The Great Tamer En Images - Annotation
This post discusses a photo as text:
De Lage, Christophe Raynaud. The Great Tamer. 2017. The Great Tamer En Images, Avignon. Festival Avignon. Web. 29 July 2017.
This is an image highlighting one of the performers during the performance of the Great Tamer directed by Dimitris Papaioannou. The performance was part of the 2017 Avignon Film Festival. The Photographer Christopher De Lage Raynaud was the official photographer whose pictures were incorporated in the festival program and on the website. The performance took place in La Fabrica, the same venue as Les Parisiens by Olivier Py. Papaioannou raises the bars for his performers. The set constantly disassembles, swallows actors, or throws them out. However, not only does Papaioannou challenge the performers through this, but he also allows the audience to reflect on their desire to create beauty through this deconstruction and reconstruction, showing the struggles that come along with it and the rewarding feeling of creating meaning. He provokes his audience rather than allow them to contemplate or understand. The performance included no written
nor spoken text and the reason I chose this picture is because the show heavily relies on the performers’ movement, acting and bodies. Papaioannou allows his actors to embody the metaphors he wishes to convey rather than through dramatic text. This is why I chose a photograph of a performer as my second ‘text’ entry. The purpose is I am discussing here postdramatic Theatre where the studied text is embodied in the actors, the structure, and the scenography. Therefore, the text is the actor and I thought it would be representative of postdramatic theatre if I show a picture as my text rather than an actual text. My research will further examine the differences between dramatic and postdramatic theatre while comparing two performances (“Les Parisiens” & “The Great Tamer”) which took place in the same venue and shared similar themes that revolved around existence.
