Theatricality In The Avant-Garde Drama: A Reconsideration of A Theme In The Light of The Balcony And The Connection
1964; University of Toronto Press; Volume: 7; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.3138/md.7.2.213
ISSN1712-5286
Autores Tópico(s)Shakespeare, Adaptation, and Literary Criticism
ResumoAN ASSERTIVE AND SELF-CONSCIOUS THEATRICALITY is an important aspect of Jack Gelber's The Connection, as it is of many plays which we loosely identify as "avant-garde." The average spectator arriving a few minutes early to a performance of The Connection finds, first, that the play has already started and, secondly, that he is himself participating in it. While the audience is still stumbling in, the actors are quietly taking their places on the curtainless stage. This establishes a special relationship between the audience and the play before the play ever begins, which is confirmed as soon as the lights dim and the first character speaks: he introduces himself as the producer of The Connection and immediately points to Jaybird, the author. From the start, we know that the playwright is not endeavoring to evoke a world of fiction whose significance and effectiveness depends on our ability to forget that we are sitting in a theater watching a play, but on the contrary that, far from hiding the theatricality of his medium, he is capitalizing upon it. We sense that we are dealing with the avant-garde theater. Jack Gelber puts the idea of theatricality to very special uses in The ConnectionJ but its importance can best be understood in relation to the theme of theatricality as it appears in other avant-garde plays, and particularly in Jean Genet's The Balcony.
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