Narrativity and Intermediality in Contemporary Theatre / Narrativité et intermédialité sur la scène contemporaine

Alix de Morant / Helga Finter / Eva Holling / Didier Plassard / Bernhard Siebert / Gerald Siegmund

Foreword / Avant-propos

Josette Féral’s text that follows this foreword serves as an introduction to this volume. It was originally given in October 2016 as the conclusion of the international symposium Narrativity and Intermediality on the Contemporary Stage in Montpellier.¹ After three intense days of discussion and reflection on the relation between narration and theatre nowadays, Féral’s statement highlighted tendencies in the intricate interplay of theatre, speech, media, and the other arts, thus providing a framework for contemporary reflections on the changes in the field. The symposium was based on the hypothesis that, despite the rise of performative and post-dramatic theatre and a subsequent abandonment of the plot, theatre performances tell stories after all. The people participating in the symposium answered with their contributions to a call that inquired into the status of the narratives that are continuously produced on stage, be they theatrical, choreographic, or performative.

Studies on contemporary mise-en-scène have mainly concentrated on the deconstruction of traditional theatrical agents (characters, text, and action), and in some cases, the results of these analyses have even led to the claim by some scholars of an “epistemological rupture”² on the contemporary stage. While taking into account these findings, the symposium Narrativity and Intermediality on the Contemporary Stage aimed at a change of perspective by proposing to rethink the modalities according to which theatre still heavily relies on narrative structures. Which models, be they literary, cinematic, televisual, or other, are these narratives based upon? In which respect does intermediality—understood as a “dynamic assemblage of juxtaposed materials”³—play a constitutive part in their unfolding? By which elements and according to which operations are spectators invited to construct their own fictions? Facing the production of dispositifs of intermediality on stage, the symposium studied this activity surrounding the spectator. It aimed to foreground the new modalities of storytelling and their means of producing sense.

A great variety of speakers explored a wide variety of questions: What kind of symbolic forms does intermediality create? What are the dispositions of the verbal and the non-verbal of speaking and listening in intermedial dramaturgies? Which narrative and interpretative models do these dramaturgies rest upon? How are these models, i.e. cinema, video clips, television series, video games, and social media, used by theatre artists and spectators alike? Which roles do the traditional instruments of live performance, the body and the voice of the actor, assume in multimedia environments? How does the digital revolution figure in multimedia narratives on stage? The contributions and proposals presented during the course of the three days of the symposium were based on the analysis of contemporary performances since the 1990s. They are now assembled in this book.

Le texte de Josette Féral qui suit cet avant-propos et qui sert d’introduction au présent ouvrage résume les trois journées d’intenses discussions qui eurent lieu durant le colloque international Narrativité et intermédialité sur la scène contemporaine en octobre 2016 à l’Université Paul Valéry de Montpellier. Observatrice privilégiée de ces échanges sur la complexité des formes narratives qui innervent le théâtre contemporain, Josette Féral s’est attachée à rendre compte des multiples intrications qui existent aujourd’hui dans les écritures théâtrales et performatives, entre différentes sources littéraires, entre le texte et l’image, le corps et la parole, mais aussi dans le jeu incessant des emprunts entre les arts et des transferts entre médias. L’hypothèse à partir de laquelle avait été pensé l’appel à communications pour ce colloque était la présomption que, malgré l’essor sur les scènes de la performance et la disparition progressive d’une intrigue, le théâtre continuait bien, même à l’ère du postmoderne et du postdramatique, de raconter des histoires.

En effet, les études des trente dernières années sur le spectacle vivant ont surtout analysé jusqu’ici la déconstruction des instances traditionnelles (le personnage, le texte, le drame), certains universitaires affirmant même l’existence d’une “rupture épistémologique”. Malgré la prise d'appui sur les résultats de ces nombreux travaux, le colloque Narrativité & intermédialité sur la scène contemporaine invitait à un renversement de perspective.

Ainsi, les auteurs du présent ouvrage se sont attelés à démontrer que le théâtre repose toujours sur de solides structures narratives. Ils se sont interrogés sur les origines et les statuts des différents matériaux narratifs auxquels recourent avec une grande inventivité les artistes, qu’ils soient dramaturges, metteurs en scène, performeurs, marionnettistes ou chorégraphes. Fort de ces considérations, le travail mené pendant les trois journées de présentations et de débats a permis de repenser les dispositifs intermédiaux comme la question de la mise en récit, à partir d’agencements entre des éléments narratifs, souvent disjoints, quelquefois presque indiscernables, mais cependant toujours constitutifs des spectacles ici présentés, tous postérieurs aux années 90. Sur quel modèle, à l’instar de quel média, à partir de quelle écriture se composent les récits théâtraux contemporains ? La littérature, le cinéma, la télévision – qu’il s’agisse de documentaire ou de fiction –, les vidéogames et les vidéoclips développent leurs propres schèmes narratifs, les conversations instantanées sur les réseaux sociaux aussi. En quoi l’intermédialité, comprise comme “un assemblage dynamique de matériaux juxtaposés” (Pavis) participe-t-elle d’une transformation du récit ? À l’ère du story-telling et des “fake news”, comment se fabriquent désormais les histoires ? À partir de quels indices, le spectateur est lui-même incité à retracer une ou plusieurs pistes narratives ? Plusieurs études de ce volume se sont ainsi centrées sur l’activité accrue d’un spectateur invité à mesurer l’écart entre les médias comme à décoder les signaux qu’ils produisent, pour résoudre lui-même l’énigme du sens.

Chercheurs et artistes ont exploré différentes perspectives. Ils ont voulu appréhender les formes symboliques créées par des dispositifs scéniques intermédiaux. Ils ont tenté de comprendre comment les opérations de remédiation suscitaient de nouvelles configurations entre le texte et l’image, entre le dicible et l’audible et comment du direct au différé, du réel au virtuel, se modifiait l’expérience de la perception. Ils ont voulu voir si le corps et la voix, principaux médiums de l’acteur, se trouvaient également affectés par ces environnements technologisés. Enfin, ils ont voulu prouver qu’il était possible pour le théâtre de s’engager dans la révolution numérique, tout en proposant aux spectateurs de nouvelles fables.

Leurs textes composent le livre que voici.

Acknowledgements / Remerciements

Narrativity and Intermediality in Contemporary theatre / Narrativité & intermédialité sur la scène contemporaine:

Scientific Committee / Comité scientifique: Prof. Didier Plassard, Alix de Morant (RIRRA 21-University Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3), Prof. Gerald Siegmund (Institute of Applied Theatre Studies, Justus Liebig University Giessen), Prof. Nikolaus Müller-Schöll (Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main), Prof. Josette Féral (University Sorbonne Nouvelle- Paris 3), Christian Rizzo (ICI- CCN), Gildas Milin (ENSAD).

Organising Committee / Comité d’organisation: Didier Plassard, Alix de Morant, Fabio Raffo (RIRRA 21- University Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3); Gerald Siegmund, Lorenz Aggermann, Eva Holling, Georg Döcker, Bernhard Siebert (Institute of Applied Theatre Studies, Justus Liebig University Giessen); Christian Rizzo (ICI-CCN), Gildas Milin (ENSAD), Nicolas Dubourg (Théâtre La Vignette).

The symposium as well as the book are the result of an ongoing cooperation between the Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3 (UPV) and the Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen (JLU), and therefore, they tell their own story of networking, peer reviewing, and friendship. / Le colloque de même que le livre résultent de la coopération entre les enseignants chercheurs en arts du spectacle de l’Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3 (UPV) et de l’Université Justus Liebig de Giessen (JLU). Ce livre raconte aussi l’histoire de leurs propres relations en termes de collaboration fructueuse, de critique mutuelle entre pairs, d’amitié.

Both the symposium and the book wouldn’t have been possible without the financial help of: / Cette aventure éditoriale n’aurait pas été rendu possible sans le soutien financier des partenaires suivants :

The editors would like to send out special thanks to: / Les auteurs voudraient tout spécialement remercier :

Fabio Raffo, Annick Douellou, Sylvie Guillou & Julie Pownall, les artistes Vincent Dupont, Rodrigo Garcia, Heiner Goebbels, Gildas Milin, Christian Rizzo, François-Xavier Rouyer, les étudiants du Master Arts de la Scène et du spectacle vivant, the students of the Institute of Applied Theatre Studies qui ont contribué au succès du Colloque, who contributed to the success of this Symposium.

Thanks a lot! / Merci!

Josette Féral

Introduction: The Return of Long Stories

It’s difficult to come up with a conclusion to these extremely rich few days, and it’s amazing to reflect upon the depth of the exchanges we’ve had in such a short period of time. We have made enormous progress in following so many presentations, but have also made internal progress, in our thoughts, in the discovery of new practices and new ideas. By way of conclusion, I will limit myself to recalling some of the paths we’ve explored over the past few days, reminding each of us that it is up to us to continue to pursue these new avenues. Obviously, it is impossible to have a totalising overview of the ideas and the proposals offered for our reflection. This impossibility is both an opportunity (fortunate in our disciplines that are necessarily blurry, in the best sense of the term) and a frustration; it would be so handy to arrange everything in tables and diagrams, but the result would be incomplete and the apparent order would be completely illusory. So the conclusion that I shall propose here will be open and fragmentary.

One affirmation emerges right away: our interest in intermediality is not a result of current fashion. Intermediality is part and parcel of our field, and gives birth to innovative forms whose richness and variety have been described by several of our speakers.

The first observation is that, beyond the various opinions voiced, the methodological approaches were all about showing the variety of modes of narration at work in theatrical productions. The aesthetic approach continues to dominate the ways of understanding a spectacle. Hence we encountered in several presentations well-known and lesser-known artists (such as Rimini Protokoll, She She Pop, Kristof Warlikowski, and Fabrice Murgia), analysed in new and deeper ways than usual. And we discovered others, like Laurent Chétouane and Maria Jerez, as well as all the puppeteers (e.g. Faulty Optic, Renaud Herbin, Tim Spooner, Hotel Modern, Bruno Pilz, and Paulo Duarte) and certain Libyan artists (Walid Raad and Akram Zaatari).

From a methodological or conceptual point of view, theatre has definitively left the sphere of hard concepts like anthropology, philosophy, ←15 | 16→sociology, psychoanalysis, structuralism, and dramaturgical analysis; even “the post-dramatic” seems to have lost its momentum, being seldom used to account for the practices that once concerned it. We are entering the post-post-dramatic, or, more properly speaking, the performative. This notion was evoked in several presentations.

This conference was entitled “Narrativity and Intermediality.” Its basis is obvious. Whether we are now in post-dramatic or performative theatre—whatever we want to call it—the productions that are staged tell stories and include accounts of every nature: intimate, epic, lyric, poetic—but in exploded or deconstructed forms. These accounts can also be linear and documentary, in the form of testimony or dialogues, in “voice on” or in “voice off.” They “recount, still and always,” as Benoît Hennaut has observed.¹ Storytelling has never left our stages. It’s a fact. I would even say that today our theatrical stages recount more than ever.

Our discussions have been situated at the intersection of several avenues of exploration: First, there is an obvious return of storytelling and narration in theatre, as several presenters have stressed. Each study revealed the artistry of the various theatrical creators, and how they used technology. Among others, we have revisited the productions of Jacques Deleuvellerie, Fabrice Murgia, She She Pop, Antoine Defoort and Hallory Goerger (Germinal), Berlin, Phia Menard, Ivo van Hove and Guy Cassiers. For some of us, we have discovered Laurent Chétouane. This return of storytelling ←17 | 18→was evident from the beginning, in the Call for Papers itself; it is all the more interesting given the expectation that storytelling would disappear from the theatre under the influence of technology and of Deconstruction, beginning in the 1960s. But we’ve seen that storytelling has endured, even if its nature has changed. What we have witnessed since then is perhaps this mutation.

This is one of the most interesting aspects of our relationship with technology. Technological devices are not simply tools; they themselves are the story, and one must tell the story that unfolds through them on the stage. We must discern not only how they displace the story, but how they are the story. Obviously, it’s the onstage action, the play of the cameras, and the displacement of the centre of attention, that generate either the main narration or parallel narrations that are superimposed, that collide and that interlock. These narrations are woven together via the gaze and the mind of the spectator, creating the story or stories. But the camera itself also becomes an actor. This is what is done so well by several artists who did not figure in this colloquium—Kris Verdonck (Heart)², Heiner Goebbels (Stifters Dinge)³, or Martin Messier and Anne Theriault (Con Grazia)⁴. In their work, the machine has supplanted the actor, but we do not find ourselves in a dehumanised environment, where feelings are excluded. These spaces can give rise to a veritable poetry—what Lepage would call a poétique technologique⁵. Clearly, productions like Germinal, Stifters Dinge, Heart, and Le Sacre du Printemps not only tell stories differently; they also tell different stories.

In this context, the very idea of ONE story becomes inaccurate, if not useless, in understanding what is being said on stage. There is indeed a story, but its thread is no longer central. What is happening on the fringes is as important—if not more so—than the structure of the play. As Jacques Derrida and Paul Virilio have said in various contexts, the margins have become the centre; they have displaced our gaze, our attention.

This has been a constant in most of the works we’ve considered—from our joyful experience of Germinal to the shows of She She Pop, and the productions of Phia Menard. These shows are not simply vehicles for stories intimately linked to technological manipulation; they burst forth from the interplay of machines and technological objects. Works like ←19 | 20→Germinal by Defoort and Goerger⁶, or Castellucci’s Le Sacre du Printemps⁷ are stellar examples. Technology is such an integral part of the process that it is impossible to disassociate it, dramaturgically, from the production as a whole. The story has become incorporated into the technology; they cannot be separated. Story and technology have become so imbricated that henceforth they share the same language.

One last point, regarding the return of long stories, and the role of technology in their theatrical production: Technology lends itself to the telling of long stories. It’s as though today’s directors, such as Julien Gosselin, seek challenges in their storytelling—challenges that will allow them to tell longer and more complex stories. In this conference we’ve heard about story telling that is audio-visual, intermedial, image-based, and more. Surprisingly, no one addressed the current phenomenon of long productions—epics like Roberto Bolano’s 2666⁸ or Michel Houellebecq’s Les Particules élémentaires⁹, both produced by Julien Gosselin. Other monumental stories that have been reprised in recent times are Guy Cassiers’ productions of L’Homme sans qualités (2010)¹⁰ and A la recherche du temps perdu 1 – 4 (2003–2005)¹¹.