Projected Performances: the Phenomenology of Hybrid Theater David Edward Coley Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, [email protected]
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Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 2012 Projected performances: the phenomenology of hybrid theater David Edward Coley Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations Part of the Theatre and Performance Studies Commons Recommended Citation Coley, David Edward, "Projected performances: the phenomenology of hybrid theater" (2012). LSU Doctoral Dissertations. 4051. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations/4051 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized graduate school editor of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please [email protected]. PROJECTED PERFORMANCES: THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF HYBRID THEATER A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in The Department of Theatre by David Coley B.A., Samford University, 2006 M.A., University of Missouri- Kansas City, 2008 May 2012 TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract………………………………………………………..…………………………………iii Chapter One: The Possible Presence……………………………………………………………...1 Phenomenologically Speaking…………………………………………………………...11 The Live and the Living………………………………………………………………….22 Chapter Two: The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of…………………………………………….40 The All-Seeing Eye………………………………………………………………………43 The Oncoming Train……………………………………………………………………..49 Shadows, Sorcery, and the Surreal………………………………………………………55 The Flicker of Motion……………………………………………………………………61 Presence and Temporality………………………………………………………………..67 The Cinema and the Stage……………………………………………………………….73 Chapter Three: Coming to a Theater Near You………………………………………………….79 Liveness Revisited……………………………………………………………………….81 Live in HD……………………………………………………………………………….88 The Globe on Screen…………………………………………………………………….97 Where Two or More Are Gathered……………………………………………………..104 Chapter Four: The Final Frontiers……………………………………………………………...115 Proto-projections and Moving Melodrama……………………………………………..119 Projecting Ideas in the 20th Century…………………………………………………….123 Projecting the Real……………………………………………………………………...129 The Woman in White…………………………………………………………………...135 The Elephant Vanishes…………………………………………………………………141 The Problem of Perspective…………………………………………………………….145 Chapter Five: Stage as Screen………………………………………………………………….152 Bodily Discourse……………………………………………………………………….157 Bodily Presence and the Cyborg……………………………………………………….160 The Puppetry of Projection……………………………………………………………..166 A Tale of Two Tempests………………………………………………………………..171 Other Hauntings………………………………………………………………………...177 Virtually the Same……………………………………………………………………...181 Chapter Six: Global Spectacles…………………………………………………………………188 China‟s Coming-Out Party……………………………………………………………..191 Fields of Dreams………………………………………………………………………..203 Conclusion: Disappearing Worlds……………………………………………………………...213 Works Cited…………………………………………………………………………………….222 Vita……………………………………………………………………………………………..235 ii ABSTRACT Throughout the 20th century, mediatized forms gained prominence and eclipsed the theater as a site of cultural power and popularity. Because of this tension, performance theorists like Peggy Phelan framed the definition of theater through its inherent differences from film and television. Other theorists like Philip Auslander problematized this distinction, particularly due to television‟s similarities to live performance. The cinema, however, has remained an opponent to performance, ignored in favor of technologies that more readily promote a sense of “liveness.” In Projected Performances, I argue that film projection is more closely related to performance than previously thought, particularly when viewed in light of their phenomenological similarities. Projection is a live act that generates a kind of presence that approximates what is felt with a live performer. The theatrical setting of most film viewings foregrounds this phenomenological frame, despite the prerecorded nature of the content. Despite the seemingly static nature of film, the exhibition of it is most often decidedly theatrical. Hybrid theater, in which productions incorporate film projection alongside live performers, highlights these similarities in a much more explicit way, creating a unique sensory experience. This blending of effects is evident in theatrical broadcasts like the Metropolitan Opera‟s “Live in HD” series, which capitalizes on the liveness of theater to draw people to the cinema. I also investigate hybrid productions that use projected scenery, such as The Woman in White and The Elephant Vanishes, as well as productions that feature projected bodies, like the work of Lemieux.Pilon 4d Art. Finally, I interrogate the use of projections in the monumental spectacles of the opening ceremonies at the 2008 and 2010 Olympics in Beijing and Vancouver, respectively.Throughout, I examine the ways in which these hybrid productions trouble the assumed distinction between iii performance and media, demonstrating that projection is a kind of performance that can share the stage with live performers without damaging the unique essential qualities of theater. iv CHAPTER ONE: THE POSSIBLE PRESENCE Once during my undergraduate years, the theater department called upon me to create original projections for a rock musical it was producing. The show was Return to the Forbidden Planet, a combination of 50‟s b-movies, oldies rock and roll, and Shakespeare. The quality of the script notwithstanding, the production was one of the most ambitious the department had ever produced. The show took place in the interior of a space ship, and my job was to create video transmissions that would be projected onto the central screen in the ship‟s bridge. I recorded and edited several sequences involving characters, models, and rudimentary special effects. During the process, I had no illusions about the quality of the work I was doing, but it did lead to a lot of thought about the nature of what I was creating. While several of the transmissions were paused and allowed to sit on screen for long periods of time (e.g. showing the outside of the space ship), others featured characters in other locations interacting with those characters on stage. This interaction was half-simulated; my projections were pre-planned with a fixed running time, but the actors on stage could feasibly improvise or change their performance from night to night. While I initially assumed that the projections would constitute a static interaction, it seemed night to night that the actors were responding uniquely each time the videos were played. Whether or not both sides of the relationship were dynamic or not, the live performances were evolving and interacting with the mediatized performances. The projections represented characters and moved the plot along; at some level, they were a performance. The nature of these projections and their effect on the actors illustrate the sometimes- blurry line between “real” living presence and the presence sometimes felt through film projection. However, the idea of presence is complicated in regards to mediatized forms and their 1 assumed differences from the “live” experience. The projections I crafted seemed to be tangible for the actors, but what of the audience watching the scene unfold through both projection and acting? Was presence a possibility within the projected image? Does presence automatically imply physical weight and volume in a shared space, or a living organism, or the simultaneity of the act and the viewing of it? While the projections were not created to indicate any “liveness” of transmission, did the audience assume they were streaming live from some other room or previously recorded? All of these questions are central to prevailing theories surrounding performance and media at the beginning of the twenty-first century, drawn from the writings of Peggy Phelan, Philip Auslander, and others. In a time when media formats such as television, film projection, radio, and online communication are not only a part of daily life but also rapidly entering the domain of the performing arts, their prevalence holds profound implications for both the performance scholar and theater artist. Scholars have, in the past few decades, distinguished media from live performance through several central qualities, and often media forms such as film are seen as antithetical to the assumed objectives of performance. However, there has recently been an increase in the use of projection technologies that, while not signaling a brand- new technology, may point to the future of the consumption of both film and live theater, such as in projected scenery, or even projected bodies. My study will interrogate those intersections of live performance and film projection in light of what such hybridization1 means to the phenomenology of both arts. Phenomenology has provided the most consistent basis for distinguishing the two performance practices, and it is 1 While there are numerous types of “hybrid” performances, I will be using this term to refer to the use of film projection within theatrical productions, instances in which both forms come together to interact or represent one another. 2 through that lens that I will analyze the nature of what happens when the two mechanisms