The Ignorance of Participation as an Act of Poetic Resistance: Introduction to the Manifest of the Company FFF: "The Friendly Face of Fascism"

Abstract

The following introduction seeks to provide some of the main characteristics of the scenic poetics set out in the manifest "FFF: The Friendly Face of Fascism. For an Aesthetics of Devices" that Roger Bernat and Roberto Fratini present in the journal Estudis Escènics.

Although the participation and involvement of the spectator are the main features of the poetics of the company, the authors emphasise in the manifest certain opposition to and betrayal of participation based on the emancipation and festive illusion of the audience (in opposition to what happened in 1960s and 1970s theatre). The participatory devices conceived by the company create systems in which the spectators-dependants can fulfil or distort the instructions conveyed by the dramaturgical design while being able to develop critical thought faced with their role and fictional stance. In this way, there is an ignorance of participation, which is the company’s stylistic hallmark.

The manifest, in this respect, very clearly sets out its idea of participation, based on a mobilisation of the audience far removed from the principles of disinhibition. Fratini and Bernat stress the importance of inhibition faced with disinhibition to understand participation as pure aesthetic data, a format that enables the social and political role of the spectators to be re-imagined.