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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 July 2009
This article examines the relation between the anticipating spectator and the transitoriness of theatre from an existentialist viewpoint. Referring to Heidegger's concept of ‘the anticipation of death’ (Vorlaufen), it is argued that any anticipation of the end of a performance is capable of reflecting temporality as a whole. In this regard, the performances of the English live art group Forced Entertainment exemplify how to bring the temporality of Dasein into the limelight.
1 Lessing was certainly one of the first to mention the transitory quality of theatre. In his Hamburgische Dramaturgie from 1767, he states, ‘Aber die Kunst des Schauspielers ist in seinen Werken transitorisch. Sein Gutes und Schlimmes rauschet gleich schnell vorbei; und nicht selten ist die heutige Laune des Zuschauers mehr Ursache als er selbst, warum das eine oder das andere einen lebhafteren Eindruck auf jenen gemacht hat’. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Hamburgische Dramaturgie (Halle 1878), p. 6. Today, several scholars focus on this aspect in performance theory, such as Peggy Phelan, who points out that performance's ‘only life is in the present. Performance cannot be saved, recorded, documented, or otherwise participate in the circulation of representations of representations: once it does so, it becomes something other than performance’. Peggy Phelan, Unmarked: The Politics of Performance (London: Routledge, 1993), p. 146. Also to be mentioned in this matter is Philip Auslander's Liveness: Performance in a Mediatized Culture (London: Routledge, 1999) and Erika Fischer-Lichte's The Transformative Power of Performance (London: Routledge, 2008).
2 See Leibniz's ‘On the Ultimate Origination of Things’ from 1697, the full quote runs: ‘Furthermore, it follows from this that all possibles, that is, everything that expresses essence or possible reality, strive with equal right for existence in proportion to the amount of essence or reality or the degree of perfection they contain, for perfection is nothing but the amount of essence’ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz: ‘On the Ultimate Origination of Things’ in Philosophical Essays, edited and translated by Roger Ariew and David Garber, Indianapolis: Hackett Pub. Co, 1989, 149–155, here 150.
3 Herbert Blau, ‘The Nothing that Is: The Aesthetics of Anti-Theatre’, talk given at Freie Universität Berlin on 19 December 2005.
4 This quote and the following refer to the show performed on 29 March 2007 at PACT Zollverein in Essen, Germany.
5 Since the performer's first name is also presented onstage, it refers not only to her identity but also to her role, which is the reason why I use the first name in the following.
6 Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, tr. Macquarrie and Robinson (San Francisco: Harper, 1962), pp. 276 ff.
7 Ibid., p. 303, italics in the original.
8 Ibid., p. 308, italics in the original.
9 Ibid., p. 237, all brackets in the original.
10 This quote is from the show performed on 25 May 2006 at the Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, Berlin.
11 For full quote and reference see note 6 above.
