“There clearly exists a dramaturgy of the director and a dramaturgy of the performer. However surprisingly it may seem at first, we also can and should speak—not just metaphorically—of a dramaturgy of the spectator” (100) “an acceptance that theatrical pleasure arises and is maintained in an unbroken dialectic between the frustration and satisfaction of expectations. This fragile balance is kept between the pleasure of discovery, the unexpected, and the unusual, on one hand, and the pleasure of recognition, déjà vu, and the anticipated on the other” (112).
In reading, Marco De Marinis’ article on the “Dramaturgy of the Spectator,” I noticed myself resisting his ideas. I had to pull back from contemptuously writing him off several times after I wrote comments in the margins to that effect. I did a little internet searching and found out that he is Italian and that his work has been translated—perhaps the translation is what has me all riled up. As I re-read and tried to dig deeper, I decided several times that I don’t necessarily disagree with him. On his basic premise that dramaturgy is “the techniques/theory governing the composition of the performance-as-text,” I am reluctant to adopt it entirely for myself—seeing as in his following discussion it seems to apply scientifically: structurally as those there were equations to discover. Perhaps this is the root of my difficulty: De Marinis speaks as if all we need is to discover the correct balance (not that he says this is easy) of frustrating & satisfying the spectator/audience’s expectations. While I do actually agree in some part with this idea, the wording, connotations specifically, really turn my stomach—“manipulation” for example, comes up many times. The performance is meant to “manipulate” a specific response in the audience. While De Marinis takes a whole section to explain that there are Closed performances (with a specific audience and interpretation in mind) and Open performances (which more or less leave interpretation and audience open), the language is seems reductive and cold to me. To John Dewey (art and education theorist), part of the beauty of art is that is expresses things that are extra-verbal—visual & aural ideas that cannot be expressed verbally. While I’m not sure that this is something that De Marinis would disagree with, I agree, and I feel that, while trying to verbalize helps us better understand (often by negation) what it is we are trying to do with art and whether or not we are succeeding, this article seemed to me to reduce art to the equation mentioned above—as though “that’s all folks!”
Ok, enough of my frustrations (ha!), here are a couple things I felt better about upon reinspection:
“this dialectic between the constraints imposed by the work (the “aesthetic text”) and the possibilities left open to those who receive the work strikes a balance which is the essence of the aesthetic experience and source of its vitality” (101) I lied, this is simply another way of saying the above quote from page 112, with which I am still not sure I entirely agree—I recognize it as something that exists in art, but I don’t think I agree that it is the essence of the aesthetic experience or the source of its vitality.
“the performance seeks to induce in each spectator a range of definite transformations, both intellectual (cognitive) and affective (ideas, beliefs, emotions, fantasies, values, etc).” (101)—this upon rereading, I do agree with. Performance does seek transformation—even if it’s just a reaffirmation of something already existing.
“The partial or relative autonomy of each of the different dramaturgies (the director’s, the writer’s, the performer’s, the spectator’s) all work together in the composition of the performance and must be seen as mutually setting and occasionally adjusting each other’s boundaries” (101)—there is a group tension involved in the collaborative process of drama, and I do believe that the audience is part of that creation
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