Reverberations Across Small-Scale British Theatre: Politics, Aesthetics, and Forms edited by Patrick Duggan and Victor Ukaegbu
Contemporary Theatre Review, 2015
dynamic of dissent that is targeted at the political consequences of austerity policies, but is n... more dynamic of dissent that is targeted at the political consequences of austerity policies, but is not reducible to a single moment or place. It is not that the pieces transcend the sum of their parts. Rather, the act of meeting is itself productive. Cull’s contribution to the collection recapitulates the book’s ambivalent position on the manifesto as a form. Or rather, the piece frames the manifesto as an ambivalent form, and valuable for that. ‘(One Less) Manifesto for a Theatre of Immanence’ is laid out in two columns. In the column on the left, Cull argues for a theatre of immanence, drawing on Deleuze’s concept emphasizing materiality, openness, and indeterminacy. The right-hand column is both numbered and non-linear in content, sometimes poetic commentary, sometimes forceful declaration. In her complex formulation in the left column, immanent theatre has both an ethical and political duty to defend (or ‘unleash, free or affirm’) tendencies towards differentiation (p. 155). It calls, manifesto-like – if paradoxically – for an unwavering commitment to change. In the right-hand column, on the other hand, Cull declares, ‘[t]here can be no manifesto for a theatre of immanence’ (p. 155). This flickering between structure and variation motivates the wider investigation of the book, and forms its argument. Cull’s chapter is paired with ‘A Play for All Trans [] Borders’ by the Electronic Disturbance Theatre/ b.a.n.g. lab. This piece makes obvious what other contributors have also suggested and explored: that the manifesto can be thought of as a script. Individual ‘characters’ and a chorus speak to and around the Transborder Immigrant Tool, a project that uses GPS and inexpensive mobile phones to create safer pathways for immigrants across the US/Mexico border. Their ‘voices’ are multilingual (English, German, Greek, Spanish, and Taiwanese). The ‘play’ also brings in documentation of institutional responses to this project (an email from UC San Diego auditors questioning the use of project funding; a letter from members of congress demanding evidence of a funding review process), and playful graphical interventions. This formal experimentation and theatricality demonstrate the partial nature of the manifesto – it needs bodies to take it up and enact it. Perhaps as well, this evocation of missing bodies underlines the unnecessary deaths TBT was designed to address. As in other ‘analogues’, the meeting place between Cull’s and the EDT/b.a.n.g. lab’s chapters is a rich field. Where Cull argues forcefully for a theatre of immanence, EDT/b.a.n.g. lab riffs on the idea of transcendence, finding connections between Henry David Thoreau’s Walden Pond and the Zapatistas’ Chiapas in their specificity of place that allows for appeals to concepts of liberty and justice. They emphasise the ‘trans-’ in transcendence, a heightened celebration of movement, at once soaringly poetic and located firmly on the ground. Taken with Cull’s philosophical appeal to change and differentiation, this pairing is a particularly useful example of the intersection of politics, philosophy, and performance at which Manifesto Now! aims. The one pairing where the meeting point is a bit less fortuitous is Analogue Four: Stuart McLean’s ‘What is the University For? A Story from the Dreamtime of a Possible Future’ and Mary Overlie’s ‘Manifesto for Reification’. Taken alone, each piece is valuable. McLean proposes the radical idea that in the face of austerity, universities must respond in a spirit of wild abundance. Overlie explicates the use of ‘reification’ in the Six Viewpoints, her influential performance training framework, using an idiosyncratic though productive reading of Karl Marx and the art critic Clement Greenberg. Though both address pedagogy, the connection seems rather forced, perhaps because the aim of each is so different. Overlie is explicating an existing system of training, while McLean’s proposals are almost stubbornly speculative. In other pairings, the meeting between two pieces sparks new thoughts and possibilities; here, the pieces seem to miss each other. This minor quibble is only noticeable because Manifesto Now! is an ambitious and thoughtfully crafted book. I don’t have space here to mention some other wonderful contributions (including the pairing of two chapters on Dušan Makavejev’s film Manifesto (1988), one an incisive psychoanalytic reading of the film by Branislav Jakovljevic, and the other a lyrical reflection accompanied by drawings by artist and director Lin Hixson). The collection is both timely and seriously engaged with time – with the (political, philosophical, and performative) ‘now!’ of the title.
Uploads
Papers by Patrick Duggan