Theatre’s Flesh, World’s Flesh
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.13130/2039-9251/8714Abstract
As soon as the light inside the theatre fades (usually very slow, almost stealthily, in order to avoid a brusque transition), a switch of codes of perception takes place. Not from reality to fiction, as if these were two separate worlds, but from one way of watching to another. Watching becomes the key in a strategy between showing and hiding, receiving and hiding back. The spectator is all but passive. All your mental and sensory faculties are focussed on digesting a flood of impressions in the course of a performance. It does not merely involve watching, but it concerns a receptivity that encompasses one’s whole physical being. How can we understand this ‘global’ perception ? What takes really place on a sensory level ? How does a spectator respond to a performance in a theatre landscape were new theatrical forms appeal to varied sorts of stimuli and sensations ? What can we learn from the field of embryology concerning our senses ? And how can we integrate the sensorial dimension into the envelop of the world ? What does it mean to be in the flesh of the theater at the heart of the world ?
References
ABRAM, David, The spell of the sensuous, Vintage Books Edition, 1997.
AMEISEN, Jean-Claude, La sculpture du vivant, Editions du Seuil, Paris 1999.
BAINBRIDGE COHEN, Bonnie, Sensing, Feeling, and Action. The experiential anatomy of Body-Mind Centering®, 3d edition, Contact Editions, Northampton 2012.
DE LAET, Timmy, CASSIERS, Edith, VAN DEN DRIES, Luk, « Creating by annotating : the director’s notebooks of Jan Fabre and Jan Lauwers », Performance Research, 20 : 6 (2015), p. 43-52.
DE LAET, Timmy, CASSIERS, Edith, VAN ROY, Frederik, VAN DEN DRIES, Luk, « Redrawing bodily boundaries : a look into the creative process of Jan Fabre », in : GONZALEZ, Madalena et al. (dir.), Aesthetics and ideology in contemporary literature and drama, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Cambridge 2015, p. 297-320.
DE LAET, Timmy, Re-inventing the Past. Strategies of Re-enactment in European Contemporary Dance, Doctoral thesis, University of Antwerp, 1996.
DI BENEDETTO, Stephen, The Provocation of the Senses in Contemporary Theatre, Routledge, New York, London 2011.
FABRE, Jan, Le temps emprunté, Actes-Sud, Arles 2007.
FABRE, Jan, OLYSLAEGERS, Jeroen, Mount Olympus. To Glorify the Cult of Tragedy. Het script, Bezige Bij, Amsterdam 2016.
GLÖCKLER, Michaela, VAN DER WAL, Jaap (Hg.), Dynamische Morphologie und Entwicklung der menschlichen Gestalt. Spirituelle Schulungsmotive für Physiotherapeuten, 4. bearbeitete Auflage 2016, Verlag am Goetheanum, Dornach.
MERLEAU-PONTY, Maurice, Le visible et l’invisible, Gallimard, Paris 1964.
VAN DEN DRIES, Luk, Corpus Jan Fabre. Observations sur un processus de création, L’Arche, Paris 2005.
VAN DEN DRIES, Luk, Jan Fabre. Het geopende lichaam, De Bezige Bij, Antwerpen 2014.
Downloads
Issue
Section
License
The authors who publish in Itinera are required to accept the following conditions:
1. The authors retain the rights on their paper and lincese the journal the right of first publication. The paper is also licensed under a Creative Commons License, which allows others to share it, by indicating intellectual authorship and its first publication in Itinera.
2. Authors may adhere to other non-exclusive license agreements for the distribution of the published version of the paper (ex. deposit it in an institutional archive or publish it in a monograph), provided that its first publication in Itinera is indicated.
3. Authors can disseminate their paper online (ex. in institutional repositories or on their website) before and during the submission process, since this can lead to productive exchanges and increase quotations of the published work (See “The Effect of Open Access”).