Theater as absence

By Jorge Dubatti

The significant and beautiful experience proposed by Liliana Porter and Ana Tiscornia (outcome of the immediate, playful reflection at the initial stages of isolation) does not replace the "old" theater with a "new" one, but it rather, starkly and pathetically, sets to the fore the entity of the absence of theater: theater as absence.

This video is a powerful device to express the power of the theater when it is absent, when that cultural treasure of humanity that is the theatrical event cannot take place. It makes that absence feel like a wound. It implicitly contrasts everything that is actually done with what cannot be done by proscription and is not named. It evokes the theatrical experience from a silent we cannot do it now. We cannot meet territorially. We cannot meet up. There is no virtual barbecued (with all that the real barbecued means). We cannot practice convivio (gather) together, body to body, in physical presence. High dangerousness. And there is no way to replace physical presence with telematic presence. Failure of the digital world if it sought to replace. Neither better nor worse, different.

Not being able to meet territorially (that is, in the convivio (gathering): geographical – historical - cultural and earthly territorial crossroads) highlights loneliness. Liliana and Ana made me cry. Seeing Patricio, Valeria, Javier, Horacio and could only touch the screen. Liliana and Ana make us feel painfully the current absence of theater. No one goes to the theater to be alone. No one makes theater to be alone. Theater is a practice of convivio (gathering). One of the most wonderful practices of humanism: the establishment of a zone of experience where we do not only speak or read, we live. We go to the theater to live. The convivio (gathering) makes us infants, or rather, it reunites us (makes us conscious) of our nature as infants. Infans: he who does not speak. Theater is experience, not just language: theater is cooked in the fire of childhood. Theater is ineffability. Theater is illegibility. Living culture, not crystallizable in in vitro structures. Pure mourning, pure transformation of the relationship with death. Theater is body and gathering of bodies, in territorial and terrestrial proximity. Not remote, not transmitted by machines. Affectation of bodies in gathering. A different thing is tecnovivio (techno-gathering), which allows the subtraction of the present bodies and their substitution by signs. The living body in phenomenological presence replaced by a sign body. The theater theater-ing, says Kartun, stating his reomodo (an specific mode of performance). So, the video, video-ing? The video theater, video-ing theater? Other policies of the gaze. Liliana and Ana give entity to all this as absence, neither more nor less. In their video, what you see does not matter so much, but what circulates invisible between the nets of what you see: the absence of an experience that we need so much.

Perhaps the sharpest place of the difference is the spectator. The act of expectation in the theater. Expectation in the theater is much more than what etymology marks: to watch carefully while waiting for something to happen. The theatrical spectator influence the beginning; he makes the act as much as the actor and the technical-artist. Just look at the ancient Greek spectators in the pottery of the Sophilus vase. Or read what Plato says about "theatercracy," the power of spectators to sabotage theatrical gatherings (Laws, 700c-d, 701a). Those who have participated in diverse presentations of the "same" performance, know that it is never the same performance because the variables of the convivio (gathering) have changed. In one, the audience shudders, sensitive and collaborative. In another, it seems drawn: it came, but it seems that it did not come, it seems that it is not. How different the theatrical spectator from his universe of creation of the event, compared to a mere observer. Various forms of participation. Irreplaceable. There is no River or Boca. There is no competition. Pluriverses: theatrical experience, video experience, video theater experience. Intellecting its multiplicities is part of the theater. Participatory universes, as John Wheeler says: “There was an ancient idea that there was a universe out there and here was the man, the observer, safe and protected from the universe by a glass plate… Now we learn from the quantum world that, even for looking at an object as tiny as an electron, we have to break that cylindrical glass, we have to get to the bottom”. The physicist adds: “The old word observer simply has to be removed from the books, and we must replace it with the new word participant. In this way, we have come to realize that the universe is a universe of participation”.

The theater is a territorial, infant experience that unfolds intraterritorial worlds (many, infinite worlds within the same territory, at least as many as actors, technicians and spectators en convivio [gathered]). Video is a remote interterritorial experience (a word that is ominous today), which by tecnovivio (techno-gathering) generates a deterritorialization effect: the “cloud”.

Liliana and Ana offer a device to perceive, with silent violence, theater as absence. I hope that the convivios (gatherings) will return soon, not only theatrical ones, the convivios (gatherings) in the streets, in the temple, on the court, in the bars, in the classes, in the houses, to hug to the grandchildren. I do not want to cry anymore.

Jorge Dubatti

(Buenos Aires, 1963)

Critic, historian and university professor specialized in theater and arts. PhD in History and Theory of Arts by the University of Buenos Aires (UBA). He received the Argentine Academy of Letters Award to the best 1989 graduate of the UBA. Regular full professor of History of Universal Theater (Arts degree, UBA). Director by public contest of the Institute of Performing Arts "Dr. Raúl H. Castagnino”, Philosophy and Letters Faculty, UBA. He leads the Research Project Filo: S&T (2019-2021) Towards a bibliographic cartography of relations between theater / arts education in Argentina. He coordinates the research area in Art Sciences (AICA), Cultural Center for Cooperation "Floreal Gorini". He founded and directs the Escuela de Espectadores (School of Spectators) of Buenos Aires, since 2001. He is general director of the Aula de Espectadores de Teatro (Theater Spectators Classroom) at UNAM. He has contributed to launch 34 Escuelas de Espectadores (Schools of Spectators) in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Spain, France, Mexico, Panama, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela. He has published more than a hundred volumes (essay books, anthologies, editions, compilations, among others) about Argentine and Universal theater. He has received numerous distinctions: 2014 Shakespeare Award, 2014 Maria Guerrero Award, 2015 and 2018 Academic Excellence Award from the UBA Rectorate. In 2007 and 2017 he received the Konex Journalism-Communication Award (Diploma of Merit Award) in the categories of Literary Criticism and Criticism of Theater-Dance-Cinema Performances.