Death, the One and the Art of Theatre (review)Adrian Curtin

Theatre Journal, Volume 58, Number 1, March 2006, pp. 166-167 (Article)

Published by The Johns Hopkins University PressDOI: 10.1353/tj.2006.0066

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166 / Book Review

passionate and boldly decisive and the work isambitious (some have said audacious), withoutquestion. But the catholicity of his attention preventsthe book from offering a coherent dramaturgicaltheory of metatheatre. It is this general reluctanceto outline a definitive model that has, I think,diminished Abel’s impact on later thinkers. Sowhile major works on metatheatre by Calderwood(Shakespearean Metadrama [1971]), Schmeling (Meta-théâtre et Intertexte [1982]), Hornby (Drama, Meta-drama and Perception [1986]), S :wiontek (Dialog—Dramat—Metateatr [1990]), and others makecourteous acknowledgement of his etymologicalpriority in introductions and footnotes, their argu-ments ultimately pass him by.

Nevertheless, Lionel Abel is to be honored as thefounder, or at least the first promoter, of the im-mense and diverse field of self-reflexive perform-ance studies both in the theatre and in everydaylife. Puchner is critical of those who neglect to citeAbel in this capacity and pitches the re-publicationof these essays as a bid to rectify the situation, andon one hand this is perfectly fair. But, on the otherhand, I do wonder if the popular currency of theterm effectively renders a defense of its originsunnecessary, and thus is to be taken as the realmark of critical influence. The legacy of Abel’sbook is that his contribution of terminology is sowell integrated into theatrical discourse that itperhaps no longer needs a reference. No doubt theword metatheatre will stand the test of time. Maybewe should let the work that begat it, like a well-regarded but now outmoded actor, retire grace-fully from the stage.

JENN STEPHENSONQueen’s University

and disrepair that typifies his plays. For, Barkersuggests, the relentlessly tragic, oftentimes violentand usually highly sexualized landscape of catas-trophe is also the site (or index) of death, which isthe principal subject that he courts in his new work.

In Death, The One and the Art of Theatre, Barkercomposes a dense series of poetic fragments, specu-lations, and imaginary scenes that sketches theconnections of his tripartite enquiry. It is, unsur-prisingly, quite a challenging text, forgoing straight-forward argument or theorizing in favor of anaccretion of ideas and propositions that adum-brates rather than explicates his concerns. Thebasic outlining of Barker’s theatre remains thesame, except that he now designates the “theatre ofcatastrophe” as the “art of theatre,” as opposed tothe humanist, populist theatre of morals and enter-tainment, which is simply (and somehow deroga-torily) called “the theatre.” This renaming has theeffect of highlighting the overt artfulness of Barker’stheatre, while implying that non-Barkerian the-atre—any theatre that favors clarity of meaningover persistent dislocation and anxiety—is debased,and therefore not Art. One might find this binarylogic objectionable, but Barker thrives on an oppo-sitional stance, shunning the mainstream and theconventional in order to cultivate the private, if notrejected, space of “authentic” tragedy, or the ille-gal. Barker’s misreading (if it is such) of “thetheatre” may be necessary for him to carve out hisown niche, but he thinks his provocative, evenincendiary, outlook quite valid, likening theatres toreligions that annihilate one another in the bold-ness of their convictions (2).

It is this vital power of tragedy that enables the“art of theatre” to “[steal] utterance from death,”making the theatre a privileged place where deathis confronted, exalted, and made to divulge itssecrets, at least in part (37). Barker maintains thattheatre is crucially an art of death because its veryartifice makes truth-statements redundant; conse-quently, it opens up the possibility of broachingdeath as a metaphysical state, which one can everonly hypothesize. “Theatre is situated on the bankof the Styx (the side of the living). The actuallydead cluster at the opposite side, begging to berecognized. What is it they have to tell? Theirmouths gape . . .” (20).

The challenge posed by Barker in this text, whichis also the challenge of his tragic theatre, is that ofadmitting death: how does one enter into thisdomain (if it is a domain) that is entirely alien toour conceptions, and which, because of its as-sumed negativity, is customarily regarded withfear? Outside the theatre, death is not valued: it is

DEATH, THE ONE AND THE ART OF THE-ATRE. By Howard Barker. London: Rout-ledge, 2005; pp. 105. $22.95 cloth.

Howard Barker adds to his body of critical writ-ing on the theatre with this new publication, whichbuilds upon his earlier work, Arguments for a The-atre (1997, 3rd edition), but also deepens and refo-cuses its concerns. This new text delves into theartistic and metaphysical implications of Barker’sself-styled “theatre of catastrophe,” which is anavant-garde mode of tragedy. Barker takes theprivileged, if somewhat marginalized, position thathe occupies in contemporary theatre and turns it tohis advantage, writing from outside the social andembracing the dark, obscure world of catastrophe

BOOK REVIEW / 167

continually deferred in favor of consumption, morelife, and the “nauseating reproduction” of the so-cial world (62). The “art of theatre,” on the otherhand, locates the ideal in death, and makes it avaluable fear, admitting it even into pleasure. It isat this juncture that the third element of Barker’stheoretical venture gains importance, which hecalls “the one.” The one is a name for a lover, but adeadly lover, who brings a potent combination ofdeath and sexual ecstasy to the subject who suffersher (the one is feminized in the text). Barker finds anintimation of death in erotic transaction, derivedfrom “the anxiety that nothing will ever againsurpass the unearthly quality of this ecstasy” (43).The formulation of the one is peculiar to Barker’saesthetics, however, and bears little resemblance toa generalized (and socially approved) romanticbeloved. There is no Hallmark card for the one. InBarker’s determination, mutuality between loversis not a sign of oneness. Instead, the ecstasy thatdistinguishes great passion is founded on hatredand fury, the realization that “all men [hate] allwomen, and all women [hate] all men” (47). Barkeris describing desire as it is expressed in the art oftheatre, of course, for it is only here that such starkantinomies can be brought together and torn asun-der. The end purpose of this is to consign thesubject who suffers the one to the abyss, as killing,Barker tells us, is “the supreme erotic gift”—theapotheosis of desire (69).

Barker is loathe to suggest that the art of theatrehas an educative function, or any function for that

matter, but if it has an intended effect, then it is touneducate the spectator, “ecstatically,” of course,giving him/her the gift of ignorance, which, hesuggests, is the only state appropriate in confront-ing death (93). For Barker, death as a metaphysicalstate is a positive release from the structures of thesocial world, with its prioritization of values, moralcodes, and laws, none of which are relevant to thealtered conditions that the dead may discover.

Death, The One and the Art of Theatre is a profoundpiece of writing—not only a major addition toHoward Barker’s canon, but also an important textin the discussion of contemporary theatre and itslinks with theory and philosophy. It could usefullybe read alongside Roland Barthes’s Camera Lucidain its personal excavation of feeling and mortalityin art, or indeed with Jean Baudrillard’s SymbolicExchange and Death for its intellectual rigor anddepth of implication. Barker aims to unsettle, andwith this work he succeeds. Death is variouslyimagined as a “vortex without categories of opti-mism or pessimism”; a cacophony; a potentialhierarchy; a realm of secrets; or none of these, butrather, an inadequate paradise: “[The tragic pro-tagonist] might enter death to find it as vulgar as afairground, as banal as a holiday, more life thanlife . . .” (88). This text, like Barker’s best writing,gets under the skin and precipitates a fatal rub.

ADRIAN CURTINCork, Ireland