Keywords: Spectator, Spect-Actor, Instrumentalization, Activism, Betweenness
The dramatic arts have been an important avenue for self-expression, discovery, and creativity. The art of storytelling introduces us to history that relates to the present. Shakespeare, for example, helped us understand love, family drama, tragedy, and the universals of life by presenting us the romantic and tragic story of Romeo and Juliet. As a society, we also need creativity and the dramatic arts are instruments that gives us a voice and platform to perform and preserve our histories, whether it is through playwriting or poetry. Additionally, theater, music, and the other performing arts can inspire people to express themselves and mobilize politically and culturally. For example, in the musical Spring Awakening, touches on subjects of rape, abortion, and homosexuality, it relays an important message about the consequences of restricting access to information to young people; the characters in Spring Awakening are repressed teenagers trying to explore and figure out who they are in a strict and prudish yet authoritarian society. In my own work, I explore the way that dramaturgical theories intersect with activism, that is, I am analyzing how dramatists use theater as a means of mobilizing, communicating, and spreading of critical thought through dramatic writing. Furthermore, I seek to ask, is political theater an avenue for social change that provides the audience with tools to feel empowered in taking collective or individual action towards social change?
In class, we have touched on the condition of the possibility of politics and its definition to go back to “betweenness,” to those who have rights and those who think they have rights, but they have been constituted by the “not has.” It’s the consternation of the exclusivity of the has. The universality of the emancipation of the model “impossible.” If the world emancipated, we would not have the struggles. For example, being a felon, you are being deprived of rights, who can take away rights? This question is part of the “political spectacle” and a constant struggle. The whole history of emancipation is not so much beyond demanding human rights as of the real struggle to enjoy the rights that have already been declared, theoretically, we should be able to enjoy these rights. Who declares these rights? An example is migrants, they do not exist within the realm of rights, and under the United States, they are declared as criminals, it’s always an open struggle and an open debate. Resistance is a way of becoming contingent, it is opportunistic, you have to find the way to crash and push the limits and pick up on something towards as if it seems it can’t happen where you need to push and make cracks (the role of the spect-actor changing the scene in a theatrical piece) Without politics there would be no “us vs them” so, there would be no performance with no spectator. As spectators, when we watch a ‘theater piece” we give the protagonists the role, where as the spect-actors, we feel empowered to act and change the ending of a scene. Therefore, performances are neither true or false, they are either effective or not effective. In the final project, I would like to explore art as a practice for freedom, how can one bring the theatricality of politics that influence voters to engage in presidential elections to the relationship between political theater and audiences, can a theatrical performance persuade, motivate, or influence to change the spectators consciousness and act?
Following my interests for the final project. In conversation with human rights and art, I seek to ask the following questions: who constitutes these rights? who has the right to speak? With these questions in mind, art then becomes a medium that challenges us to research, to answer questions of aesthetics and actions, and provides us with the knowledge and responsibility to act for our freedoms, “we” are responsible for our own freedom and it does not depend on an ideology or institution to liberate ourselves. In conversation with Arendt in her topic of Action, she says “with the creation of man, the principle of beginning came into the world itself, which, of course, is only another way of saying that the principle of freedom was created when man was created but not before.” With this in mind, I would like to present a documentary by Juliano Mer Khamis a Palestanian peace activist and theater director in Jenin. Arna’s Children, directed by Juliano Mer Khamis and Danniel Danniel, is a film detailing the Israeli Occupation that centers around a children’s theater group founded by Arna Mer-Khamis, a legendary activist against the Israeli Occupation. Arna spent her life campaigning for justice and human rights in her homeland and founded an alternative education system for Palestinian children whose lives had been disrupted by Israeli occupation. In the Jenin refugee camp, Arna opened a theatre group where she taught the children to express anger, bitterness and fear through acting and art. In the first 20 minutes of the film we see how these children, through theater, are being trained to hate and are told what to say to the camera rather than giving them a free voice, there are questions like “what would you like to do to the Army?” and one child answers “Kill them.” In class, we have discussed art as a mode of connection and, as a vehicle that mobilizes communities towards social justice. An example we looked at was The Art Space by Alfredo Jaar, where he asked the community to build a space out of paper and he eventually burned it down, claiming that it was not his place to impose something on people. Based on this example, we see an act of transformation, art as a mode of connection, and transformation of the political as new possibilities. I encourage for this film to be watched and contextualized, I think it’s a perfect example that slightly answers my statement of art as a practice for freedom with activists resisting the Israeli Occupation. Below is a link to the entire film, the first 20 minutes provides with enough context. Trigger warning! Please be advised there is a lot of violence shown.