Sumários
Antonin Artaud
22 Novembro 2023, 14:00 • Chiara Nifosi
Today, the students presented Antonin Artaud's theater of cruelty. The reading was divided in two parts--a shorter introduction to the theater of cruelty and the actual first Manifesto of 1932. We highlighted the following points (taken from the slides of Week 11):
Artaud's is a response to the crisis of theater, which he explains as follows:
–Competition with other forms of art and entertainment (cinema, circus, music hall);
–Predominance of psychological theater («analytic theater», entirely relying on verbal language and following a principle of realism in setting, costumes, etc.);
He underlines the relevance of dreams and irrational drives:
–Immersive experience;
–Radicalization of the impact of theater;
–Opposition between Western logos and Oriental «incantation»;
He considers theater as a «total spectacle»:
–Reconciliation of analytic theater with the «plastic world», i.e., of the mind with the body;
–The spectacle must involve the totality of the «organism»;
–Meaningfulness of the totality of the gestures, objects, etc. on stage – everything is to be turned into a sign.
We discussed the characteristics of the Manifesto as a genre:
–Programmatic text that proposes general definitions and a practical agenda to put something into practice;
–Text that operates a fracture with the past and the preexisting tradition;
–Text characterized by aggressive imagery, vocabulary, and tone;
We talked of theater as expression in space, which requires the use of a wider range of signs than the verbal ones:
–As a consequence, secondary importance of the dramatic text.
–Starting point for the elaboration of this alternative theatrical language: the suffering body (first victim of Artaud’s «cruelty»).
Artaud redefines the scope of theater:
–We discussed the quote: «In our present state of degeneration it is through the skin that metaphysics must be made to re-enter our minds» (p. 99).
–Mind dependent on the body and sensibility.
Charlotte Delbo/2
17 Novembro 2023, 14:00 • Chiara Nifosi
Today, we continued our discussion of Delbo's play Qui rapportera ces paroles ? (Acts II and III). We analyzed the different reactions that the characters oppose to their experience in the concentration camp, thus isolating some voices in the collectivity that Delbo presents in the play. While some seem to seek refuge in memory (les Tourangelles), in other cases memories of the past mix with anxiety for a future outside the camp (Berthe and the death of her sister); while Françoise initially refuses to live and considers suicide, she will be among those who manage to survive; finally, Yvonne seems to be the one who focuses on the present and the "weight" of every single minute spent in the camp, without using memory or future projections as forms of escapism. These reactions highlight different relationship with time, especially in its connection with the prominence of bodily experience in the play.
Charlotte Delbo/1
15 Novembro 2023, 14:00 • Chiara Nifosi
After fixing some last points about Antigone, the students did their presentation on Charlotte Delbo's Qui rapportera ces paroles?. After that, I incorporated the information given by the students with some more details about Delbo's biographical background, specifically the background of her years in the Resistance and in the concentration camps. We discussed the status of Holocaust literature and the much-debated quote from Theodor Adorno about the collapsing of culture and the barbarism of "writing poetry after Auschwitz". This discussion served as a point of entry into the text. We analyzed the author's indications in the liminal part of the text, the incipit, and the exchange between Claire and Françoise over the hypothesis of suicide. Interestingly, in this scene where Claire affirms the need for the recovery of a collective perspective, we find dramatization of the conflict between individual choice (freedom) and collective responsibility, a tension that the play seems to reinsert in the context of concentration camps.
Antigone/3
10 Novembro 2023, 14:00 • Chiara Nifosi
Today, we went back to the idea of the pointlessness of Antigone's act, while also considering what she accomplishes through her revolt. This revolt applies to multiple elements: political power, gender norms, rationality, adulthood, and social institutions. We concluded that her act may or may not be pointless... But this is not even the point! Her act, in fact, results into exposing the limits, hypocrisy, and insufficiency of the above mentioned elements that characterize established power. In this sense, Antigone is a revolutionary figure.
Antigone/2
8 Novembro 2023, 14:00 • Chiara Nifosi
Today we continued our discussion on Anouilh's Antigone. I showed the first minutes of Nicolas Briançon's adaptation (2003, link here: https://youtu.be/mxG_sQClVFk?si=M5QAaXrimOwLMHqQ) to evaluate the impact of the Prologue over the rest of the play.