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Olfactory Performances Olfactory Performances Sally Banes Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/dram/article-pdf/45/1 (169)/68/1820738/105420401300079040.pdf by guest on 23 September 2021 The smells of Western culture attenuated for much of the th century; modern sanitation reduced “bad” odors in daily life, while changing values di- minished the rich use of scents for special occasions, such as religious rituals and theatrical events (see Classen, et al. ). The beginnings of Western the- atre in ancient Greek festivals like the Eleusinian mysteries (in modern times considered the prototype of the modern gesamtkunstwerk) were suffused with intense aromas of all kinds—including fruit, floral, grain, and animal offerings; blood and burning animal flesh; wine, honey, and oil libations; and the burn- ing of incense and other materials in sacred fires (see Burkert ). In our times, the use of incense in Catholic churches constitutes a diminished survival of the ritual use of smell in religious performances. Scented theatre programs and perfume fountains were only two of the th-century olfactory devices in Western theatres (see Haill ), but during most of the th century, the “fourth wall” conventions of realism generally divided the spectator from the mainstream stage and permitted only sight and sound to cross its divide. Historically, the cultural uses of aromas in the West diminished with the hy- giene campaigns of the late th and early th centuries, since the spread of disease was linked to foul odors. Perhaps the deodorization of the theatre was in some ways connected to the scientific ambitions of naturalism, to an idea of the theatre as a sanitized laboratory (whereas odor could be precisely described in the pages of a naturalistic novel, safely distanced from the body of the reader). The deodorization of the modern theatre may also be one facet of a conscious move away from—even an antagonism toward—religious ritual. In that context, it’s not surprising that the Symbolists, hostile to naturalism and fascinated by re- ligious mysteries, restored aroma to performance in the late th century. Over the course of the th century, various artists (both mainstream and avantgarde) repeatedly attempted to renew the sense of smell as part of the the- atrical experience (including plays, dances, operas, and performance art)—using aroma both to challenge and to expand the realist aesthetic. In the s, olfac- tory effects in performance became particularly pronounced. And yet, the use of aroma onstage has received surprisingly little critical or scholarly attention; there is no published history of olfactory performances, nor have most theatre semioticians included smells in their analyses of theatrical signs. Thus there ex- ists a largely unexplored rhetoric of what I will call the “olfactory effect” in theatrical events—that is, the deliberate use of “aroma design” to create mean- ing in performance. Perhaps this is because so often the use of smell seems merely iconic and illustrative, a weak link in a chain of redundancy across sen- The Drama Review , (T), Spring . Copyright © New York University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Olfactory Performances sory channels that does nothing more than repeat what is already available visu- ally and aurally. However, I contend that smell has been used and may be used in a wide variety of ways; that on closer analysis even the seemingly elementary use of smell as illustration proves more complex than at first glance; and that it is useful to the history and criticism of both theatre and aroma to anatomize these distinctions. (Although throughout the history of Western performance there have been all sorts of accidental and/or unintended smells in the theatre, from the food spectators eat to the odor emanating from urine troughs, in this article I am concerned only with olfactory effects through aroma design.) Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/dram/article-pdf/45/1 (169)/68/1820738/105420401300079040.pdf by guest on 23 September 2021 Jim Drobnick has noted the “ambiguous semiological status” of smell—the way it is situated, as Alfred Gell puts it, “somewhere in between the stimulus and the sign” (in Drobnick :). Perhaps this ambiguity (and also the technical difficulty of controlling scent in the theatre) has served as a deterrent to the elaboration of aroma design. Yet despite its low aesthetic status, aroma is not simply part of nature, but does carry cultural meaning, and certainly the conscious use of aroma design in the theatre—a place characterized, as Roland Barthes has put it, by a “density of signs” ([] :)—is a mode of communication that, like any other element in the mise-en-scène, can be used for artistic effects and thus analyzed and interpreted. In his essay “Rhetoric of the Image,” Barthes analyzes how visual im- ages (like advertisements) communicate meaning (Barthes [] ). I find Barthes’s “spectral analysis” of the visual image useful for my project for a num- ber of reasons, in particular because he separates out the various components of images, according to their communicative channels (linguistic as well as visual). This can be useful by analogy for separating out and then reassembling the vari- ous components of the theatrical mise-en-scène, including the olfactory. My project of anatomizing a rhetoric of aroma in theatrical representations begins from the premise that there is a total, integrated sensory image (or flow of images) created in the theatre, of which the olfactory effect may be one com- ponent. Thus in analyzing meanings conveyed by aroma design in the theatre, one needs to discuss the use of odors in relation to the dominant sensory chan- nels of theatre—the visual and the aural—and not simply as isolated sensory events. The aroma may work in concert with the other sensory channels to re- inforce meaning, or it may complement or conflict with the other channels. Moreover, keeping in mind C.S. Peirce’s semiotic triad, icon-index-symbol (), will be useful in distinguishing among various representational strategies, especially in understanding how aroma either enhances or departs from realism. I begin my poetics of theatrical aroma design with a taxonomy that is struc- tured according to the representational function the odors in the performance are intended to discharge. I should point out that my categories in this tax- onomy are not mutually exclusive, since these olfactory effects may perform more than one function (and the functions are not all parallel in nature). There are six categories so far: to illustrate words, characters, places, and ac- tions; to evoke a mood or ambience; to complement or contrast with aural/ visual signs; to summon specific memories; to frame the performance as ritual; and to serve as a distancing device. (There is also a seventh category, that of unrecognizable smells, which remains to be explored further.) The most common use of aroma onstage is to illustrate words, characters, places, or actions. For instance, in The Governor’s Lady (), director David Belasco enhanced the realistic effect by creating an onstage replica of a Childs’ Restau- rant, complete with the aroma of actual pancakes, which were cooking during the play; in Tiger Rose () he scattered pine needles on the floor to create the proper scent for the forest setting; and in The First Born (), set in San Francisco’s Chinatown, he burned Chinese incense (Marker :–). Of- ten (but not always), the mode of technological dissemination of odor in this Sally Banes category of illustration involves cooking food, either onstage or offstage—for instance (in various recent productions): bread, toast, bacon and eggs, ham- burgers, soup, spaghetti sauce, omelettes, popcorn, onions, garlic, artichokes, mushrooms, panela (caramelized cane sugar), hazelnut cookies, risotto, jas- mine-scented rice, fish and chips, curry, sausages, sauerkraut and kielbasa, kid- neys, boiled beef, Cajun shrimp, and Australian barbequed meats of all kinds.5 But there are many other illustrative aromas besides those derived from food— for example, the smells of manure, diesel, and citronella in Ivo van Hove’s production of India Song (Wilson :); of rose perfume in the Persian Garden Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/dram/article-pdf/45/1 (169)/68/1820738/105420401300079040.pdf by guest on 23 September 2021 scene of the Paris Opéra revival of Rameau’s opera-ballet Les Indes Galantes (Guest :); of various th-century “unhygienic” smells in Mark Wing- Davey’s production of The Beaux’ Stratagem (Winn :); of marijuana in various productions of Hair; and of cigarette smoke in countless performances. Related to the illustrative function, but operating more generally, is the use of olfactory effects to evoke a mood or ambience, as in Vsevolod Meyerhold’s production of Don Juan, when “proscenium servants” sprayed perfume to cre- ate an aura of luxury (Leach :–). Similarly, but more recently, Graeme Murphy’s ballet Shéhérazade for the Sydney Dance Company () incorpo- rated perfume smells wafting from the silken canopies of the set (Cargher :). In Valentine de St.-Point’s “métachorie” dance performances in Paris in , the dancer burned large pots of incense, according to her theory of correspondences—no doubt derived from Baudelaire and also the Symbolist staging of The Song of Songs at the Théâtre D’Art in —governing the scent, predominant color, musical environment, and central poetic idea for each dance (Moore ). In Le Théâtre La Rubrique’s production of Cendres de Cailloux by Daniel Danis, “the audience was put in darkness during most of the two hours’ performance. During the course of the play, the actors used [...] natural essences to recreate, through smell, the feeling of being in the forest of Northern Quebec” (Lavoie ). A New York production of Joe Orton’s Entertaining Mr. Sloane, directed by David Esbjornson, used straw- berry-scented room spray to create a tacky ambience (Brantley ).
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