haphazard

‘The ideal’ was a theme I felt that ran through all of this week’s reading. It was stretched to the idea that perfection is only achievable when no longer human. For Kleist, a dancing puppet can exceed what any human dancer can achieve, for Craig the uber-marionette should replace the individual/actor as a symbolic human figure that is without the ‘weakness and tremors of the flesh’ (81). Both points of view see emotion as an obstruction to the mind’s control over the body, which can only be executed perfectly without the “haphazard” influence of emotion. In R.U.R, the original robots are more efficient than humans because they do not feel emotion, they are even unable to understand the concept of death.

I found it helpful to understand the Craig extract by comparing it to Diderot’s Paradox. The issues discussed in both these texts are similar, both touch on the question: to what extent is the actor really feeling the emotion experienced by the character they are portraying? I am reminded of a something I learnt last year, which is that the history of theatre splits broadly into three phases: 1. “characterised by the operations of conventionalism”, 2. “the cultivation of illusion” and 3, “the contestation of illusion”. The actor/character relation in the first phase, which includes Medieval and Elizabethan theatre, is described like this: “the spectator perceives a real actor, and is impelled by textual and performance conventions to imagine an ‘imaginary’ character. The spectator is in creative allusion with the dramatist and actor towards a more complete realisation of the text.” This is a type of theatre in which the Paradox as described by Diderot does not exist because he was writing at the beginning of the next phase, of illusion. He is aware and commenting on this change in his discussion of Shakespearean language, saying: “Cleopatra…would make a sorry figure in history; they would raise laughter in society. People would whisper…in what world do people talk like this? And why are they not intolerable on the stage? Because there is such a thing as stage convention…it is a protocol three thousand years old. And will this protocol go on much longer? That I cannot tell you.” (22) Diderot concludes that the great actor can train his body to portray the illusion of emotion without feeling a thing. Craig, writing in 1907, is on the cusp of the third phase, and for this reason is preoccupied with the same things as Diderot, examples such as this: “emotion works upon the voice of the actor, and produces the impression of discordant emotion”(Craig 57) reveal a still unresolved definition of a working emotion and the impression of one. He does however identify the conventions of illusion that have created this contradiction and is insistent in his rejection of them as a corrupting view of what theatre is: “If there is any actor who is reading this, is there not some way by which I can make him realise the preposterous absurdity of this delusion of his, this belief that he should aim to make and actual copy, a reproduction?” (Craig 64)

Marxist criticism would have connected the process of industrial capitalism with the history of western culture (as it corresponds to the phases of theatre) in which the body is objectified and seen as a ‘material’. Craig refers in particular to the actor as an instrument: “The young man appears before the multitude and speaks the lines, and the speaking of them is a superb advertisement for the art of literature…After the applause the young man is swiftly forgotten…but…the author found it profitable, and shortly afterwards other authors found it an excellent thing to use handsome and buoyant men as instruments. It mattered nothing to them that the instrument was a human creature” (60). It is the body and its automatic mechanisms that fail us in the end: “there has never been an actor who reached such a state of mechanical perfection that his body was absolutely the slave of his mind” (67) In fact, Craig makes a point about this contradiction being peculiar to western ‘art’ : “all the intelligent men and women of Europe – one does not speak of Asia, for even the unintelligent in Asia fail to comprehend photographs while understanding art as a simple and clear manifestation – have protested against this reproduction of Nature, and with it photographic and weak actuality” (81). The Artaud quote I included in a past blog is perhaps even more relevant here than where I put it, because Craig’s modernist approach holds many similarities with Artaud’s, who was similarly inspired by Eastern ritual and stylistic theatre.

To finish, I’m really pleased that others have picked up on the gender representations in RUR because it means I can raise a few ideas: Any power Miss Helena Glory has is because of her beauty as a young unmarried eligible ‘Miss’. By act two she is ‘Mrs Domain’ and continues to be defined against the male. She is one of only four representations of women, as opposed to nine representations of men, which is perhaps illustrative of the condensed possibilities for women to define themselves. Her actions always stem from the social constructions of the maternal, such as her initial interest in the human rights of the robots and their souls. Her one powerful action is the burning of the old documents (a bit hedda gableresque?) but her reasons for this action are not rationalised, she does it overcome with emotion, making it a weak action when juxtaposed against Domain’s ruthless rationality. The robotess Helena might as well be considered as the same character (I wonder if they could be played by the same person in performance?), the Eve parallel is present in more than the last five mins of the play because it was Helena who persuaded the doctor to make some robots with souls, or to tempt them with knowledge. Robotess Helena’s character representation is the same as Helena’s, in many ways she serves the same function: to inspire the men with her outward appearance and her maternal and impetuous performance towards Primus when she combs his hair, but not her rational mind. She is described as “lovely, but quite stupid. Simply no good for anything” (47), until of course she can be a mother. These are character traits that reflect stereotypes of the time, that empowered women only when they perform in roles of appropriate femininity. A thought to end: “Helena: How terrible. It’s scandalous! Domain: Why scandalous? Helena: It is of course it is. Why did you call her Sulla. It’s a man’s name. Sulla was a Roman General” (14) it is easy to forget the extent to which gender is inscribed into something as everyday as your name.

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