Dramatic criticism faced with mise en scène

In a very personal - and subversive - vision about the critical exercise, Kalina Stefanova advocates that the definitions, categories and labels remove the soul of the shows, delete their singularity and lead critique to easiness.

Could theatre criticism be "post-dramatic"? (a deliberately provocative view-point on the role of definitions)

Kalina Stefanova, Ph.D.

In defense of theatre-makers

I fully understand the vast majority of theatre-makers who want to free themselves from critical definitions. The most obvious reason they have is that definitions are generally constricting—they simply “feel tight”. What’s more, definitions can be like uniforms—and how could we expect that a great director, for instance, would settle for being simply, say, “a post-modernist”, when there are so many others labeled in the same way?! Then, definitions—especially when they consist of one or two words tend to be quite flat, that is, strikingly incongruous with the three-dimensional nature of theatre. Above all, though, I’m ready to get into the shoes of theatre-makers for one reason which is usually not pointed out. And it’s not pointed out because it doesn’t belong to the sphere of rationality, therefore it’s quite vulnerable. Yet, I believe, it underlies—consciously or subconsciously—theatre-makers’ opposition against definitions. Here it is:

L'aprés-midi, by Raimund Hogue

One original, not a remake

by Franz Anton Cramer

One might take it for just another attempt to reinsure contemporary performance practice by going back to canonical dance work of the past. So many Sacre-reworkings, Swan Lake-redoings without end, self-quotations by dance artists, appropriations of methodologies, innovations and avant-gardes of the past. Anne Collod has worked on the Ballets russes and on Anna Halprin, Dominique Brun has become an authority in historic step material used by Olivier Dubois (even though, in Nijinsky’s case, Claudia Jeschke and Ann Hutchinson Guest are the ones who originally deciphered the Faune’s score). And historiography is among the most contested academic disciplines related to dance these days.

Today, when the boundaries between reality and fiction fill theatres all around the world, can someone

measure how pornography reinvented the body?

The Big Race

by Jaime Conde-Salazar

What solution would there be for the performing arts, if we are constantly talking about crisis? And, at a point when the borders between reality and fiction fill out theaters throughout the world, has anyone remembered how pornography has long ago reinvented the body? Let us reflect upon that, like in a lazy Sunday afternoon.

Sunday afternoon. There is nothing interesting on TV. Is it too early to find revelations on the screen? It is also too early to abandon ourselves in porn and drugs. Who knows if it is not a good time to ask uncomfortable questions. Things like “What is going to happen to the performing arts? What future do they have?” keep ringing in my head. “What a pathetic way to spend the weekend”, we immediately reprimand ourselves when we realize we are making such questions. But actually there is nothing better to do, that´s why…