(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
Alain Badiou: A Praise of Theater. Polity Press, 2015
On 22 February 2016, former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis launched a new democratic movement for the EU. For this launch, he had deliberately chosen the Berlin theater Volksbühne as the setting. He wanted to speak directly to the «space of the people» because the theater stage is a good place to launch a new democratic idea. Maybe he had also chosen the theater because we live in a confused time and because something completely new is about to happen. Whether he has thought of the French philosopher Alain Badiou is not known, but the thought is obvious. "Our confused time is," says Badiou, "first and foremost negative – the feeling that the idea has disappeared." An ingrained nihilism that says we can do without ideas, without orientering and horizon that it is enough to live in the present and cultivate our consumption and lifestyles. In our confusion, we equate ideas with a projection of self-interest, instant gratification, and enjoyment. Through the liberal competitive idea of chasing the constant «news», each one seeks to express his confusion by clinging to this circulation of goods. "It's the theater's responsibility," says Badiou, "to show the confusion as confusionThe "theater" stylizes and reinforces the obvious fact that a confused world is uninhabitable to humans. The theater exhibits an alienation of those who do not see that the world has lost its way and is not the result of unfortunate circumstances or personal incompetence. ”The theater presents an unseen opportunity on stage. And this possibility is neither ideological nor abstract – it originates from the subject itself, man embedded in this confusion. The theater as a learning space will elevate the viewer's insight into its own confusion. It will give birth to an idea – one orienteringsmall for existence. "The theater is, when it takes place, a demonstration of this idea: We see bodies and people speaking and we see them struggling with the question of who they are and what they are capable of." But it is only by taking the theater as an art seriously that the theater can make man the bearer of a historical (liberating) event.
An endangered art. But theater is an endangered art form: it is threatened by a populist ritual that is only interested in giving what the people want, an entertainment repertoire of musicals, pop music and stand-up. Bad theater that reproduces given ideas. Above the entrance to the theater it says today: "Please, do not disturb." The laughter is like a circus revue: You laugh when you make fun of politicians, but it is a laugh «that comes to terms with the given». Real comedy does not entertain, but creates «disturbing joy». But the theater is also threatened by a reactionary left-wing elite who see the theater as something that has survived itself. For whom every representation (representation) must be criticized and deconstructed; the theater should preferably be broken down with violent visual and sonic ceremonies to bring us closer to life. But this anti-theater movement and fluxus, according to Badiou, have not been able to provide answers to the crises, and are without emancipatory potential. Led by performance artist Marina Abramovic: “You have to hate the theater: the knife is not real, the blood is not real, and the emotions are not real. Performance is the opposite: the knife is real, the blood is real, the emotions are real. " The Performance Theater wants to abolish the spectator's passivity and create a direct bodily dialogue which goes back to Artaud's pure body theater. But this “attempt to save the spectator from his passivity is the culmination of passivity,” Badiou says. We certainly need the overrun, but as pure negation, the avant-garde is unable to confirm another space of opportunity. It does not give birth to a new idea.
The theater as a true event. It is about creating an «affective and formal participatory manipulation» that can be boiled down to one thing: the theater as a incarnation of an idea. Such a theater must show them dirt produced in our way of perceiving things. When the theater incarnates such a truth, it depends on one aktiv intervention: I seize something; and a passive: I'm grabbed, taken to bed. When the theater «thinks», it has no reason in man, but in the rupture of the event. The actor becomes the bearer of a new idea. Which reaches Rodrigo in the play The Cid (Corneille) is caught up in his ideological idea of pride and honor, which he can only secure by killing the man whose daughter he loves – Chimene. Instead of turning honor and love into opposites, the play presents them as tensions emanating from the same subjective material. By not killing Chimene's father, Rodrigo becomes the bearer of the idea of love. We see it on his body which is no longer stiff. An idea is always associated with the body, with experiencing a difficulty. Ideological ideas such as honor, pride, homeland and growth are ideas for the head without body, without empathy, without life.
Ideological ideas such as honor, pride, homeland and growth are ideas for the head without body, without empathy, without life.
The liberating theater. According to Badiou, theater is a democratic practice because the theatrical act must appeal to any, and because the theater feeds on opposites. Unlike the film, the theater is one embodiment of the idea, while the film only shows slot of the idea, making it a melancholy art form. The film must fight the aleatory (random), while the theater visualizes the protagonist's suffering and becomes the bearer of a state of tension which runs through the actor's gesture. Here I have a hard time following him. On the other hand, I can see better dancing as a metaphor for the theater because «the dance emerges from within its own movement». The body is crucial for the theater because we do not yet know what the body is capable of, and with the text (dialogue) a indirect distance. The unique thing about the theater is the actor's ability to through a tight dialogue incarnate the thought through the body. This is how the theater can present what Badiou with Brecht calls «a passion for the real». With a tight framing and organization of dialogue, the word can hit the body in such a way that what is said both exposes the lie, but at the same time expresses a confirmation and fidelity to a life in its wonder, vulnerability and grace. Simple words can do that, as in Beckett's dramas where the actors go through their crisis without seeking answers to these through foreign authorities (God, secure identity); through demonstration of their own vulnerability, fragility and powerlessness, they (and we) recognize the idea of the common. In the liberating theater, the spectator must give it a chance that something can happen, and if he / she identifies with the character, this new thing can happen.
