Performance Insights Site-specific theatre and performance with special reference to Deborah Warner, Peter Brook and Ariane Mnouchkine William Joseph McEvoy PhD. University College London September 2003 ProQuest Number: U642828 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest. ProQuest U642828 Published by ProQuest LLC(2016). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 Abstract This thesis aims to develop a critical vocabulary for dealing with site-specific performances. It focuses on their association with dereliction and decay and assesses the implications of this. A central claim is that these performance modes are best understood in terms of their critical reception. I argue that site-specific performances redefine the language of criticism while profoundly questioning theatre’s cultural location. Even in the cases of site-specific performances that flagrantly negate traditional theatre forms, the theatre text and critical frameworks, these return in said performances as fragmented, spectral or unconscious. The thesis divides into two parts. Part 1 deals with the emergence of site- specific performance at the intersection of trends in art and theatre in the 1960s. It outlines the role of decay and the ‘found’ object/space in creating a genealogy for site-specific performances, while showing how critical writing changed to map this new terrain (Chapter 1). Furthermore, it argues that site-specific performances are characterized by distinctive modes of critical writing, in which the critic is self­ reflexive and creative (Chapter 2). Arguing that critics are deeply implicated in the production of site-specific performances. Part 1 ends with a critical and creative reconstruction of Deborah Warner’s use of abandoned sites for performances in London in the 1990s (Chapter 3). Part 2 of the thesis re-reads the creation of Peter Brook’s Bouffes du Nord and Ariane Mnouchkine’s Cartoucherie de Vincennes as site-specific events which were subsequently reinscribed as the defining moment in each theatre’s history. I show how site-specificity changed from being a counter-cultural gesture into a constantly redeployed marker of cultural identification. Chapter 4 examines narratives of the discovery of the two theatre venues by their directors and critics, showing how site-specificity is produced at the intersection of individual, cultural and aesthetic discourses. Analysis of the Bouffes du Nord in Chapter 5 charts the critical uses of the theatre’s decay, while Chapter 6 views the Cartoucherie as the culmination of the Théâtre du Soleil’s quest for group identity through identification with workers. Contents Page Acknowledgments 6 Introduction 8 Scarpetta and Kantor: theatre, theatre-ejfects and the critic Site-specific theatre and performance: circulating negation How site-specific theatre and performance emerged Environmental Theatre Theatre theory and theatrical space What site-specific theatre and performance rejected The production of hybridity: site-specific art Work/site relations: language, dialogue and missing plinths Discursive sites, disoriented viewers Consolidating the genres of site-specific theatre and performance Site-specific theatre and performance locations The critical function o f site-specific theatre and performance Remodelling critical metaphors: decay and waste Refiguring critical practice Constructing site-specificity, reconstructing its afterlife PARTI Chapter 1 40 Conceptualizing site-specific theatre and performance: found objects, found spaces Allan Kaprow and the class o f art objects The implications of Kaprow’s analysis Tadeusz Kantor: the abject and sublime object of/as theatre Kantor and the object Language and object Object and function The object’s negation The Object-Space Schechner and The (Tulane) Drama Review The disoriented audience o f site-specific performance Conclusion Chapter 2 71 Site-specific theatre and performance: critics, texts and the hidden scene of writing Site-specific theatre/performance: the implications of metaphor ‘Anything but literary’: Theatre and the Scene of Writing ‘Even if only secretly’ Theatre, site and writing Frisch’s critico-creative text Site-specific performance and/as archaeology Site-specific metaphors: the scene of the crime (implications) Writing, trauma and the document Site-specificity: body (and) writing Entering sites, entering texts Exposure and secrecy Chapter 3 99 Deborah Warner^s site-specific theatre and performance: objects, reading and (inter)textuality Whose Waste Land? Eliot’s, Warner’s or the spectator’s? Building as text The Waste Land, or, does John Gross wear glasses? American Ruins/London ruins: Reading The Tower Project in/through Camilo José Vergara’s American Ruins Vergara’s ruins: the consequences of solitude Reading into Performance Sites o f Reading Haunted sites, haunting texts Conclusion PART 2 Chapter 4 126 Finding the Bouffes du Nord and the Cartoucherie de Vincennes: reconstructing the site-specific moment and critical disorientation Exposing borders Discovering the Bouffes du Nord and the Cartoucherie de Vincennes: excavation and evasion Private Journeys into Theatre Critical indecency Fantasies and productions of marginality Finding the theatre site, inscribing its significance The Bouffes du Nord and the Cartoucherie: decay and work Brook and Mnouchkine: locating the other Theatre sites and ethics Conclusion Chapter 5 148 Peter Brook and the Bouffes du Nord and decay: staging critical desires The Bouffes du Nord and site-specific performance in Paris The Bouffes du Nord: heterotopia and decay The Bouffes du Nord: early criticism Theorizing decay: writing and the body Decay and the other Recent critics of the Bouffes du Nord: site, decay and the body Critical exposure and fire Decay and life-cycles Decay: archaeology, layering and waste Decay and critical subjectivity The chic translations of the Bouffes’s du Nord’s decay Conclusion Chapter 6 172 Theatre Out of Place: Ariane Mnouchkine and work in process at the Cartoucherie de Vincennes, Paris Collective creation: from identification with work to recognition of the other Work, building, aesthetics Theatre: ‘pas un métier du tout’ Arnold Wesker’s La Cuisine: the universality o f work Wesker as worker Le songe d ’une nuit d ’été: ‘des hommes travaillent à une oeuvre importante, à une fête’ Différent working methods: children and utopias The Théâtre du Soleil and les Halles Recycling work at the Cartoucherie Production, creation: producing creation at the Cartoucherie Converting (audiences at) the Cartoucherie From work, via creativity, to affect Coda: the work of memory and the memory of work Conclusion Conclusion 208 BIBLIOGRAPHY 217 I dedicate this thesis to 93 Hanley Road, 113 Liverpool Street, 17 Naish Court, 5 Thorpe House, and 4 Hunter Street Acknowledgments I would like to thank Professor Michael Worton, my supervisor at University College, London, for the critical flair and intellectual acumen with which he has responded to this project. His constant support and encouragement have been invaluable. I have benefited greatly from his ability to instil confidence and to approach ideas from fresh and exciting perspectives. Professor Timothy Mathews has made important contributions to this thesis at various stages, and I extend my thanks to him, especially for his support at my first major conference in Leiden. I am grateful to other members of the French Department at UCL, in particular Roland-François Lack and Nicholas Harrison, who have offered advice and ideas at key moments. This thesis was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Board and the UCL Graduate School, and I express my warmest gratitude to them. I was able to undertake a two month research trip to Paris thanks to the UCL Graduate School and a Phylis Palmer Travel Fund. The UCL French Department gave me the great opportunity to spend a year at the Université de Paris 3, Sorbonne-Nouvelle, as a lecteur. Dimitris Papanikolaou has accompanied this thesis every step of the way and my debt to him is incalculable. His passionate involvement and probing intelligence have exerted a major influence over my life and work. A great number of people have supported and encouraged me in personal and professional capacities, foremost among them, Tom Andrews, Denis Anscomb, Ben Dowell, Patrick Watt, Tessa Roy non, Caroline Johnson, Julie Huntington, Mitzi Angel, Karim Mekhtoub, Richard Gooder, Ian Patterson, Deborah Philips, Theo Hermans, Anne-Marie Duffy, Eleni Syminelaki-Nanou, Konstantina Nanou, Timothy Wade, Billy McEvoy. I would like particularly like to mention my CAPES students at Paris 3 for our great classes and Gareth Lewis-Jones for his unstinting support and good humour as I was finishing this thesis. My mother, brother and sisters know how much their love has meant for me, especially at the difficult period of the death of my father, Patrick McEvoy, whose wise words and life-long encouragement have been sorely missed since. Introduction This thesis is an examination of site-specific theatre and performance.