Several years ago I witnessed a subtle
choice in a production of Hamlet that
has fundamentally changed and shaped the way I think about the play. It was at
the American Shakespeare
Center (ASC) in Staunton, Virginia. The stage, and in turn the experience of
watching a play in this space, is certainly different. Over a decade ago, the
ASC successfully built an approximate reproduction of the Blackfriars
Theatre—one of the two main playhouses The Lord Chamberlain’s Men
(Shakespeare’s playing company) frequented. The playhouse is small (see the
link above), but that is not what makes the experience unique. The unique ethos
at Blackfriars is the product of the theatrical ideology that values a
seemingly Bakhtinian embrace of the Carnivalesque. For Bakhtin, the Carnivalesque
is a stylistic literary modality that values the subversion of hierarchy
through chaos (in particular humor, farce, and laughter). This is what the ASC
does so well. Through humor, farce, chaos, and laughter they challenge
conventional assumptions of what theater (and Shakespeare…you know, that pillar
of the Western canon) can be.
To be clear, the ASC is not reductive in
their provocations. That is to say, they are not provocative for the sake of provocation. My sense is that such
an approach would devalue the political impact of provocation by shifting it to
the realm of spectacle, which from my experience, the ASC is not.
In the Carnivalesque, Bakhtin emphasizes
the importance of free interactions between discourses. For Bakhtin, the Carnivalesque
is a unique space where socially acceptable rules regarding etiquette and
proper behavior—typically reified through a ruling or dominate class—are
subverted. Bakhtin’s Carnivalesque is a state-of-play that perpetually
challenges, tests, and complicates hegemonic assumptions.
I mention all of this because the theater
(with some notable exceptions) is a discursive space that clearly distinguishes
between those that consume a cultural thing (the audience) and those that
produce a cultural thing (the actors, directors, etc.). I want this post to be
brief, but I argue, quickly and perhaps reductively, that there is an
interactive disconnect in the theater that the ASC attempts to subvert. Even
though film doesn’t have theater’s productive immediacy, audiences seem more
inclined to cheer, celebrate, protest, or disrupt for no other reason than
because they are not in direct contact with those that produced (past tense)
the cultural product they consume. The ASC does this in several fascinating
ways, but the one I want to mention is the proximity of the audience to the
actors on stage. Unlike any other theatrical productions I have witnessed, the
ASC positions audience members on stage (at times, mere inches away from the
actors themselves). In doing so, this gives the actors the opportunity to
interact with the audience members on stage in addition to audience members
positioned throughout the playhouse. But what I find so intriguing is the way
in which this choice to have audience members sit on stage “shares” the space
conventionally reserved to those producing the cultural product. Audience
members are used as prompts (occasionally actors will hide behind audience
members if a stage direction or interpretive choice dictates), but in addition,
audience members are also mobilized. My wife and I saw a production of As You Like It this past weekend where
several audience members where brought on stage to dance with the actors.
But back to what I mentioned in the
opening paragraph. So in this production of Hamlet
the actor playing Hamlet delivered the opening line to the often
overwrought “To be, or not be” soliloquy not rhetorically but literally. As he
positioned himself to begin, he paused, turned to his left, and locked eyes
with a boy sitting to my right. He walked over to the boy, bent to a knee, and
waited for the boy to return his gaze. Once the boy unenthusiastically obliged,
he began: “To be, or not to be, that is the question.” The boy was speechless
and understandably petrified. Hamlet said nothing. He waited. After a beat,
Hamlet gestured exasperatedly with his left hand as if to say, “well, what
would you like me to do?” The boy said nothing, but he smiled. Thus, Hamlet
continued, “…Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer / The slings and arrows
of outrageous fortune…” and you know the rest. It was as if the boy, not
Shakespeare, granted him permission to proceed.
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