Month: November 2014

Historiography- What is the point?

Shane Humberstone Research

Historiography – ‘the pursuit of truths about the past within the conditions and constraints of possible knowledge’ (Postlewait, 2009, p.1)

Thomas Postlewait outlines that historians ‘must transform the artefacts into, develop supporting evidence for their hypotheses, place historical events in appropriate contexts…’ (2009, p. 1). In many cases this can be useful and help people develop an understanding of the past. Yet as a pro Stalin picture could have been staged and false, theatre documentation can be just as unreliable.

Alfred Jarry's Ubu doodle
Alfred Jarry’s Ubu doodle
Production of Ubu Roi
A 1964 production of Jarry’s Ubu Roi

 

Theatre is ephemeral. There are hundreds of ways, such as recording, reviews, pictures, of documenting theatre, but it is impossible to capture the spirit and liveness of the event. From past events, pre television, we have little actual sources, some reviews or accounts of the event, but they are through the lens of an onlooker and can only be seen as bias. Furthermore, we have the actual texts of scripts but there is no one of truly knowing whether Alfred Jarry wanted Ubu Roi to shock as it did (or has been reported), or how it truly felt to stand in the Globe through one of Shakespeare’s plays.

In addition, video recordings are just as unreliable. We are not watching a live performance, we are watching what someone else has watched. Someone has decided for us what we see and when. It certainly is a good thing to record these events especially in this way as aesthetics and general performances can be picked up and analysed but due to the ephemeral fleeting nature of live performance, some things can never be understood.

Why is Historiography important?

‘Every performance, if it is intelligible as such, embeds features of previous performances: gender conventions, racial histories, aesthetic traditions – political and cultural pressures that are consciously and unconsciously acknowledged’ (Diamond, 1996, p.1).

Like all fields, an understanding of drama’s past helps embellish and strengthen performances today and in the future. Not only can you learn from mistakes made from those of the past but also see how audiences reacted to certain things. For dramaturgs it is essential in order to educate their show with as much insight and knowledge as possible in order for it to be as successful as possible.

As a result of the importance of historiography, plays are haunted by its predecessors. Audiences do not arrive at a show oblivious to theatre as ‘Everything in the theatre, the bodies, the materials utilized, the language, the space itself, is now and has always been haunted, and that haunting has been an essential part of the theatre’s meaning to and reception by its audiences in all times and all places’ (Carlson, 2001, p.15). If a famous play such as Hamlet is being performed, an audience  member brings with them several things. They may have seen a production, or several, of the play before and find themselves comparing the production to that which they have already seen. This can work with famous actors too. A famous actor will not only be seen as the role they a playing on stage but also previous roles in which audience members may recognise them from. This theme of ghosting can work in both a positive and negative sense depending on each of the externalities.

Below is a presentation on how Alan Bennet’s The History Boys is haunted by it’s original cast and the Britain in which it was set;

Works Cited

Carlson, M. (2003) The Haunted Stage: The Theatre as Memory Machine. Michigan: The University of Michigan Press

Diamond, E. (1996) Performance and Cultural Studies. Oxon and New York: Routledge.

Postlewait, T. (2009) The Cambridge Introduction to Theatre Historiography. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

 

Performance Update

Shane Humberstone Practical

Here are some notes on the progress of the visual side to my performance.

IMG_3108 IMG_3109

I am sticking to the installation idea i have encompassing audience members in a box of four projectors.

On the first of the four walls will be my evolution of the Bittersweet Symphony music video. It will start with just fields to symbolise the ‘started from nothing’ mentality , which the song represents. This will then g into a darkened tour of the Holocaust memorial (Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe) in Berlin. The memorial is 2711 concrete slabs of different sizes. I am taking the visual of bleak concrete blocks as a sign of change, and arguably progression, from the plain flat fields. It will finally finish with my Lincoln version of the music video. I will film myself walking from the cathedral, a symbol of grandeur and hope, to the less fortunate parts of Lincoln. This will hopefully show the struggle and difference of different people throughout a single city.

The second of the projections is less complicated yet also less set. It will have archetypal pictures of people of today ranging from the Upper Class Kings Road “gentleman” to the East End street boy. I will remove the face of each picture and will stand in my boxers in front of it. This will play with the idea that we are all equal when we are naked. This is also playing hand in hand with the idea of other people’s projections on others.

The third I want to be both comical and shocking, polar opposites if possible. This projection will be showing people failing. It could be silly failing like falling off a skate board or more serious issues such as murder. Its intention is to show that whatevr we may expect there are going to be unforeseeable boundaries and challenges. this challenges may be so great that our dreams may not materialise. Furthermore it is inspired by a mantra made famous by the rapper 50 Cent, ‘Get Rich or Die Tryin”.

A Still from 'Get Rich or Die Tryin''. Taken from www.imgarcade.com
A Still from ‘Get Rich or Die Tryin”. Taken from www.imgarcade.com

The final projection will be a selection of Tweets and Facebook status’ expressing peoples dreams. It will show what the goals of our society are.

Untitled

As all the films will be playing simultaneously this will create individual experiences as oppose to a unified audience collective experience. People will be able to pick and chose as of when then watch each of the videos.

 

A Post on the Postdramatic

Shane Humberstone Exploration

The postdramatic is a form of theatre that was first acknowledged by the German Hans Thies Lehmann’s study Postdramatic Theatre (1999). The study highlights how contemporary has moved away from traditions carved by playwright of the well made play and the ”no longer dramatic’ forms of theatre that have emerged since the 1970s’ (Jurs-Munby, 2006, p.1).

Within the brackets of the first paragraph i have already highlighted a very significant point. Lehmann wrote his study back in 1999 in Germany where these conversations had already been flourishing for several years. it was not until 7 years later that Routledge published an English translation of the book suggesting that the use of this term has one again seen the UK dramatically fall behind the continent.

Although new forms are being experimented with, despite the suggestion of the word, the prefix ‘post’ does not actually mean a total disregard for dramatic forms. Jurs-Munby in her introduction outlines that post is used ‘rather as a rupture and a beyond that continue to entertain relationships with drama’ (2006, p.2).

A contemporary postdramatic example, however debated, is Tim Crouch. Crouch fell out of love with acting and the theatre industry and after writing several productions for children found himself producing work of a very distinctive nature. Crouch in his work demonstrates ‘ that the theatre space – together with the performance of written dialogue spoken within it – had transformational possibilities’ (Bottoms, 2009, p. 65). in his opinion the theatre should be used to create illusion rather then depicting a late 19th century Norwegian house as an Ibsen would. A seminal text of Crouch is An Oak Tree. In performances of  An Oak Tree Crouch would use an actor who had never seen the script before and feed them instructions, more often then not, audible to the audience. But Crouch’s disobedience to theatrical norms do not end there with the actor. In stead of having an oak tree on stage he uses a chair. Instead of using characters he uses chairs. Crouch ask the audience not to suspend their disbelief but rather ask them to deal with the several layers of theatricality that he provides them throughout the play.

A poster used for 'An Oak Tree'
A poster used for ‘An Oak Tree’

Despite all these rebellions and forms, Crouch still tells a story. It’s is a very clear and dramatic on of that : ‘a grieving father deals with the loss of his teenage daughter in a traffic accident by claiming to have turned the substance of a tree (located roadside at the accident site) into that of his daughter’ (Bottoms, 2009, p.65). As well as this he creates his own cosmos that himself and his fellow actor  are stuck in and emotions are shown and a sense is catharsis is felt. He creates both a fictive cosmos (as in a drama) as well as an allowance for other externalities, such as the audience and the performance space, to enter and exit throughout the play. For me this is where Crouch truly establishes himself as a postdramatic artist.

 

Works Cited

Bottoms, S. (2009) Authorising the Audience: the Conceptual Drama of Tim Crouch. Performance Research, 14 (1) 65-76.

Jurs-Munby, K. (2006) Introduction in Postdramatic Theatre. London: Routledge.