Copyrighted material – 978–1–137–47880–1 Selection, introduction and editorial matter © George Rodosthenous 2015 Chapters © their individual authors All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2015 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978–1–137–47880–1 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Theatre as voyeurism : the pleasures of watching / [edited by] George Rodosthenous, University of Leeds, UK. pages cm Summary: “Theatre as Voyeurism redefines the notion of voyeurism as an ‘exchange’ between performers and audience members in contemporary theatre and performance. Pleasure (erotic and/or aesthetic) is here privileged as a crucial factor in the way meaning is produced in the encounter with a theatrical work. George Rodosthenous has drawn together an intriguing selection of authors and the ten chapters make a significant contribution to the overarching critical project of assessing the value of approaching theatre through – and as – voyeurism. The authors focus on a range of case studies including specific theatre artists such as Jan Fabre, Romeo Castellucci, Ann Liv Young, Olivier Dubois and Punchdrunk. This edited volume is therefore relevant to prospective readers interested in various aspects of visual experience in the theatre today”—Provided by publisher. ISBN 978–1–137–47880–1 (hardback) 1. Theater audiences—Psychology. 2. Voyeurism. I. Rodosthenous, George, 1973– PN1590.A9T475 2015 792.01—dc23 2015001214 Typeset by MPS Limited, Chennai, India. Copyrighted material – 978–1–137–47880–1 Copyrighted material – 978–1–137–47880–1 Contents List of Illustrations vii Acknowledgements viii Notes on Contributors x Introduction: Staring at the Forbidden: Legitimizing Voyeurism 1 George Rodosthenous Part I Voyeurism and Directing the Gaze 1 Always Looking Back at the Voyeur: Jan Fabre’s Extreme Acts on Stage 29 Laurens De Vos 2 The Dramaturgies of the Gaze: Strategies of Vision and Optical Revelations in the Theatre of Romeo Castellucci and Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio 50 Eleni Papalexiou Part II Voyeurism in Space 3 Intimacy, Immersion and the Desire to Touch: The Voyeur Within 71 David Shearing 4 In Between the Visible and the Hidden: Modalities of Seeing in Site-Specific Performance 88 William McEvoy Part III Voyeurism and Acts of Watching 5 The Pleasure of Looking Behind Curtains: Naked Bodies from Titian to Fabre and LeRoy 111 Luk Van den Dries 6 Baring All on Stage: Active Encounters with Voyeurism, Performance Aesthetics and ‘Absorbed Acts of Seeing’ 128 Fiona Bannon v Copyrighted material – 978–1–137–47880–1 Copyrighted material – 978–1–137–47880–1 vi Contents Part IV Voyeurism and Exhibiting the Body 7 Thinking Critical/Looking Sexy: A Naked Male Body in Performance 147 Daniël Ploeger 8 Viewing the Pornographic Theatre: Explicit Voyeurism, Artaud and Ann Liv Young’s Cinderella 166 Aaron C. Thomas Part V Voyeurism and Naked Bodies 9 ‘Music for the Eyes’ in Hair: Tracing the History of the Naked Singing Body on Stage 187 Tim Stephenson 10 Outlying Islands as Theatre of Voyeurism: Ornithologists, Naked Bodies and the ‘Pleasure of Peeping’ 211 George Rodosthenous Index 226 Copyrighted material – 978–1–137–47880–1 Copyrighted material – 978–1–137–47880–1 Introduction: Staring at the Forbidden: Legitimizing Voyeurism George Rodosthenous In Euripides’ The Bacchae (405 BC), Pentheus is regarded as one of the first voyeurs on the theatrical stage. When the god Dionysus offers him the opportunity to observe – hidden – the orgiastic activities of the Bacchants in the mountains, Pentheus accepts, even if he has to deny his muscular masculinity and dress up as a woman in order to blend in and remain unnoticed. Pentheus’ desire to watch the women in the mountains dancing and singing in ecstasy does not bode well for him as, in the end, he is killed and decapitated by his own mother; his guiltless visual pleasure is punished with extreme death. In the myth of Salome (and in particular Wilde’s 1891 version), Salome dances the ‘Dance of the Seven Veils’ for Herod. In return for this, she asks for the head of John the Baptist to satisfy her mother’s thirst for revenge. Since then, theatre audiences have been watching forbidden acts of sexual encounters, disrobing and (accidental) nudity. The presence of stage nudity is now a regular feature in European pro- ductions, while elsewhere it becomes a powerful directorial tool for the director/auteur to provoke, scandalize, get noticed, outrage, titillate and excite the unsuspecting and, at times, conservative audiences by converting them to complicit voyeurs. There are, of course, productions that are now notorious because of their use of nudity, which has become instrumental to the marketing, promotion and indeed commercial success of the work. Whether we are examining the stripping scene in Calendar Girls (2008)1 or The Full Monty (2000), the first sexual encounter in Equus (1973), The Graduate (2000) or Outlying Islands (2002), the shower scenes in Take Me Out (2002), ‘the scene before the Intermission’ in Hair (1967), the rape scene in Lulu (1895) and The Romans in Britain (1980), the flashes of flesh in Privates on Parade (1977), The Judas Kiss (1998) and The Pass (2014), the sexual 1 Copyrighted material – 978–1–137–47880–1 intro.indd 1 4/14/2015 4:35:51 PM Copyrighted material – 978–1–137–47880–1 2 Staring at the Forbidden Figure Intro. 1 Inside (2011) by Dimitris Papaioannou (Photo: Rene Habermacher) athletics in The Blue Room (1998) or the entire (adult) musicals Oh! Calcutta! (1969) and Naked Boys Singing (1998), these works carry the seed which unfolds voyeuristic feelings within the audience. Contemporary theatre artists such as Calixto Bieito, Jan Fabre, Romeo Castellucci, Xavier LeRoy, Konstantinos Rigos and Dimitris Papaioannou2 have pushed the boundaries of what is acceptable to watch on stage through their experimental and, at times, controversial performances. In Papaioannou’s six-hour performance installation Inside (2011) in Pallas Theatre, Athens, the audience were invited to drift in and out of the space, select their viewing angle and watch a group of performers undress, lie in bed, take a shower, eat, stand on their balcony and get immersed in a range of everyday activities. Papaioannou grants his audi- ences permission to watch these repetitive daily rituals, as if through a keyhole, and allows them to look at the ‘inside’ of an Athenian flat with as much intensity as they wish. He presents them with a series of raw, lyrical, poetic, everyday vignettes and transforms the audience into a ‘photographer’ who can choose their angle of viewing. The work allows the viewer to direct their gaze inside the action, touch the bodies of the performers with their look and opt to go in or out of the ‘performa- tive’ space. The audience’s invasion of the space is not exposed, but the Copyrighted material – 978–1–137–47880–1 intro.indd 2 4/14/2015 4:35:51 PM Copyrighted material – 978–1–137–47880–1 George Rodosthenous 3 Figure Intro. 2 Inside (2011) by Dimitris Papaioannou (Photo: Marilena Stafylidou) solipsism of the performers on stage is coupled with the loneliness of their actions. In the same way that a Bach fugue draws us in and enables us to see the musical interconnections and thematic development, Inside places us in the forbidden area of watching explicitly acts which are private and hidden through repetition and variation of the movement material. Our voyeurism is encouraged and liberated from any feelings of guilt or anxiety. This ‘theatre as voyeurism’ experience reminds us of the daily mini-performances we perform, unnoticed, and how these are now pre- sented as mock-documentary programmes and reality television such as Big Brother (Endemol UK, 2000–present) and exposed by choice through websites such as cam4.com. This volume will discuss the suggestion that theatre is a voyeuristic exchange between the performer and the audience, where the performer (the object of the audience’s gaze) and the audience (the voyeur of this exchange) are placed in a legalized and safe environment for that interaction. Voyeurism, getting access to forbidden visual imagery, is Copyrighted material – 978–1–137–47880–1 intro.indd 3 4/14/2015 4:35:53 PM Copyrighted material – 978–1–137–47880–1 4 Staring at the Forbidden Figure Intro. 3 Inside (2011) by Dimitris Papaioannou (Photo: Marilena Stafylidou) often used to imply a morally dubious position, but this book offers an alternative perspective and aims to redefine the term.