PAPER IV
Subject: TEATRO INGLÉS
Code: 14227 group: B
NPA: CL46706 Mª JOSEFA GÓMEZ GARCÍA
PLURAL ARTISTIC CREATIONS
The theatre like other kinds of amusements is going through a rough period, mainly because the high rivalry that it has with the entertainment coming trough “the new technologies”. I mean games on internet, all kinds of CD-ROOM games and Nintendo.
But we should not forget the, by now old, TV with so many different channels. Nor the cinema or DVD either.
We can enjoy all these at home. It is not like before, when the theatre started many centuries ago. We do not need to go out to enjoy ourselves. That is the reason why I think the future of theatre relays on its capacity to surprise the audience. People would only move outside their homes to see something really spectacular and in many ways transgressor. Like for instance the spectacles of “La fura dels bous”, where you have people hanging from ropes and spinning all round. The scenario can be very minimalist with just few cardboard boxes that keep changing shapes creating an ephemeral architecture. They catalyze different scenic disciplines like theatre, dance, circus, opera and performance. They also use the new technologies to project imagines or messages in the scenario. The actors can even be naked if they think that it would help to show the insignificancy of the human being.
The scenario can be a conventional stage with the audience sited on chairs or a whole factory premises with the audience standing up, either a public square in town.
I will never forget one of their performances in a kind of big night club. The scenario was the whole room and we the audience standing in the middle were part of it. The walls were covered with screens where we could see our selves being recorded. It all started showing how members of the group were taking anybody from the audience; take his clothes off and trough him in the top of a platform that was suppose to be the stage. Of course everyone that they were taking was part of the group, but it was so well done that I was really scared to be picked up and been thrown up naked in the middle of the stage. However I really enjoyed the feeling of threat that they make me believe I was under.
That is what I meant when I talked about the capacity to surprise the audience, also to include you in the performance.
We leave in a schizophrenic society and I think it is important that theatre companies reflect that in their plays. That is what spectacles that are a compendium of all scenic arts in one can do. The theatre like the rest of us has to change and to adapt to the new times we live in. We leave times where information comes from many different ways; we have so many different stimuli coming from the TV, internet, cinema and others that we need something really strong and powerful to make us feel something. “la fura dels bous” has the strength and visual capacity to make me feel so much. I bet for this kind of plural artistic spectacle as the surviving one.