OFFENDING THE AUDIENCE (ARTE EDITORIAL)

PETER HANDKE - «OFFENDING THE AUDIENCE» DIRECTED AND DRAMATISED BY MIRAN KURSPAHIĆ




"The speak-ins (Sprechstucke) are spectacles without pictures, in as much as they give no picture of the world. They point to the world not by way of pictures but by way of words; the words of the speak-ins don't point at the world as something lying outside the words but to the world in the words themselves. The words that make up the speak-ins give no picture of the world but a concept of it. The speak-ins are theatrical inasmuch as they employ natural forms of expression found in reality. They employ only such expressions as are natural in real speech; that is, they employ the speech forms that are uttered orally in real life. The speak-ins employ natural examples of swearing, of self-indictment, of confession, of testimony, of in interrogation, of justification, of evasion, of prophecy, of calls for help. Therefore they need a vis-à-vis, at least one person who listens; otherwise, they would not be natural but extorted by the author. It is to that extent that my speak-ins are pieces for the theater. Ironically, they imitate the gestures of all the given devices natural to the theater.

The speak-ins have no action, since every action on stage would only be the picture of another action. The speak-ins confine them selves, by obeying their natural form, to words. They give no pictures, not even pictures in word form, which would only be pictures the author extorted to represent an internal, unexpressed, wordless circumstance and not a natural expression.

Speak-ins are autonomous prologues to the old plays. They do not want to revolutionize, but to make aware."

Peter Handke, 1966.

Forty years exactly have passed since Handke wrote these lines as a prelude to his play "Offending the audience". Much has happened in the world in the meantime, and in the world of theatre for that matter. What was once a controversial avanguard text, is now days considered to be a pioneer classic of post-modern theatre.
Handke's play is an hour-long polemical lecture about the theater, taking place in a theater, that tries to be as unlike theater as it possibly can be. We are asked to abandon every expectation, to be the subject of the actors' gaze the way that they are usually the subject of ours. There is nothing offensive in what is represented on the stage; the offense of the title is that nothing at all is represented.
That might have been the case in the 60ies,but today, the relations in modern society have changed to that degree, that a mere word uttered from the stage, cannot move or affect anyone to a point where he or she would be offended. Too many things and events have happened in the theatre, and the conventions changed as well, for this text still to be vibrant and shocking as when it was released. Other Medias rose to power since then, and the role of theatre in a society changed dramatically, so it had to return to its roots - first-hand event experience, a fact that something is happening in your presence, here and now. It needed a rethinking and a "face lifting" so to speak, in order for its "point" to be delivered to the audience today, that has an experience of post-modern theatre. The main focus of this production was how to resolve a problem with the passivity of the audience in today's theatre, and how to make them think about their own position in the convention of the theatre. It was quite simple - you should put the audience in a situation, where they would be forced to think about their position. By using the conventions, against the conventions. The events that occur in a society are always linked with the development in theatre, or they should be. It's a sort of a live input or feedback from the real world, which needs to be processed and refined through the art and stage. As the violence and rioting rises in the world, so does the level of violence in the theatre, although it's a different sort of reflection. Desperate times, call for desperate measures. You are the subject. The focus is on you. So beware. We're coming...

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