JULIAN M. OLF Acting and Being: Some Thoughts about Metaphysics and Modern Performance Theory Modernist Paradox Modern theorists have for some time expressed considerable ambivalence on the relative value of spontaneity in art — especially in the performing arts. For that matter, modern performance theory embraces a running debate on the simultaneous (and paradoxical) needs for control and improvisation, artifact and life.! At the core of the modernist paradox lies a phenomenological pleonasm: the need to employ “the real’ in order to re-present “the real.” If manis, as Appia called him, “reality itself,” then how is one to go about using a living actor in the service of representing a reality as compel- ling as his own reality? Is it possible both to be and to pretend to be —not alternately but simultaneously? 1am not speaking here about a battle among genres or “isms.” For that matter, where it surfaces, the paradox may be found in an ambivalence within the work of art- ists. A major portion of the efforts in modern performance theory may be reduced to an examination of the dialectics of this ambivalence. A major portion of the excite- ment in contemporary theatre practice has centered around experimental efforts to mediate, “transact,” or effect “transformations” between the poles of the paradox. In an attempt to resolve this modern dilemma, a number of theorists and pra tioners have turned to the realm typically reserved for the reconciliation of irrecon- cilable opposites ~ the metaphysical realm. In the discussion that follows, I will touch upon some key metaphysical concepts of Artaud, Stanislavski, and Grotowski. It should be kept in mind that | am nowhere suggesting here a belief that any one or another theorist was professionally dedicated to a pursuit of Metaphysics, or that he was even aware of anything beyond a passing interest in that branch of philosophy. For that matter, so tentative and curious are some of the writings (so temporary a phase in some of the careers) that treatment here will perhaps give the impression that one writer or another had greater interest in the subject than the facts would warrant On the other hand, all of these writers ventured (consciously or not so) into the one area that they felt might possibly cast light on the paradox of being and acting. Hence, Julian M. Off, an Associate Editor of Theatre Journal, 1s Chairman and Professor of Theatre at the Univer sity of Toledo. His artictes en performance theory hive appeared in ET] and TDR..A version of this article ‘was presented as an invited paperto Thee Theory of the Theatre Conference. 18 April 1980. at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor ' Thave elsewhere discussed this ambivalence in some detail. See “The Man/Marionette Debate in Modern Theatre,” FT] 26 (December 1974), 488-404. lam grateful to Rebecca Lauer and the Department of ‘Theatre at the University of Toledo for technical assistance with the manuscript of this present article 3435 / ACTING AND BEING there is reasonable justification for examining these issues outside of their initial con- text and out special attention to their proportionate value in the overall careers of the men who gave them utterance. Moreover, because the elucidation of correspond- ing motifs and structures is what concerns me here, | approach my subject without an overriding concern for historical chronology, arranging my materials in a format that will enable me to reveal most clearly what I see as a major theme in modern perform- ance theory. Artaud In spite of Artaud’s insistence during the late 1930s that his theories on theatre were inseparable from metaphysics, most critics and students, finding Artaud’s unique metaphysics virtually incomprehensible, all but ignore them in their examination of Artaud's performance theory. Where Artaud’s metaphysical concepts cannot be ig- nored, they are regarded, alternately, as the manifestations of psychosis (natural or drug-induced) or whimsy — at best surrealist; in any event, highly subjective and abstruse. Perhaps because Artaud did lead a troubled and painful existence, he was less cir- cumspect = less tentative — about outlining his beliefs than were the other theorists. For that we may be grateful. However, because Artaud’s metaphysics were unique (not easily attributable to any organized religion or cult), and because the poet spoke mostly by way of analogy and metaphor, his metaphysics will require a somewhat leisurely examination. And, as metaphysical systems ultimately resist discursive treatment, it will be necessary at times for us to use our own metaphors and analogies. with which to elucidate Artaud’s. Artaud believed that “it is through the skin that metaphysics must be made to re- enter the mind."? He begins his book Theatre and Its Double with two specific analo- gies—those of “The Plague” and of “Alchemy.” The plague appears to hold interest for him on three counts. In the first place, this plague is communicable; secondly, it is “gratuitous” —which is to say, the plague attacks both mind and body without ap- Parent reason or justification; finally, the plague is catalytic: by itself it possesses no destructive power. It exists, in Artaud’s theory, to release the potential for destruction in the organism. Alchemy, for Artaud, was an ancient science that trafficked in the “philosophical states of matter” (49), It was in Fact dedicated to resolving fundamental antagonisms 2 Some recent literary theorists and philosophers have tackled aspects of Artaud’s metaphysics, though they have not done so from a specifically theatrical perspective. Among these. see Jacques Derrida, “la Parole Soufflée and "The Theatre of Cruelty and the Closure of Representation,” in Writing ancl Difference, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1978), pp. 169-95, 232-250, Maurice Blanchat, Le livre @ venir (Paris: Gallimard, 1959), pp. 45-52; Susan Sontag, “Introduction,” Antonin Artaud: Selected Writings (New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1976), pp. xvii-lix; Leo Bersani, A Future for Astvanar: Character and Desite in Literature (Boston: Little Brown and Company, 1976), pp. 259-72; and Roger Shattuck, “Artaud Possessed,” New York Review of Books (November 11, 1976), pp. 17-23. * Antonin Artaud, The Theatre and Its Double, trans. Mary Caroline Richards (New York: Grove Press, 1958), p. 99, All Artaud quotations are from thisedition, Page numbers will appear within parentheses fol- lowing the quotations.36 = / Ti}, March 1981 between mind and matter, idea and form. Through processes aimed at spiritual and intellectual refinement, its proponents searched out that irreducible state which no longer admitted such concepts as concrete and abstract. Alongside this refinement of the mind and spirit (and running parallel to it) is a physical refinement of matter Alchemists believed that at that consummate point where such antagonisms were resolved a corresponding laboratory procedure would yield what was then believed to be the purest, most inert, most irreducible substance: gold. The alchemists believed that both spirit and matter yearned to be simple and pure. One need only, gently, help them along their way. Hence, both Artaud’s plague and the science of alchemy were virtual phenomena in the sense that neither contained its end within itself (48). Both strove to release the potential in mind as well as in matter. Artaud’s concept of the double is complex and illusive. Phenomenologically speak- ing, it combines the qualities of sameness and otherness within one conceptual for- mat. It not only combines these qualities, it equates them harmoniously. As a con- cept, it would appear to be related, in part, to such literary examinations of the double as we find in Conrad's The Secret Sharer; Dostoevsky's The Double; and Stevenson's Dr, Jekyll andl Mr. Hyde (as in other treatments of the werewolf myth.) In the field of psychology there is Rank’s celebrated study The Double; in Christian theology, dis- cussions of the Trinity. Perhaps more to the point is mythology — especially the Vedic and Upanishad myth of creation (the fundamental myth of Atma-yajna), oriental a counts of the nature of duality, and, in no small way, Plato's “Myth of the Cave.” After all is said and done, however, we are still left struggling for a firm grasp on the manner by which a thing, any thing, can, at one and the same time, be both other and same, both manifold and unique. ORIENTAL MYTH ARTAUD'S COSMOLOGY Phase | Consciousness One Will Alone Without Conflict Essential Phase Il Brahma ‘Drama Phase III + The problem with literary (and cinematic) treatments of the doublehas to do with the fact that narrative and pictorial logic demand time-space intervals among the elements ~ intervalsthat deay the double its pri- mary metaphysical property, that of correspondency or the simultaneous cahabitation of opposites within ‘one format. Hence, although cinematic dissolve which depicts the transformation of Dr. Jekyil’s eyetooth into Mr. Hyde's canine may be titillating, it is actually reassuring, It isa far simpler matter for the cational mind to deal with transformation feven grotesque transformation) than with mystical correspondencies.37 / ACTING AND BEING The Doubled World of Artaud According to the Vedic and Upanishad myth, Consciousness disguised as Brahma formed the world by an act of self-forgetting, self-diversification, self-dismember- ment. In this fashion the one became the many. However, plurality is but an illusion — divine forgetfulness. The elements of the universe participate in the Brahma, who is himself an emanation of something much greater and far more important.® Artaud begins with the universal premise that theatre is, at its root, a “conflict of spiritual states” (53). He proceeds with an assertion that somewhere in the universe there exists “a kind of essential drama” which contains, “in. a manner at once manifold and unique, the essential principles of all drama. . . an infinite perspective of all con- flicts (50; italics mine). This essential drama is itself “the image of something subtler than Creation, . . . one Will alone—and without conflict’ (51; Artaud’s italics). This realm is regarded by the Orphic and Eleusinian mysteries, as well as by most Eastern religions, as the first phase of Creation: the concept of the universe The Double, then, addresses a rather curious (and basic) relationship between all things and the idea of all things — a platonic relationship. All matter, according to Ar- taud, is revelatory (59); which is to say, the thing is a manifestation of its source. The unique bears constant witness to the manifold and need only be consulted for intima- tions of itself. Perhaps a rather mundane analogy of mine will help to clarify some of these points. The analogy has to do with the properties of a two-dimensional purple circle: 1. Strictly speaking, our apprehensions of the color and shape of a two-dimensional purple circle are our objective indicators of the existence of that circle. 2. There are three ways to create such a phenomenal circle: We might treat a con- fined neutral surface with a chemical that reflects, simultaneously, the red and blue properties existent in a ray of white light. (In other words, we might, simply, paint a picture of a two-dimensional purple circle.) On the other hand, we might direct a white light through a purple medium onto a confined, neutral surface. Because the medium masks out all but the desired red and blue properties of white light, it serves our purpose here. We might. finally, direct two separate sources of white light — one filtered through a red medium; one, through a blue medium — onto the same, con- fined, neutral surface 3. Now, returning to our initial premise, if we assume its color and shape to be the sole determinants of the object circle, and if we agree that color is a composite quality born of the potential inherent in white light, we may conclude that (a) the manifested purple circle is intrinsically different from its component parts; (b} although it occu pies space, the manifested purple circle is an outgrowth of a temporal process — it re- + See Maurice Valency, The Flower and The Castle (New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1966), pp. 328-330 [have borrowed from Valency’s discussion of the fundamental myth Atma-vaina—a discussion that (although centered on Strindberg) is especially illurninating here.38 / T],March 1981 quires time for the continual affirmation of its phenomenal being: (c) there is no which-comes-first in the creation of the manifested purple circle, It flashes into being, like a grid, when all of its elemental properties are present in their proper proportion; (d) although this manifested purple circle has no claim to existence outside the condi- tions outlined above, it is an ever-present potential inherent in the properties of neu- tral, white light. If, by analogy, we were to regard this potential as the idea of the thing, we are ina better position to understand Artaud’s notions of the thing as. a man- estation of itself, the manifold in the unique, the revelatory nature of matter, the double. Let us now glance back at the diagram depicting Artaud's cosmology. If we were to regard the first phase {One Will Alone Without Conflict) as the source of pure, white light; the second phase, a prism; the third, a screen on which colors are manifested — we then have a rather primitive (though perhaps useful) model for dealing with some important aspects of Artaud’s theory. All of the various colors, however different in appearance they may be from one another, are instrinsically related to each other. Each required an intermediary for its existence — although the potential for that exist- ence was always present. Each, by virtue of its existence, bespeaks its source —is, in fact, a manifestation of that source. To Artaud, the second phase deserved special attention; for that is the phase "of dif- ficulty and of the Double, that of matter and the materialization of the idea” (51). The second phase is also the realm of cruelty, a rather important, though frightfully mis- understood, concept PHASE | / IDEA THOUGHT ‘CHAOS DIFFICULTY CRUELTY PHASE II EFFORT RIGOR voID PHASE III \ THING GESTURE oz7zZ00my Dz~zZg OMe39 / ACTING AND BEING The Alchemy of Cruelty The transmutation of ideas into things, the philosophical issue of Becoming, now becomes the question. The first ripple in the great stillness of Artaud's cosmos is of monumental importance, for it introduces the very notion of intention, effort, rigor, difficulty, The fission resulting from that first ripple— energy that ultimately brings us the world as we know it —is the prototype for all disturbance. As with all forms of birth, becoming involves a rather profound disturbance of the outer stillness. It is to this disturbance that Artaud assigns the epithet cruelty. By necessity, then, cruelty is the residue of becoming. Only by understanding cruelty in this light may we begin to understand Artaud’s remark that, “It is cruelty that cements matter together, cruelty that malds the features of the created world” (104); and, “Effort is a cruelty, existence through effort is a cruelty” (103); and, “Cruelty signifies rigor, implacable intention and decision, irreversible and absolute determination” (101); and, finally, “Everything that aets is a cruelty” (85). For me the theatre is identical with its possibilities for realization... . (45) After examining Artaud's writings on the subject of the mise-en-scéne, we realize that for Artaud theatre is a rehearsal of cosmic process —an analogue for the very pro- cess of becoming that we have been discussing, a double for that process. Like the Plague and Alchemy, theatre is a virtual phenomenon. It does not possess its end within itself. It exists to unleash the possibilities inherent both in its own materials and within the soul of man who beholds and interacts with these materials. If it is cruel or shocking, it is so to awaken in us intimations of primordial chaos, primerdial terror through which all things came to be. Artaud invested enormous metaphysical importance in every sound and gesture in theatre. To him, “a gesture narrowly divides us from chaos” (64). If there is to be a pur- pose for theatre, that purpose is to enable mankind to “recover the nation of a kind of unique language half-way between gesture and thought” (89), to enable man to “reassume his place between dream and events” (93); “to express objectively certain secret truths, to bring into the light of day by means of active gestures certain aspects of truth that have been buried under forms in their encounters with Becoming” (70; italics mine). Artaud insisted that the actor be "both an element of first importance, since it is upon the effectiveness of his work that the success of the spectacle depends, anda kind of passive and neutral element, since he is rigorously denied all personal initiative. It is a domain in which there is no precise rule; and between [these dual requirements]. . . there is the whole margin which separates a man from an instrument” (98). Artaud’s statement reveals the modernist ambiguity on the role of the actor. It also points to- ward the acting’being paradox which demands both control and individual initiative in art, a paradox that ultimately asks the acter to be true to himself, to his biographi- cal and emotional memories and, at the same time, to subordinate himself to a ruling idea quite external to his sense of being. Artaud never clearly reconciled the paradox concerning the actor, For that matter,40 / TI, March 1981 his insistence on denying the actor personal initiative has had the effect of bequeathing to history an image of the Artaudian director as one who is at best arbitrary and self- indulgent, at worst, tyrannical. Nonetheless, I believe that we are now in a position to understand that in at least one important respect Artaud did resolve the problem: To become a medium for the “essential drama” —to establish (or. if one prefers, reestab- lish) contact with a lost phase — requires on the part of actor and director an enormous investment of self. To participate in universal process, to bow to cosmic necessity, re- quires (of Artaud’s artist, as of the yogi) a profound act of will: the summoning of all initiative for the purpose of eliminating (or voiding) self, will, and initiative. Indeed, for Artaud it is on the metaphysical plane that such profound antinomies as matter and spirit converge. It is to that very plane that other modern theorists have turned for the reconciliation of the corresponding antinomies of artifact and life, control and im- provisation. Stanislavski Ihave been speaking of the conflict between control and improvisation, artifact and life, that marks the history of modern theatrical theory. This conflict may be found in theatre practice— perhaps most poignantly in the words of the great Italian actor Tommaso Salvini: “An actor lives, weeps and laughs on the stage, and while weeping or laughing, he observes his laughter and tears."* In other words, the actor must both live and pretend to live — simultaneously. The quotation by Salvini was a favorite of Stanislavski’s, who spent a good portion of his mature career pandering its implications. The evolution of his famous system was designed, it would appear, to place the actor into the greatest existential contact with the role—to make person and role as nearly synonymous as possible. Yet, Stanislavski was insistent that the actor never lose sight of himself on the stage, that a careful (if tenuous) distinction be preserved between real life and art. (The image that comes te mind is that of the bullfight —where the success of the performance is in direct proportion to the grace with which the matador reduces the distance between his gut and the bull's horns. Clearly, the two must never meet. But, ah, how desirable it would be were they, casually, to brush one another.) Stanislavski's model student had a long and arduous path to follow. Having satis- fied the physical, psychological, and moral prerequisites spelled out by the master, and having grown proficient at the psycho-technique, the actor might then consider himself prepared to enter into the creative state. Up to this point, all of his art and art- istry have been applied to establish conditions propitious to awakening action, moti- vating it. Stanislavski believed that as successive objectives are met the actor's “motive forces” align themselves with the author's, that the actor is at his best when he is a vehicle for the author's “ruling idea.” With certain minor modifications, American admirers of Stanislavski designate * Konstantin Stanislavsky, Stanislavsky on the Art of the Stage, trans. David Magarshack (New York Hill and Wang. 1963), pp. 69-70,41 / ACTING AND BEING this “creative state” as the destination for “method-trained” actors, and the journey is effectively over once that state has been attained. Stanislavski (perhaps laboring under the impact of the crue] paradox inherent in the Salvini idea), however, did not stop here. In An Actor Prepares he observed that for certain actors (and only at cer- tain times) —and only after the creative state has been attained — “magician nature” in- tercedes and propels them into the realm of the “I AM,” the realm of public solitude. For a man who constantly took pains to make himself clearly understood, Stanis- lavski was never very clear about the meaning of this existential-phenomenal realm. Apparently, he saw the actor as being, profoundly, both self and other, both actor and role. He saw the actor as one who is aware of the multitude around him — yet, at the same time, as one who is alone to the point of experiencing total isolation, This vi- sion is paradoxical to be sure; however, no more so than the often stated need that the actor be both true to himself and to the poet (not to mention the director); and cer- tainly no moreso than the Salvini ideal itself. Opposites such as these converge upon Stanislavski’s actor who, along with most other modern artists, must contend with the paradoxes of our age. Stanislavski must have realized at a certain point that he was playing with fire. At best, actors would find his system hopelessly difficult; at worst, vague and self-con- tradictory. We must keep in mind, however, that anything beyond the creative state was reserved for the select few --and then sampled infrequently, if ever. He described experiences derived from this state the way one might describe “rushes” or “flashes” from drug-induced states—clearly not the kind of experience that can be easily im- agined or described Emboldened, perhaps, by his excursion into this somewhat obscure, existential- phenomenal realm, Stanislavski rather tentatively ventured into another, more im- ponderable realm—one which | call extra-phenomenal.” In this realm, experienced perhaps a few times in the gifted actor's entire career, the actor experiences the “grip” (or “grasp”), Here, physical and vocal forms of expression are no longer necessary. Communication is linked to the ebb and flow of energy from the actor's person in a process described by Stanislavski with the terms “irradiation,” “ray-absorption,” and “ray-emission.” As best as I am able to gather, the actor's entire craft has been exer- cised toward the end of rendering himself a pretext, a medium, a transparency through which life's “ruling ideas” flow. In other words, all will has been exerted to the end of obliterating any will. To summarize: Stanislavski dedicated himself to finding a method by which the ac- tor might bring the most life —the greatest degree of truth —to his work. All practice was aimed at making role and self as nearly synonymous as possible. Yet Stanislavski felt that the confusion of art and life were somehow wrong, that there must always be a clear distinction between the two, Throughout his writings Stanislavski rode the horns of the modernist dilemma. We know for a fact that he was fascinated with the 7 Seechapter 10, Constantin Stanislavski, An Actor Prepares, trans. Elizabeth Reynolds Hapgood (New York: Theatre Arts Books, 1970), especially pp. 199-20642 / T],March 1981 principles and techniques of yoga.* However, it was only in a few isolated comments on the subject of irradiation that Stanislavski came close to articulating a metaphysi- cal solution to the dilemma. Unfortunately, he dropped the issue as suddenly as he raised it and proceeded to search out other more practical means for enabling the actor to arrive at the creative state. His system of actor training succeeded in reducing the distance between art and life. However, like the proverbial Archimedean arrow, the more diminutive the distance left to travel, the more profound the remaining chasm And, in fact, nowhere in his system was the actor provided with a concrete means for both being and pretending to be simultaneously. Grotowski For the Grotowski of the late 1960s and early 1970s, a good portion of the theatre experience comprised a series of paradoxes —all of which were somehow to be bridged by the actor. For Grotowski, as for Artaud and Stanislavski, the actor was both an in- dividual and a participant: Although his psyche was held to be of great importance, he was, yet, but part of a collective creation, a creation at least equal in importance to any and all of its component parts. Following that primary paradox, the others flowed quite naturally: For Grotowski’s actor, the act of creation was by necessity both spontaneous and disci- plined. In approaching his art, the actor was required to possess “infinite courage’; yet, he was instructed to be prepared at every moment to “resign” himself; he was tobe both active and passive. In his exercises, the actor (like the competitive athlete} was re- quired to master the form, the objective elements; at the same time, however, it was important that he impart to these elements the stamp of his subjective self, that he make them his own Grotowski insisted that the actor's art be one that involved great excesses and equally great austerity. By pushing himself beyond fatigue the actor would enter a state of “passive readiness,” a form of alertness indebted, primarily, to fatigue. The body of the actor was subjected to rigorous training so that, according to Grotowski, it might, ultimately, cease to exist. And so it went, an unending stream of contradic- tions —all of which seemed, somehow, to make eminent sense. Unlike Stanislavski’s system, where progress was additive, involving the mastery of successive techniques and habits of mind, the Grotowski methodology, during this phase of his career, was basically subtractive. Following an orientation that Grotow- ski called the “via negativa,” one labored to eliminate all personal hindrances to ex- pression. Like the Eskimo artisan striving to reveal the animal form hidden in bone or stone, the actor sought to reduce and eliminate the delay between impulse and action, to reduce and eliminate anything that might conceivably separate dream and gesture. For memories (like most thoughts) were, according to Grotowski, physical reactions, and gesture was the mind and spirit manifested. * See William H. Wegner. “The Creative Circle: Stanislavski and Yoga” ET] 28 (March 1976), 85489.43 / ACTING AND BEING In 1967 Grotowski wrote, “Our goal is to expose totally the spiritual process of the actor... . [Through the technique of trance] we attempt to eliminate his organism's resistance to this spiritual process. The result is freedom from the time-lapse between inner impulse and outer reaction. Impulse and action are concurrent: the body vanishes, burns, The spectator sees only the visible reflection of spiritual impulses," Grotowski spoke of a threefold rebirth. In the first phase the actor, while studying his body and its capacity to reflect impulses, sought to establish contact with the self as other; that is, by reflecting on his psyche he quite naturally placed himself at some distance from his psyche. Grotowski characterized this first rebirth as a “search.” In the second rebirth, a “projection,” the actor's colleagues became screens for this biographical other. By projecting his innermost feelings on those around him, the ac- tor was able to pay proper respect to those feelings while, at the same time, further distancing himself from them. In the final rebirth, called “materialization,” the “biographical other” detached itself from the actor's colleagues. Now it was no longer a mere projection. It was a “secure partner,” a person, as it were, who remained at the actor's side at all times, At the moment of this third rebirth, the actor bridged the paradoxes and arrived at what for Grotowski must have been the creative state: Finally the actor discovers what | call the "secure partner,” this special being in front of whom he does everything, in front of whom he plays with the other characters and to whom he reveals his most personal problems and experiences. This human being — this “secure partner" —cannot be defined. But at the moment when the actor discovers his “secure partner” the third and strongest rebirth occurs, a visible change in the actor's behavic It is during this third rebirth that the actor finds solutions to the most difficult problems: how to create while one is controlled by others, how to create without the security of crea- tion, how to find a security which is inevitable if we want to express ourselves despite the fact that theatre is a collective creation in which we are controlled by many people and working during hours that are imposed on us. One need not define this “secure partner” to the actor, one need only say, ‘You must give yourself absolutely’ and many actors understand, Each actor has his own chance of making this discovery, and it's a completely different chance for each. This third rebirth is neither for oneself nor for the spectator. Its most paradoxical. It gives the actor his greatest range of possibilities. One can think of it as ethical, but truly it is technical — despite the fact that it is also mysterious.° Hence, we see that Grotowski found, he thought, the solution to the paradoxes that were central to the art of acting —and to theatre as he understood it. Unfortunately, when questioned by Richard Schechner in a TDR interview, he characterized thesolu- tion as itself “mysterious,” “paradoxical,” and “undefinable” — although something in- tuitively understood by many actors. * Towards the Poor Theatre,” TDR 11 (Spring 1967), 61, (Italies Grotowski’s.) + "An Interview With Grotowski.” TDR 13 (Fall 1968), 32. (Italics Grotowski’s.)44 / TJ, March 1981 Conclusion ARTIFACT -. CONTROL =: LIFE IMPROVISATION -» HAPPENSTANCE EVENT TOTAL, INTEGRATED ARTWORK =: TO PRETEND TO BE - + TO BE Modern art —especially the art of theatre which employs both spontaneous and controlled elements — has been infused with tension stemming from the array of op- posing impulses outlined above. The modern theorists that we have examined, unable to cast their vote with confidence or authority on either side of the paradox, have sought some meaningful synthesis of these fundamental antagonisms. All, atacertain phase in their careers, have understood (if only intuitively) that the union of such pro- found antinomies can ultimately be effected, meaningfully, on a metaphysical plane —the plane normally reserved for the reconciliation or unification of opposites, Artaud, Stanislavski, and Grotowski (although in every other respect as dissimilar a gathering of theorists as one might ever hope to find) all understood that one must strive to be both other and same simultaneously, to be and pretend to be simultane- ously —that, indeed, our epoch demands that as artists we possess a fully articulated sense of the double. Unfortunately and, I suppose, inevitably, all three men reached a stage where try- ing to describe the “solution” became extraordinarily difficult. Artaud resorted to analogy and metaphor ~ thereby running the risk of succumbing to a form of private language. Stanislavski, too, trafficked in metaphor, and his discourse on “irradiation” as experienced by the select few sounds like the forerunner to Castaneda and writers on astral projection. Grotowski, insisting upon a “secure partner” — before whom the actor's body may vanish, burn, exposing the spiritual self -- concluded that the whole business is “undefinable."" Nonetheless, these bold and curious efforts to describe the undescribable have had the effect of forcing our attention upon an elusive though intriguing problem facing theorists and practitioners of the post-romantic era—a problem that remains as unre- solved today as it was when Wagner conceived of the gesamtkunstwerk, or unified + In recent years, asis commonly known, Grotowski has moved away fromthettield of theatre. Much of the so-called paratheatrical activity in which he and his colleagues have been engaged. while not actually secretive, has been far less visible to the theatre community than the writings.and productionsto havecome from the Polish Lab Theatre of the late sixties, However. from remarks by Grotowski. Flaszen. and persons who have participated in the Lab Theatre's paratheatrical activities, it has grown clear that what remains of theatre in Grotowskis work is being employed as a means of studying consciousness: that. in fact Grotowski and his colleagues may have come closer than most contemporary theatre theorists or pract- tioners to assigning patently metaphysical objectives to their ‘artistic’ endeavors, |Ed. Note: see TT 31 (1979), 460-66 and T] 32 (1980), 349-56 and 404-05 for recent discussions of Grotowski’s present work. |45 / ACTING AND BEING artwork. Wagner had insisted, we recall, upon the subordination, if not the total sub- jugation, of the elements of an artwork in favor of its overall design. But post- romantic man was too volatile to submit readily and wholly to the dictates of the mise-en-scéne. For well over a century, performance theorists and practitioners have struggled to comprehend the role of the living artist within his own artwork. Even in the metaphysical musings of certain modern theorists, we have not yet comfortably located man, “reality itself,” within the coordinates of the author's timeless character, the director's vital dream, and the performer's active gesture.’? 1 The three theoreticians discussed in this essay are not alone in hinting, at the metaphysical “solution” to the antinomies and paradoxes of our age. One of the earliest of modernist statements on the subject came from Heinrich von Kleist who, in his early nineteenth-century essay on marionette theatre, spoke of the need to locate the dancer's soul in his center of gravity. Unfortunately, man’s humanness presents an obstacle to achieving the pure movement required of art. Kleist concluded that only a body with no con- sciousness or one possessed of omniscience — that is, a marianette or a god — is capable of such movement. (See “On the Marionette Theatre,” trans. Thomas G. Neumiller, TDR 16 [September 1972], 22-26.) We recall that at a certain time in his career Edward Gordon Craig, presenting virtually the same argument as the one voiced by Kleist, denied the actor the right to call himself an artist —in fact, suggested banishing the living actor from the stage in favor of a form of marionette. He did make one important concession: Ina state of trance or ecstasy — that is, when the actor steps outside of himself —man can become material for art. (See “The Actor and the Ubermarionette.” in Total Theatre: A Critical Anthology, ed. E. T.Kirby (New York: E. P. Dutton and Company, 19691, pp. 34 and 51.) Even André Antoine, to whom we attribute the popularization of the “faurth wall” theory and who is (properly) regarded by all as a saber realist, believed that the time had not yet come for man to understand (what he called) “interior staging” —the art of reveal- ing the most intimate and mysterious facets of life. (See Tom Driver, Romantic Quest and Modern Query. A History af the Modern Theatre [New York: Dell, 1970], p. 72.] Antoine characterized stage movernent as that which reveals “the mysteriaus ‘depths’ of the action,” In this regard, he maintained that naturalistic truth is only a beginning.” fee Acting and Being: Some Thoughts about cet Metaphysics and Modern Performance Theory Julian M. Off Theatre Joumal Vol. 33, No. 1 (Mar., 1981), pp. 3445 Published by: Johns Hopkins University Press DOI: 10.2307/3207486 Stable URL: http://www jstor-org/stable!3207486 Page Count: 12