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FOR A NEW ECSTATIC THEATRE
by Javor Gardev
Ecstasis
IN ITS ETYMOLOGY, ECSTASY (ECSTASIS) SUGGESTS "STANDING OUTSIDE",
OR "STANDING APART". Ecstasis is defined not only by
what is visible; it is defined in equal measure by what is invisible,
by one’s standing apart from one’s own individuality. This standing-apart
is directed at theater’s ideal telos, the living in the image
(eidos). Ecstatic theater is democratic theater; it wants everybody
to exist in the closest possible proximity to this eidos. In order
to achieve its aim, ecstatic theater relies on empathy rather
than on intellect. It is grounded in the orgiastic cult known
from ancient Greece whereby ecstasis, generated by the collective
energy of the community, spread quickly and epidemically. And
yet, despite its democratic credentials, even the orgiastic ecstatic
theater cannot but profane the teleology of ecstatic acts.
If the aim of ecstasis in the theatrical act is to merge the
personality of the actor (the performer of "embodiment")
with the archetypal image (the person being embodied), such a
goal is obviously utopian. Yet, it is nevertheless a working aim
precisely to the extent that it is unattainable. It is crucial
to eliminate one of the most enduring myths in the theory of theatre,
that of embodiment as method. The rejection of this theory does
not need any special arguments if it is understood that I dwell
only in the body in which I find myself in the given here and
now. That is why theatrical ecstasis must never be conceived literally
as a being-in-the-image but only as an incessant aspiration towards
such being. Ecstasis is not the final point where the yearning
for existence in the other’s body and time becomes reality; it
is the avenue of this yearning, the painfully convulsive history
of the heroic aspiration to an ideal Otherness with whom I am
in direct kinship; it is the after-crisis of the desire to achieve
one’s own eidos. What is the temporal structure of this ecstasis,
how does it evolve over time? We can distinguish two phases in
which the effort to inhabit Otherness proceeds, two moments (speaking
in dialectical terms) that together form the unity of ecstatic
movement. Firstly, excess (Latin excessus="going-out")
and, secondly, enthusiasm ("having-god-inside-oneself").
Ecstasis: The actor’s act
In Greek theatre, acting occurs, like the orgy to which it is
so closely linked, on the borderline. Rather than an "act",
acting is a situation, a situation where matter is left on its
own, whose content is gone, where things have lost the crutches
of their being. As Plato put it, in ecstasis, the souls are elevated.
The orgy is a standing-out or standing-away that cannot be articulated.
Eluding conceptual description, it does not easily fit into theories.
Since the orgy obtains its being from being unexplainable, it
lives dangerously, a mysterious paradox. Acting is located the
borderline between two distinct states: the "body with a
face" and the "bodies without faces". The orgy
marks the transition or way out (excessus) from the first to the
second state. The area in between these two states, between the
"I" qua myself, on the one hand, and the "I"
in its aspiration towards the image (the domain of genuine excessus),
on the other, forces everyone into the indifference of the ecstatic
community (=the chorus) where all form one single entity, a.k.a.,
the embodied Dionysius. To the extent that their ecstasis differ,
we have to differentiate between the chorus and the other actors.
The task of the chorus as the phalanx of excessus is to effect
a breach in the in the autonomy and detachment of the other actors.
Within excessus, two preliminary (preparatory) phases can be
distinguished, exaltation and euphoria. Exaltation is the necessary
precondition for stepping out into facelessness (depersonalization).
The task of the chorus is to bring the audience to a state of
exaltation; to ensure communication between the audience and its
own orgiastic community; and, finally, to prepare everyone for
the going-out-of-oneself that is excess. The community as a whole
is the only outlet for this step where all personal energy dissolves
into collective energy.
The efforts of exaltation bear fruit in the second phase of excess,
euphoria. The merging of the individual with the community has
combined all energies into one, powerful enough to perform the
sympathetic breakthrough from the private to the social. The actors
from the chorus appear as the phalanx that accomplishes this breakthrough.
Their exaltation, euphoria and excess materialize in striking
bodily contractions. After the shell of autonomy has been cracked,
the time of the narrative starts bringing all private psychical
time into synchrony with itself. Ideally, private time should
now be fully identified with the time of the narrative. Practically,
such full identification is of course impossible. The body is
in pain precisely because it cannot be abandoned altogether. That
is where the action of the actors begins. The role of the protagonist
is to take upon himself the identificatory energies of the spectators.
The Greek actor is the object of the community’s unified empathy,
freeing the chorus from its custody over the audience. In ancient
theater, the existential time of the protagonist, which was present
in its totality to the spectators (they all knew the plot in advance),
became an object of desire for unity. The audience passionately
wanted to start living "that" time as if it was its
own. Yet such a desire could not be fully accomplished since their
own bodies and their own times (despite all synchronization) could
never be fully abandoned. The actors of the chorus take it upon
themselves to hold back the empathetic impulses of the community
as soon as these get unhealthily strong. Preoccupied with empathy,
the audience sees the world only through the eyes of the character;
the interventions of the chorus change this perspective so that
the approaching (fatal) end of the character could be observed
(let me remind you again that in Greek theater everyone knew what
was going to happen). Thus the community was perpetually oscillating
between a feeling of empathy for the character, and a feeling
of empathy for itself.
This is how the audience unnoticeably moves towards the second
phase of ecstasis, enthusiasm, which is regulated by a fundamental
rule of the orgiastic cult, the rule of "proper madness".
To act madly in a "proper" way means that one’s ecstasis,
while being full-blooded, should also be controlled in order to
prevent harm to one’s body. Whether that is achieved or not depends
on how skillfully the exchange between the impersonating actors
and the actors from the chorus is performed. "Proper madness"
has the status of an event only for the audience. To the actors
it is more like a technique or medium. During "proper madness"
the audience’s empathy must not slip out of control. Once that
has been achieved, the inter-play of empathy and alienation emerges
as the true foundation for enthusiasm, a.k.a. the higher stage
of ecstasis whereby the deity (Dionysius) speaks through the bodies.
This enthusiasm embraces the actors and the chorus alike. The
actor’s agonal attempts (shared empathetically by his audience)
to shed his skin and be in the represented image gradually eliminate
all self-expression. The actor then proceeds to another state,
that of being possessed. This movement blazes a trail for something
that the actor has in him without being conscious of it. The actor
lets this element resound within himself and reconciles himself
to being nothing but its passive resonator. What reveals itself
in the state of being possessed is on not the actor’s "character"
but the Dionysius in him, enthusiasm proper, the ultimate approximation
to being someone else. The state of being possessed contains within
itself simultaneously all the preceding moments of ecstasis (exaltation,
euphoria and excess) which are revived in the living "now"
of emotional abundance.
Situated beyond skill, enthusiasm is also the proper domain of
talent. It is the ability not so much to articulate meaning, but
rather to bear it, let it speak through you and others. Both in
Greek theater and on the modern stage, enthusiasm represents the
pinnacle of acting. Having attained enthusiasm, the actor exhibits
not the character he tries to embody but the quintessence of his
own existence. The theatrical dimension of acting consists not
in skilful embodiment, in the illusion of its success, but in
the "agony of embodiment" and in the painful endurance
of the impossibility to transcend one’s own body. Given all this
it is difficult to determine what is more tragic: the tragic fate
of the represented character, or the actor’s (predestined) failure
to embody that character authentically. As it turns out, our lifetime
imprisonment in a body is a metaphysical tragedy all in itself.
Ecstatic theater laments this imprisonment, yet at the same time
it celebrates the heroic, if utopian, effort to overcome it.
The enthusiastic aspiration toward the proto-image is followed
by catharsis, the return to one’s self. Catharsis is the therapeutic
element in the exhaustion that results from the striving for embodiment.
It is impossible to achieve a performance of this kind by relying
only on actors as individuals (as is common practice in contemporary
European theatre). Ecstatism is possible only in a community.
The epidemic rapture of the group and the sweeping rush of collective
energy are necessary requirements for ecstatic theater.
The director in ecstatic theatre
Despite all efforts to transform it into a controllable ritual
(on the theatrical stage or through any other cultural activity),
the orgy always preserves its own inalienable territory. In ancient
Greece, it was the task of the chorodidascalos-whose responsibilities
consisted in the directing of the play as well as in the composition
of its music and the conduct of the chorus-to control the orgiastic
cult so that it could unfold without causing harm. There are at
least two fundamental dimensions to the director’s efforts to
control, one secular and utilitarian, the other artistic. Yet
the efforts by culture (or the theater director) to control the
orgiastic cult can never succeed completely. Being esoteric and
beyond all measure, the orgy resists the straightjackets of culture.
Ever since Nietzsche, cultural activity has often been identified
with the Apollonian principle and its efforts to grind chaos into
a machine of fine forms, providing an image for what is per se
formless and faceless. The Dionysian principle, on the other hand,
has been seen as the passive object of this process, the beyond-culture
that can never be fully transformed into culture. The point is
that the Apollonian and Dionysian principles do not simply battle
within the limits of culture; Dionysius is rather the pre-cultural
counterpoint to Apollo. Serving as its very foundation, Dionysius
remains outside the framework of culture. In other words, the
Apollonian principle (a.k.a., culture) is doomed to be forever
unable to reach deep enough into its own foundations, even though
it feels a desperate need to do just that.
Yet the satisfaction of being present at one’s own primal scene
cannot be denied to anyone. It was for this reason that in ancient
Greece the polis arranged (and paid) for an encounter between
the community and its own origins in the theater. The theatrical
orgy was directed by its own demiurge, the chorodidascalos, who
ensured that the deity intervened in the narrative only under
strictly determined conditions. In Greece, involvement in the
ecstatic performance was considered a civic act through which
the free citizen was purged from his concealed passions in order
to maintain his loyalty to the community. The idea was to confront
people (the followers of Apollo) with their concealed fears and
hidden aggressions (Dionysius) in a battle (ecstasis) from which
the Apollonian army would always emerge victorious. The successful
realization of this task was considered a precondition for the
stability and well-being of the polis. The second dimension of
the chorodidascalic action in ecstatic theatre, the dimension
that is artistic and creative, consisted in musical composition,
one of the main generators of ecstasis, a task that was also entrusted
to the director (chorodidascalos). In sum, until Dionysius ascended
to the throne of enthusiasm, the chorodidascalos acted as the
all-powerful, if concealed, ruler of the community. With his actions
he both served and defied the deity. As we saw, the chorodidascalos
was personally responsible for the "appropriateness"
of the mania. If the chorus was the first phalanx of excess, the
chorodidascalos was its strategist, the instigator of excess in
ecstatic theater.
Translated from Bulgarian by Pavel Popov
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