Page 229 - Únete. Join us (Bienal de Venecia, 57 edición)

JUMPING OVER WALLS A CONVERSATION BETWEEN FRANCESCO CARERI AND JORDI COLOMER
229
Theatre Number 6 by Bel Geddes of 1915-1926. All of them propose overcoming the plan of the proscenium theatre, which delineates a clear division between actors and spectators. It is important to overcome this, because this plan is reproduced in our spaces of everyday life, the organisation of schools and universities, places of worship, parliaments ... In every case all these attempts to burst the cavea have in common the idea that the place of “the public” must be recognised. There is a lot to discuss about the use of language for naming those who attend a performance, a theatre, a museum, and obviously their roles ... I think it is important to talk about the place they occupy, physically, in space and to emphasise it, expand it.
El Público [The Audience] is, on the other hand, the title of a play by García Lorca, who set up an itinerant theatre called “La barraca” [The Hut] in the 1930s, in the context of the “Misiones ambulantes”1. That is another element that intervenes in some of the videos, in that metallic construction with wheels, which has a flag, which unfolds a stage, and which we call “the pavilion”, and from which the actress Laura Weismahr recounts, in a variety of places and in ten languages, ”The City Coat of Arms“, a short story by Franz Kafka on the role of the builders of the tower of Babel ... So, certainly, the theatre appears in many parts and serves to talk about many different things ...
FC: I also remembered that I had recently read that the Greek word “theatron” derives from the archaic “théasthai”, which means – according to what Snell suggests – “to see the mouth opening”, then to look with interest and amazement. Thus “theatron” does not initially indicate the theatre or its space, but the gesture of astonishment of the group of people who are witnesses of an action.
JC: Exactly, this is what it would be. Without the audience there is no theatre, even in the sense of theatre as a text, the audience is the reader. There may be no building, but the people who attend a performance are necessary. In this sense it is important which space is attributed to that audience – literally – and the space that constructs – that produces – the very presence of an audience. I agree, interest and astonishment, but the critical capacity is totally necessary, it is necessary to realise that you have your mouth open – in this sense I feel very Brechtian.
FC: I really like this idea of a movable Venice Pavilion with an audience that crosses the spaces participating
1 [Translator’s note: the “Misiones ambulantes” were a travelling educational and cultural initiative of the Spanish Republic]