Images from climate strike on September 20, 2019 in which millions of people walked through the streets of New York City. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/20/nyregion/climate-strike-nyc.html
“PERFORMANCE…[i]t’s a doing, a done, and a redoing. It makes visible, and invisible; it clarifiesand obscures; it ephemeral and lasting; put-on, yet truer than life itself…performance is radically unstable, dependent totally on its framing, on the by whom and for whom, on the why where when it comes into being.”[1]
Diana Taylor addresses the temporality and limitations of performance because of the liveness, the idea of doing and done. This doing and done translates into an act of belonging or striving to belong in a specific way, or rather existing, to make sense of the conditions of object-subject relations in society. In conversation with theatre artist Augusto Boal, the ephemerality of performance points at the liveness and agency of its subjects—the “spect-actor.” “In order to understand this poetics of the oppressed one must keep in mind its main objective: to change the people — “spectators,” passive beings in the theatrical phenomenon — into subjects, into actors, transformers of the dramatic action… In this case, perhaps the theater is not revolutionary in itself, but it is surely a rehearsal for the revolution. The liberated spectator, as a whole person, launches into action. No matter that the action is fictional; what matters is that it is action!”[2]This call to a new theatre gives voice and action to the people of the community, the people the piece is about. This action is a framework for revolt and reclamation. With this tool is mind, how successful is forum theatre discussing issues and reclaiming bodies (transformation of object to subject) of its “spect-actors”?
Bertolt Brecht argues that theatre should be a form of entertainment, a tool to delight, but it is also a great vessel for education and changing the way the audience believes they should function during a performance. He agrees in the active participation of the spectator through alienation. This alienation is deeply connected to object-subject relations for bodies in protest.
[1]Taylor, Diana. Performance (North Carolina: Duke University Press, 2016), 41.
[2]Boal, Augusto. Theatre of the Oppressed (New York: Theatre Communications Group, 1993), 122.