“Theatre and the Resensibilisation of the Senses” – Gido Broers

Frank Kessler addressed in his lecture several ideas on how different media affect the sensorial perception of the observer. The emphasis during this lecture was on media that are based on images; photography, film and television. What is the place of theatre in this story? In this short blog, I will address several concepts and ideas about the senses, perception and their relation to theatre.

When discussing the reconfiguration of the senses with regards to theatre, the concept of intermediality is useful, as defined by Chiel Kattenbelt: “co-relations between different media that result in a redefinition of the media that are influencing each other, which in turn leads to a refreshed perception” (2008, 25). When a performance is being considered as being intermedial, this means that there are, as Liesbeth Groot Nibbelink and Sigrid Merx argue in their article Presence and Perception: Analysing Intermediality in Performance, different “sensory modalities” at work in the performance which could contradict each other. Because of those different modalities that are being addressed in one performance, those intermedial performances lead to a “resensibilisation of the senses” (2010, 218). For instance, nowadays in many performances video screens and cameras are being used by the actors on stage. So the actors are not only live present, but also virtually present on the screen, which demands a different mode of perception.

Because of the various shifts in sensorial modalities in intermedial performances the spectators are invited to, according to Groot Nibbelink and Merx, “work through these unstable sensual experiences to become aware of precisely this instability of the reality we live in and to deal with the fact that we don’t know” (2010, 220). This instability in perception and this connection with the unstability of reality was also addressed by Walter Benjamin in his essay The Work of Art in the Age of Technical Reproduction, but then in relation to the shift from photography to moving images; “The spectator’s process of association in view of these images is indeed interrupted by their constant, sudden change. This constitutes the shock effect of the film, which, like all shocks, should be cushioned by heightened presence of mind” (1969, 17), to which he adds in a footnote: “The film is the art form that is in keeping with the increased threat to his life which modern man has to face. Man’s need to expose himself to shock effects is his adjustment to the dangers threatening him.”

In everyday life, different, possibly conflicting, sensory modalities are at work at the same time. I think theatre is a good place to experiment with dealing with those different modalities and to make the spectators ready to adjust themselves to “the dangers threatening him in real life.” Or to put it more mildly: to enable the audience to reflect on the instability of the world outside the safe theatre space.

Sources

• Benjamin, Walter. “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” In Illuminations, edited by Hannah Arendt, translated by Harry Zohn. New York: Schocken Books, 1969: 217-252.
• Groot Nibbelink, Liesbeth and Sigrid Merx. “Presence and Perception: Analysing Intermediality in Performance”. In Mapping Intermediality in Performance. Edited by Sarah Bay-Cheng, et al. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2010.
• Kattenbelt, Chiel. “Intermediality in Theatre and Performance: Definitions,
• Perceptions and Medial Relationships”. Cultura, Lenguaje y Representación / Culture,
• Language and Representation 6 (2008): 19-29.