The Blame of Karkinos: Theorizing Theatrical Space

Abstract

Both of the two principle mid-twentieth-century theorists of drama, Antonin Artaud and Berthold Brecht, met the Aristotelian tradition head-on. Of the two, Brecht is the more explicitly anti-Aristotelian, but Artaud is perhaps the more radical and is the one who will be compared with Aristotle in what follows. Artaud overturns the Aristotelian ranking of the parts of tragedy, putting the spectacle on top. Whereas Aristotle had said that tragedy could have its effect through reading or recitation,¹ without performance, Artaud would largely do away with a written text and, to the extent possible, with an author. Comparison of Aristotle and Artaud brings out, in the first place, the subordinate, and somewhat ambiguous, position of spectacle in the former and its overwhelming importance in the latter. One would not need Artaud, however, in order to be aware of the problematic nature of the spectacle in the Poetics: For this subject, classical scholarship would be a sufficient startingpoint and guide. Artaud becomes useful at the point at which he introduces into theory of drama problems with which, for whatever reason, Aristotle was completely unconcerned. One such problem is space. For Aristotle is so far from concern with theatrical space that, even when he speaks of opsis, he means only the visual aspects of the actors.² It is fair to say that such concepts as theater space, stage space, and dramatic space—to invoke some distinctions that will become important later in this paper—could hardly be derived from the Poetics.