Theatre and its contradictions
Theatre is one of the oldest forms of sharing human experience, and it is perhaps because of that very depth that it deserves to be questioned with precision, and without complacency.
For years I have been working alongside companies, venues, cultural mediation teams, directors of arts organizations and funders, and what I observe there is that the subsidized performing arts carry within them a contradiction that is rarely faced head-on. Their proclaimed intentions (reaching all audiences, creating connection, emancipating) are often contradicted by their actual structures. The hierarchy between authors, directors, actors, technicians and spectators reproduces what these same structures claim to deconstruct, front-of-house arrangements theatricalize distrust instead of openness, and the texts presenting the shows assign the spectator a subordinate position when they could make them a partner.
These contradictions do not stem from bad intentions, but from structural mechanisms that can only be seen by agreeing to look at oneself with the clarity one ordinarily applies to the systems one criticizes. That is the work I try to do in the articles of this section.
I write them for actors who sense that something eludes them in their relationship with the audience, for stage directors who doubt the coherence between their forms and their intentions, for mediation teams looking for methods that start from people themselves, for directors of organizations who want to understand why their house does not look like their city, and for funders who wonder what they are really supporting.
I believe theatre can be a practice of democracy, and not merely a service of democratization. It can then create the conditions for a real encounter instead of organizing the reception of a work, and place its trust in actors, participants, residents and the unforeseen, as living matter. This path is demanding, and I propose to explore it here, with constructive, workable questions rather than ready-made answers.
