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The Possibility of Darkness: Blackout and Shadow in Chris Goode's Who You Are

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 February 2013

MARTIN WELTON
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Abstract

Although a rather recent convention, sitting in the dark looking at others in the light has become a standard element of going to see a theatrical performance. Before the introduction of powered lighting systems that focused light on the stage, however, audiences and actors alike were bathed in a shared illumination. As life outside the theatre becomes ever more exposed by light, what are the possibilities presented for and by a performance that takes place in darkness? In this article I discuss these possibilities as they were explored in Chris Goode's Who You Are, a performance commissioned by Tate Modern for Experiences of the Dark, a series of talks, presentations and other works inside Miroslaw Balka's giant installation How It Is.

Type
Articles
Information
Theatre Research International , Volume 38 , Issue 1 , March 2013 , pp. 4 - 19
Copyright
Copyright © International Federation for Theatre Research 2013

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References

NOTES

1 See www.parliament.uk/briefingpapers/commons/lib/research/rp2010/RP10-078.pdf, accessed 4 March 2011.

2 Baugh, Christopher, Theatre, Performance and Technology: The Development of Scenography in the Twentieth Century (Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2005), p. 94Google Scholar, describes theatre as ‘the very act of living performance that was revealed and expressed by light’.

3 See, for example, Boal, Augusto, Theatre of the Oppressed (London: Pluto Press, 1979)Google Scholar; Nicholson, Helen, Theatre, Education and Performance (Houndsmill: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Thompson, James, Performance Affects: Applied Theatre and the End of Effect (Houndsmill: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011)Google Scholar.

4 See for example, Kershaw, Baz, The Radical in Performance: Between Brecht and Baudrillard (London: Routledge, 1999)Google Scholar; Schechner, Richard, Performance Theory (London: Routledge, 1988)Google Scholar.

5 Read, Alan, Theatre and Everyday Life (London: Routledge, 1993), p. 58Google Scholar.

6 Ibid, p. 59.

7 The piece was commissioned by the gallery for Experiences of the Dark, a series of talks, presentations and other works taking place inside Balka's installation.

8 Sainsbury, Helen, ed., Miroslaw Balka: How It Is (London: Tate, 2009).Google Scholar

9 Sorensen, Roy, ‘We See in the Dark’, Nous, 38, 3 (2004), pp. 456–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar, here p. 457.

10 ‘Whatever dynamic commerce there is in physical fact between source of light, illuminated object and perceiving eye, this context forms no part of the phenomenal result . . . The gain is the concept of objectivity, of the thing as it is in itself as distinct from the thing as it affects me, and from this distinction arises the whole idea of theoria and theoretical truth. Furthermore, the image is handed over to imagination, which can deal with it in complete detachment from the actual presence of the original object’. Jonas, Hans, ‘The Nobility of Sight’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 14, 4, (1954), pp. 507–19, here p. 515.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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12 Casati, Roberto, Shadows (London: Vintage, 2004).Google ScholarPubMed

13 Ibid., p. 14, italics in original.

14 Koslofsky, Craig, ‘Princes of Darkness: The Night at Court, 1650–1750’, Journal of Modern History, 79, 2 (2007), pp. 235–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Schivelbusch, Wolfgang, Disenchanted Night: The Industrialisation of Light in the Nineteenth Century, trans. Davies, Angela (Oxford: Berg, 1988)Google Scholar.

15 See Koslofsky, ‘Princes of Darkness’, for further discussion.

16 Schivelbusch, Disenchanted Night, p. 7.

17 Whilst indoor performance was certainly occurring and documented before this, it represents a formal shift of both architecture and institution away from the outdoor, sunlit presentation that was the widespread norm.

18 Cited in Nicoll, Allardyce, The Development of the Theatre: A Study of Theatrical Art from the Beginnings to the Present Day, 5th edn, revised (London: Harrap, 1966), p. 275.Google Scholar

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23 Chris Goode, ‘Who You Are: An Experience of the Dark for Performance Inside Miroslaw Balka's Who It Is’ (unpublished, 2010), p. 1.

24 Hurley, Erin suggests, in her essay ‘Blackout: Utopian Technologies in Adrienne Kennedy's Funnyhouse of a Negro’, Modern Drama, 47, 2 (2004), pp. 200–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar, that it was dimming technology such as that pioneered by George Izenour, rather than electrical light per se, that allowed the blackout to develop.

25 See Welton, Martin, Feeling Theatre (Basingstoke: Palgrave), 2011Google Scholar; Welton, ‘Once More with Feeling’, Performance Research, 10, 1 (2005), pp. 100–12; and Welton, ‘Seeing Nothing? Now Hear This’, in Banes, Sally and Lepecki, André, eds., The Senses in Performance (London: Routledge, 2002), pp. 146–55Google Scholar.

26 In technical stage management, ‘general state’ or ‘general cover’ refers to a number of lanterns used to provide an overall illumination for the playing area, in which the lighting designer may later chose to blend, fill or focus other lights.

27 Bottoms, Stephen, ‘Materialising the Audience: Tim Crouch's Sight Specifics in ENGLAND and The Author’, Contemporary Theatre Review, 21, 4 (2012), pp. 445–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar, here p. 459.

28 Blau, Herbert, ‘Universals of Performance: Or, Amortizing Play’, SubStance, 11, 4 (1983), pp. 140–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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31 ffytche, Matt, The Foundation of the Unconscious: Schelling, Freud and the Birth of the Modern Psyche (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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33 See www.kleimo.com/random/name.cfm, accessed 15 September 2012.

34 Goode, ‘Who You Are’, pp. 8–9.

35 Although both Elsie Artbung and the position of Director of Visitor Experiences were the products of Goode's imagination, he was later amused to find a vacancy for just such a post advertised by the gallery (see http://beescope.blogspot.com/2010_03_01_archive.html, accessed 31 March 2011).

36 Goode, ‘Who You Are’, p. 24.

37 Rayner, Ghosts, p. 158.

38 Casati, Shadows, p. 6, italics in original.

39 Ibid., p. 29.

40 Goode, ‘Who You Are’, p. 6.

41 Ibid., p. 10.

42 Ibid., p. 18.

43 Ibid., p. 2, italics in original.

44 Goode closed his blog Thompson's Bank of Communicable Desire on 1 January 2012 (http://beescope.blogspot.co.uk).

45 See Gocer, A., ‘The Puppet Theater in Plato's Parable of the Cave’, Classical Journal, 95, 2 (2000), pp. 119–30Google Scholar; and Jurkowski, Henryk, A History of European Puppetry from Its Origins to the End of the 19th Century (Lampeter: Edwin Mellen, 1996)Google Scholar.

46 Plato, Republic, trans. F. M. Cornford (New York: Cornell University Press, 1945), 507a.

47 Ingold, Tim, ‘The Eye of the Storm: Visual Perception and the Weather’, Visual Studies, 20, 2 (2005), pp. 97–104.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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49 See http://services.parliament.uk/bills/2010-12/daylightsaving.html, accessed 15 September 2012.

50 Davis, Tracy C. and Postlewait, Thomas, eds., Theatricality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).Google Scholar

51 Ibid., p. 1.

52 Goode, Chris, ‘The Audience Is Listening’, Contemporary Theatre Review, 21, 4 (2012), p. 469Google Scholar.

53 Goode, ‘Who You Are’, 2010, p. 18.