폭력의 아포리아

The Aporia of Violence: Tim Crouch’s The Author

The Author by Tim Crouch critically reviews the theatrical experimentation to overcome the media representation of violence concentrating on the internal structure of drama. He rereads Sarah Kane’s Blasted from the point of spectatorship. What Kane was pursuing is to deliver the experience of violence to the spectator which is concealed by the simulacra of media event. Basically it was an attempt at abolishing the epistemological distance that separates the spectator from the victim of violence and provoking the spectator to step out from the reserved seat of passive spectator and to take action. However, according to Jacques Rancière, it is the desire to abolish the distance that creates it. Kane makes the mistake of handing down the legacy of Plato’s notion of mimesis that centers on the belief that theatrical medium is the evil and should be eliminated for the presence of community. Epistemological distance is not an evil to be abolished but the normal condition of any communication. It is not the difference of knowledge that should be bridged between teachers and students. An emancipated spectator in its true meaning is not an active subject that overcomes the inactive position as an observer but the spectator that is freed from the inequal position assumed by students who are forced to pursue the knowledge handed down by teachers. Crouch takes a step back from the arena of violence. Rather than present the excessive violence on the stage, he makes the spectator to imagine, interpret, and analyze violence. In his view, theatrical violence is not so much the object of representation or spectacle as that of conceptual reconstruction, it is closely linked to the cognitive and emotional state of the spectator rather than the embodiment of actors. Crouch has gotten rid of the stage and placed the audience at the center of the drama in the Author. At first, this looks like an attempt at materializing an “active” audience emphasized by Kane and Postdrama. But by eliminating the spectacle, rather than abolishing the theatrical medium, it recuperates the original significance of viewing. By transferring the weight of the drama from the author, director, stage and actor to the spectator, he raises the issue of pedagogic stultification within theatrical presentation that places the spectator at the far end of the effect of drama. Such an attempt by Crouch not only offers critical overview of Kane’s legacy but also echoes recent critical discussions on the violence of media and visibility.