Epica, Ethics and Pop - maneuvers out of the post-modern literature and theater.
In late November, the Kollatino of Rome, at the last meeting in Novo Critical, the Academy of Artifacts presented in reading scenes from "One Day", the spectacle of 24 hours which was debuted at the 2008 festival Romaeuropa but, due to production problems, has never seen the light. Although not completed, the director Fabrizio Arcuri "One Day" remains the best piece of theater designed by his company because he was "born to witness the total inadequacy of the system and consistently has been" aborted at the hands of this shortcoming. " In fact, "One Day" hovers like a ghost on the current situation to dispose of space and funding system that is undermining the Italian theater, because it was perhaps the first real wake-up call, and has for a long day with a light almost "mythical". Needless to undertake a review of a show ever staged, of which only parts have been presented and most readable. It would be a necessarily partial refund, since 'Day One' is a work-world that are extremely complex, which would have housed inside other shows, and offering several levels of reality and strands of history in an elaborate plot: the kidnapping of the parable of a Romanian baby doll Dolly Bell depicting a rabbit Chechen (Dolly Bell but also many other things ...), performance KISS live - the band's favorite child, but also the reproducibility of the sample pop icon, turn even work here in Beijing - the adventures of porn actor Tito, passing through the meshes of a noir business of trafficking in organs. And this is just a taste of the drama produced by Magdalena Barile from Fabrizio Arcuri ideas and improvisations of his actors - now collected in a book published recently to Titivillus.
However, the operation of "One Day" may provide food for thought interesting to read a trend that is emerging in the international theater. "One Day" as the "Shoot / Find Treasure / Repeat '- the seventeen songs written by British playwright Mark Ravenhill and staged always Arcuri - or as the theater soap Rafael Spregelburd "Bizarra", whose Italian version created by Manuela Cherubini is currently on stage at Angelo Mai Rome, are all examples of use of an unusual shape for the stage: the cycle 1 . Unusual because the perennial crisis in the theater has accustomed us to create more small, with only a few players when, with little or no scenery, a short drama "pocket" that you can move easily and cheaply (with ' only exception working on the vision of the theater and intercept circuits that intersect with the visual arts).
The cycle is not simply a show longer - otherwise we should include in this line of reasoning also operations such as Peter Stein with "Demons" - or a form of theater overflowing from the usual boundaries. Of course, both in 'One Day' in 'Bizarra "For example, he chose to take a show off the scale, measure out, is also a direct challenge to a theater (in the Italian case) and an economic (in the case Argentina) that seem to compress the theater beyond repair. But the shape of the cycle also has implications drama particularly interesting, giving the sign of an attempt to distance itself from aesthetics of the fragment that has characterized the period of post-modernism without slavishly go back to a staging of a conventional type.
The cycle has to do with the epic, is indeed its classic form, EPA is certainly present in all these works, which in their complexity have several typical traits of the epic tale. Surprisingly, in the era of rapid and surface seems to be just the epic tale, with its layers and its time to use much more than the usual standard, suggesting a possible way out of the post-modern, its fragmentation, its denial of the story in favor of an open work from multiple readings and all equally valid. Moreover, if one of the pillars of the theories of post-modernity was the very end of the story - and the concept developed by Francis Fukuyama was nothing if not a declaration of the impossibility of resuming an epic tale in modern history after the collapse of Communism and the questioning of the Marxist ideal of progress as the driving force of history - it is with the conversely that the epic story begins. Why is the epic is the only kind that can give birth to myths fondativi su cui si ergono le grandi narrazioni.
Qualcosa del genere l’ha intuito negli stessi anni la letteratura, che proprio nell’ultimo decennio ha cercato di uscire dall’empasse in cui si era cacciata tempo prima, messa alle corde da un minimalismo più di idee che stilistico. Nel nostro paese si possono ricordare operazioni come i «Canti del Caos» di Antonio Moresco, mentre la New Italian Epic – termine proposto nel 2008 da Wu Ming 1 per circoscrivere un’insieme di autori e opere letterarie uscite a nell’arco che va dalla seconda metà degli anni Novanta al primo decennio del nuovo secolo 2 – è oggi una categoria with force that animates the literary debate. Although this definition takes into account the historical setting or meta-historical novels, you can propose a parallel fund, perhaps spurious, to what is the theater where the setting is rather closely related to the present and even the present. In both cases, anyway, is the epic search mechanism to reactivate the mechanisms tired of the narrative, the spark can "shine" the reader / viewer, as they say.
We suffered two caveats. The first is that the epic, although it is a word that fascinates word "euphoric" that conjures up vast horizons, size and enterprise of writing - using a definition of literary criticism Carla Benedetti 3 - not necessarily steeped in ethics. Mechanisms are also appeals to her - and well before the theater and literature - American television writers, so that their TV series are the main entertainment product in recent years. Obviously with what not to say that the TV series are necessarily carriers of content that is not ethical, God forbid, but it is right to point out that the ability to make up the epic and its mechanisms also belongs to commercial products entertainment (Besides most of the time products are well made and writers who use high-level). On the other hand we are talking about a "form" as complicated as it is in the field of beauty and form is also a carrier of the substance, and forms are of limited value in time and the use made of it: if you need to undermine conventions and illuminate paths of reasoning about the world around us - to continuously move the object, said Fabrizio Arcuri 4 , shape and object to their relationship sclerotizzino not devoid of meaning - have a value next to we recognize that social value art rather than entertainment. "Sometimes revolutions pass through the invention of new forms," \u200b\u200bsays Rafael Spregelburd in an interview published in The Stranger 5 . But, in fact, in this case the value is revolutionary in form as in the act of inventing.
Second point: the real fault of post-modernity, in terms of aesthetic forms that expressed, is that because of its apocalyptic formulation implicitly as they pretend to be a definitive aesthetic horizon and impossible to overcome (although at the same time praise the pursuit of the "new" categoria mitizzata e spesso equivocata). Inoltre, se e quando queste forme estetiche vengono praticate in nome di una critica-denuncia della realtà coatta della post-modernità stessa, esse risultano spesso troppo contigue all’oggetto della propria critica, rendendo di fatto impossibile distinguere tra “adesione” e “denuncia” (per altro in perfetta coerenza con la post-modernità dove tutto e il contrario di tutto collassa nel buco nero di uno stesso orizzonte senza possibilità di futuri eventi: forse, da questo punto di vista, quella sulla post-modernità è l’unica teoria filosofica e sociologica ad essere contemporaneamente apocalittica e integrata). Insomma, come si fa a say whether we are "against" or "for"? How do we know, within this framework, if art has lowered his voice so as to make it come together in this "elegant silence" that confusion is the media - to cite an expression of Ascanio Celestini - or whether it is screaming loudly? Is unknown, because in the vast sea of \u200b\u200bpost-modernity is no longer an outside or inside, and ask such questions amounts to quibble sex of angels ...
course is not true that it is not possible to distinguish the wheat from the ryegrass, or for any other because its position may be reduced to an attitude stadium based on the pros and cons. The nuances exist, and often the contradictions that emerge from them not as an element of confusion, but as a form of enlightenment. For this reason, in addition to two points made in the previous paragraph, and therefore to them, it should be noted that these forms of epic - those dramatic as the literary - have no problem to communicate with another key ingredient of the shackles of post-modernity and confine their claim to reality in an eternal present, a present expanded forgetful of the past and does not foresee the future: Pop.
The philosopher Maurizio Ferraris, in a recent article 6 appeared La Repubblica, scrive che il post-moderno può essere sintetizzato in tre parole di undici lettere in tutto: Iper Pop Post. «l’Iper come valutazione positiva dell’eccesso e come rifiuto della misura, il Pop come miscela di alto e basso nel sistema dei media, e soprattutto il Post, l’idea di essere postumi, di venire dopo», scrive Ferraris.
Certamente il ricorso all’epica cerca di lasciarsi alle spalle il Post: la rivendicazione è portata avanti con forza da parte di questi artisti, tanto che Fabrizio Arcuri di questo ragionamento ne fa un fil rouge che attraversa esplicitamente la complessa stratificazione di «One Day»; mentre l’Institute of Germanic and Romance Studies dell’Università di Londra ha deciso di intitolare la pubblicazione degli atti di due conferenze sulla New Italian Epic in modo emblematico: “Overcoming Postmodernism”. Ma l’Iper e il Pop? Sono elementi costitutivi tanto della teatro-novela di Rafael Spregelburd o della maratona di «One Day», quanto di romanzi metastorici come «Q» di Luther Blissett (il precedente nome collettivo del gruppo di scrittori oggi noto come Wu Ming) o di scritture debordanti come «I canti del caos». Tutti questi oggetti artistici sono “eccessivi”, e tutti si immergono volentieri nell’oceano del Pop e ne fanno un elemento di fascinazione. Questo vuol dire che la loro voce si combines the refined silence of the media confusion?
not give a clear answer, can provide some equation of general application. In the end - and it is good! - Are always in the works speak for themselves, not the theories. But we can hazard a guess in principle, namely that when an appeal Iper and Pop is a seductive array only, it is situated on the frequency of background noise, the confusion of the elegant silence the media. If, however, that action constitutes a fascination yes, but who has the duty not to seduce but to open passages of reflection on this, then it should be in a different frequency, where words are distinguishable, and their meanings, even if they have multiple facets, are certainly far from ambiguous.
In this context it seems to me that at first glance, the scene of the epic cycles and some contemporary antibody present in more than a phenomenon as the New Italan Epic. In literature, the epic action is indeed a successful attempt to retrieve a broader narrative that seemed destined to have shortness of breath, but the narrative maintains a very high degree of fictional, where from this point of view of epic is nothing but the new deal of communication between writer and reader, nothing else that the "form in vogue." Of course, then this form can be useful to return to put on the plate of the literature of important issues and broader - for example the "destiny of nations," according to Wu Ming - but is often also a mechanism that uses the instrumental form, so seductive, and is therefore a strong risk of rhetoric. In the arts that use the word this risk materializes usually when you are convinced, more or less manifest in the superiority of content over form, while the osmotic relationship between form and substance to bring out the chemistry necessary for a work of art really speaks to those who it receives. Obviously I'm not saying that the entire corpus of novels cited by Wu Ming 1 in his essay to be rhetorical, not at all, but that their fictional, they "believe", their action epic for epic feel, remains a limit - for a more structural limit, since the narrative is mostly "fiction" - the equation "epic equal recovery of a possible speech on the world." I'm not saying that this equation is not possible, simply that it is not automatic. Because it lacks a crucial aspect of literature, the third vertex of the triangle that form the axis-based substance that is perhaps the Most importantly the language. It is the language of the writer, his style, to ensure that the agreed contract will not remain mere seduction but produces a shift of the gaze of the player on the world, and not by chance that the language of the great literature of the era of post removed -modernity, is the style to be finished in the dock for the setting up of a natural barrier to communication. From this point of view an experiment as alienating "Songs from the chaos" of an action epic Moresco seems more complex and successful.
In the theater the question runs on a different track. Why is fictional reflection on the explicit and indispensable is practically all the rage since there is a theatrical drama. And the theme of reality and fiction is intimately related to the nature of the medium of theater. A good chunk of the latest generation Italian theater - regardless of whether or not they use the epic genre - have declined in various aesthetic forms, urgent common: the urgent need in various ways to undermine the mechanisms of communication, show the toy scene broken, split, to be able to demonstrate how 7 . The capital that goes behind the theater, in this reflection, it is the questioning of the idea of \u200b\u200b"representation" (As an element of fiction) that has rocked the boat on the debate stage virtually throughout the twentieth century. The result - as Andrea Porcheddu stressed during the meeting on "One Day" - is now such that you can attend performances throughout Europe, which recover mechanisms of narrative and "staged" but at the same time have that phenomenon, borrowed from the performing arts, the "missing character" (ie, when the actors are on stage as themselves, and not because they are trying to materialize a particular character). And this co-existence - as opposed to what would be the case in the literature, where you would end immediately in the field experiment metaliterary - does not give the work an aura of metatheatrical. Instead, it retrieves the agreed contract with the viewer on the grounds that the plaintiff with him disassemble the usual communication and its mechanisms.
Returning to the theater that is making use of the epic cycle, while immersing it in the rough waters of Pop is bringing this complex, inexhaustible reflection of theater on the fictional. Being obsolete the medium of theater, compared with a post-modern, made of digital hypermedia, makes the false construction of reality in theaters medial always present and explicit: the actors (and directors behind them) must constantly question what gives them the right to be on stage, that is what allows them to be credible in front of them who is watching. They can not appeal to a common agreement that plays sull'immedesimazione so-called "immersive" (as in cinema, for example, or literature), because the viewer is not only in theatrical work: it is rather himself a part, because without the audience, the theater can not physically happen. The degree zero of the theater is always the meeting (and physical) between humans, between spectator and actor, and if there identification it has to pass through the dynamics of encounter and dialogue, of relating. It is a practice that has given but a semantic precision. One aspect of theater that makes up for grabs to what the director Massimiliano Civic dell'autoralità about the theater: "The director and the actors become a multinarratore that tells the public and is determined by something that goes beyond the understanding of the individual to give rise to third. About the author of a play? In my opinion, anyone in the theater is always talking and magical third is the relationship 8 . If we add to this discussion the third vertex of the triangle that creates a spectacle, and that the public and its perception, we can imagine the scene as something that occurs in a hypothetical that is the intersection where all these people meet. If we, from this point of view, the theater is an art much more conceptual than many other arts.
The choice of the action and the epic cycle, then, not being at the base of the covenant of theatrical communication with the viewer, not liable to be dragged into a rhetorical mechanism which you try removing a constant - at least in a certain type of theater. The epic thus emerges as an attempt to invention of a linea narrativa complessa e stratifica, che tuttavia non giustifica di per sé l’operazione teatrale, semplicemente perché è “di grande respiro” o “ben fatta”, come una serie tv, ma perché inventa una forma nuova dal potenziale “rivoluzionario” nel senso espresso da Spregelburd.
Ciò vuol dire che nel teatro il ricorso all’epica è un fatto positivo e non lo è nella letteratura? Ovviamente non si può porre la questione in modo manicheo. Come ho già affermato le opere, siano esse di teatro che di letteratura, si possono giudicare solo per ciò che valgono e non per l’adesione ad una teoria piuttosto che ad un’altra – and luck. But I believe that the action epic that can not emerge as virtuous in itself - an "ethical" in the first proposal - if it does not address his links with a high vertex of the triangle of post-modernity: Pop.
What then can be considered the epic pass to our escape from post-modernity is to be verified. Can not leave without hyper betray itself, and because it is difficult to give up Pop the card game in order to shine the viewer / reader. In its denial of the Post, however, draws a broader horizon to which it is already possible to wade to breathe better, to smell less foul air. It is not a trivial matter.
December 10, 2010
a For more Spregelburd Rafael is also the author of another cycle, "Eptalogia of Hieronymous Bosch," released in Italy in two volumes for Ubulibri, by Manuela Cherubini.
2 Wu Ming "New Italian Epic", Einaudi Stile Libero, 2009.
3 "Free Italian Epic" by Carla Benedetti, www.ilprimoamore.com article published in the March 11, 2009, and in reduced form and with the title "slating epic" su L’Espresso n°10 del 12 marzo 2009.
4 Il riferimento non è a un testo scritto, ma a l’intervento che ha fatto il regista dell’Accademia degli Artefatti a Novo Critico in occasione della presentazione di «One Day».
5 «Teatro e Telenovela», intervista di Graziano Graziani a Rafael Spregelburd, da Lo Straniero n°126-127 – dicembre 2010 / gennaio 2011.
6 «Siamo ancora postmoderni?» di Maurizio Ferraris, articolo apparso su La Repubblica del 19 giugno 2010.
7 Vedi a questo proposito the essay "The reality in a gaseous state. A look at the theaters of the twenty-first century "Graziano Graziani, to be published in article form on www.altrevelocita.it in December 2010.
8 Massimiliano Civic interviewed by Attilio Scarpellini, in "Dream in the summer night" by William Shakespeare in the translation of Maximilian Civic, edited by Attilio Scarpellini, Publishing & Entertainment 2010. 
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