Theatre and Narcissism

John William Waterhouse, 'Echo and Narcissus'. (1903)

When I first read the title for Jacques Lacan's essay 'The Mirror Stage as Formative of the I Function' my first imagining was of a stage surrounded by mirrors, reflecting both the actor and the audience.  What Lacan was referring to was actually a stage in every human being's life, namely, at 6-18 months.  But, I don't think my interpretation was that far from the truth. 

What occurs in the mirror stage is a child's first fascination with their own reflection.  Lacan writes of how the child, before he has even yet mastered standing or walking, can already recognise his own reflection.  He leans into a mirror and seeks to fix the image in his mind, to remember the face that everyone can see but him.  It is worth considering that Lacan describes this stage in conjunction with a primal instinct towards reproduction; he highlights a study on pigeons in which a female pigeon recognises her own ability to reproduce by seeing the gonads of another pigeon.  (Lacan, p.5) interestingly, Lacan also writes that "this condition is so utterly sufficient that the same effect may be obtained by placing a mirrors reflective field near the individual." (ibid.)

Is this the case in humans?  Is our own narcissistic self-consciousness actually intrinsic to our henceforth ability to reproduce?  Regardless, what this asserts is that self interest in this way is a primal instinct; it is natural to be fascinated by who we are and what we portray of ourselves.  Furthermore, it harnesses an objective view of the world to look into a mirror and understand that a movement has been willed by yourself, belongs to yourself, and is not affiliated with that which surrounds your reflection. That is to say, we define our physical presence by what is different and most similar to what we can see and know of ourselves, beyond a piece of furniture, an animal, or another human.

But, what of our psychical presence?  Taking this point further, we turn to consider the space outside of our physical reflection.  What I mean is the space beside geometric space, the "dark space of groping, hallucination and music, which is the opposite of clear space, the framework of objectivity" (Lacan, 2003).  Responding to the sound waves from a radio or, indeed, exhibiting the force of our will to switch that radio on are barely tangible concepts to ourselves.   We cannot see emotions, thoughts or dreams.  I found it very sobering to discover that the cerebral cortex in the brain, the part that plays a key role in memory, perceptual awareness, consciousness, voluntary muscle movement and reasoning, all crucial to recognising the reflection of ourselves, is only 2-3mm thick.  By looking at this part of the brain, one does not thereby see the specific thoughts or emotions of the human.  Instead, our only witness to the effects of this intangible space is that which we see in the mirror, in our actions and most significantly, in other people. 

To return to my mistaken reading of the 'mirror stage' as a theatrical set, we can see that actually, the stage is where these two planes of space - the tangible and intangible - are brought together.  An excellent example of this is the layout of the Arcola Theatre in Dalston, London.  I went to the theatre recently to see an intriguing production from The Miniaturists (39) and an image that has stuck in my memory is of the moment when the lights went down to begin the first play.  To set the scene, the auditorium is designed so that the audience sits opposite each other, the stage space in between them.  Before the play has started there is nowhere to look but at each other, and as the lights dimmed to black out, I watched as a series of lights from people's mobile phones went out.  One by one, they took away the illumination of a person's face.  I thought there was something quite apt about transferring light from the audience member to the actor, but when the lights lifted again the opposite audience was disconcertingly still clearly visible.  What I was more comfortable with was that the audience, particularly the front row where I was sat, is as much a part of the stage as the set itself.  I experienced having a gun pointed in my face in one play and a bean bag placed next to me in another and, although this does not serve to suspend belief, it certainly welcomes the audience to the production.  By way of contrast to this somewhat collaborative approach to theatre, we can consider the work of Martin Crimp.  Though brilliant, I find his plays to be wholly patronising by the way it seems to scream through the fourth wall how ridiculous being human is.  (I should add, the characters are generally not screaming, the stark truth in what they say just makes it feel like that.).  The effect of this was that I left 'In The Republic of Happiness' at the Royal Court last year feeling like I should apologise for being so intolerable.  In particular were the lines:

"It's a fact I can eat fruit.  It's a fact I can stand on one leg.  Oh look at the fine fruit spray as I break the peel.

Look at the fine fruit spray: smell this fine orange.  Look at me.  I said look at me.  Look at me eat fruit.  Look at my mouth - not just the teeth - look past the teeth, look right past my tongue - look into my throat - come right into my throat and enter my stomach - enter my stomach, pass into my gut - look round, yes, take a good look round my gut, check it out, check out my nice long gut and emerge from my arse.  Look at me.  Look at my arse." (Crimp, 2012)

This is where we return to the notion of a mirrored stage, because it was like looking in a mirror that looks back and balks at what it sees.  The Arcola stage however, by placing our fellow spectators in as much view as the play itself, has a more surreptitious control over the audience's reaction.  By way of explanation, I found myself to be constantly checking that my face had not fallen gormless in immersion in the play and, quite consciously, that I was laughing and frowning at the same parts of the play as the opposite audience members.  That is to say, while the plays were mirrors of ourselves, we too were mirrors of ourselves and the play's conversation seemed to involve everyone in the auditorium.  Either way, for both Crimp's play and the Arcola Theatre, through the relationship between the actors, the audience, the text and myself I was constantly aware of my own reflection.  The reason for this, I think, is that what is necessary for responding to theatre is this same process of defining - objectively - the differences and similarities we see in accordance with ourselves.  In short, what is 'real' and 'true' to us.  In support of this we return to Lacan:

"The function of the mirror stage thus turns out, in my view, to be a particular case of the function of imagos, which is to establish a relationship between an organism and its reality" (Lacan, p.6)

To conclude, whether it is a piece reminiscent of, for example, Artaud's Theatre of Cruelty or Mike Leigh's tendency towards social realism, when the lights dim on the audience the stage becomes as much a narcissistic practice for the audience as a child pouring into a mirror.  It is a natural, primal instinct and if Martin Crimp wants to laugh at us for it, so be it, because if I remember the production rightly, we were all laughing too.

http://www.royalcourttheatre.com/whats-on/in-the-republic-of-happiness

Crimp, M. (2012) In The Republic of Happiness. Faber, London. p.67-8

Lacan, J. quoted in Caillois, R., Frank, C. and Walsh, C. (2003) The Edge of Surrealism, A Roger Caillois Reader. Duke University Press, USA. p.90

Lacan, J. (2002) ‘The Mirror Stage as Formative of the I Function’ in Ecrits A Selection. Translated by Bruce Fink.  Norton, London.

Surrealism

"Surrealism means 'above realism'." This eternally intriguing artistic movement is not a negation of reality; in its truest tradition, surrealism opens our understanding of reality by hovering above it."

(Dazed and Confused, February 2013 3 (18), an interview with model/actress/director Farida Khelfa by Elsa Schiaparelli.)

Theatre and Dreaming.

 

Edward Hopper, Solitary Figure in a Theatre. c.1902-4

It is problematic for me, as a playwright, to believe that more truth of meaning is found in actions and images than in words.  But it's true.  When we remember our dreams, we remember the colours, shapes and feelings ahead of the actual words that are spoken.  By way of proving this, I once had a dream that I was ordering coffee from a Caffe Nero in Notting Hill that I used to frequent when I worked in a store on Westbourne Grove.  To provide some background to the consequences of this dream, I must mention that a friend once told me how much better an Americano tastes with pouring cream rather than milk.  Since I first tried it, I have never looked back.  But, ordering my coffee as such in this Caffe Nero caused the baristas to look at me with both confusion and concern and continually get my drink wrong. To return to my dream, because I endured this farce so repetitively the script is one that I can, apparently, recite in my sleep because I remember looking at my watch and seeing that I had spent thirty minutes trying to get my order right.  Yet can I remember how distinctly I cried, "pouring cream, not whipped cream!" in the dream?  Not as vibrantly as I remember the images: the barista's face, my watch, the sunshine on the road and the bright white of the buildings.

            This caused me to wonder, what is it that dreams are made of?  According to Freud, it is the desires of the subconscious that, beyond the censorship the waking mind gives to them, are freely explored.  Furthermore, he describes the process of dreaming, and of interpreting that dream, as "the fulfilment of a wish" (Freud, 1991) that is either suppressed or realised in the waking world.  Conversely, then, when the dreamer commits some awful act such as murder, rape or adultery it is an inhibited urge from the depths of their psyche.  Understandably they seek to distance themselves from the dream, to shirk responsibility of it, which Freud labels as 'displacement'. This becomes more complicated when we consider Andre Breton's description of such an occasion as "supremely revealing", yet it is "in no way contaminable by morality, actually experienced "beyond good and evil" in the dream" (Breton, 1999) because of the nature of its abstraction from reality.  What Breton seems to suggest is that in the dream state, we care not for the consequences of our actions nor the character of them, only our desire to perform them.  Within this, to turn briefly to the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche, we can understand the state of the dreamer as the ultimate state of man - der übermensch - free from the confines of morality and free to explore his potential.  He sees the height of a cliff and wonders not, "Is it safe to climb it?" But rather, "how shall I climb it?"  Conducive to this, as Breton writes,

 "The mind of the dreaming man is completely satisfied with whatever happens to it.  The agonizing question of possibility does not arise.  Kill, plunder more quickly, love as much as you wish.  And if you die, are you not sure of being roused form the dead?  Let yourself be lead." (Breton, 1924)

Therefore, as we can see, it is purely a matter of free will.  The justification of things as "good" or "evil" is a triviality that encumbers the waking man; it this act of 'censorship' we submit to for the sake of journeying amicably through the day.

            But then, what is real?  If our dreams reveal our true feelings, what does that connote about our approach to our 'real' lives?  If we are constantly suppressing our true will for the sake of living harmoniously with one another, who can speak of honest relations? Breton also writes, "Perhaps my dream of last night was a continuation of the preceding night's, and will be continued tonight with an admirable precision" (Ibid.) and in this respect, it seems plausible that the dreaming world should be the 'real' world.  Especially when, as we have established, it is where man is most truly and freely himself.

            Perhaps 'plausible' is too strong a word to associate with such an idea.  But I am often given to half-jokingly lament over the terrible state of the world (ruining the British countryside with the train route for the HS2 is my latest source of woe) and I long for a world other than this one, like a neighbour's house that is cleaner with better tea and finer wines.  Tell me, is dreaming not that world?  Breton described the dreamer as 'satisfied' which, even in a nightmare is an apt description because we do not doubt the reality of what we see.  that is to say, the images of our minds are so convincingly clear that we respond emotionally to them and at last, this is where I return to my initial quandary.  the question was, how can a playwright portray a world realistically and honestly through something that is built on words?  To put it succinctly, I see language as the expression of our conscious and movement as that of the sub-conscious.  If then, according to Freud's analysis of our dreams, our true self bleeds through the activities of our sub-conscious that is remembered as images, then surely this flaunts the fallible nature of language as a vessel to truth.  Therefore, how can a playscript - a dialogue - achieve this illusion of truth?

            Outside of this, of course, there are many styles of theatre advocating innovative ways of offering, dismissing or downright screaming the 'truth' about life.  In the same vein of surrealism, we need only look as far as Samuel Beckett's Endgame, Sarah Kane's Cleansed and Harold Pinter's The Homecoming to see how three similar, yet very different plays communicate what it means to be alive.  But, crucially, here we must remember the ultimate intention of any play: it is to be performed.  What we remember from a production, like from a dream, are images connected to emotional responses that convey the story for us.  Where is reality, where is truth, where is life?  It is eternally up for debate, most especially in theatre.  And so, I turn once more to Andre Breton's Manifesto of Surrealism, because his answer gracefully bypasses any definite provocations:

"The earth, draped in its verdant cloak, makes as little impression upon me as a ghost. It is living and ceasing to live which are imaginary solutions. Existence is elsewhere." (Ibid.)

Breton, A. (1999) Nadja Penguin, London.

Breton, A.  (1924) Manifesto of Surrealism [website] Available at: <http://www.tcf.ua.edu/Classes/Jbutler/T340/SurManifesto/ManifestoOfSurrealism.htm> 1999
Freud, S. (1991) The Interpretation of Dreams, Penguin Freud Library, USA