HOW FAR IS FACEBOOK A FORM OF THEATRE?
A DISSERTATION
Hypothesis:
Is Facebook a Form of Theatre?
Theatre is Story Telling, Communicating, Ritual and Spell.
Facebook is Story Telling, Communicating, Ritual and Spell.
Therefore Facebook is a form of theatre.
NOTE: Facebook is an Online Social
Abstract
This piece of writing will look at theatre and Facebook through six different theorists and
theatre practitioners to evaluate the similarities between the two mediums specifically
focussing on Storytelling, Communication, Ritual and Spell. This will also look at
these four theatrical concepts in a philosophical and theoretical manner examining the
reasons behind why we create theatre and why we log on to Facebook, suggesting that
perhaps they are for the same reason - human desire for connection.
Introduction
For the purposes of this piece of writing, theatre will be defined as four different things: storytelling, communication, ritual and spell. Two people engage in storytelling when one person tells a story and the other listens; communicating is using any means possible to articulate ourselves, the world around us and stories; ritual is the ability to blur illusion and reality; and spell is the suspension of disbelief. Taking these definitions and looking at what theorists and practitioners have to say about them, this dissertation will compare what they say about theatre to what happens on Facebook and hope to prove that as a result of the similarities found, Facebook is a form of theatre. The reason that this piece of writing will compare Facebook to theatre is because of its popularity today and the similarities between the two mediums. Facebook is the most trafficked website in the world which means that it is being used by people daily. But why? On the Log In Page on the Facebook website and underneath their branded name is written “Facebook helps you connect and share with the people in your life” We use Facebook to express ourselves, to stay in touch with people, to communicate, to give ourselves self worth and importance, to connect, and to share our lives. Theatre is also a place to communicate and connect:
…the very purpose of the stage is to be an arena for the display of passions in conflict,
that because of its physicality, its fleshiness and principle of palpable encounter, the
theatre gives us our own selves represented as embodied emotions. What the theatre of
course gives us, or ought to give us, is consciousness; consciousness enacted, so to
speak. Moreover, in this enterprise, emotion, or passion, figures as an element placed or
located in relation to other things. (Gilman 1999, pg 160)
Facebook does the same as theatre where: they both share the possibility for creating characters, writing stories, and designing a story. These actions allow for expression, storytelling, creativity and make believe.
The reasons for using the following theatre practitioners and theorists is because their ideologies and ideas support a lot of what happens on stage as well as on Facebook between people. The theatre practitioners and theorists that have been researched are Jaques Lacan, Frederic Nietzsche, William B Irvine, Luigi Pirandello, Jerzy Grotowski, and Antonin Artaud
What is Theatre?
“Art begins in difference, in discontinuity or division from life, and in drama, this difference may be assisted by locating an action in a special place (theatres), surrounding it with special ceremonies, holding it at special times, and using aids (curtains, sets, lighting, costumes). It encourages what Plato and S. T. Coleridge call "a spell" or "suspension of disbelief." So necessary for identification with the content of art, this condition temporarily supplants the viewers' life interests and capacities for analysis and understanding with the false urgencies, tensions, and sufferings that unfold” (Jerome, 1997).
- ‘Story telling’
Theatre according to Grotowski can exist so long as there is an actor and an audience which is also a person and a person in the same room, which Peter Brook would say is a man watching a man walk across an empty space. This is where storytelling takes place between at least two people who can engage in sharing their life stories, imagination and thoughts: “I regard the theatre as the greatest of all art forms, the most immediate way in which a human being can share with another the sense of what it is to be a human being - Oscar Wilde” (Notable Quotes, 2011).
- ‘Communication’
Art is the ability to communicate more effectively than words can do alone. In a theatre, theatre makers are given countless opportunities to use means other than dialogue and monologue to tell a story for example dance, song, costume, makeup and set. All these mediums act as ways to enhance meaning and improve communication:
It has not been definitively proved that the language of words is the best possible
language. And it seems that on the stage, which is above all a space to fill and a place
where something happens, the language of words may have to give way before a
language of signs whose objective aspect is the one that has the most immediate impact
upon us-ANTONIN ARTAUD, The Theatre and Its Double. (Theatre Quotes, 2011)
- ‘Ritual’
Ritual is the enactment of a mass event of belonging and shared stories and understanding of life and the world. It does this by blurring the lines between reality and illusion in order to get at the ’truth’ and what’s beneath the surface.“Rituals give access to emotional states that resist expression in language, which is why they have become so desired...”(Muir, 1997). Ritual exists to invoke, become or influence a divine entity and to have a relationship with the spiritual world acting as a permeable border between two worlds: “Drama lies in extreme exaggeration of the feelings, an exaggeration that dislocates flat everyday reality - Eugene Ionesco, Notes and Counter Notes” (Notable Quotes 2011). They provide Liminal spaces meaning “threshold”, a space of transformation, of possibilities, of the sublime and where adherence to the social world is un-necessary. In theatres this liminal space exists between the stage and the auditorium or rather the actors and the audience.
- ‘Spell’
Spell is the suspension of disbelief allowing a person to stop thinking and start believing what is on stage. It is complete adherence to the illusionary world of the play which is necessary in order for an audience to engage fully with the story. If this is achieved the audience should feel something called catharsis meaning to purge or cleanse, a release of emotion. The Greek philosopher Aristotle was the first to use the term catharsis with reference to the emotions in his work Poetics where “in that context, it refers to a sensation or literary effect that, ideally, would either be experienced by the characters in a play, or be wrought upon the audience at the conclusion of a tragedy; namely, the release of pent-up emotion or energy” (Turner, 1982) Catharsis is the ultimate ‘spell’ in the sense that it transports us to an unconscious state of feeling: “an emotional release associated with talking about the underlying causes of a problem or seeing a dream” (Turner, 1982).
What Is Facebook?
Facebook is a social network which enables its users to log on to the website and create personal profiles for themselves. The users add ‘friends’ (other people who have done the same) so that they can interact and look at that persons page. - Facebook and ‘Story Telling’On Facebook a real live person creates an online profile for themselves which commonly features pictures of themselves, personal interests, and contact information: “Most of all Facebook is about performing…and letting the world know why we are important individuals” (Kirkpatrick 2010, pg 40). Facebook doesn’t just work from a performing end, it also works form the spectator side - allowing people to judge you:
So what about features such as looking at friend’s photos? A perspective is that it is used
to fulfil the curious nature and desire of humans. It can also be interpreted as social
gratification by using it as a comparative to your life to determine whether you adhere to
a set characteristics of desired behaviour or fashion to the group to which you
aspire…How many of you once you have joined a group either look at it or post a
comment on the page on a regular basis. If you are not engaging with the group on a
regular basis, is it really a true online micro community? If it isn’t why do we join these
groups. Perhaps it’s to enhance of self worth by surrounding ourselves by ‘groups’ and
‘communities’ to which we ‘belong’. In other
words going back to our tribal instincts.
(Monkey, 2009)
- Facebook and ‘Communicating’
Facebook started off in Harvard university as a way of connecting the students there where “if you’re a geek who is a little uncomfortable relating to other people, why not create a website that makes it easier?” (Kirkpatrick 2010, pg 29). Facebook can communicate through ways that do not entirely rely on language or social contact. People can write information about themselves in their ‘info‘, use online chat to talk instantly to their online ‘friends‘. browse the ‘newsfeed’ which features all recent changes on their friends Facebook pages, browse their friends profiles, and share video and music links, and upload photographs into Photo Albums: “people were celebrating their relationships together and showing the world that you are close to the people in the picture where photos were no longer little amateur works of art, but rather a basic form of communication” (Kirkpatrick 2010, pg 156). As well as these virtual communications Facebook has formed its own language outside of the network.
- Facebook and ‘Ritual’
Facebook is currently the most effective tool at communicating to millions of people all over the world: “Maybe we will use Facebook merely to connect more closely to those we already know. Maybe doing that will reinforce our sense of tribal separation” (Kirkpatrick 2010, pg 333). Facebook blurs illusion with reality because of the real live people behind the characters and as a result there is nothing we can ever be sure of as real on the website. However it also gives us the opportunity to escape reality for a while, from the real and symbolic world of social interaction and can let us into a more liberating one:
We are quite happy to chat with people online but won’t say hello to people on the
street! Why is this? Is it that the internet and virtual communication provides a barrier
and a sense of security and protection to us due to being either faceless or the
opportunity to be faceless? Or is it that the internet is deemed by some users as an
extension of their personal self that they feel safe and comfortable with to share ideas or
unique engagements. (2009)
It is especially liberating for people who do not have an outlet: “Educated young people in the Middle East are often passionate and active Facebook users. “Kids there have some of the most intricate profiles,” says Cohen. “These are repressive countries, with little outlet for expression, so people can feel more real online than they are in real life” (Kirkpatrick 2010, pg 281).
- Facebook and ‘Spell’
When we log onto Facebook we buy into a contractible agreement that everything is real. What is special about Facebook is that human desire always tends to get the better of us - we can find ourselves asking people we like online to meet us in the real world . Online relationships can quickly turn into real relationships and as a result sexually release our emotions through physical and loving relationships
Chapter One
Lacan describes us all as ‘lacking’ something. It is this ‘lack’ which drives us to create and watch theatre and to log onto Facebook. Lacan‘s ‘Mirror Stage’ is the point in an infants life when they first look into a mirror and recognise their ‘other self’ traumatising because they are forced to recognise that they are not the most important nor the only person in the world. They are alone in these thoughts restricted by language and the symbolic order; and even if the rest of the world feels the same loneliness and detachment the infant will never know for sure. This recognition of ‘other’ makes the infant feel as if they have lost a feeling best described as ignorant contentment in the arms of the mother who cares for your every need.“If we could communicate with the mosquito, we would learn that it floats through the air with the same self importance and feels itself also to be floating centre of the universe” (Nietzsche 2007, pg 48). Lacan goes on to explain that the infant grows up to always unconsciously desire to find this wholeness or ‘thing’ they feel they have lost:
Lacan predicted the mirror stage face-off of the alter Ego of the subject and its secular
Ego upon the asymmetrical encounter of the speechless infant with the unfathomable
mystery of the gaze of the Thing. It was this primordial stage of encounter with the other
that invested art with a fundamental theatricality and made the manufacture of every
work into a battle where victory could not be guaranteed. (Levine 2007 pg 90)
Lacan believed we could find this ‘Thing’ in art and other people - ultimately in communication. Arthur Miller would agree. “I regard the theatre as a serious business, one that makes or should make man more human, which is to say, less alone - Arthur Miller” (Driver, 1960).
Lacan and Storytelling
Lacan says that we tell one another stories as a way of sharing our life with people and welcoming them into it. Facebook allows us to watch other people intricately and Untimately and perhaps connect with them on a level not available in the physical world. The social network also gives us the power to be the star of our own webpage where hundreds of people can watch us and admire us from afar, but how they admire us comes down to how we portray ourselves online through the character we create.
Catfish is a real life documentary about the consequences of creating characters online and investing belief in them. In late 2007, Ariel Schulman and Henry Joost began to film the life of Ariel's brother, Nev as he began a friendship online with a family including Megan who he begins a long distance relationship with. However the trio of film makers discover that most of the things Nev believed to be true were actually made up. He had never been in contact with Megan, only her mother who had forged several Facebook Accounts in her depression at her broken dreams about who she thought she could have been. Catfish was the perfect example of the manipulation of self online and a heartbreaking look at why some one would create such phoney characters.
Lacan and Communicating
Facebook makes it easier for some of us to communicate, especially if we are shy or self conscious. Mark Zukerberg was an out of place kid who was dumped by his girlfriend on the night he created the first version of Facebook “I know it sounds corny, but I’d love to improve peoples lives, especially socially” he told the newspaper…“I’m all about people expressing, and however people see fit to use the site, that’s cool“” (Kirkpatrick 2010, pg 35). Lacan says that when we are in love we tell people our deepest thoughts, desires, fears, things we are ashamed of etc. as a way of trying to offload all of your inner ‘self’ to another person you hope will take it and understand you a little better. When people doubted Facebook Zukerberg would say that “understanding people was not a waste of time”.
Lacan and Ritual
Facebook is connecting people all over the word so that now we do not need to lose touch if someone immigrates abroad. It also means we can meet new people we may never have had the opportunity to meet before and to learn a little about their culture and country. Facebook is commonly used to search for old friends and is a great way to keep up to date on what people you know are doing. Lacan would say the reason for keeping in touch with all these people is because we are trying to stretch ourselves to be connected to as many people as possible. However there is always the possibility that the people you interact with are not being honest or that you read things in the wrong way e.g. sarcasm or a joke. Lacan says that life is a dreary ride and that escapism is a way of returning to the womb, an unconscious contentment with life.
Lacan and Spell
Lacan says that we all desire the ‘thing’ they think they ’lack’ - another person to fill ourselves emotionally: “Human desire is the desire of the Other” (Levine 2007, pg 99). The innate desire for physical contact spurs online relationships to become real live ones where a person can potentially find their ‘lack’ in a soul mate. Catharsis is a release of emotion, an unconscious state of feeling, a pure purging of feeling - much like an orgasm in sex. Sexual intercourse between two people can literally be seen to be two bodies becoming one (filling the Lacanian hole/‘lack‘ in a most literal sense) where the
orgasmic release of emotion at climax can be seen in the same way that catharsis is - utter release from the symbolic order: “discharge of pent-up emotions so as to result in the alleviation of symptoms or the permanent relief of the condition” (Dictionary.com, 2011) At the same time as catharsis manages to make us feel ‘whole’ again whether it is in the theatre or in sexual intercourse, it is ultimately non permanent and soon after we will come back down to earth, back to the ‘real’ world, back to the symbolic order. In this moment as well as a total complacency and revival there is total lack - which we know will undoubtedly soon follow. Facebook gives us a reality where we can ignore all other social norms and focus on one thing - other people. Being able to shut out all else presents us with the chance at cathartically being fulfilled in the long term: “Success stories [from Facebook relationships] include various marriages, function deals, partnerships, and other very encouraging endorsements of virtual communication as a form of social interaction” (Thomson, 2009). Lacan would say we use Facebook to find this ‘lack’ in the people we communicate with and if we haven’t met anyone online yet then we are searching which might explain why so many people spend so much time online.
Facebook is a site entirely reliant on human relationships, creating them, harvesting
them and maintaining them however finding love or ‘lack‘ is not the main reason. We
also use it to establish our place in the world, our identity and perhaps all because of the
mirror stage which so forcefully destroyed all our first illusions: “While the
Facebook.com is not explicitly about bringing people together in romantic unions, there
are plenty of other primal instincts evident at work here: an element of wanting to
belong, a dash of vanity and more than a little voyeurism” (Kirkpatrick 2010, pg 33) .
Chapter Two
Irvine wrote a book called On Desire Why We Want What We Want and described all our desires as having one thing in common - they are all things we believe in. He says these things are temporary distraction from the ‘thing’ Lacan says we are lacking, but no matter how distracted we are, we will still be unfulfilled. Irvine wrote down that there were two important things in our lives - ritual and love.
Irvine and Storytelling
Even if we were totally fulfilled by our rituals we would still seek out other people to be with, keep us company and tell stories to, and Irvine illustrates this using The Last Man Theory; where a man wakes up to find himself all alone in the world, realising that the things he ‘wanted’ he no longer does without the presence of people around him to see his hair style, or posh car. What he longs for is company. Irvine says that we all desire to be a ‘somebody’ and for people to acknowledge our existence, to admire us if not love us. Our desires are not random, they are manipulated or predetermined either by evolutionary psychology to pro-create, which means that whether we like it or not we are driven by an urge to find compatibility and connection in other people which strengthens Lacan’s reading of our constant pursuit for the ‘Thing’ in relationships: “To be alone is one of the greatest evils for man” (Irvine 2006, pg 31).
Irvine and Ritual
Irvines describes how a liminal space can make it easier for us to communicate as well as change our character:
The social mask we wear, however is uncomfortable. We cannot wear it twenty-for hours
a day but we must periodically remove it so our skin can breathe - so our real selves can
emerge. This is why we value privacy. When we are alone, behind closed doors, we can
finally quit acting and be ourselves. (Irvine 2006, pg 39)
Facebook is a valuable tool for removing this mask because we can socialise with many people but in the comfort of our own home. Theatre does the same for an actor, providing the actor loses themselves in their character. We find things to believe in through everyday rituals which give us meaning and
coherence, such as theatre and Facebook. Facebook is a part of many peoples daily routines where the average user on Facebook spends 1, 400 minutes a month online and goes on at least once every day. The frequency of users to Facebook constitutes a ritual in terms of a rituals ability to “...give a sense of control, order, and meaning...people can judge themselves as better or worse depending on their choices...which can be reassuring to someone who craves certainty...becomes a perverse sort of religion...heaven of certainty, while a higher weight plunges one into hell of terror. It can afford a level of drama and intensity unmatched by anything else in the person’s life” (Newmark, 2008).
Irvine and Spell
Facebook can occupy our time and destroy the real interactions we could be having in the real world, or in a theatre building. Although arguable the interactions in a theatre are just as blasé as they can be online because an actor rarely makes direct contact with any one member of the audience, and even the audience rarely make any kind of contact with one another (unless they all share an applause, laughter, or fright). Browsing the web has become a popular pastime where people search for hours through the world wide web - but what exactly is it that we are looking for? We may say it is a video clip
or the confirmation that all our friends are safe, but in reality it is more complex than this - we could be searching for the lost ‘thing’ something that will make us feel content, at least for a little while. Time can lose all sense of meaning as a person travels miles in web pages, and all the while stays in the same space.
Chapter Three
Frederic Nietzsche
We tell each other stories to connect, the more we know about one another the more we may be able to understand one another, ‘get‘ one another, or in Lacanian terms fill our ‘lack‘ after childhood castration: “In short, stories are part of the fabric of life. We replay the events of our lives through our stories. That’s why being able to tell stories (and understand other people’s stories) is an essential skill that children need to develop as they make their way in the world” (Talking Point). Nietzsche interpretation of the reason we feel ’un-whole’ or to be ’missing something’ lies in the symbolic order and words. Unfortunately however a lot of storytelling takes form in the way of words and language.
Nietzsche and Storytelling
Facebook contains news and stories about things personal to us in our lives “Stories are an essential aspect of everyday communication. We tell stories to pass on news, share information and explain how we feel about things. We seem to have an instinct for story telling” (Talking Point). These stories and news casts are also constantly updated and re-written day to day and Facebook can even display ‘Top News’ on your Home page that will list your friends recent activity: “Facebook wasn’t a tool for keeping track of news made somewhere else. It was a tool for making news right there, on Facebook” (Kirkpatrick 2010, pg 295). ‘Comments’ and ‘Wall Posts’ written by people are spontaneous, honest and fresh because they can be forgotten about the next day. Because there is so much information being shared around we know more about one another than we have before - we can see the contact our friends make with other friends, view their contact history, analyse and scrutinise comments or photographs and we can tell people more about us than we may ever have done in person: “We have, each of us, a life-story, an inner narrative-whose continuity, whose sense, is our lives. It might be said that each of us constructs and lives a 'narrative', and that this narrative is us, our identities. ( Oliver Sacks, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat)” (Caesar, 1998). Facebook almost always guarantees entertainment because it tells us stories and news about ourselves and people we know - almost like logging on to see a play about yourself every day and being able to directly communicate with your audience as well as change and re-write the script and play as often as you wish: “A good newspaper, I suppose, is a nation talking to itself - Arthur Miller” (Notable Quotes 2011).
Facebook contains news and stories about things personal to us in our lives “Stories are an essential aspect of everyday communication. We tell stories to pass on news, share information and explain how we feel about things. We seem to have an instinct for story telling” (Talking Point). These stories and news casts are also constantly updated and re-written day to day and Facebook can even display ‘Top News’ on your Home page that will list your friends recent activity: “Facebook wasn’t a tool for keeping track of news made somewhere else. It was a tool for making news right there, on Facebook” (Kirkpatrick 2010, pg 295). ‘Comments’ and ‘Wall Posts’ written by people are spontaneous, honest and fresh because they can be forgotten about the next day. Because there is so much information being shared around we know more about one another than we have before - we can see the contact our friends make with other friends, view their contact history, analyse and scrutinise comments or photographs and we can tell people more about us than we may ever have done in person: “We have, each of us, a life-story, an inner narrative-whose continuity, whose sense, is our lives. It might be said that each of us constructs and lives a 'narrative', and that this narrative is us, our identities. ( Oliver Sacks, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat)” (Caesar, 1998). Facebook almost always guarantees entertainment because it tells us stories and news about ourselves and people we know - almost like logging on to see a play about yourself every day and being able to directly communicate with your audience as well as change and re-write the script and play as often as you wish: “A good newspaper, I suppose, is a nation talking to itself - Arthur Miller” (Notable Quotes 2011).
Nietzsche and Communicating
Facebook is a site driven by words however it has created it’s very own language, much like texting did when mobile phones evolved. Words such as ‘Frape’, ‘I’ll Facebook you’, and ‘tagging someone’ have all become part of the younger generation vocabulary
“And critically, the language people speak on Facebook is increasing the one they speak
offline as well”(Kirkpatrick 2010, pg 92 and pg 277) .And even shortened words to
express excitement and emotion are frequent online e.g. “LOL” or “omgklkr!!”. to show
someone’s excitement at, for example, a video they have just watched or a picture they
have just seen:
LOL (laughing out loud) is an acronym many of you have likely used, born of text messaging and e-mail grammar like :(when you're sharing something sad about yourself or :) when the sun is out. There is also TTYL (talk to you later), OMG (oh my God) or its cousin, OMG! (omigawd!), LMAO (laughing my ass off), WTF? (what the f**k?) as well as emoticons.
The language of bloggers, user-review authors, and texters is easy to adopt, which makes it insidious. It relates to a shift in our social consciousness that equates availability or ease of use with knowledge or even expertise (Whitlock, 2008) Facebook does have other means of language in the form of Photo albums, the ability to share video and music links, “Poking“ - which is a button you can press to make
someone pay attention to you insinuating a poking of recognition that you are there-, and the hundreds of gaming and Facebook applications which you can recommend your friends play with you online. All these things act like Theatre Arts can do in a play by enhancing your character, and perhaps they are even more exact than a lighting state is to express mood in a theatre.
Nietzsche and Pirandello despised words and felt that language and the symbolic order constricted what he wanted to say: “THE FATHER: But this is where all the difficulty lies! In words! We all have inside ourselves a world of things; each one of us has his own world. And how we can possibly understand one another, signori, if in words I utter I place sense and value of things as they are inside of me…We think that we understand each other, but we never really do…” (1979, pg 60).. He believed that naming anything would butcher it of meaning and because of this he stood firm that language was lies and words which could never do justice to whatever it was we were actually referring:
Nietzsche develops the thesis that language provides only a simplified reduced, and
therefore erroneous translation of reality because it relies on general concepts that cannot
register all variation and difference…Nietzsche was exploring the paradise that life is
based on a foundation of lies, and necessarily so. (Fritzche 2007, pg 48)
Whilst we may be creating intricate profiles about ourselves and sharing it with more people more often, ultimately we are butchering ourselves of meaning by defining ourselves as certain things and nothing else. The more we add to our profile the less we leave to the imagination: “The machine-glorified by many (such as the Futurists) as the symbol of progress and hope in the future-had been turned against man by other men. To Pirandello it was a symbol of alienation” (1979, pg 154). Theatre is much more versatile in creating meaning using symbolism and metaphor for example. Nietzsche sees language as a cowardly way to live and one that encourages false character, like the characters we watch on stage and the characters we create on Facebook:
The intellect as a means for preserving the individual, reveals its principal powers in
make-believe. This is how weaker, less robust individuals protect themselves, since they
are not able to wage the struggle for existence with the horns and sharp teeth of beasts of
prey…Deception, flattery, lying and cheating, talking behind backs, striking a pose,
living in borrowed splendour, wearing masks, hiding behind convention, putting on a
show for others and for ourselves, in short, constantly fluttering around the flame of
vanity, is so much the rule that nothing is more important that the appearance of a plain,
honest desire for truth among men. They are deeply immersed in illusions and dream
images: their eyes simply glide over the surface of things and see “forms”. (Fritzche
2007, pg 49)
That is to say that Facebook as well as theatre are in fact also deceptions of meaning because they allow us to manipulate our identity through words and illusion. Everything on a theatre stage and a Facebook profile have been put there specifically (most of the time) including the actors, movement, words, gestures etc. making what we see a re-incarnation of things that have already happened - and are no longer natural. In real life it is much harder to fool people because so much of us is communicated through our body language and our eyes.
Chapter Four
Antonin Artaud Theatre of Cruelty intended to abandon dialogue as a primary means of communication and create something powerful by appealing to all human senses using his own Theatrical Language. He thought he could make theatre that would physically and mentally effect its audience calling this technique ‘active metaphysics’.
Artaud and Storytelling
Artaud was in strong pursuit of understanding the innermost and unconscious part of the human psyche and the way that two individuals relate to one another much like Lacan: He believed that theatre had the power to affect the appearance and structure of things and that bringing together audience and actor is ‘just as complete, as true, even as decisive as bringing together two bodies in short lived debauchery is in life - Grotowski. (1964, pg 57) His theatre was entirely dedicated to making his audience feel something whether it be happiness, shock, disgust, estrangement - he wanted to engage them and connect with them. You need only think about the powerful effect that a comedy has on you when it makes you laugh out loud, or the effect a horror movie has on you when it makes you so scared that you hide behind your pillow. This is what Artaud wanted to achieve in his theatre - physical and mental reactions from his audience. One of the main entertaining qualities about Facebook is that it has the potential to make a person laugh or cry depending on the circumstances e.g. laughing at a Video Clip
posted to your wall by a friend: Click here. Not only does Facebook have the power to affect peoples emotions but bigger things in life too, politically and socially better than any theatre has been able to:
more:
When there’s more openness, with everyone being able to express their opinion
very quickly, more of the economy starts to operate like a gift economy“…All this
transparency and sharing and giving has implications, in his opinion, that go deep into
society. “its really changing the way that governments work”. (Kirkpatrick 2010, Pg 287)
Artaud’s theatre presented and forced the audience to watch unspeakable truths to shock them with his definition of ‘cruelty’ which was: "A theatre that is difficult and cruel for myself first of all. And on the level of performance, it has nothing to do with hacking at each others bodies, carving up our individual anatomies…but the far more terrible, essential cruelty objects can practice on us. We are not free and the sky can still fall on our heads. And above all else, theatre is made to teach us this. (Artaud 1964, pg 57) Artaud made the ’Cruelty’ in his theatre so that people would acknowledge reality, more specifically his reality. He was aware that the effect of catharsis in physical situations - the idea that with pure wholeness there also comes the inevitable loss of it:
Any true feeling in reality cannot be expressed. To do so is to betray it. The
expression…creates a vacuum in thought…Any strong feeling produces an idea of
emptiness within us, and lucid language which prevents this emptiness also prevents
poetry appearing in thought. For this reason an image, an allegory, a form disguising
what it means to reveal, has more meaning to the mind than…words or their analysis.
(Artaud 1964, pg 51)
His Theatre of Cruelty should be able to take his audience into a ritualised state which is “not just a place to please the eyes and put on a spectacle; it can affect the mind hypnotically and it can affect our sensitivity, totally transporting us out of our own reality and into the world of the play. Whether they admit it or not, whether a conscious or unconscious act, at heart audiences are searching for a poetic state of mind, a transcendent condition by means of love, drugs, war or insurrection” (Artaud 1964, pg 88).He says that one of the reasons for theatres decline in popularity is because theatre does not make us feel anything let alone catharsis: For too long we have all been told theatre is all lies and illusion. Because for four hundred years, that is, since the renaissance, we have, become accustomed to purely descriptive, narrative theatre, narrating Psychology. (Artaud 1964, pg 55). Where as Artaud tried to get at the truth by presenting people with his Theatre of Cruelty and to make people feel things, Facebook can affect people without even trying to. Online we can entertain Artaud’s ‘cruelty’ but it is not always true or real, like Artuad‘s was. In Catfish When Nev discovers that he has been lied too he is adamant that he hasn’t been fooled. He read and conversed with a person he wouldn’t question to lie to him and as a result he naively bought into the fabricated story. He also admits to genuinely feeling a connection with the eldest daughter Megan and is upset to discover that she has not been as honest as he imagined:
- They’ve fooled you for eight months. Pretty good.
-They didn’t fool me. They just told me things and I never cared to question. That’s not fooling. I just cant believe I talked to this person. I told her things and had a real conversation with her about life and feelings. There were moments were I felt genuine, that I really cared about this girl. Now I don’t know what to do.
Limited and censored amounts of information make it easy to affect people because the illusion on screen convince us of what we are seeing and reading, almost better than any kind of suspension of disbelief in theatres.
Chapter Five
Jerzy Grotowski
Grotowski’s ‘Poor Theatre’ was a theatre which was stripped away of all un-necessary theatrical elements such as Theatre Arts. In fact he says that all that is needed is an actor and an audience, or rather a person and a person. Grotowski trained actors to use their voice and body in ways that stripped away their everyday ‘mask’ and to use their body and voice in ways which were - humanly possible but - not commonly used in every day life. He hoped that by being open and bare in performance the audience would buy into the liminal space on stage.
Grotowski and Storytelling
Poor Theatre is the antithesis of person to person theatre, one watches and one performs
and this is how we tell a story. Peter Brook says in Grotowski‘s Towards a Poor Theatre: For this we need both a crowd on stage and a crowd watching - and within that crowded stage individuals offering their most intimate truths to individuals within that crowded audience, sharing a collective experience with them(1968). Facebook is similar to Grotowski’s Poor Theatre because it also needs an audience to
exist. However where as in Grotowski’s theatre there is a spectator and a performer, on Facebook we can embody the actor if we are focused on our personal profile, or we can play the audience if we focus on browsing or ‘stalking’ other peoples pages. This allows for people to actually interact rather than there be an audience who sit in silence and watch on at performers. But even if there is direct communication on Facebook it is not two people in the same room and this limits bodily communication. In the past, several dates may have been needed in order to get intimately familiar with a persons life style, but now Facebook allows for people to be given the ‘thumbs up’ before they have even been met in person. Facebook allowed Nev from Catfish to gather a horde of information on the eldest daughter Megan from viewing her profile and by
looking at her photographs he could examine her looks, by surfing her past conversations he could imagine what she was like to talk to, and by reading her Profile Info he found out about her likes and dislikes:“Megan is a dancer, she sings. I guess I don’t know that much about her”(Joost, 2010).
looking at her photographs he could examine her looks, by surfing her past conversations he could imagine what she was like to talk to, and by reading her Profile Info he found out about her likes and dislikes:“Megan is a dancer, she sings. I guess I don’t know that much about her”(Joost, 2010).
Grotowski and Communicating
We may be talking more than ever on Facebook but we are actually interacting less, however this is perhaps not to say that we are connecting less The same holds true for e-mail and social networking programs that make it possible to establish contact with almost anybody. If I wanted to, I could e-mail US President Barack Obama. There's something about e-mail that makes the actual space—metaphorical, physical, personal—disappear. (Whitlock, 2008) That is unless you look at Grotowski and Artaud who would argue that physical and mental means of human behavior are necessary in a work of theatre: Antonin Artaud believed that our current lives lacked magic because we “choose to observe our actions, losing ourselves in meditation on their imagined form [Facebook, the cinema, dreams], instead of being motivated by them [physically using the body]” (Artaud, 1964). If physical presence is important in the theatre then what about when a piece of traditional theatre uses video screens to project video images of characters? Does it still count as long as there are physical actors present too? Looking at Grotowski and Artaud it does so long as the video is there to help enhance the theatre play as an art form and not there as a primary story telling device, much like plays that use only dialogue which Artaud would say is not theatre because theatre requires a theatrical language other than words.
Grotowski and Ritual
Grotowski and Ritual
Grotowski believed that acting was a way of life - it was his ritual, his desire, and the ‘thing’ he settled for that would fulfill him especially when his physical theatre allowed him to work intensely with other actors: "Man always needs another human being who can absolutely fulfil and understand him. But that is like loving the absolute or the ideal, loving someone who understands you but whom you have never met. Someone you are searching for. There is no single, simple answer (Grotowski 1968, pg 202). He says his theatre does not cater for the kind of man who goes to watch for culture needs northe man who goes for relaxing entertainment, his theatre is for connecting. His Poor Theatre used actors to act and do things we don’t normally, crossing a threshold that could transform the people who dared to cross it and take them into a sublime feeling in the semiotic world: “Why are we concerned with art? To cross frontiers, exceed our limitations, fill our emptiness in which what is dark in us slowly becomes transparent” (Grotowski 1968, pg 21). Poor Theatre was very ritualised - at least for the actors - but arguably not for the audience:
There is something incomparably intimate and productive in the work with the actor entrusted to me. He must be attentive and confident and free, for our labour is to explore
his possibilities to his utmost. His growth is projected onto him or rather is found on him - and our common growth becomes revelation. This is not instruction of a pupil but utter opening to another person, in which the phenomenon of “shared or double birth” becomes possible. The actor is reborn - not only as an actor but as a man - and with him, I am reborn. It is a clumsy way of expressing it, but what is achieved is a total acceptance of one human being by another (Grotowski 1968, pg 25).
This makes his theatre more of a successful communicator between the actors than it does between the audience and the actors.
Chapter Six
Luigi Pirandello
In the theatre the audience watches the actors knowing that they are portraying people who they are not in real life - they are playing a character. On Facebook we watch our ‘friends’ believing that they are portraying people who are real in real life. However how far is the online profile a true expansion of the real person and how far is it a character?
Pirandello and Storytelling
On Facebook a real live person creates an online profile for themselves which commonly features pictures of themselves, personal interests, and contact information. This person can type in any information they like and cut and paste around what is truth, what is false and what they choose not to say at all (for example some people don’t share any hobbies or interests but will share photographs, and never express how they are feeling in their online posts) which creates a personal identity which represents them and is subject to how they will be judged and perceived by their friends and the rest of the world. A Facebook user becomes director, writer, producer and designer of the world their online character inhabits but this character doesn’t really exist either (at least not in full form because it is on the internet). People can also own a Facebook Profile and character and not interact at all - Facebook “stalking” involves spending time following another persons activity online by reading non private conversations and looking at photographs. They absorb the network of online conversations between Facebook Icon Identity Characters in the hope of being entertained, learning something new or communicating, much like we do in theatre. Facebook ‘Stalking’ is the alternative to watching a performance on stage and judging it. We put ourselves out there online to be judged and this is why people are careful about what information they share , their Profile Photograph (which can say a lot about you (sometimes it is of people having a good time, sometimes it is people with family, sometimes it is a picture that hides the persons face etc.) and some people don’t even upload one in fear of the scrutiny involved in judging by appearances online. An audience can judge a performer on stage based on their character but on Facebook people browse others pages and judge other people - whether they can help it or not - with the belief that the people they are looking at are portraying their real selves.
However sometimes in theatre the actor is not particularly good or we judge them on their appearance and acting ability alone, and sometimes on Facebook we can judge people in the knowledge that who they are portraying is not the real them.
Pirandello and Communicating
Pirandello expressed himself through the characters he created and his best known play Six Characters in Search of an Author is a play about the “human impulse to construct replicas of ourselves and, most centrally, the choices we make or avoid between imagination and reality” (Gilman 1999, pg 174), about what we reveal about ourselves, what we hide and what we don’t acknowledge, just as we do on Facebook: “Certainly the most diverse, if minor, pastime of literary life is the game of Find the Author
Arthur Miller (Notable Quotes 2011). Pirandello’s art may also be seen as his attempt to immortalise himself in the world in the light that all man will die but his characters cannot: “This conflict between life and form, or physical reality and art, is a ruling obsession, the one which more than any other instigates his mature theatre, becoming in fact one of its principle subjects. “All that lives,” he writes, “by fact of living has a form, and by the same token musty die-except the work of art which lives forever in so far as it is form”(Gilman 1999, pg 173) Where as life is inevitably immortal art can be
immortal and live on past it’s authors death. This gives the author a meaning, a name and a remembrance in life, but most of all a recognition of self. Facebook is also immortal and even when we die our Facebook Profile Character will in fact live on. Unlike the elite few who have gone down in history for their talents, successes and fames, we can all be stars of our own web pages, and remembered, immortalised forever.
Pirandello and Ritual
Pirandello wanted to blur reality and illusion, to join the stage and the actors and destroy the liminal threshold that separated the two so that he could force people to accept that there is a difference between ‘reality‘ and pretence:
Instead of accepting the old separation between the actors on stage and the audience in the auditorium, he seeks to create a unity between the two. Not only is the stage acknowledged as stage, but actors actually leave the proscenium frame and enter the auditorium. Instead of focussing on how theatre can be like life (the assumption on which realism is based) he concentrates on how life can imitate theatre, and how the two can come together so that the distinction between them can be made only with extreme difficulty. He also shows how people use the apparatus of the theatre-role playing, masks, costumes, and so-to structure their lives and the responses of others to those lives. (1979, pg 52)
What Facebook does that Pirandello doesn’t is destroy the physical liminal space that exists between a spectator and an actor. Viewing other people or interacting with them all takes place in the same place on Facebook where almost everything is public and on stage (apart from e-mails and instant conversation). ‘Commenting’ on some ones page means you are not only communicating to them but also to everyone else who reads that comment and perhaps ‘comment’ themselves on yours. There is no social structure or any kind of hierarchy in Facebook despite being used universally all over the world by people from different backgrounds, ethnics and social class. Facebook is a fantastic way at bringing huge amounts of people together equally and universally.
Pirandello and Spell
Pirandello wrote plays as an extension of himself and his emotions: "Pirandello, as a man who had suffered deeply, had to communicate his sense of chaos, alienation, and fragmentation in such a way that his insights could be used to alleviate rather than contribute to the difficulties (1979, pg 155)".
He struggled with communicating language the same as Artaud and Grotowski and he is a perfect example of an author who wrote plays in order to communicate his own thoughts and feelings:
Facebook too allows for a extension of our emotions and character. In Catfish when Angela is revealed she admits to her depression at what she gave up in order to take care of her husbands handicapped kids who are totally dependent on her. She tells Nev that Megan was someone she wished she could have been, imagined she might have been, and was a bit like who she used to be. She lived her lost dreams and personality through an online character and pushed it so far as to make another real person buy into that person also:
To me it is never enough to present a man or a woman and what is special and characteristic about them simply for the pleasure of presenting them; to narrate a particular affair, lively or sad, simply for the pleasure of narrating it….They are, to speak precisely, historical writers. But there are others, who beyond such pleasure [of writing like this], feel a more profound spiritual need on whose account they admit only figures, affairs, landscapes which have been soaked, so to speak, in a particular sense of life and acquire from it a universal value. These are, more precisely, philosophical writers. I have the misfortune to belong to these last. (Gilman 1999. Pg 166)
Facebook too allows for a extension of our emotions and character. In Catfish when Angela is revealed she admits to her depression at what she gave up in order to take care of her husbands handicapped kids who are totally dependent on her. She tells Nev that Megan was someone she wished she could have been, imagined she might have been, and was a bit like who she used to be. She lived her lost dreams and personality through an online character and pushed it so far as to make another real person buy into that person also:
You were able to show me things that I don’t have access to. We don’t have access to
that kind of dance like that. Dancing was an important part of my life when I was
younger and I always wanted to be a professional dancer. I guess I threw it away really. I
threw it away to have a good time. There’s a lot of personalities that came out were just
fragments of myself. Fragments I used to be, wanted to be, never could be. I don’t know
what else to say. You know when I met the boys I knew I was making a sacrifice with my
life…it’s like I gave up a lot of myself. Most days I don’t know who I am. (Joost, 2010)
Chapter Seven
Technology
Facebook is the social Network Giant of the present day and the most trafficked website in the world. It has more than 500 million users existing in over thirty countries in over seventy languages. An average user has 130 friends and spend over 43,200 minutes on Facebook a month. There are over 900 million objects that people interact with and an average user is connected to 80 community pages. With the invention of ’Smart Phones’ which can access the internet and directs you straight to Facebook, it is
now used by more than 250 million users and twice as much as non phone users. The diversity and breadth of users as well as being able to log on and off as you please makes it one of the most fascinating means of communication ever - people can stay in touch with hundreds of people and share information with all of them. Facebook has become religiously part of peoples lives so much so that we use it even when we are in the company of other people and perhaps we do this because we badly want to be connected to the rest of the world, to people and we are terrified of missing out on anything (especially on Facebook which is constantly changing and updated):
So what would we do without Facebook? For a lot of students or people with spare time it has
become an almost habitual process that we do when we log onto the internet. If we do
not log on and give it a quick check we feel as though something is missing like an
equilibrium has been disturbed. So why does this almost ritualist nature provide us with
a feeling of reassurance? (Monkey, 2009).
So why do we use Facebook? One of the common answers that we give is that it’s a
social networking tool to help us communicate. But is it? If we want to communicate
with people we can have a conversation face to face. We don’t actually need Facebook to
talk to people. Does it just make us lazy by giving us another opportunity to stayed glued
to a screen instead of making the effort to engage in conversation? (Monkey, 2009)
If Facebook proceeds to take up more and more of our time will we too be connected mentally more than physically?: ”In five years there wont be a distinction between being on and off Facebook. It will be something that goes with you wherever you are communicating with people” (Kirkpatrick 2010, pg 316). At least Theatre still requires physical presence of actors and audience in the same building wherAs far as I’m concerned, there is no such thing as mingling on the internet - that all true forms of socialising are practiced face-to-face” e there are no computer screens to hide behind : “
(Martinett 2009, pg 12). Theatre remains organic and natural because it still allows for mistakes on stage and for things to be imperfect. Real human emotion purged by an theatrical atmosphere is a result of really physically and mentally living the part or believing in it and nothing can better a suspension of disbelief as raw as the one in a live theatre.
But everything in life evolves and moves forward and perhaps Facebook is an inevitable
evolution of Theatre:
Art is timeless, fixed, immutable. It supplies constancy and security missing in an age of transition. Thus, life may try to adopt some of the practices of the theatre in order to create stability. Yet if theatre is the true mirror of life, it must change at the same time that life does. If life is ambiguous, complex, and increasingly self-conscious and self-critical, then theatre must be too (1979, pg 156)
Conclusion
The reason practitioners in this dissertation tell stories is because they want to share themselves with their audience, and Facebook is fundamentally about this also - it just depends on the person, much like it does in theatre also. Not everyone will be honest about the stories they portray. Ultimately theatre cannot exist without a performer and an observer, and neither can Facebook therefore they are both similar story tellers. Theatre communicates to the audience through a language not entirely made up of
words, using creative uses of the mind and body to create more meaning than is ever possible. Facebook operates via a computer or an Iphone where language is punched into the site through a keyboard and words alone. In saying this Facebook has several other ways to communicate and it has made up it’s own language. Theatre blurs illusion and reality giving access to sublime feelings and worlds which can form communities and mass sharing of an experience. All the same, we go into a theatre aware that it is illusion. Facebook blurs illusion and reality to an ever greater extreme
because we log on thinking everything is real. Theatre arguably has a better chance at achieving a sublime and a semiotic state of being in its actors and audience, however Facebook can also do this and share it universally all over the world where ethnicity, gender, race and any person of any social status is welcome to join:
Finally, social networking sites can bring people together camouflage varying
backgrounds who strength otherwise never have met, and then encourage them to
extend that participation preoccupation de facto nature gregarious functions.
Electronic interaction displaces the social interaction, keeping people apart - it is
so convenient that people lack the drive to actually interact face to face. People
are social animals, mastery the main, and removing that pillar rap actually affect
their social development, especially if started at a young age. (Anon 2009)
Theatre can take us into another world but only for a small time and not regularly where as Facebook users can escape into the Facebook world for as long as they want whenever they want. Theatre is mostly make believe and through its story telling and communicating it can make its audience feel catharsis - a purging of emotion. Facebook is less likely to trigger such an overwhelming feeling online however it is the potential to achieve an even more overwhelming catharsis if two people meet outside of the cyber world.Everyone engages with theatre in a different way - some are pretentious, some create it, some make their living from it, others enjoy watching it, and some review it. There is no doubt then that theatre has a different effect on everyone. There are also many ways in which to engage with Facebook - some use it just to send messages, some use it to watch what other people are doing, some to play games, some have a small group of ‘friends’ who can see their profile and others have hundreds of them. Again there is no doubt that Facebook will have a different effect on all of it’s users. If we are willing to let Facebook and Theatre be ways to express ourselves fully then they have the potential to perhaps fill our Lacanian ‘lack‘, otherwise they are simply forms of entertainment:
When you come into the theater, you have to be willing to say, "We're all here to
undergo a communion, to find out what the hell is going on in this world." If you're not
willing to say that, what you get is entertainment instead of art, and poor entertainment at
that.- DAVID MAMET, Three Uses of the Knife. (Notable Quotes 2010)
There are many similarities between Facebook and theatre: we create characters to tell our story, and we use means other than language to communicate and express ourselves. There is a powerful liminal space online which blurs what is real with what is not, and the social network has the power to affect people emotionally through the relationships created. However when we engage with people we are not physically in the same room; when we communicate we rely more heavily on words than artistry; the liminal space is a technological virtual space which is not organic or pure; and any spell or catharsis can only be valid if it is in direct contact with another person physically. Ultimately Facebook is a form of theatre to the extent that it harbors the same human impulses and desires that lie at the root of theatre:
Imbedded in our DNA is an irresistible urge to connect. Human existence is intrinsically
scary, and trapped inside our separate bodies and minds, all of us can feel alone from
time to time. The sharing of our lives with others helps us to create meaning, and gives
us a feeling of security and of belonging. (Martinett 2009, pg 21)
These ’urges’ are resolved in the same way online as in the theatre: through storytelling, and communicating and connecting with other people. As a result these urges have the potential to inflict ritual and spell on the audience. But no matter what, logging onto Facebook is a far cry from the experience of going to a theatre. The theatre has the ability to bring hundreds of other people together into the same room and engage them directly with the same thing, where as Facebook only allows one person per computer screen. Live performance is dangerously unpredictable whether it has been rehearsed or not, but Facebook is entirely predictable because it allows people to edit, censor and manipulate what we see on ’stage’. As far as Facebook is a form of theatre, it cannot duplicate the experience of it and therefore it is an entirely different art form, however at the heart of both mediums there is an unattainable urge to connect, which we try to accommodate into our lives through them both - Theatre and Facebook.
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