Today, when advanced technology has been introduced into almost every pore of life, we see theatrical performances that have in their composition large projectors, video shoots or various special effects, where the influence of film can be felt. For many, this minimizes the uniqueness of the audience’s experience of the actors’ performance on stage.

What happens on stage is a unique, indescribable emotion for the spectators. Actors embody characters from the past, while the concept of re-embodiment makes sense when we see a theatrical performance, with multiple transformations of actors from one character to another.

Losing identity

With the spread of the COVID-19 virus, cultural life was forced to find alternative ways to breathe. So, in Kosovo but also around the world, online platforms enabled the broadcast of various plays from the past, but also with actors who recited dialogues from long distances.

Such a thing, though functional, had no effect on theatrical performance where the spectator becomes one with the characters; there he experiences strong emotions, strange sensations, moments of liberation and amusement and looks at the living art. Then we have the aesthetic side, the beauty; the characters, the costumes, the scenography, the props and the lights look different when we are in front of them and when we see a broadcast and everything seems fainter and shrunken.

Since its inception the aim has been to enact performances in front of the public — when we go back to the rituals of antiquity, the different cultures of the world developed new techniques, depending on their beliefs. They conveyed various energies and emotions to the people who were present during the performances. During these acts the subconscious side of man was awakened, the dormant sensations of the soul were awakened, in a process where the mind and body together reached the zenith.

The great theater practitioner and theorist Konstantin Stanislavski, who with his system of “art of experience” emphasized credibility on stage, with the actor who had to experience the role to the core and this magical moment of experiencing the role would excite the public with the illusion that what they are seeing is real. According to him, the actor does not dare to pretend for a moment, or execute tricks in order to deceive the public, on the contrary he believed that the artist can only be called such when he deeply believes in his actions and play.

As an illustration of this is the film “A Clockwork Orange” by director Stanley Kubrick, made in 1971. This was a film consisting of several genres intertwined in a completely unusual way. The title itself indicates that something natural like orange is presented in another form — that is, mechanical.

We find the explanation in the story of the main character, a boy named Alex Delarge, who is a very unruly and violent teenager, who also leads a gang of youngsters. When he is arrested by the police, he is subjected to a revolutionary method of the time, which tries to eradicate from him any desire to commit criminal offenses. Initially the method works and Alex loses some diabolical thoughts, but in the end he returns to what he once was in the past.

Originality can never be othered, only modified. The uniqueness of theater is defined by the writer Antonin Artaud in his book “The Theater and its Double,” when he says that “the theater is the only place in the world where a gesture, once made, can never be made the same way twice.” Therefore any tendency to remove it from its origin must be stopped.

Feature image: Arrita Katona / K2.0.

Is theater losing its identity?

Originality loses its meaning when we try to change it.

Alban Goranci

Is theater losing its identity?

Originality loses its meaning when we try to change it.

Alban Goranci