The Apparatus and Programming of the Event: For an Architecture of Participation

Abstract

In the contemporary European theatre context, the involvement of the spectator as an integral and decisive part of the scenic realisation is a widespread practice, capable of redefining the theories and praxes of theatre language. The material contribution of the spectator is an intrinsic part of the scenic writing, sometimes as co-creator with the actors or as the sole creator and protagonist on stage.

This article reflects on the concept and role of the apparatus in productions exclusively aimed at the pleasure of the spectators. The apparatus, understood following Michel Foucault, as a “set of strategies of the relations of forces supporting, and supported by, certain types of knowledge” (Agamben, 2009: 2), changes traditional playwriting: the apparatus provides for the introduction of the programming activity in theatre. Consequently, the apparatus is the dramaturgy of the scenic event, with the provision and organisation of the event in each phase, reconciling it with the action of the spectator. Using some technological devices (tablet, headphones, remote controls, etc.), the spectator follows the instructions and questions, thereby contributing to the scenic realisation. Depending on the forms of the apparatus, it changes how the spectator is included in the participatory dynamics programmed. In some cases, the form assumed by the dramaturgical concept is that of a complex design with the construction of a sensory, spatial poetics or of the imaginary or by re-writing reality; in others, it is the net, which originates an architecture of the experience lived by the spectator, the sole protagonist on stage.  

Based on these reflections, we will explore different participatory paradigms in order to analyse how these provide for specific modes of relationship: between the spectator and the participatory performance; between the spectators; and between the spectator and him or herself. We will provide specific examples of each typology, which will enable us to establish a broad vision of the languages characteristic of participation and of the mutations that it involves in the theatrical linguistic codes.

apparatus, participation, spectator, programming, dramaturgy,