Four Spectators

Author(s): Eugenio Barba and Richard Fowler

Source: TDR (1988-), Vol. 34, No. 1 (Spring, 1990), pp. 96-101
Published by: The MIT Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1146009
Accessed: 04-09-2019 08:25 UTC

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 Four Spectators

Eugenio Barba

The Natural Borders

The theatre's nature is ephemeral. What consequences can be drawn

from this true yet banal affirmation?
One could dive into the culture of the ephemeral.
One could, on the other hand, oppose the unavoidably transient nature
of theatre. This opposition brings us to a discovery of its meaning. It is an
attempt to dilate the theatre's boundaries, to refuse the predetermined role
which it assumes in our culture. Thus: to negate the theatre by doing it.
This means knowing how to hide the negation in the heart of a work
which must above all be "well-done." We can transmit the meaning of the
revolt without naming it, simply by means of technical principles and
professional attitudes.
"Ephemeral" means "that which lasts but one day." But also "that
which changes from day to day." The first meaning evokes the image of
death; the second, on the other hand, evokes the ever-changing flow which
characterizes being-in-life.
It is the performance, not the theatre, which lasts only a short time. The
theatre is made up of traditions, of conventions, of institutions, of habits
which endure throughout time. The weight of this endurance is so heavy
that it often prevents life from emerging and replaces it with routine.
Routine is another of the theatre's natural boundaries.
To fight against the theatre's ephemeral nature does not mean to protect
that which endures: tradition. Nor does it mean to fight for the conserva-
tion of performances. The "electric shadows," as the Chinese called film,
do not menace the theatre. They threaten to seduce it. Film and electronics
realize what was unthinkable until this century: performances which can be
conserved practically unchanged. And thus they obscure the awareness
that the essential dimension of the theatrical performance resists time not
by being frozen in a recording but by transforming itself.
The extreme limit of this transformation is found in the individual
memories of the individual spectators.

That Part of Us Which Lives in Exile

What does it mean to work keeping the spectators in mind but not the
public? The public ordains success or failure; that is, something which has
to do with breadth. The spectators, in their uniqueness, determine that
which has to do with depth-they determine to what extent the perfor-
mance has taken root in certain individual memories.

96

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 Four Spectators 97

There is a part of us which lives in exile, which we or others (the others

in us) do not find acceptable or sufficiently important. Certain perfor-
mances burgeon in this rationally, morally, or emotionally exiled region.
The spectator does not consume these performances. Often s/he does not
understand them or does not know how to evaluate them. But s/he con-
tinues to have a dialog with the memories which these performances have
sown deep in her/his spirit. I say this not as a director but on the basis of
my experience as a spectator.
The necessity of distinguishing between public and spectators derives
from the will to consciously exploit an inevitable condition: even though
some or many reactions can be unanimous and common (these are the
public's reactions), communion is impossible. Intense relationships can be
established, but they are based upon reciprocal estrangement.
This estrangement is not only a source of difficulties but can be exploited
as a precious source of theatrical energy. Instead of trying to construct a
performance as an organism which speaks to all spectators with the same
voice, one can think of it as being composed of many voices which speak
together without each voice necessarily speaking to all spectators.
For several years, Odin Teatret's performances have contained frag-
ments (sometimes entire sequences) which are directed to certain specific
spectators whom we feel are close to us and to whom we personally refer.
This does not mean these sequences or fragments must appear incongruous
to other spectators. Rather, it has to do with creating a woven fabric of
actions which is coherent on the preexpressive level [see Barba 1986:135-
166], precise in its dramatic rhythm, and which contains "knots" of
images that can arouse the attention of every spectator. The action or
sequence which for the majority of spectators is alive but impenetrable, or
simply nonboring, must, for at least one spectator, contain a clear and
central value.

The word "spectator" does not apply only to those who are gathered
around the performance. In part, the actors and director are also spectators:
they are active in the composition of the performance; they are not, how-
ever, the masters of its meaning.
I have referred to an extreme case. There is a vast gamut of possibilities
between this case and its opposite pole, where everything must be equally
decodifiable by the maximum number of people. When one is in a position
to explore this gamut amply, then one is also in a position to cross barriers
of language, of social and cultural divisions, of different levels of educa-
tion-not because the performance is "universal" and says something ac-
ceptable to everyone, but because at some moments it speaks to all while at
other moments it speaks differently to each individual. The performance
dances not only on the level of energy but also on the semantic level. It is
its meaning which dances, sometimes explicitly, other times covertly and
secretly, open to the free associations of some spectators, while ambiguous
and unrecognizable for others.
The real difficulty does not consist in guaranteeing the presence of multi-
ple voices, but in safeguarding the organic integrity of the performance.
There must be a technique which prevents its fragmentation or its degrada-
tion into a message which is coded, insensate, and inert for those who do
not possess the key.
Making it possible for the spectator to decipher a story does not mean
making her/him able to discover the "real meaning," but means creating
conditions which allow the spectator to ask her/himself questions about
the meaning. It has to do with uncovering the "knots" of the story, those

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98 Eugenio Barba

points at which the extremes embrace.

There are spectators for whom the theatre is essential precisely because it
presents them not with solutions but with knots. The performance is the
beginning of a longer experience. It is the scorpion's bite which makes one
dance.
The dance does not stop when one leaves the theatre. The aesthetic value
and the cultural originality of the performance are what make the sting
sharp. But its precious poison comes from somewhere else.

The Technique of the Director as Spectator

I continue to make theatre because I 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 con-
cretized 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 spectators' repre-
sentative. The director must be loyal to them in the same way that s/he
must be loyal to the actors. 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 spectators.
Loyalty to the spectator consists of assuring that each spectator is not
patronized by the performance, does not feel treated like a number or like
"a part of the public," but experiences the performance as if it were 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 to break up the unity of the public on the mental
level. In the same way, to be loyal to the actors does not mean to seek for
success for them, interest from 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 per-
formance. For me, the director 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 as-
sociate my work with the image of Rabelais's starving dog who persists in
biting the bone in hope of breaking it and discovering within it "une
substantifique mouelle. "
This doggedness implies hunger, obstinacy, and technique.
Let's discuss technique. One might say: "The director is the first spec-
tator." Or, "Her/his task is to direct the attention of the spectator through
the actor's actions." But of which spectator are we speaking? The tech-
nique exists only when the director can work on de-composing the spec-
tators' possible behaviors into certain basic attitudes.
Without a preliminary de-composition, there is no orientation in the work,
there are no parts which one can then cause to interact, one is unable to
proceed by trial and error: no composition is possible. The necessity of
decomposition is evident when one begins 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 frag-
ments (scenes, sequences, microsequences) and a differentiation between

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 Four Spectators 99

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 for a similar craftsperson-
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 spec-
tator," s/he should not identify her/himself, her/his own private identity,
with that image ("the first spectator") which instead should be a working
tool. 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 spec-
tators 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 terri-
tory of the work consists of knowing how to identify her/himself first with
one, then with another, and with yet another of these spectators, oversee-
ing 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 perfor-
mance 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 meta-
phors, 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 s/he might not know the language in
which the actors are speaking, nor recognize the story. S/he does, how-

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Ioo Eugenio Barba

ever, recognize that this work is "well done," carefully detailed like the
handiwork of a master craftsperson 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 kinesthetically. 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 frag-
ment, in each detail, in each microaction, an erratic relic of her/his knowl-
edge, 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 recogni-
tion to knowledge, from the information of an experience to the experi-
ence of an experience. S/he must be able to re-see the performance each
evening without becoming bored, as if s/he were wandering in a "dilated
mind" which each time causes new questions to surface, and which con-
fronts 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 be 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 em-
broidery 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 "well-done"
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.

Translated by Richard Fowler

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 Four Spectators IoI

Reference
Barba, Eugenio
1986 Beyond the Floating Islands. New York: PAJ Publications.

Eugenio Barba, founder and director of the International School for Theatre
Anthropology (IS TA) and Odin Teatret in Holstebro, Denmark, is a contributing
editor to TDR.

TDReading

For more on Barba's work see: Phillip Zarrilli's "For Whom Is the
'Invisible' Not Visible: Reflections on Representation in the Work of
Eugenio Barba," TDR 32, no. I (TII7); "Eugenio Barba to Phillip
Zarrilli: About the Visible and the Invisible in the Theatre" and
Zarrilli's response in TDR 32, no. 3 (TII9); Eugenio Barba's "Eura-
sian Theatre," TDR 32, no. 3 (TII9); Patrice Pavis's "Dancing with
Faust: A Semiotician's Reflections on Barba's Intercultural Mise-en-
Scene," TDR 32, no. 3 (TI23).

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