Objectives:
1. To agree on class mechanisms and expectations (delivery methods, "essay" assessment criteria, feedback, etc.)
2. To distill the core concerns of Japanese modernity from the assigned reading.
3. To translate these concerns into hypotheses about the manner of acting appropriate for the Japanese modern.
Recap Notes on Class
According to Tsuno, theatre makes rules that shape the audience, and the audience's rules reshape the theatre as well (sometimes for the better, sometimes not). A particular notion of negative, passive theatre involves the audience following a bunch of rules about being silent. These silent people are "individual" with their truths, and this individuality is necessary for our notion of tragedy as a conflictual, dialectic motion in history (an individual struggles, wins, and then grows). Tragedy reinforces our notion of the individual precisely because we see the individual crushed. Seeing this individuality on stage weirdly makes us more passive because we "feel" for the individual who has done something.
We then talked about how we could manipulate audience or performance to change parts of this relationship --either heightening the identification or shocking the audience out of passivity. I also threw the idea of community vs. individual into the mix. We will use the scenes from the required reading that you bring with you to class (in printed/written form) next week to Rehearse/test our theories. The key to this performance is to think about how you as a human "feel" during the process. Your essay will rely on this experiential data (alongside the reading---and remember if you can't make the performance weeks or choose not to, there is a whole other version of the module for you with a different essay)
Notes on Recap and Reading (Tsuno - Concerned Theatre Japan):
Tsuno’s idea in regards to individuality is an interesting parallel to Herbert Blau:
‘Desire has always been … for the audience as a community, similarly enlightened, unified in belief, all the disparities in some way healed by the experience of theatre. The very nature of theatre reminds us somehow of the original unity even as it implicated us in the common experience of fracture, which produces both what is time-serving and divisive in theatre and what is self-serving and subversive in desire … as there is no theatre without separation, there is no appeasing desire.’ - The Audience - Herbert Blau
Both discussing the audience being individuals with their truths however paralleled this idea with herbert that the act of being in an audience regardless of subjective thoughts you are submerged as a community. The individuality becomes more significant when looking at the effects of certain pieces on each audience member thus affecting their individual ‘ truths’ also as stated by Tsuno these audiences ‘Rules’ can affect the piece as well. However in my eyes, if the piece is impactful enough the level of individuality is nullified as there would be a unified idea of being affected by the piece.
Passivity
Passivity is interesting as yes stillness is something brought along via the feeling of being subdued as stated however in contrast this could be due to the conforming ideas of actually going to the theatre.
Quoting Ethan Mordden - ‘Audience reactions at live performances are so programmed as to seem canned, and...theatre audiences, emulating those in television studios, appear to applaud on cue’ - Peter Marks, "Standing room only (and that's not good)," New York Times, December 8, 1995, sec. H: 5
This stillness may be a product of mediatized theatre as we are programmed to be silent in a theatre, and to respond to happenings on stage accordingly however this should not be the case if one is affected by ‘feeling’ for the character/individual on stage ones reaction may be different, it may cause traumatic sobbing, anger, etc thus why are we so still in the audience. If you felt these emotions away from theatre you wouldn’t normally act by being still.
In the final paragraph of the recap
This whole concept of passivity is, in my opinion, not down to individuality and that response but it’s a programmed response to having in theatre, Passivity in theatre should be in definition an impartial and pragmatic response to what is being witnessed not a response which invokes no reaction. Individuality does play a part within theatre when looking at deep and personal thoughts however in an objective sense each person is still communal as the piece is invoking a thought process within each audience member. So one is individual within a community, every audience has subcultures of individuality which are hosted by each person watching the performance.
After writing these previous notes and then referring fully back to Tsuno’s writing it is interesting to see the parallels between Philip Auslander’s idea of Mediatized theatre, Ethan Mordden’s ‘Programmed’ audiences, and Tsuno’s view of ‘a peculiar spectating entity, endowed with its own fixed set of rules’, its as if the theatre is no longer a place for audiences being free to feel whatever they want yet now it is a constructed formulated platform for the audiences to feel only what the theatre wants you to feel. Tsuno stating that he is ‘not merely an onlooker’ gives the sense that these formulaic instructions have removed individual experience and forced into collective experiences.
‘When I am reading I am fully responsible for my own silence’ - Tsuno - This quote goes back to what I was saying previously, becoming an audience member within a theatre we are no longer responsible for our silence and individuality.
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