PERFORMANCE REVIEW: STAGING IONESCO BEYOND THE ABSURD – THE AMBIGUOUS GAME OF INNOCENCE
PERFORMANCE REVIEW: STAGING IONESCO BEYOND THE ABSURD – THE AMBIGUOUS GAME OF INNOCENCE

Summary/Abstract: In the era of post-dramatic theatre and of the stage invasion by the new media technology, mounting performances of texts that have become “canonical” naturally entails the directors adopting a polemical attitude, since, more than ever before, they have to justify and “defend” their options. In other words, they are faced with expectations (of an aesthetic nature, or pertaining to cultural mentality) that are apparently difficult to meet and come from different types of audiences, which are sometimes located at the antipodes: on the one hand, apparently conservative, passive audiences, with elitist biases, who expect the reassuring confirmation of what they already know about the value of the staged text, and on the other hand, a neo-neo-avant-garde public, as it were, or the public of the digital generation. The latter audiences, revolving around the “millenarist” spectator (emancipated, in Jacques Rancière’s terms), want to find themselves and their highly-contemporary identity, which is about to gain consistency, in an interactive, uninhibited type of performance, which challenges clichés and the cultural patina of any museified theatre.

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