Course Blog #3 (Justin) - Wielding Theatricality

As Whitney pointed out in her post, Davis’s concern with theatricality is wrapped up in the audience and its perception/consciousness of spectacle as spectacle; “Such a spectator, who distinguishes between actor, role, and situation; self and other; and between self and self-as-actor, creates theatricality” (141). Whitney and Sara have both discussed how this awareness by the audience connects Davis’s theatricality to Brecht’s performance style, which attempts to harness this phenomenon in order to move an audience/collective to public action (social, political). Though as Sara rightly points out, this facet does not make Davis’s theatricality equivalent to Brecht’s V-effect, it simply makes such ‘alienation’ a possibility. I have always been troubled by Brecht’s theories, but have been unable to pinpoint why. The reason may be connected to the aforementioned susceptibility/tendency/potentiality of the audience; ostensibly, theater artists employing Brechtian techniques are not merely trying to actively engage audience members, but are purposely playing upon their given natures to promote potential social ruptures. The question of ethics and theater has been raised several times in class, and that concern/anxiety/fear is beginning to greatly resonate with me. The resonance is magnified by Davis’s repeated attempts to work against negative connotations often associated with the term theatricality; “theatricality is a condition of being, and though its inescapability is debated, it is not considered a negative condition” (131); [Theatricality] seems to exist side-by-side with what commentators would recognize as the conventionally theatrical, but is not synonymous with it and certainly not pejorative” (136); “Theatricality is ‘pardonable’ as a glitch suffered by humans because of their inability to achieve nature’s spontaneity” (139); “Theatricality’s ‘inauthenticity’ was its virtue, recognizing the gap between signifier and signified, truth and effect” (142). Davis’s attempts to overcome the negative connotations that theatricality has acquired since its first published use by Carlyle stokes my own fears surrounding the concept, instead of pacifying them. Ultimately, Davis seems to argue that an audience wields the final say in how theatricality is perceived and whether it will have an effect post-experience, whether lived activity or dramatic performance. As she states, “Theatricality…is not about politics per se…and it may exist in the theatre or in everyday life as long as spectators grant it” (152) and near the end, “In public life, however, the onus for instigating this theatrical moment is on the spectator, who by failing to sympathize and instead commencing to think, becomes the actor” (154). Although a hopeful view (and an empowering notion for spectatorship), given theater's history as a tool for propaganda, I am not convinced of an audience's power to turn sympathy on and off as though it were controlled by a switch.