Theatre/Theater. The Text Machine Gets on the Stage...

[Thomas Colin]

   What follows is not directly about the theatre/theater problem, but on 
theatre and theatricality in general, in GR.
   Interestingly enough, the first occurrence on p3 ("it's all theatre") is 
a metaphor *in presentia,* that is explicitly emphasised through a syntactic 
link which relates usually differentiated modes of consciousness, and 
bridges the gap between the real and the imaginary, reality and its staging 
into a textual form. In a way, it erases the notion of an extralinguistic 
reality, independent from any act of perception. So what we have from the 
beginning is an altered perception, a dream, where the real is put at a 
distance and de-naturalized : "it will be a spectacle."
   If the metaphor is in presentia and the spectacle presented as a 
virtually programmatic statement, is it still a metaphor? In the end it 
seems to compel the reader to reconsider his/her notions of such dualities s 
metaphorical and literal meanings, image and object (this is interesting 
when we come to the cinematic simulation), word and referent (through the 
signifier/signified filter), and also voice and subject, that is the idea 
that a speech, as in the theatre, necessarily comes from some actor on 
stage. This is radically thrown into question in GR.
    So from here we have a theatre problematics which is  a problematics of 
reversibility : with on the one hand the real perceived as theatre, and on 
the other hand theatre perceived as the real. Thus lain "ass backwards," we 
can artificially divide  theatracility in GR into two categories: mentions 
of theatre (and cinema), and use of the theatrical and cinematic form.

    Through the mentions of theatre, generally occurring at a moment of 
revelation, the narrative voice takes on a hermeneutic position that 
redoubles that of the reader, as decipherer of a real which his new lucidity 
defines as veiled : a "puppet stage" (152). The real is then artificial 
within the fictional text, and the true real (the Real, the Text) is always 
underneath, or beyond, at several remotes. "Their" power is then a power of 
alienation and illusion, quiet reminiscent of Debord's Society of the 
Spectacle. By confusiong signs and phenomena, the society of the spectacle 
(that is basically, the world we live in, folks) manages to invalidate both 
: signs are fetichized and the real is as malleable as a text of fiction : 
"La realite objective est presente des deux cotes. Chaque notions ainsi 
fixee n'a pour fond que son passage dans l'oppose : la realite surgit dans 
le spectacle, et le spectacle est reel. (Objective reality is present on 
both sides. The end of each notion thus defined is to pass over to the 
opposite side : reality looms up from the spectacle, and the spectacle is 
real.)
   Thing is: once we get a Real, an a Text (the Rocket? asks Enzian), it 
could mean that the real, and the text of GR are only staging, performances 
of It. This staging being redoubled by the performance and the staging of 
the reading-process, another interpretative layer, another filtering lens. 
Of course the Text cannot be read (just like God's intention in the Bible is 
subject to endless interpretation for the Puritan). Thus paranoia as an 
obscessive-compulsive struggle against the undeterminacy of all things, at 
all levels. In the end the most stable entity is the reading conscience (and 
again, not always), as stage director of an all-englobing stage. This is 
where theatre no longer as mention, but as use (almost strategic use) comes 
up. This stage is the dimension where "theatre might be the reading of a 
book, its writing in operation." (Mallarme via Julia Kristeva in "Word 
Dialogue, and Novel, *Desire in Language* Columbia UP).
  So what about the "theatre" as deceptive acting and the "theater" as 
active recognition? hu? well... dunno.
  This, one more time, was a really quick overview. So questions, comments, 
insults, bashings, welcome...
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