THEATRE AND THE INTERCULTURAL METAPHOR

THEATRE

AND

THE INTERCULTURAL METAPHOR

by

Denise Agiman

Stockholm University

(Sweden)

16 September 1998 -

CONTENTS

HUMAN BEINGS AND THEATRE   ......................................................   p. 3

CULTURE AND CULTURAL IDENTITIES   ..........................................   p. 3

THE INTERCULTURAL RELATIONSHIP   ............................................   p. 3

THE INTERCULTURAL METAPHOR   ..................................................   p. 4

MEANS OF ACCESS TO THE OTHERNESS   ................................   p. 4

THE BRIDGE OF UNDERSTANDING   ...........................................   p. 4

IN SEARCH OF A BALANCE: BETWEEN UNITY AND SPECIFICITIES      p. 5

Bibliography and Quotations   ............................................   p. 6

HUMAN BEINGS AND THEATRE

Theatre art is characterized by relationships among human beings.  From the author to the audience, from the designers to the metteur en scène and to the actors: human beings are always at the core of the theatre experience, and the main characteristic to define them is certainly culture.  Culture encompasses any human action, relation, habit, and belief.  Therefore, any theatrical approach or practice has culture as a binding element.  At the same time, cultural identity is what distinguishes human beings and makes them different from each other, even when they seem to belong to the same “culture”.  As a matter of fact, cultural identity cannot be grasped as a monolithic concept.  It is composed by a multitude of singular elements.  

CULTURE AND CULTURAL IDENTITIES

Jean-René Ladmiral, underlying the specificity of cultural identities, claims that « L’identité culturelle s'appuie sur des facteurs objectifs, comme l'heritage et l'histoire, le cadre politique, les origines ethniques, les traditions, la langue, la religion...  Mais elle repose tout autant sur des éléments subjectifs qui s’inscrivent dans la conscience des membres d’une communauté » (Ladmiral, 1989:9).  This means that differences between human beings, even when they belong to the same society, might be numerous and at different levels.  We cannot reduce, for instance, cultural identities at the level of nationality.  Nationality is an important factor that characterizes human behavior, but certainly not the only one.  National culture holds a relevant status in the imaginaire collectif, on the other hand the idea of “nation” does not constitute a culturally homogeneous ensemble.  Age, wealth or poverty and the degree of education or, in other words, the social class to which one belongs;  and the subjective points of view, in other words the fears and desires of each individual’s emotional make-up, generate a diverse perspective.  As Dilthey succeeded to demonstrate through his studies on Geisteswissenschaft, this different scenery of the relational world, i.e., the contribution of the emotional-cognitive dimension  to one’s world, cannot be neglected anymore.  

THE INTERCULTURAL RELATIONSHIP

Any contact between human beings who belong to different cultural identities, must be considered as an intercultural relationship.  This is true for the real world as for the fictional world.  That’s why an accurate knowledge of cultural identities involved in the context of a performance - from the plot of the play to any specific cultural heritage of the participants altogether - facilitates the process of understanding a theatrical event.  

The idea of settling a theatre event in its cultural and social context, has been defended by practitioners and theoreticians all over the world.  Antoine Vitez thought that theatre cannot exist as an entity apart because it is always set in a field of political forces and it is, actually, itself the outcome of political and moral issues. This means that theatrical art, while is communicating an aesthetic and immediate pleasure to the spectator, also acts at the level of the social consciousness.  In other words, a theatre event, either at the very unconscious level, or in a clear and intentional stance, always represents human cultural contexts.  Any theatre participant carries, indeed, its cultural identity.  This can imply as much each subjective cultural identity of the équipe members, as, in a broader sense, the cultural context in which the performance takes place ( which is also represented by the audience).  

THE INTERCULTURAL METAPHOR

Theatre is the reflection of culture, or cultural identities.  On the other hand, theatre’s intent is not the reproduction of culture itself at the very first degree.  In fact theatre art strives to transmit cultural identities via a form of figurative evocation.  Theatre is essentially somebody that tells a story to somebody else.  This “transfer” needs necessarily “imagination” as its catalyst for functioning.  In fact, only in a mutually shared imagination realm, stories can be understood and human beings can encounter each-other.  Culture is the “blood”  of a theatrical body.  Imagination is the “heart” that provokes the flow, allowing communication to happen.  Theatre art, suggesting a transposed framework of reality is, hence, a metaphor of it.  What is the nature of a metaphor?  Metaphors are always based on a relation of similarity between what the word «properly» says, and what one wants  to make it «figuratively» to say.  A metaphor aims to shift from an original meaning to a fictional sphere, without denaturing it.  In the same line of thought, theatre is inspired by human cultural contexts, but it does not photocopy them.  It discloses a derivative form.  However, because of this derivative-metaphorical dimension, the nuances that characterize cultural identities are often hidden, unconscious and concealed in a theatre experience.  

MEANS OF ACCESS TO THE OTHERNESS

How can one then enter a determined culture? One needs some clue.  Prejudices and stereotypes often  constitute the entrance to the “otherness”.  Pre-judgments are a kind of passe-partout that, according to Ladmiral, offer a reassuring explication system, because they are commonly shared.  Stereotypes consist in an immediate predisposition to schematize and rationalize other’s worlds.  When one notices, for example, that Italian actors are particularly extroverted, and considers that gestures and movements in Italian theatre are exuberant and vivacious, one uses a widespread statement.  Admitting that psychological and introverted acting style characterizes Swedish theatre and determining that a Swedish actor mostly embraces minimalism and logocentrism, is also a way to express stereotypes and generalizations on humankind.  

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