Conversation with Romeo Castellucci
You emphasise in numerous interviews that mysticism is not your intention. Is your theatre often described in this way? Romeo Castellucci: Yes, often. But in fact, mysticism is the experience of believers, and so it is limited, closed, while theatre is in its very nature characterised by openness, being for everyone; it only starts to form a group of people, and for this reason it is a religious phenomenon. Religion is a group of people who gather in relation to some event. Metaphorically, it can apply to a football match. It is about that which is watched, which belongs to everyone and consolidates the group. A [church] mass, film, theatre, [sports] match are religious phenomena but, of course, in a more limited sense of this word. Do you mean a ritual? Romeo Castellucci: No, in my opinion, it is not a ritual yet. A ritual has a very complex structure. Aside from this, it entails participation, while in theatre the division is preserved. When a viewer intrudes on the stage, as happened to us in Paris during Sulconcetto di voltonelFiglio di Dio, the performance is broken because of the element of reality trespassing in another world, that of the performance. I don’t believe in elements of the real onstage, they leave me indifferent. I believe that the division stage/auditorium exists, and should exist. That is why what I do consists of suspending reality: it is necessary to separate the real world, represented by the viewer, from the frozen world of the dream, which the viewers look at and which they experience in a different way. The word ‘religion’ entails this division, because it Developing A Thesis derives from the Latin word meaning ‘to bind’, which assumes the existence of some primordial division. This division is precisely that which gives theatre the potential to rethink reality. Reality possesses no instruments to read itself, so it has to resort to metaphor, and a metaphor is a system of images. Images, in turn, are very complex. They are not things. For instance, animals do not have an idea of images, but only an idea of things. Numerous experiments have demonstrated that an animal is interested in the reflection in the mirror only as long as it thinks it sees a thing. It walks away when it realises that it is only a reflection. We, on the other hand, are more interested in images than in things. Probably due to distance, the lack of belonging, if I may say so, between myself and the image. I do not belong to the image and an image does not belong to me, whereas a thing can be captured; it is, can become part of, my daytoday experience. An image changes incessantly, is fluid and uncertain. Early images were not created to testify to existing reality but to transgress it. Cave painting was related to the world of the dead. What am I driving at? I wish to say that in theatre the division into two worlds is distinct. The circle is not the form of theatre. The circle is a metaphor for a city, human community—when a group of people gets together, they immediately form a circle. Greek theatre is, in turn, an incomplete circle, it does not close, part of it is missing. That is the part which belongs to a different reality, a different world. می توانید برای بررسی انجام پایان نامه با ما تماس بگیرید . Does this division correspond to the division into the sacred and the profane? How would you name this different world? ‘Sacred’ is a dangerous word, at least dubious, because it is understood as something pure, luminous. It does not convince me. For example, Oresteais entirely QFD impure. It is violent, a pool of blood. The sacred couldbe replaced with a different word—‘different’ or ‘elsewhere’. The sacred is, however, not only and solely pure. In my ISI Paper opinion, the word is used too often in a stereotypical way. Theatre is an impure experience for an actor as well as for a viewer. But the status of an actor remains more neutral. In the Greek sense of the word, an actor is a mask; he is a receiver, comes for a moment and passes by. It has no ontological meaning. Theatre is, above all, the viewer’s individual experience. There are so many people in theatre—an author, a director, actors and others—but the only interesting figure is the viewer. Theatre is the viewer’s epiphany. What about an artist? زمان لازم برای اکسپت و چاپ مقاله isi چه زمانی است؟ An artist has to disappear in the work of art. He or she should become transparent. In my opinion, it’s a necessity. The art of our era is the art of the viewer. I think that it is about some psychological or mental power which does not belong to the stage. Does it, then, belong with the house? Is it on the audience’s side? Yes, it belongs with the life of the viewer. Who cares about my psyche? Who can be interested in it? Speaking of psyche, I mean a real artist—a viewer who remains anonymous, who needs to become involved in contemplation. What does the viewer contemplate? I think the discovery is that the viewer sees himself as the one who is looking. He sees his own back, himself watching and creating the performance. The art of our epoch is created by the viewer who is a god and creates in a novel manner. Emotions are on his or her side rather than on the side of the stage. I hate emotions onstage. Of course, everything in theatre is in the character, the character carries the show, but it should remain on the character’s surface. In research of Cain’s body with a childlike hand, as in Genesi:From the Museumof Sleep,or in the bodies of the anorexic women who played Cassiusand Brutus in the second part of Giulio Cesare? Yes. Adam is a body which is coming into being—it is yet unknown what form it will have. That is why he was played by a professional contortionist. Eve is an asymmetrical mother—she was an elderly actress who had undergone a mastectomy, and innocent Cain has a childlike hand. Each of the characters had their form. Actors in Genesi were all close to the concept of a universally recognisable form; one which belongs to all of us. The Book of Genesis is also known to and concerning everyone. It is about the images imprinted in the consciousness of every viewer. A performance involves an agreement between the audience and the viewer, rather than their identification. Is identification in theatre impossible? روش های انجام پایان نامه حقوق در در اینجا ببینید It is possible in film and in literature, if they are well made. I fi nd the work of a traditional artist of value only from the historiographic perspective, in the same way as you appreciate an old classic painting. The theatre of traditional fiction is in most cases so inept and so desperate that I am unable to identify myself with it. At the moment, I can go to see a traditional performance like I visit a museum. Except that in a museum there are so many beautiful works of art, for example those of Caravaggio orRaphael! That is why I visit museums much more frequently [than traditional theatre]. There is an understanding of sorts. I am standing in front of a work of art, awestruck by its beauty. In traditional theatre, there are too many feelings. The viewer’s emotions and impressions are, of course, a different story. You are describing the viewer as a creator, but in the Berlin episode of TragediaEndogonidia, you placed humansize rabbits made of felt in the house. I watched the performance in Avignon and I remember the consternation of people when they realised who was sitting among them. There were around 500 rabbits circled around the auditorium. It seemed to me that a rabbit was an accusation directed at the viewer; to me it symbolised cowardice rather than power. Exactly 650 humansize rabbits made of black material sat in the auditorium. The rabbit could be a metaphor for fear, escape, pettiness. It denoted: wake up, react, think, look, the eyes of these rabbits are made from buttons! However, the perspective can be reversed completely. Rabbits are a ‘perfect audience’ for this nightmare—an infanticide—which the protagonist goes through. They can be her hallucination, or maybe she really sees them? In the production, six huge black rabbits carry the coffin. Blackness makes them disconcerting, even if initially they have a comic effect. Maybe they represent the dead? So let’s agree that the rabbits in the auditorium are beings which have always inhabited theatre. They are already there when the viewers enter the auditorium. They are phantoms for whom the performance was made. Yet there is no unambiguous explanation for their presence. I must admit that, in that period, I did not yet consider the viewer to be the central figure in a performance. Probably also thanks to this production, the thought about the viewer’s new, bizarre role developed. I believe in the viewer’s creative power. What’s left when the curtain goes down? The performance continues in the viewer’s memory. In Sulconcetto di voltonelFiglio di Dioeverything was artificial, but emotionsremained true. Does everything remain in the viewer’s experience? Yes, but the manner in which an image, a body or a sound are read is not my problem. Here again, mysticism as an intimate individual experience comes into play. When you spoke about the surface of the body, thus about the materiality of the performance, I thought of Pavel Florensky. I like Florensky, but we are different. In contrast to theatre, an icon is a formula of salvation; you pray while looking at it. Theatre does not reach that high. It has a different objective. Salvation and punishment are the same thing here. It brings to mind Bataille’s philosophy. He did not want to speak about mysticism, because it was too strongly linked with Christianity, and used the expression ‘inner experience’, but in fact he meant the same thing. In Bataille’s thought, that which is pure is also linked with the impure. He is a frequent reference in the context of your theatre. Romeo Castellucci: Bataille was significant, but never particularly close to me. I was interested in the relationship between Eros and Thanatos when I was a secondaryschool student. I don’t mean the relationship between Eros and Thanatos, which is so often mentioned with reference to your productions from the 1990s. The similarity would be that, according to Bataille, there is no salvation. There is no Name which gives salvation. In this sense, I am close to Bataille. If the theatre were to be the place of salvation, I would have it closed. I cannot bear this thought. Why? Romeo Castellucci: Because I don’t want to be saved by someone or something. It is a form of resigning from your own existence, destiny. If I needed a guru, I would travel to India. It is a form of power which we know well from history. Greek tragedy, on the other hand—and I always refer to Greek tragedy, not because I am nostalgic, or because I am a philologist or archaeologist, but because tragedy is like a polar star, it is an absolute model—was a poison of sorts taken by citizens with consciousness, knowing that it may cause panic, fear, stress, a state of confusion, giddiness. Theatre offers an opportunity to evaluate, to judge not just the production itself, but also the human being presented in it. It gives you an instrument, a weapon, you are its protagonist—this is why Greeks agreed to take this poison. Theatre is a kind of a laboratory of the human being. It presents a reality which isn’t an everyday reality, but a potential reality. Some of the creators of tragedies were even ostracized. Why? Because they spoke about and made people watch things which were dangerous to the community. The political potential of theatre lies in the fact that it forces us to be attentive. We live with a surplus of information, experiences and knowledge. Theatre leads us into a different time, gives us that which is most important: access to experience. Thanks to it, experiencing is still possible. Politics as something current, as a subject, is of no concern to an artist. In my opinion, art is located elsewhere, outside everyday life. Does it give the possibility of transgressing the communal order, though? Yes, but it is vital that the transgression should not come from the outside. In the word ‘salvation’ there is hope, and hope means being desperate. You hope for something, believe in something that will come from the outside. Theatre is about something else. It is a transgression which comes from the inside, from the law itself. Law destroys law through law, as in the case of Oedipus Rex. Greek tragedy transgressed the law, and in this sense it was a poison consciously taken by the citizens of the city. Yes, transgression is part of this system. That is why theatre is always a deceived place. From its very definition. It is there that transgression begins. In what sense? Theatre is related to something artificial. Theatre is a counterfeit coin. It does not save the soul that is not the goal. People have always looked for something impractical; they are missing something, and theatre is founded on this lack. I mean an operation initiated by the stage, a trap in which the spectator is caught. But this trap is a gift! Gorgias said in the context of Greek tragedy that the one we deceive is wiser than the one who knows the truth. The deceived is pulled into the game, is searching; the one who knows the truth already knows everything. Gorgias’s statement is the germ of aesthetic thinking. Outside of the aesthetic context it is dangerous. Of course, there are people in power who take advantage of it, for instance, in Italy. There are many examples of such Gorgias bombs. In theatre, however, being deceived stands for consciousness, knowledge. The deceived is conscious of it. The viewer knows that he or she is in the theatre, that it is an aesthetic and psychological strategy and that the viewer wants to be deceived. He or she leaves after the performance enriched in knowledge, consciousness, cognition. And so theatre does not offer salvation, a bright experience, but darkness in which the viewer has to find light by himself or herself. Theatre is the moment of awakening, gaining consciousness. It is closer to a trick than to truth? Truth has nothing to do with theatre. It is a terrible word. Truth rules out theatre. Nietzsche, the philosopher who grew out of Greek tragedy, said that art is an instrument which makes it possible to free oneself from truth. If all of us knew the truth, we would all be slaves. This also applies to the Christian perspective. There is no truth for Christians, because of the possibility of making a mistake. Therefore, communication, which became a dominant ideology, has to be disturbed, doubt and uncertainty have to be introduced. Art is not communication, but a way of discovering. Discovering is the opposite of communication, it means upsetting communication. This is precisely the role of theatre: to create an opportunity for discovery, or even revelation. Once again we are close to religion and spirituality. Yes, but you need to take the risk. There is nothing mystical in it. It is not an act of faith. The entire body is overpowered by the experience of discovering. While discovering, my gaze forms the object, the movement of the gaze creates the tragic, because there are no events which are tragic as such. It has nothing to do with mysticism. Mysticism comes from the above; the tragic, on the other hand, can be everywhere, also in small things, such as microbiology. Yet still, until the end of the 1990s, religious themes recur in your theatre: Genesi, Inferno and PurgatoriofromDivina Commedia, Sulconcetto di voltonelFigliodelDio, in which the organising principle is theimage of Christ. It is easy to interpret your theatre in the religious vein. Everyone has the right to their own interpretation. To me it is not a matter of faith, it is not about Christianity, but about forms. Catholicism is important because it is our European legacy, the source of forms. But the cross, the symbol of Christ’s suffering, does not belong only to Christianity. It appears already in the Old Testament. Aby Warburg spoke about the flow of images, that we are in the stream of forms. An artist does not discover [them], but evokes them. They find him. A human being does not govern the flow of images, does not control them. I do not invent them, but let the images flow through. But you choose them. Yes, but I do not form them. The Four Seasons Restaurant reveals the power of the history of images. There is a plethora of references in the production. There are characters’ gestures, rhetorical gestures which are made in front of many people and which are part of history, there are mythological gestures and gestures of power—thus the flag. Those gestures are added to Hölderlin’s text. You can travel among them. It is different in Sulconcetto. Here gestures do not constitute the history of images. The gesture of the son taking care of his father, nursing him, cleaning up after him, is a gesture which no one really sees. This performance is not about history, but about a state we all know. No words are necessary, the intimacy of the gestures will suffice. It is a universal language, the language of the body. However, Sulconcetto di voltonelFiglio di Dio drew sharp reactions from audiences. Demonstrations were organised in numerous cities. I don’t want comment on what happened in Paris, because these were not reactions of the audience but of people who did not see the production and did not know what they were talking about. Many [religious] believers saw it and appreciated it. The reception varies depending on the country, political and social contexts. For instance, in Athens we staged it during social upheavals and many viewers interpreted the father’s excrement as a legacy to which the next generations are doomed. In short: the young have to clean up after the old. As you can see, the reception of the production changes. A production is not a finished, closed work. It is a fight in the viewer’s mind and body. Sulconcettoseems very close toPurgatorio. Yes, they belong to a similar aesthetic line. Maybe it is about the same relationship between father and son, maybe they are the same characters. It was an odd experience, this type of narration and realistic composition. Until Purgatorio, I had worked in a different aesthetic. This production, however, was to refer to the bourgeois theatre in which everything is in the furniture, everything is correct, flat and too simple. This realism turns out to be a trap, because the attack comes from the center of this reality. And this production also met with opposition from the audience. You speak about a community, but your theatre divides. It gives rise to discussions, different interpretations, and this is something other than hysterics, because this is how the reactions of audiences in Avignon should be termed. Making reference to the figure of Christ always entails risk. It is a field of search completely appropriated by the right wing, at least in Italy, where politics is antigospel and racist. But it is precisely the right wing that protests hysterically when anyone makes reference to Christ, as if he possessed some immunity and belonged to them only. My production ennobled the relationship between the human body with its excrement and the face of the son of God. When I was a child, I used to live 40 kilometers from Cesena, in the countryside. There was a small church filled with representations of Christ. His image is also my legacy. It is also my story. Cesena, September and December 2012.
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