Trespass

	It is that dim and unexplained feeling that the ominous message of Death and Nought flows to us from a creature which is deceptively alive, but has no consciousness and no destiny, it is that feeling which is the cause of the trespass, rejection and attraction at the same time. Condemned and fascinating. (1)

The late Polish director Tadeusz Kantor always claimed he had an illegal presence as the Director on stage - his role was to keep truth in his actors, they had to 'be' and not act. The essence of performance must be the honesty, the reality, the immediate.

My interest in Kantor is personal and like him, as a painter working in theatre, I know I am an intruder. Kantor’s intrusion into the performance arena has a lot to teach contemporary theatre practice about unquestioned hierarchy and traditions. Intruders into performance – visual artists or technology - can change the frame of reference.

Kantor allowed us to see even beyond his canvas to the artist sitting just to the side of his work, to allow us to see his creation happening simultaneously. People are fascinated by the act of creation. Theatre being the rehearsed repetition of creation. Kantor allowed us to see the actual thought processes as they happened, we saw unrehearsed creation...

	"well it was 'rehearsed' the process was very exact - how he wanted 'emotion' 'action' portrayed but his presence on stage was totally unpredictable." (2)

Within the body – one of the most difficult things is to capture and repeat spontaneous thought. What is achieved in a rehearsal can be elusive after first discovered. Spontaneity is better served by painting where the mark is immediate and simultaneous with the thought. Kantor’s direction was an act of spontaneous thinking and control which came from a very deep immersion with his materials (the performers as well as the inanimate). Only hard work leads to spontaneous thinking.

What is the danger is that new technologies appear to cheat – a superficial awareness and a chance capture of the elusive spontaneous originality to be preserved and repeated ad infinitum. With all the cameras, video projections and flattened screens – the material becomes the process and is deadening. People are closing their minds.

But when a tortured artist commits suicide in front of your eyes – then again and again and again and again and again until the process disintegrates into a ritual of ridiculous repetition. We understand the manipulation of our perceptions and the bodily quirks of the performer bring the specific to the general. But the repeated film bores us with its lack of development.

	…if the rite (i.e. of remembrance) is to repeat a creative act it can only do so in not repeating it, for only once can a creative act be creative; if the rite repeats it exactly, it is no longer an act of creation. (3)

Kantor’s excitement at the creation of collage was still strong after decades - when can you convincingly tear apart an actor on stage - as you can an image for collage. Collage was an art that more than any other reflected the horrors of the war.

	…the ability to capture the infinite, sudden or subterranean connections of dissimilars, as the major constitutive principle of the artistic imagination in the age of technology. (4)

Today cut and paste is ubiquitous and unnoticed - it is so easy with computers – my theory is that through the computer we will understand disciplines and genres beyond our own experiences just by chopping everything up and sticking it back together. The danger is banality – everything puréed up into invalid’s soup but the positive is new forms from fresh ingredients.

	Language is on the side of censorship and repression; figural representation is on the side of desire and transgession. Lyotard thinks of modern art as being fragmented and believes that it is liberatory. Fragmentation and disruption of convention: but this raises the question, ‘Can art exist for ever as a transgression of previous assumptions?' (5)

When I am on the stage one of my fears is that I will say out loud my internal dialogue. The tradition of ‘living death’ which is acting or performing - when you are locked into a pre rehearsed ‘role’ to break out and laugh is literally to corpse (6).

	Useless to pretend that the actor moves on the same plane as the spectator: the actor is caught in the world of the dead, he is not free, as we are, to leave the theatre, and we are always aware of this radical difference. (7)

Kantor’s direction was like a literal corpse diving between living and living death. This is what I understand by Theatre of Death.

Now we are Dead, we are finally trespassing onstage as living artworks….

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