Everything is radical - Kabale der Scheinheiligen (The Cabal of Hypocrites)
Sky Gilbert’s essay invites a direct comparison between Canadian and European theatre, as the type of theatre Gilbert describes as radical, we experienced in every Festival d’Avignon play. Gilbert explains that his company, Buddies in Bad Times, is “artist-run” (Gilbert) rather than audience centred, meaning that they rely on government funding to create meaningful theatre rather than audience funding. He talks about how this tends to lead to commercial theatre, which, in North America, is often musical theatre (Gilbert). Buddies in Bad Times receives government funding that most companies do without, which both allows them to take risks as they depend less on audiences (Gilbert), but also grounds the company’s success in government approval. In Avignon, the majority of the shows we saw, in their programs, listed Government arts funding, such as the Dutch Performing Arts Fund (Festival d’Avignon 30), and the entirety of the festival is funded by huge institutions as well as government funding, such as the Republique Française, the city of Avignon itself, and the Institut Français (Festival d’Avignon 68). The public funding of this festival allows for well-funded works which encourages directors to take risks, more developed sets and costumes, and works that truly represent their country of origin. This reliance on government funding has implicit issues of censorship, but mostly does away with the need to fill seats. The shows in Avignon managed to fill seats, not only because it is unique in the world, but perhaps because the government’s funding and support of the arts has leaked into mainstream culture enough that Europeans truly want to go see theatre.
Radical dramaturgical ideas seem to flow through each of the shows in Avignon, especially Die Kabale, which showed shaping from dramaturgy. Die Kabale relied upon non-linear style, pro-sexual thinking (Gilbert), and each show showed elements of postdramatic theatre (Jürs-Munby 4). I imagine this has to do with the company and continent’s history of theatre, government funding, historical depth, and even the rich queer, sexual history prevalent in Berlin. In all, this radical theatre that is responsive (Gilbert) rather than dictative seems to be the sort of fluid dramaturgy that was found in all of the Festival d’Avignon, and perhaps what made so much of it postdramatic; they were allowed to be enthusiastically diverse and explorative in part from their funding and the attention paid to them in the festival setting. The pressure of governmental theatre is much more complex, but ultimately allows for bigger risks than that of audience funded theatre that can, with one massive critique, be dismantled and plummet a company into debt.
Works Cited
Gilbert, Sky. “Dramaturgy for Radical Theatre.” Canadian Theatre Review, 1996.
“Die Kabale der Scheinheiligen. Das Leben des Herrn de Moliére" (English)”. http://www.festival-avignon.com/en/shows/2017/die-kabale-der-scheinheiligen-das-leben-des-herrn-de-moliere Accessed 13 July 2016.
Jürs-Munby, Karen. “Introduction.” Postdramatic Theatre, edited by Hans-Thies Lehmann, Routledge, 2006, pp. 1-16.
Noé, Ilya. “Site-Particular.” Mapping Landscapes for Performance as Research. - Scholarly Acts and Creative Carthographies. Edited by Shannon Rose Riley and Lynette Hunter. Palgrave Macmillian, 2009.
