Bitef

The dance does not stop when one leaves the theatre. The esthetic value and the cultural originality of the performance are what make the sting sharp. But it’s precious poison comes from somewhere else. The technique of the director as spectator 1 continue to make theatre because 1 can address spectators who seek to be confronted with something which secretly leaves a trace in that part of them which lives in exile. But these words are nothing but words if they do not become concretized in precise instructions for theatrical craftsmanship. During the work on a performance there must be a moment in which the director crosses over to the other side and becomes the spectator's representative. S/he must be loyal to them in the same way that s/he must be loyal to the actors. The loyalty to the actors consists essentially of creating conditions which allow them to find a personal meaning in the performance without being totally subjected to the demands of the spectators. The loyalty to the spectator consists of assuring that s/he is not patronized by the performance, s/he not feel treated like a number, like a part of the public, but experiences the perfomance as if it was made only for her! him. in order to whisper something personal to her/him. For a director, to be loyal to the spectators does not just mean to interest them, to excite them, to entertain them, to move them. It means to master the techniques necessary in order to break up the unity of the public on the mental level. In the to be loyal to the actors does not mean to seek for success for them, interest for critics, consensus from the theatre milieu. The director is not a ’protector’. Many consider her/him to be an expert coordinator. Others identify her/him as the real author of the performance. For me, s/he is rather the person who knows the sub-atomic reality of theatre and who experiments with ways of breaking the obvious links between actions and their meanings, between actions and reactions, between cause and effect, between actor and spectator. I associate my work with the image of Rabelais’ starving dog who persists in bitting the bone in hope of breaking it and discovering within it une substantificque moulle. This doggedness implies hunger, obstinacy and technique. Let's discuss technique. One might say: the director is the first spectator. Or her/his task is to direct the attention of the spectator through the ac-

tor's action. But which spectator are we speaking of? The technique exists only when the director can work on dc-composing the spectators’ possible behaviour into certain basic attitudes. Without a preliminary de-composition. there is no orientation in the work, there are a parts which one can then couse to interact, one is unable to proceed by trial and error no composition is possible. This is evident when it is a question of working on the ’materials’ of the performance. The process which leads to the final unity - in which it should no longer be possible to distinguish between the different levels and the separate fragments - actually begins with a decomposition into fragments (scenes, sequences, microsequences) and a differentiation between levels (the actions of each individual actor, the relationships, the physical and vocal actions, the time and space of the performance, the visual and sonorous montage). Less evident is the necessity forma similar craftsmans-like attitude when working on the quality of the relationships with the spectator, guaranteeing for her/him'the plurality of the voices with which the performance can whisper something to her/him. When the director affirms that s/he is the performance’s ’first spectator’, si he should not identify her/himself. her/his own private identity, with that image ('the first spectator’) which instead should be a workingtool. If s/he does so, the performance is in danger of being arbitrary. Conscious of this risk, at other times the director lets her/himself go to the opposite extreme. S/he mentally constructs a spectator-type, a generic image based on the public which s/he prefers or most fears. This image does not provide her/him with a concrete interlocutor whom s/he can profoundly respect. The technique of the director as spectator is a technique of alienation and identification. Alienation not only from the public but also from her/himself. Identification with the various and precise experiences of spectators which have to do with the various and precise ways the performance succeeds in being-in-life. This technique has a personal nature. Its principles, however, can be communicated and shared. It is necessary to assume the way of reacting of at least three spectators and to know how to imagine a fourth. I call these four ’basic’ spectators: - the child who perceives the actions literally; - the spectator who thinks s/he doesn't understand but who, in spite

of her/himself dances; - the director’s alter ego; - the fourth spectator who sees through the performance as if it did not belong to the world of the ephemeral and of fiction. Every moment of the performance must be justified in the eyes of every one of these four spectators. The director’s technique in this essential territory of the work consists of knowing how to identify her/himself first with one, then with another, and with yet another of these spectators, overseeing their reactions, imagining the laughter of the fourth spectator. Her/his task is also to harmonize the four different spectators so that what permits one of them to react does not block the kinesthetic or mental reactions of the others. In this way the director explores the gamut which allows the performance to burgeon in various memories. Each concrete spectator in fact can be thought of as an individual in whom these four 'basic’ spectators are combined in differing proportions. The child who sees the actions literally cannot be seduced by metaphors, allusions, symbolic images, quotations, abstractions, suggestive texts. S/he observes what is presented, not what is represented. If Hamlet recites “to be or not to be”, the ’literal child’ sees a man who is speaking at length, alone, without doing anything interesting. The second spectator does not think of understanding the meaning of the performance. We can imagine that si /he might not know the language in which the actors are speaking, nor recognize the story. He does, however, recognize that this work is welldone. carefully detailed like the handwork of a master craftsman from one of those cultures where no distinction is made between art and craftsmanship. Above all, s/he lets her/himself be ’touched’ by the preexpressive level of the performance, by the actor’s dance of energy, by the rhythm which dilates the space and time of the action. S/he follows the performance kinestheticall. S/he is awake because the performance makes her/him dance in her/his chair. The spectator who is “the director’s alter ego" is minutely informed about all the contents of the performance, the texts and the events to which it refers, the dramaturgical choices, the biographies of the characters. The performance is for her/ him a territory in which the traces of the near and remote past give life to new contexts and unexpected relationships. Her/his way of seeing penetrates this living archeology, passing from the upper strata down to

the deepest. S/he must be able to recognize in each fragment, in each detail. in each micro-action, an erratic relic of her/his knowledge, saturated with information, but endowed with a new energy which elicits unusual mental associations. All that which happens here and now, on the stage, must reawaken a resonance in her/ him which is immediately transformed into sound heard for the first time. Only in this way can this third spectator face the events of the performance. passing -from recognition to knowledge, from the information of an experience to the experience of an experience. S/he must be able to re-see the performance each evening without becoming bored, as if s/he was wandering in a dilated mind which each time causes new questions to surface, and which confronts her/him with an enigma which pursues her/him. These spectators are not pure abstractions but personifications to whom the director must impart precise faces and names. Even if they are. not real spectators, the director must able to identify with them: they are personae (masks, roles) which s/he mentally takes on in order to leave behind her/his identification with her/himself and her/his own private reflections as spectator. The director concentrates first on one, then on another of these various ’basic’ spectators, weaves and tunes their reactions in the same way that s / /he weaves and tunes the actions of the actors. The fourth spectator is nearly mute. S/he smiles at the performance’s Maya-veil. S/he sees that which no spectator can materially see: the embroidery on one character’s shirt, unnecessary because it is hidden by a jacket, but embroidered with the same care as the embroidery which has been made to be seen because it has a value for the individual actor and for the director. S/he sees what the actor does with her/his left hand while s/he is showing the spectators her/his right hand. S/he sees the welldone work even when it is secret and s/he recognizes if the actor is doing it because of a necessity which goes beyond any spectator’s exigencies. The fourth spectator is the collaborator who helps us negate the theatre by doing it. D Eugenio Barba