How the past becomes present in theatre performance. The role of spectator’s theatrical memory
The video from the webinar is available to watch here.
Webinar info: If the ancient Greek drama contains such a value and its effect to the formation of the modern international theatre is so determinative, this is not only because of the wide range and the quality of its intertemporal values and universal messages, neither because its aesthetic thoroughness that make it a representative sample of a “classical” literary text. It is also equally (and maybe more) because of its stage representation as a live spectacle of a complex artistic creation, within which the main goal is accomplished: i.e., its reception as an experiential reality by the spectators that are present at a special venue and time and participate in the action taking place on the stage, in order to realize their educational and entertaining psycho-cathartic communication of the performance The “past” of the values included in the plays, is enclosed in the live spectacle of the message presented on the stage and is re-signified as the “present” of the tragic text .In this sense, tragedy may equally function for the modern people in any part of the world, with any personal or collective educational experience, regardless of the special terms and conditions of “reception”.
The theatrical performance can become a ceremony of remembering and reproducing the past, an act of collecting and gluing together its elements, with which at the same time an attempt is made to impose an interpretation of the past and to shape the consciousness of the viewer and through them to design” a cultural identity.” This identity includes the set of aesthetic and artistic experiences that have been registered in the collective consciousness of the group and directly and indirectly shape the image that each spectator individually forms of the (theatrical) past .Because the mechanisms of creating the stereotypes and shaping the common perceptions operate in the theatre, as a complex form of art and a social phenomenon with an interactive character, the mnemonic recording of the past in the consciousness of the society, affects (consciously or not) the point of view that the particular viewer can utter.