places theatre-making squarely into the field of ultimate ontological, epistemological and, above all, ethical questions of humanity. This cunning metadrama could figure indeed as an extreme version of David Roberts’s second type since here, the space of the play, just as much as the world of the play, is not reduplicated, as in Rambert’s piece, but turns out to be almost non-existent: the entire action takes place as if outside the conventionally established borders of 50 drama, in the intensely lit space of the audience, in what seems to be the form of, again, a narrative address by theatre producers to the flabbergasted members of the actual public, divided into two groups facing each other, with only a tiny vacant corridor in-between them. The producers are visible and present, seated amongst others, only talking about their preparations for the show, which the audience never actually witnesses, except for one very short scene, just to have a glimpse of what it was supposed to be, a tiny moment of re-play of the creative process that introduces the audience to a crude, violent “slice of life” of a raped young woman Karen, a scene that quickly blends with the situation of the audience witnessing its re-creation. As in Rambert’s play, the actors are instructed to appear in The Author under their own, real life names as well, but the name of the author and director of the play, Tim Crouch, is always supposed to remain the same, regardless of the actor who would take his part. If Rambert’s actors can seemingly act as if no one is watching them, as if the fourth wall is shielding them from any public responsibility, only to be reminded that there is an internal audience that they ignore just as much as the real one, Crouch reverses the theatrical situation by focusing on all actual audiences of his play and by openly accusing them to consist of consumers and voyeurs who display the same kind of irresponsible indifference towards the “obscenity” of what they nevertheless insatiably watch, be it violence in the theatre or outside of it, on the screen or in their neighbourhoods. Besides framing the entire play by the appearance and the monologues of the very author who wrote them – supposedly, the same Tim Crouch who also appears in the performance as the actor playing himself – Crouch parallels Calderón’s structural tautology in his complete conflation of acting with a chance to act ethically. Just like Calderón’s members of humanity who are allowed to exercise their free will and yet listen to the prompter named Faith, who advises them to choose to do good and thus acquire a place next to the Author-God at the supper to which he invites them after the performance, so also all the characters in Crouch’s play – the members of the actual audience included – are given an opportunity to take a stand when it comes to the ethical meaning and purpose of a theatre representation, especially the one representing graphic images of violence. Instead of Faith who figures as a prompter in Calderón’s piece, here, however, we have an ironic, if not diabolic advisor, a character of a deluded member of the audience – initially played by Adrian Howells – prompting the audience constantly to respond to his infantile enthusiasm for theatre’s most superficial attractions. The irony befalls the figure of the Author as well: the contemporary God-like creator turns out now to be a monomaniacal torturer of the actors he summoned, so absorbed in his righteous need to show the violence of the world to the world that he inevitably perpetuates it, thus destroying the actors’ lives, making them martyrs of a morality play with doubtful didactic outcomes. Unlike Rambert’s actors, who search for the truth of their love in other representations, 51 not only in Masaccio’s picture but also in the myths of Adam and Eve, Orpheus and Eurydice and even in the myth of John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s love, Crouch’s characters search for the cause and origin of violence outside of representation: the character of the actress, initially interpreted by Esther Smith, claims that she went to the beaten women’s shelter in order to understand the character of Eshma she has to interpret, where she met Karen, the actual relay for the effet du réel that the actress wants to produce through her interpretation. It turns out that the character of Karen, whom the audience got acquainted with in the rehearsed fragment of the inset play, is not part of the play in preparation, but only a kernel of reality used to make that play more “real” . Moreover, the whole troupe visits an unknown East-European country in the war for the same purpose, just to grasp why a man would rape his own daughter and then use that knowledge in performance. Even the Author, Tim Crouch, declares at the outset of The Author that he decided to kill himself by drowning in a coffin-like tub of a spa, just to taste what death is like, or perhaps also to assume the ultimate responsibility for all the symbolical capital he used to exploit by representing images of violence to gain success and fame. To sum up the surprising resonances with Calderón’s emblematic metadrama, there is in Tim Crouch’s play – an allegorical play, by the explicit designation, that the author professes within the play – even the mention of a dinner party to which “the author” invites his actors at the end of the show, just as the God-like Author does in The Great Theatre of the World. Crouch’s dinner party, however, ends in the horror of all horrors: if Calderón’s innocent unborn child ends in a Limbo since it never had a chance even to get an idea of what ethics means, here child appears in the guise of Esther’s baby, innocently sleeping while the author – as, again, he himself confesses to the audience – masturbates to the internet child pornography he is watching on the computer screen while the rest of the guests, and his wife, go to sleep. Disgust that this confession may generate among the members of the audience is thoroughly welcome, for the Author finally kills himself indeed, right after having announced that writing had left him, before he even had the chance to leave it first and abandon the space of the play – as, we may add, Artaud had anyway wished the author to do. 4 The contrasting two examples I decided to reflect upon in this paper thus nicely point to the limits of contemporary dramaturgical ambitions to match the prevailing impulse of forgetting the pressures and obligations towards a pre-existing play- text and devise theatre that would somehow spring from its own internal and momentary necessity. Whether engulfed in “universals” such as the issue of love and the question of sexual difference, or tackling the thorniest of all violent outrages 4 The character of the author re-appears in a number of contemporary British plays, as Dan Rebellato points out, but it is striking that he never sees this obsession in the light of Artaud’s (and Derrida’s), problematisation of this role, so particularly invested in drama as a controversial case of literary “ownership”, but rather chooses to connect Crouch’s “death of the author” with Barthes’s famous essay. 52 currently plaguing the world, the two dramatic constructions, deconstructions and reconstructions of representation that I chose as exemplary cannot but turn around their very theatrical conditions, that is, around the fundamental puzzle that never slips from the minds of their authors: what’s theatre got to do with it? By rejuvenating inherited modes of metadramatic self-questioning, they testify to the curious fact that theatre – even the dramatic one – was never meant to be a representation of something absent from the here and now of its actual happening, of its performance, of its immediacy, its production of feelings, meanings and epiphanic moments. However, the reverse is true as well, that theatre was never only about the here and now of the sheer spontaneity and eventfulness; it was always closely tied to the very phenomenon of literacy, as a challenge posed by orality, corporeality and contextuality to the apparent semiotic fixity and narrative determinations of the written word. 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Bottoms, Stephen. “ Authorizing the Audience: The conceptual drama of Tim Crouch.” Performance Research: A Journal of the Performing Arts, vol. 14, no. 1, 2009, pp. 65–76. —. “Materialising the Audience: Tim Crouch’s Sight Specifics in ENGLAND and The Author.” Contemporary Theatre Review, vol. 21, no. 4, 2011, pp. 445–463. Delgado-García, Cristina. “‘We’re All in This Together‘: Reality, Vulnerability and Democratic Representation in Tim Crouch’s The Author.” On Precariousness. Vulnerabilities, Responsibilities, Communities in 21st-Century British Drama and Theatre, edited by Mireia Aragay and Martin Middeke, De Gruyter, 2017, pp. 91–108. Derrida, Jacques. Écriture et différence. Seuil, 1967. Henke, Christopher. “Precarious Virtuality in Participatory Theatre: Tim Crouch’s The Author.” On Precariousness. Vulnerabilities, Responsibilities, Communities in 21st- Century British Drama and Theatre, edited by Mireia Aragay and Martin Middeke, De Gruyter, 2017, pp. 77–90. Irigaray, Luce. The Way of Love. Trans. by H. Bostic, Continuum, 2002. Jarcho, Julia. Writing and the Modern Stage. Theater Beyond Drama. Cambridge University Press, 2017. Nietzsche, Friedrich. Beyond Good and Evil. Prelude to a Philosophy of Future, edited by R-P . Horstman and J. Norman, trans. by J. Norman, Cambridge University Press, 2002. Rebellato, Dan. “Exit the Author.” Contemporary British Theatre. Breaking New Grounds, edited by Vicki Angelaki, Palgrave Macmillan, 2013, pp. 9–31. Roberts, David. “The Play within the Play and the Closure of Representation.” The Play within the Play. The Performance of Meta-Theatre and Self-Reflection, edited by G. Fischer and B. Greiner, Rodopi, 2007, pp. 37–46. Tomlin, Liz. “Foreword: Dramatic Developments.” Contemporary British Theatre. Breaking New Grounds, edited by Vicki Angelaki, Palgrave Macmillan, 2013, pp. viii–xxvi. 54 UDK 82.09-2:792 UDK 792:82.09-2 DOI 10.51937/Amfiteater-2022-1/54-65 V prispevku razpravljam o načinih, kako se metadramske modalnosti simultane dekonstrukcije in rekonstrukcije fiktivnega vesolja pojavljajo v dveh sodobnih igrah, Zapiranju ljubezni (2011) Pascala Ramberta in Avtorju (2009) Tima Croucha. Pokažem, da obe priznani igri spadata v trdoživo avtorefleksivno linijo dramatike, ki preizprašuje zaprtje reprezentacije, ki se začenja v zgodnjem modernem obdobju s klasičnimi besedili, kakršni sta Shakespearov Hamlet in Calderónovo Veliko gledališče sveta. Ključne besede: zaprtje reprezentacije, dekonstrukcija, metadrama, Shakespeare, Calderón, Rambert, Crouch Lada Čale Feldman je redna profesorica in predstojnica oddelka za teatrologijo na Fakulteti za humanistiko in družbene vede na Univerzi v Zagrebu. Pri raziskovanju se osredotoča na področja gledališča, performansa in študij spola. Med drugimi je v hrvaščini objavila monografije Igra v igri v hrvaškem gledališču, 1997; Evridikini obrati, 2001; Femina ludens, 2005; Sanjam ne gre zaupati, 2012; ter Onkraj odra, 2019. Je tudi soavtorica knjige V kanonu, študije o dvojništvu, 2008 (z M. Čale), ter Uvoda v feministično literarno kritiko, 2012 (z A. Tomljanović). Bila je sourednica več posebnih izdaj revij in številnih zbirk, med drugim v angleščini Strah, smrt in upor, Etnografija vojne: Hrvaška 1991-92, 1993 (z I. Prico in R. Senjković), ter Napačno uprizarjanje: eseji v spremenljivih vidikih, 2014. Za eseje in knjige je prejela štiri nagrade, njen prispevek o »Napačnem uprizarjanju« v soavtorstvu z M. Blažević je objavljen v knjigi Bryana Reynolda Študije performansa: ključne besede, koncepti in teorije, 2014. lcfeldma@ffzg.hr 55 Dekonstrukcija in rekonstrukcija fikcijskega sveta: o dveh nasprotujočih si primerih sodobne metadrame Lada Čale Feldman Fakulteta za humanistiko in družbene vede, Univerza v Zagrebu V razpravi nameravam pretresti relevantnost in odpornost dramskega gledališča, se pravi gledališča, ki se zanaša na besedilno predlogo, ki predhaja gledališki izvedbi, z vidika notranjih, podedovanih modusov teoretizacije in avtopoetskega pomlajevanja, ki očitno kljubujejo domnevni smrti tovrstnega gledališča v obdobju postdramskega, ne več dramskega ali postpostdramskega besedila. Vpogled v to, kako se ti modusi uporabljajo v sodobni dramatiki, bi nam, po mojem mnenju, lahko pomagal razumeti, kako je prišlo do tega, da se dramsko besedilo trenutno, kot vse kaže, vrača in maščuje vsem poskusom, da bi ga reducirali na čisto jezikovno in literarno entiteto ter ga s tem ločili od dejanskosti odra, kar mu že od nekdaj zagotavlja strukturno specifičnost, tudi v časih, ko so ga obravnavali zgolj kot, z besedami Benjamina Bennetta (27–56), eno od »literarnih zvrsti«. Sodobna dramatika poskuša po svojih najboljših močeh iti v korak s postdramskimi uprizoritvami in jih porajati z lastnimi poskusi, da bi se iztrgala in osvobodila od »zaprtja reprezentacije« kot invariantne strukture zahodnega gledališča, ki jo je napadal že Artaud, teoretiziral pa Derrida kot metafizično po svojem bistvu. Vendar so poskusi, da bi ubežali tej strukturi, ogrozili sam pojem drame, saj pogosto privzamejo obliko bodisi »liričnih« ali »epskih« strategij »dedramatizacije«: a kot poudarjeno trdi Liz Tomlin v predgovoru k zbirki esejev o sodobnem britanskem gledališču Vicki Angelaki, preden odpišemo dramsko gledališče kot neodpravljivo utemeljeno v totaliteti, zaprtju in časovno napredujočem fikcijskem kozmosu, zaprtem v predobstoječe dramsko besedilo, bi bilo treba razmisliti o sami zgodovinski točnosti takšne definicije, kaj šele pripoznati spoštovanja vredno dramsko tradicijo samorefleksivne kritike. Sodobni dramatiki obujajo tovrstno samorefleksivnost s tem, ko se, na primer, izrecno sklicujejo na ključne elemente samega gledališkega medija – na avtorje, igre, igralce, občinstvo, dramsko igro in gledalstvo, pa tudi na prostore, se pravi, na ontologije, ki jih ti akterji in dejavnosti domnevno naseljujejo. V nasprotju s Tomlin, ki poudarja modernistične predhodnike, na primer Pirandella in Geneta – 56 katerih metadramska soočenja z »realnim« zagotovo spadajo med najzanimivejše motnje v zgoraj omenjeni invariantni strukturi – bom na tem mestu posegla še precej dlje v zgodovino dramskega gledališča. Pri tem sledim premislekom Davida Roberta o tem, kako bi Derridajeva razprava o Artaudu lahko služila kot izhodišče za opredelitev dveh osnovnih tipov metadrame. Pokazala bom, da oba prototipa iz zgodnje moderne dobe, ki ju izpostavi Roberts – Shakespearov Hamlet in Calderónovo Veliko gledališče sveta – zares lahko uporabimo kot vzorčna primera za razumevanje obeh skrajnih točk v sodobnem metadramskem eksperimentiranju, ki sem ju izbrala. Drugače od Lehmana in drugih izvedencev za performans, ki, z besedami Julie Jarcho, kot kaže, »izkazujejo nekakšno selektivno amnezijo, kar se tiče Derridajeve kritike« (4), nas Roberts opomni na to, kako sumničav je Derrida glede artaudovskih sanj o pobegu iz zaprtega kroga reprezentacije. Sodeč po njegovi različici Derridajeve teze, tradicionalno gledališče, ki ga hoče Artaud ukiniti, implicira »prevlado besede« in »primat utemeljevalnega logosa, ki prizorišču dodeli naslednje elemente: avtorja- ustvarjalca, odsotnega, oddaljenega, oboroženega z besedilom, ki nadzoruje in obvladuje pomen reprezentacije, igralce pa pripravi k temu, da udejanjajo voljo nevidnega gospodarja pred občinstvom gledalcev, potrošnikov, voajerjev« (37). Vendar pa Derrida opozarja tudi, da je Artaudovo gledališče neponovljive geste in samoprezence nemogoče, saj se ponavljanju ni mogoče izogniti, vse, kar lahko gledališče naredi za to, da bi spodkopalo zgoraj opisano teološko strukturo, pa je, da »razgali tisto, kar krog reprezentacije vsebuje«, da reprezentira »mejo reprezentacije« s tem, ko re-prezentira reprezentacijo (prav tam 37–38). Na podlagi teh premis Roberts predstavi dva tipa metadrame, med katerima razlikuje glede na nasprotujoče si strategije, ki jih uporabljata za to, da spodkopljeta smrtonosno zaprtje. Oba tipa izhajata iz inherentne zmožnosti dramskega gledališča, da preizprašuje lastne meje tako, da postavi v ospredje prostorsko dvojnost, ki jo implicira, saj »vsaka drama odpira dejanski prostor igre, obenem pa tudi reprezentira svet kot igro« (prav tam). Prvi, t. i. »samokritični« tip metadrame mejo reprezentacije vključi v okvir lastne »igre kot sveta« v obliki vložene igre – na primer dobro znani primer »mišnice« v Hamletu, za katero se zdi, da jo upravlja neki nevidni in nezanesljivi duh v stroju. Drugi, »samopotrjujoči« tip, katerega vzorčni primer je Calderónovo Veliko gledališče sveta, pa mejo projicira navzven, v »svet kot igro«, tako da avtorja, skritega v zaodrju, prikaže v ospredju, kot vsemogočnega Boga, ki predstavo hkrati vodi in gleda in ki nazadnje vsem dejanskim gledalcem Calderónove igre tudi podeli bodisi odrešitev bodisi prekletstvo. Z namenom, da povzamem ideološki zastavek te opozicije, naj to vse prekratko obrazložitev končam s tem, da še enkrat navedem besede Davida Robertsa: 57 [P]rvi se poslužuje podvojitve, da s tem ponotranji izvor in vzročnost prizora, drugi pa, da izvor in vzročnost pozunanji. [...] Teološko in zgodovinsko gledano, ta tipa kažeta v dve nasprotni smeri: igra v igri prek obrata navznoter predhaja moderni recesiji izvora, se pravi, paradoksu samoimplikacije; gledališče sveta pa se ozre nazaj in prek obrata navzven ponovno potrdi srednjeveško zaprtje pomena, katerega rezultat je alegorija samoeksplikacije. (38–39) Kot primera iz sodobnosti, ki po mojem mnenju spominjata na omenjena tipa samorefleksivnosti, lahko navedem besedili Clôture de l’amour (2011) Pascala Ramberta ter The Author (2009) Tima Croucha. Prav ti metadramski besedili sem izbrala, ker v naslovih, zanimivo, vsebujeta določene izpostavljene asociacije na Derridajev komentar k Artaudu in na zgoraj opisano »invariantno strukturo« zahodnega gledališča: zdi, se, da prvi namiguje na zaprtje reprezentacije, drugi pa prikliče v spomin osrednji, če ne že kar božanski položaj avtorja. Čeprav so francoski naslov Rambertove igre v angleščino prevedli kot The Closing of Love ali Love’s End (Zapiranje ljubezni oziroma Konec ljubezni), sama vztrajam pri aluzivnem vtisu izvornega naslova, ki uporabi prav isto besedo – clôture – kot Derrida pri opisovanju paradoksa Artaudovih ambicij. Po mojem mnenju Rambertova igra tako namenoma povezuje krizo ljubezni s krizo reprezentacije in kulture na sploh, še posebej pa s krizo gledališča. Izbor Rambertove igre lahko upraviči že tudi zgolj velika odmevnost, ki ga je izzvala, saj je, drugače od Avtorja Tima Croucha, ki je gostoval večinoma po anglo-ameriškem svetu, Zaprtje ljubezni (kot bi sama prevedla Rambertov naslov) že doseglo status mednarodnega fenomena, saj so ga uprizorili že v več kot dvajset jezikih po vsem svetu, od Brazilije in ZDA, prek Slovenije, Hrvaške in Italije pa vse do Egipta, Rusije, Kitajske in Japonske. Res pa so o Crouchevem besedilu široko razpravljali in ga imajo številni kritiki (Bottoms, Rebellato, Henke, Delgado-García in drugi) za res vplivno igro, vendar pa navdušenju za uprizarjanje Rambertovega besedila vsaj za zdaj še ni sledila resnejša strokovna analiza njegove planetarne privlačnosti. 1 Zakaj torej ravno Zaprtje ljubezni? Naj še enkrat ponovim, da je zaprtje mišljeno kot dvoumna beseda, ki označuje samozadostnost in samostojnost nekega vesolja, obenem pa tudi konec tega vesolja. V želji, da bi hkrati zavrnil in razglasil zaprtje reprezentacije, da bi jo končal, ukinil, hkrati pa jo v enem zamahu tudi oživil pod lastnimi pogoji, si je Artaud prizadeval, kot nas opominja Roberts, uvesti čisto gledališče prezence, ki ga ne bi od zunaj upravljala še neka druga roka. Se pravi, z drugimi besedami, vzpostaviti čisto imanenco življenja – in smrti. V takšnem gledališču igralec postane mučenik, ki dovoli svoje lastno uničenje z namenom, da postane spektakel, ki dokazuje imanenco 1 Edina izjema, za katero vem, je monografska izdaja revije Parages, št. 7, 2020, v kateri lahko najdemo navdihujoč esej o Rambertu kot dramatiku in režiserju, ki pa igro omenja zgolj mimogrede, ne da bi se le lotil interpretativne analize. Revijo objavlja Narodno gledališče v Strasbourgu, s katerim Rambert redno sodeluje, tako da je izdaja, posvečena Rambertu, prej poklon hišnemu avtorju kot strokovna publikacija. Kljub temu je v reviji mogoče najti nekaj zanimivih pripomb urednika Frederica Vossierja pa tudi Claudine Galea in obeh igralcev, ki sta prva nastopila v francoski različici igre, Stanislasa Nor- daya in Audrey Bonnet. 58 negacije. 2 Artaud si je zamislil celo vrsto tehnik, s katerimi bi bilo mogoče napasti ali otopiti občinstvo ali pa ga soočiti z neizbežno smrtjo: s tem, ko je besnel proti gledališču svojega časa, je izražal ne le gnus do »psiholoških« dilem, ampak še posebej do vse cenene sentimentalnosti in verbalnosti meščanskih družinskih dram. Na prvi pogled se zdi, da Pascal Rambert naredi ravno nasprotno: v Zaprtju ljubezni piše logorejsko igro za prastari aparat théâtre àl‘italienne, ki klavstrofobično in obsesivno naslavlja ravno preizkušnje in stiske značilnega modernega meščanskega zakonskega para. A ker manjka dialoška stihomitija, Zaprtje ljubezni sestavljata, tako se zdi, dva zaporedna monologa, ki pa sta v resnici dva monomanična »pripovedna« glasova, prisiljena v »dramatični« spopad. Kot če bi Rambert, soočen s trenutnim trendom reprezentiranja sveta kot razlomljenega v babilonsko množico pripovednih ontologij, poskušal preizkusiti obliko drame, potisniti njene trenutne implozije do najskrajnejših meja, zamejiti to obsedenost s samopripovedovanjem tako, da jo razpostavi v skupnem prostoru/času tistega, kar bo Badiou poimenoval »prizor Dveh« (29), arhetipske, pa vendar tako moderne drame spolov. Pri tem Rambert poudarja tudi nujnost, da lika potrpežljivo vztrajata v molku vsak skoraj po celo uro, da poslušata drug drugega in da se odzivata na drugega izključno prek svojih teles, da molče izzivata nenamerne dialoške poante, prekinitve, obotavljanja in modifikacije ali pa nemara dodatni zagon znotraj monološke teksture partnerjevega govora. Dialoški spopad tu ni verbalen, odvija se v prostoru med jezikom enega ter telesom drugega. Rambertova igralca drug drugega naslavljata po svojih pravih, vsakdanjih imenih, saj sta protagonista igre »dejansko« – se pravi, tako v tem možnem svetu, v fikcijskem vesolju igre, kot tudi v dejanskem svetu njegovega uprizarjanja – tudi sama igralca. Ta korak je mnogo bliže Artaudovi poetiki, kot se nemara zdi, saj Rambert s tem povzroči kolaps fikcije v živo, dihajočo, utelešeno dejanskost odra: prostor igre in sveta kot igre tako postaneta en in isti prostor. Njegova namišljena igralca sta namreč zasačena sredi vaje za neko neznano igro, ki je morda prav tako igra o ljubezni, morda gre prav za to igro, v kateri, kot empirična igralca, pravkar dejansko igrata. Soočena s to smrtonosno ločitvijo, se tako moški in ženska, če naj to izrazimo prek pravega paradoksa, zdita ravno to, kar dejansko tudi sta – bitji, ki dejansko trpita zaradi bolečih jezikovnih udarcev, ki jih njuna lika oddajata v telesi drug drugega, pa vendar bitji, ki v samem tukaj in zdaj svojih ireduktibilnih, intimnih, uprizarjajočih jazov spet »samo igrata«, kot bi bila, celo potem ko se par že razide, še vedno pripravljena ponovno začeti z vajo in igro. Dejansko kadar koli igro uprizarjajo, igralci po vsem svetu drug drugega kličejo po pravih imenih, 3 s tem pa svoja osebna telesa in eksistence soočajo z 2 V tej luči se je treba poglobiti v pred kratkim objavljeno monografijo Kimberly Jannarone Artaud in njegovi dvojniki (Ar- taud and his Doubles), 2015. Avtorica bere Artaudovo besedilo v zgodovinskem kontekstu in najde številna ujemanja med njegovimi obsesivnimi motivi in metaforami na eni strani ter fašistično retoriko na drugi, še posebej, kar se tiče nenehnega izpostavljanja »vseprisotnosti zla, pregrešnosti telesa in potrebe po sistematični uporabi krutosti in terorja« (1). 3 Uporaba pravih imen igralcev se v sodobnem gledališču pogosto pojavlja kot način za nakazovanje »avtentičnosti« (kot je v zadostni meri dokazala že diskusija po predstavitvi pričujoče razprave na konferenci). Kljub temu pa gre pri tem za dramaturško sredstvo, takšno, kot so vsa druga, ki še dodatno zabriše že tako nejasni semiotični status gledaliških imen in 59 vsakokratnim prevodom igre, tako da to mešanje istosti in razlike v ponavljanju deluje tudi na globalni ravni. Že s samo rekonfigurirano ponovljivo neponovljivostjo Rambertovo Zaprtje ljubezni zaobrne in še poglobi ključni paradoks, ki ga je Derrida zaznal v Artaudovih spisih, s tem, ko ustvari metaigro, igro v igri, ki se neskončno ponavlja v skoraj enaki mizansceni, a vsakič z drugimi igralci, drugimi utelešenji, drugačnim kontekstom »sveta kot igre«. Vendar pa se, nasprotno nasilnemu prizoru očetomora, ki, kot je razglasil Derrida, nujno straši po odru, ki ga je Artaud tako obupano hotel očistiti zatiralske prisotnosti Boga, Rambertova igra s svojim neskončnim diferencialnim gibanjem odpira grozljivemu srečanju s spolnimi razlikami, obupanemu iskanju irigarayevske »poti ljubezni«, izhoda iz njenega smrtonosnega zaprtja, za kar se, tako kot za zaprtje reprezentacije, izkaže, da temelji prav na tistem, čemur se deklarativno skuša izogniti: na metafiziki samoprezence, prikazni Realnega in ideji Resnice. Nadomestiti izvorni prizor očetomora s sicer zaskrbljujočim, a navsezadnje vendarle ljubezenskim »prizorom Dveh« že pomeni izzvati nasilno logiko, ki preži za Artaudovo željo, da bi ukinil Boga. V nasprotju z vsemi kritiki Rambertove igre, ki jo hvalijo zaradi njene univerzalnosti – s čimer pa bodisi hote zanemarijo ali pa povsem zgrešijo način, na katerega zastavlja vprašanje spolne razlike – trdim, da je prej omenjeni metagledališki vtis odvisen prav od zavezanosti reviziji zgodovine in od slepe ulice, v kateri se zdi, da še vedno tiči prevladujoča kultura ljubezni z vidika ženske. V Rambertovi igri res prihaja do osupljivih razlik glede tega, kako moški in ženski lik uporabljata jezik in kako naslavljata vprašanje ljubezni. Moški je tisti, ki razglasi neizbežno zaprtje, nemožnost skupne prihodnosti, izčrpanost določenega pojmovanja ljubezni. Kar se Stana tiče, ljubezenski odnos, v katerem se nahaja, ni več nič drugega kot neskončno ponavljanje istega, gledališča ljubezni kot iztrošenega gledališča reprezentacije, gledališča sentimentalne fikcije, ki je zgrajeno na nečem okludiranem: na skriti, kruti resnici negativnosti, ki bi jo bilo treba zdaj dokončno razkriti, ubesediti, privesti na odprto. Drugi, ženska je tista, ki jo obtožuje, da se preveč krčevito oklepa tega fikcijskega, iztrošenega, sentimentalnega pojmovanja ljubezni, da obupano ignorira in odriva negativnost, da preprečuje nujnost tega, da bi končno prišla na dan, in da sili moškega v to, da nadaljuje po skupni poti. Ampak kaj je, po Stanovem mnenju, ta skrita resnica ljubezni, potlačeni temelj njene postane gledališke iluzije? Očitno je Stanovo pojmovanje ljubezni prežeto s psihoanalitičnimi izrazi, ki formulirajo razmerje do drugega v okviru logike heglovskega prepoznanja in lacanovske želje. Naj vas opomnim, da gre pri tem za logiko, ki samo željo pojmuje kot utemeljeno v delu negativnosti, na Realnem, ki mu ni mogoče pripisati pomena, ki zaznamuje vrzel ali manko v konstituciji subjekta in ga pripiše pogledu drugega, ontološkega statusa fikcijskih entitet, na katere se nanašajo. Na tem mestu se ne morem spuščati v to zanimivo razpravo, vsekakor pa bi jo bilo vredno raziskati, kot je to začrtal Michael Y. Bennet (glej Literaturo). 60 tako da hlepi po nečem skritem za pogledom drugega – mimogrede, to je tudi logika, ki obvladuje metagledališko strukturo eksemplarične psihoanalitične tragedije – Hamleta (Armstrong 6–29). Za trenutek zastati v tej destruktivnosti, se spomniti, kako ljubezen deluje, prepoznati Drugega, za Stana potemtakem pomeni v prvi vrsti izzvati Audrey kot izstopajočo igralko, kot izjemen zaslon in zrcalo za njegov lastni narcizem, ter nanjo projicirati zaželeno izpolnitev lastnega manka, s čimer bi dokazal destruktivno logiko želje, katere konstitutivna nezadovoljivost proizvaja privid izključenega Realnega. Ker je želja nezmožna, da bi kadar koli dosegla svoj cilj, razen v smrti, lahko proizvede samo razvrednotenje biti v stvari za enkratno uporabo, v objekte in substance. Razhajanje se bo torej kljub Stanovim občasnim nostalgičnim reminiscencam o izgubljeni ljubezni kmalu spridilo v pričakovano prerekanje glede različnih predmetov, ki imajo zanj, kako ironično, posebno sentimentalno vrednost. Stanova govorica je na silo »moderna«, morda bi morali reči kar »postmoderna«, prežeta z navedki klišejev, bolj ali manj ironičnimi, z angleškimi žargonskimi besedami, kakršna je na primer »turn-over«, ki francoski original onesnažijo s sodobnim tehnomenedžerskim besednjakom, ki se širi globalno, da bi iztrebil pomen in komunikacijo. Takšna zloraba jezika lahko vodi samo v vojno, kar samo po sebi morda še ne bi bilo tako grozno, če ne bi bilo otrok: sredi Rambertove predstave, tik preden moški in ženska zamenjata strani na prosceniju, s tem pa tudi položaj govorca, nastopi zbor otrok, ki kot da prekinejo vajo in si spet prilastijo oder. Sicer niso vsi ti otroci potomci Stana in Audrey, a če se spomnimo na moderno »recesijo izvorov«, ki jo David Roberts pripisuje prvemu tipu metadrame, kar predstavlja psihoanalitično poglabljanje v najgloblje kotičke našega spomina, bi lahko rekli, da se celotno občinstvo identificira z njunimi otroki, ki tako zastopajo vse otroke tega sveta. Vendar pa se na tem mestu stvar obrne in ženska začne ugovarjati ter tako prepreči moškemu, da bi enostavno odšel. Njena pot iz tega je radikalno drugačna, saj metareferenco na gledališče prestavi v nov okvir, tako da služi pravici Drugega do odgovora in do uvajanja perspektive Dveh, še posebej zato, ker razhod, noben razhod, ni nikoli izključno oseben; na neki način vedno vpliva na ves svet. V časovni shemi igre, natanko tako kot v shemi zgodovine civilizacije, ženska nastopi druga, pravzaprav je bila prisiljena, kot bi dejal Nietzsche, gojiti »nagon za drugo vlogo« (69). Drugi del igre bo potemtakem prepuščen temu notranjemu dopolnilu logorejičnega zastavka moškega, se pravi, njeni reviziji, njeni zavrnitvi zaprtja, njenemu izzivanju logike istega, njeni mimesis, njeni parodiji, njenemu odjeku Stanovega govora, se pravi, uvajanju najbolj opevanih irigarayevskih strategij dekonstrukcije in premeščanja vseh zaprtij – misli, seksualnosti, identitete in, predvsem, človeškega postanka ter ljubezni kot njegovega horizonta. Protinapad ženske bo, če smo že pri tem, moškega prisilil, da prisluhne samemu sebi, saj se bo norčevala iz njegovega oskrunjenja jezika, 61 še prav posebej pa iz same besedne vojne, če sploh ne omenjamo grandioznosti vloge, ki si jo je Stan pripisal v njej, ko se je z bojišča ljubezni splazil kot dezerter, pri tem pa se ni kaj dosti oziral na to, kaj bo ta vojna, vojna besed, prinesla tako njunim otrokom kot tudi vsem otrokom sveta. To, kako se ona spominja njune ljubezni, nima nobene zveze s cepljenjem ega, z željami in projekcijami, gre prej za združevanje na videz nezdružljivih vidikov življenja v vsakdanjih opravilih ne glede na to, kdo ali kaj je prvo. Audrey potemtakem ovrže Stanovo pojmovanje Realnega, tako v ljubezni kot v gledališču, češ da temelji na nasilju in destrukciji, na nepriznani, artaudovski fascinaciji s smrtjo in krutostjo. Telo, njeno lastno telo, za Audrey ni ne stvar, ki jo je moč razgaliti, prikazati in onečastiti, pa tudi ne zrcalo ali zaslon za Stanov »gizdalinski videz«, temveč ogroženi kraj njunega skupnega postajanja in transcendence, ki na tem mestu nadomesti emblematično prazni krog, sklenjen krog Ofelijinega naročja, kastracijo tesnobe, ki, kot pravi Philip Armstrong, preži skrita za epistemološkim neuspehom Hamletove »mišnice« (Armstrong 20–25). Prav s tega mesta bo nič manj ponižana ženska Pascala Ramberta še enkrat poskusila priklicati moškega nazaj. Čeprav si ne more kaj, da ne bi v njiju videla naslednikov Masaccieve ganljive interpretacije Izgona Adama in Eve iz rajskega vrta, se ženska raje postavi v vlogo Evridike, ki »iztegne svojo belo roko«, »z njim stopa naprej skozi skupne sanje«, »se vračata v življenje ustvarjata in zaplajata«, odpira časovnost Dveh namesto substancialnosti enega. Moški se ji ne bo pridružil, kljub temu pa se bo igra končala z dvoumnim tonom, saj v zaključku obeh govorov tako moški kot ženska prepoznata potrebo, da nadaljujeta delo igralcev, se pravi, da še naprej ponavljata igro, in da morata to početi kot vsi ljubimci po vsem svetu, spet in spet. V nasprotju z notranjimi podvojitvami in neskončnim ponavljanjem, ki ga ponuja intenzivno osvetljeni igralni prostor Rambertove Clôture de l’amour, kar zgolj za hip prekine srhljivi vdor otrok, ki par opomnijo na to, kdo je nepripoznano notranje občinstvo njunega gledališkega razkazovanja, pa drama The Author Tima Croucha, kot sem že namignila, predstavlja možnost metadramskega obrata navzven, kot ga je uvedel Calderón v Velikem gledališču sveta. Seveda še zdaleč ne želim namigovati, da postpostdramski Avtor Tima Croucha hrepeni po srednjeveški veri v neomajni temelj »resnične prezence« Boga, vendar pa struktura, ki jo je zasnoval Crouch, in pa teme, o katerih razpravljajo njegovi liki, zagotovo prikličejo v spomin vzporedno tradicijo, ki, tako kot Rambertovo besedilo, gledališko delovanje umešča neposredno v polje ultimativnih ontoloških, epistemoloških, predvsem pa etičnih vprašanj človeštva. Ta bistroumna metadrama bi v resnici lahko predstavljala ekstremno različico drugega tipa po Davidu Robertsu, saj prostor igre, tako kot tudi svet igre, tu nista podvojena, tako kot pri Rambertu, temveč se izkaže, da tako rekoč ne obstajata: 62 celotno dogajanje se odvije tako rekoč zunaj konvencionalno vzpostavljenih meja drame, v intenzivno osvetljenem prostoru občinstva, v obliki, za katero se spet zdi, da gre za pripovedno naslavljanje zaprepadenih članov dejanske publike, ki so razdeljeni na dve skupini, obrnjeni druga proti drugi in ločeni zgolj z ozkim praznim hodnikom, s strani gledaliških ustvarjalcev. Ustvarjalci so vidni in prisotni, sedijo med drugimi, govorijo zgolj o svojih pripravah na predstavo, ki je občinstvo nikoli dejansko ne vidi, z izjemo enega samega zelo kratkega prizora, samo toliko, da dobijo bežen vpogled v to, kar naj bi predstava bila, droben hip posnetka ustvarjalnega procesa, ki občinstvu predstavi grobo, nasilno »rezino življenja« posiljene mlade ženske Karen. Gre za prizor, ki se hitro zlije s položajem občinstva, ki je priča poustvarjanju le-tega. Tako kot pri Rambertu imajo igralci navodilo, naj v Avtorju nastopajo s svojimi pravimi imeni iz resničnega življenja, samo ime avtorja in režiserja predstave Tima Croucha naj bi vedno ostalo enako ne glede na to, kateri igralec prevzame njegovo vlogo. Pri Rambertu se igralca očitno lahko obnašata, kot da ju nihče ne gleda, kot da ju pred kakršno koli javno odgovornostjo varuje četrta stena, obenem pa ju opominja, da obstaja tudi notranje občinstvo, ki ga ignorirata prav toliko kot dejanske gledalce, Crouch pa gledališko situacijo obrne s tem, ko se osredotoči na vse dejansko občinstvo svoje igre in jih odkrito obtoži, da niso nič drugega kot potrošniki in voajerji, ki izkazujejo enake vrste neodgovorno brezbrižnost do »obscenosti« tistega, kar kljub vsemu nenasitno gledajo, pa naj gre za nasilje v gledališču ali zunaj njega, na zaslonu ali v njihovih lastnih soseskah. Poleg tega, da vso igro uokviri s pojavo in monologi prav tistega avtorja, ki jih je napisal, domnevno istega Tima Croucha, ki nastopa tudi v sami predstavi kot igralec, ki igra samega sebe, Crouch potegne vzporednico s Calderonovo strukturno tavtologijo s tem, ko povsem zlije igranje s priložnostjo, da deluješ etično. Natanko tako kot Calderónovi pripadniki človeštva, ki dobijo priložnost, da ravnajo po lastni svobodni volji, pa vendarle poslušajo šepetalko po imenu Vera, ki jim svetuje, naj izberejo dobro in si tako zagotovijo mesto ob boku Avtorja - Boga pri večerji, na katero jih vabi po predstavi. Tudi vsi liki v Crouchevi igri, vključno s člani dejanskega občinstva, dobijo priložnost, da se postavijo zase, ko pride do etičnega pomena in namena gledališke reprezentacije, še posebej takšne, ki reprezentira eksplicitne podobe nasilja. A namesto z Vero, ki v Calderónovi drami nastopa v vlogi šepetalke, imamo tu opravka z ironičnim, če ne že kar diaboličnim svetovalcem, z likom razočaranega člana občinstva, ki ga je sprva igral Adrian Howells. Ta nenehno spodbuja občinstvo, da se odzivajo na njegovo otročje navdušenje nad kar najbolj površinskimi gledališkimi atrakcijami. Ironija doleti tudi lik samega Avtorja: izkaže se, da je sodobni bogu podobni stvarnik dandanes prej monomanični mučitelj igralcev, ki jih je sklical, tako zatopljen v svojo pravičniško potrebo po tem, da pokaže nasilnost sveta samemu svetu, da s tem neizogibno vzdržuje prav to nasilje in tako uničuje življenja igralcev ter iz njih dela mučenike moralitete s precej dvomljivimi didaktičnimi rezultati. Drugače 63 od Rambertovih igralcev, ki resnico svoje ljubezni iščeta pri drugih reprezentacijah, ne le v Masaccievi sliki, ampak tudi v mitih o Adamu in Evi, o Orfeju in Evridiki, celo v mitu o ljubezni med Johnom Lennonom in Yoko Ono, Croucheve osebe vzroke in izvor nasilja iščejo zunaj reprezentacije: lik igralke, ki jo je sprva igrala Esther Smith, trdi, da je obiskala zatočišče pretepene ženske, da bi razumela lik Eshme, ki ga mora igrati. Tam se je srečala s Karen, dejansko nosilko effet du réel, ki ga želi igralka podati s svojo interpretacijo lika. Izkaže se, da lik Karen, s katerim se je občinstvo seznanilo v fragmentu vložene igre, sploh ni bil del uprizoritve v procesu priprav, temveč le drobec realnosti, ki so ga uporabili, da bi igro naredili bolj »realno«. Še več, vsa skupina z enakim namenom obišče neznano vzhodnoevropsko državo, ki je sredi vojne, da bi tako lahko zapopadli, zakaj bi moški posilil lastno hčer, in potem to znanje uporabili v predstavi. Celo sam Avtor, Tim Crouch, na začetku Avtorja razglasi, da se je odločil ubiti se, tako da se bo utopil v krsti podobni banji nekega zdravilišča, samo da bi okusil, kakšna je smrt, ali pa, da bi prevzel končno odgovornost za ves simbolni kapital, ki ga je nekoč izrabljal z reprezentiranjem podob nasilja za to, da je dosegel uspeh in slavo. Kot zadnje presenetljivo ujemanje s Calderónovo emblematično metadramo omenimo še, da je v Crouchevi igri – gre za alegorično igro, kot jo izrecno označi avtor, kar izpove v okviru same igre – celo omenjena večerja, na katero »avtor« povabi igralce po koncu predstave, tako kot bogu podobni Avtor v Velikem gledališču sveta. Vendar pa se Croucheva večerja konča z grozo vseh grozot: pri Calderonu nedolžno nerojeno dete konča v vicah, saj nikdar ni imelo priložnosti, da bi si ustvarilo vsaj bežno predstavo o tem, kaj pomeni etika; tu pa se otrok pojavi v podobi Estherinega dojenčka, ki nedolžno spi, medtem ko avtor – kot, spet, sam prizna občinstvu – masturbira ob internetni otroški pornografiji, ki si jo ogleduje na računalniškem zaslonu, potem ko gredo ostali gostje, vključno z njegovo lastno ženo, spat. Gnus, ki bi ga lahko pri članih občinstva sprožilo takšno priznanje, je zelo dobrodošel, saj se Avtor nazadnje tudi v resnici ubije, takoj potem, ko razglasi, da ga je pisanje zapustilo, še preden je sploh dobil priliko, da bi ga sam prvi opustil in zapustil prostor igre. K temu bi lahko dodali: natanko tako, kot je Artaud želel, da bi naredil avtor. 4 Kontrastna primera, ki sem se ju odločila raziskati v prispevku, lepo pokažeta na meje sodobnih dramaturških ambicij, da bi se ustrezno odzvali na prevladujoče težnje, da bi pozabili na pritiske in obveze do predobstoječe igre - besedila in ustvarili gledališče, ki bi nekako pognalo iz lastne notranje in trenutne nujnosti. Naj se poglabljata v »univerzalije«, kot sta problematika ljubezni in vprašanje spolne razlike, ali pa obravnavata najbolj trnovega izmed vseh nasilnih škandalov, ki trenutno pestijo 4 Kot opozarja Dan Rebellato, se lik avtorja pojavlja v celi vrsti sodobnih britanskih iger, osupljivo pri tem pa je, da te obsedenosti nikoli ne uzre v navezavi na Artaudovo (in Derridajevo) problematiziranje te vloge, ki je tako partikularno vpletena v dramatiko kot kontroverzni primer literarnega »lastništva«. Namesto tega Crouchevo »smrt avtorja« raje na- veže na Barthesov slavni esej. 64 svet – obe dramski konstrukciji, dekonstrukciji in rekonstrukciji reprezentacije, ki sem ju izbrala kot eksemplarični, ne moreta drugače, kot da se sučeta okoli lastnih gledaliških pogojev, se pravi, okoli temeljne uganke, na katero niti za hip ne pozabi nobeden od avtorjev: kaj ima gledališče opraviti s tem? Z obnavljanjem podedovanih modusov metadramskega samopreizpraševanja pričata o nenavadnem dejstvu, da gledališče, celo dramsko gledališče, ni bilo nikdar mišljeno kot reprezentacija nečesa, kar je odsotno od tukaj in zdaj svojega dejanskega dogajanja, njegovega uprizarjanja, njegove neposrednosti, proizvajanja čustev, pomenov in trenutkov razodetij. Vendar je res tudi nasprotno, da v gledališču nikdar ni šlo samo za tukaj in zdaj čiste spontanosti in dogodkovnosti; vedno je bilo zelo tesno povezano s samim fenomenom pismenosti, kot izziv, ki ga oralno, telesno in kontekstualno postavljajo navidezni semiotični fiksnosti in pripovednim determinantam pisane besede. Mislim, da je prav to opozorilo, ki ga obe metadrami, o katerih sem razpravljala, ostro osvetljujeta, s tem pa apelirata na sodobne dramatike, naj se osvobodijo pogosto globoko omejujočega polja tega tukaj in zdaj (Jarcho 15), prav zato, da bodo lahko ponavljali. In prav s ponavljanjem, pa četudi to zadeva dramaturške vzorce, podedovane iz starih časov, bodo lahko dosegli spremembe. Prevedel Jaka Andrej Vojevec 65 Literatura Armstrong, Philip. Shakespeare‘s Visual Regime. Tragedy, Psychoanalysis, and the Gaze. Palgrave Macmillan, 2000. Badiou, Alain, in Nicholas Truong. In Praise of Love. Prevedel Peter Bush, Serpent‘s Tail, 2012. Bennett, Benjamin. All Theater Is Revolutionary Theater. Cornell University Press, 2015. Bennett, Michael Y. »Names and Reference.« Palgrave Communications 1, 2015, doi: 10.1057/palcomms.2014.5. Bottoms, Stephen. »Authorizing the Audience: The conceptual drama of Tim Crouch.« Performance Research: A Journal of the Performing Arts, letn. 14, št. 1, 2009, str. 65–76. —. »Materialising the Audience: Tim Crouch‘s Sight Specifics in ENGLAND and The Author.« Contemporary Theatre Review, letn. 21, št. 4, 2011, str. 445–463. 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