Crossroads in the Black Aegean by Barbara Goff;Michael Simpson;

Author:Barbara Goff;Michael Simpson;
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: OUP Premium
Published: 2007-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

AMERICA AT COLONUS

However we finally understand Gospel’s version of reconciliation, it often seems to walk a fine line with regard to the politics of race and culture. To further the discussion, we shall now consider Gospel in relation to two other complex negotiations that it performs. With respect to both, it reworks and reaffirms the trope of reconciliation. From its position as one of the more important of Breuer’s works, Gospel has much to say about the American avant–garde and of the phenomenon of American interculturalism.

Breuer’s work is often linked with that of Richard Foreman and Robert Wilson, and the three may be described as ‘the full emergence of the avantgarde tendencies in American theatre’ (Herman 1987: 8). In 1977 Bonnie Marranca hailed the American avant–garde as the liveliest and most creative centre in the West, and singled out Breuer, Foreman, and Wilson as representative of the ‘Theatre of Images’, the main project of which is the promulgation within the audience of radical and alternative modes of perception (1977: pp. ix, x, xii). In pursuit of these modes of perception Breuer’s work has used a variety of techniques such as combination of video or audio with live performance, and innovative explorations of the stage space.45 To produce different ways of seeing and to make a direct connection with the audience, ‘an immediate and therapeutic transference of emotion’ (Innes 1993: 191), have consistently been among the goals of the American avant–garde.

Innes argues persuasively that the avant–garde as a whole is characterized by revolutionary aesthetics which prefigure social revolution (1993: 1). In search of revolution, the avant–garde rejects modern materialistic bourgeois society and, Innes suggests, seeks a corrective to it in ‘primitivism’. ‘Primitivism’, in his model (3),

has two complementary facets: the exploration of dream states or the instinctive and subconscious levels of the psyche; and the quasi–religious focus on myth and magic, which in the theatre leads to experiments with ritual and the ritualistic patterning of performance… Both are variations of the same aim: to return to man’s “roots”, whether in the psyche or prehistory.

The theatre practices of non–Western cultures, especially Asia, have also been pressed into service in the quest for an alternative. These various experiments in theatre constitute ‘an attempt to replace the dominant modes of drama—and by extension the society of which these are the expression—by rebuilding from first principles’ (3). As the theatre is remade, so will be the society in which it emerges.

If Gospel may be described as part of the avant–garde, then the experiment with ritual, and the direct connection to the audience’s sensibilities (as witnessed by the successful evocation of ‘catharsis’), are afforded as much by the dimension of gospel music as by that of Greek tragedy. Even the rejection of modern materialist society can be read both in the evocation of the ancient world and in the Christian alternative. Gospel music is not usually represented as an avantgarde form, nor does it so represent itself, but it is here readily recruited to a project that can be identified as avant–garde.

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