Red button Shakespeare

Summary

INTRODUCTION

This article is cued by Andrew Hartley's provocative discussion of the logical impossibility of performance criticism; he writes that

One's sense of what happened on stage is shaped by perspective, which may be about where in the house you were sitting (to one side, close enough to be spat upon by the cast, peering through opera glasses from The Gods) or it may be about where you happened to be looking at a given moment.

It is also, akin to my previous writing on, and wrestling with, the indeterminacy of meanings generated by theatre production, structured in order to facilitate these multiple perspectives. Thus, somewhat perversely perhaps, I have fixed upon the model of interactive sports coverage, whereby the viewer can, by virtue of the remote control red button, appreciate the spectacle from a number of alternative perspectives. On the football (soccer) pitch these include: regular viewing angle; bird's eye view; goal-to-goal; 'player-cam'; highlights reel; 'fanzone'. For the purposes of this close reading of (a section of) performance, King Lear (3.7, the blinding of Gloucester) at the reconstructed Globe in London (2008), the perspectives upon, or from, which I originally wanted to focus were: the yard - 'front and centre'; upper gallery; the Lord's rooms; production archives; focus on a specific player; groundlings - a focus on the audience; facial expressions; delivery of text - pauses, inflection, emphases. I have incorporated the majority of these perspectives: they, in turn, are followed by alternative readings of the play and production as a whole which are informed by the various perspectives of the (closely read) blinding scene.