Magical realism belongs in the theatre PART 2

Challenging perception is what magical realism in theatre is all about. And the perception I want to challenge is that the world is static and that life begins and ends with what can be seen. My plays are about making the unseen seen (an observation Peter Brook made of Artaud). Questioning the status quo of society, politics, culture, in fact all belief, through a process of presenting the unpresentable, reflecting the impossible and making it a reality. That is why the motif of flying and floating comes up so often in my plays. Here is a physically impossible act happening all the time in different ways. That image carries so much within it. And within magical realism, like all things that should not or apparently do not happen in empirical reality, it can happen and does happen! That is why I use magical realism. In employing this form I am not stating what it is possible and impossible to the audience.

The stories that are called magical realist, however brutal or ugly or beautiful or strange they are in content, are always touching upon something divine. The ordinary is transformed into something quite extraordinary, and this is the same in theatre. Theatre is the mode I choose above others because it makes the mundane fantastic, even in the very process of enacting the story. When a story is lifted off the page and transported onto the stage it cannot help but become a magical event, far more powerful than just having been read, no matter how remarkable the words. When you invite an audience in to witness what you have created, the ritual is extended. You are asking for participation in your creation. Their energy offers energy to the created theatre piece, and the ritual takes place, the energy is exchanged and the show comes to life. Something is transformed into a living state that was once still and lifeless. And in this moment of exchange between the audience and the enacted, change occurs. The two elements cannot remain unchanged. The audience offers life to the story and in return the story offers a new awareness, a shifted consciousness, a shift in perception. No other medium can offer this because no other visual form is intended specifically for a particular audience in a specific time and place. Of course, a film is made to be watched, but does not rely on its audience to bring it to life. It can be argued that a play can be performed without an audience, but each night when an audience enters the theatre and the show is performed, the performance is different; it is made anew every time it is seen. The exchange between audience member and performance can be measured in response and is often spoken about by performers and directors when they say things like the audience were flat, they didn’t give the performers much to work with and other such stuff. There is a power in the presence and specificity of a particular audience in a particular space on a particular night. No other medium can hope to attain the magic that constitutes that exchange.

Thus it seems natural to me that the magic of theatre should best showcase the magic of the way I write, and be the best way to ensure the divine exchange takes place. I do have an agenda as with many theatre practitioners. I intend my theatre as the theatre of the divine, which seems to me a natural extension of what theatre is. I tell stories with the intention of accessing a part of the audience that will bring about a change in perception and awareness. In their subtlety and ambiguity, I do not intend to tell the audience how or what they should be feeling, but offer them a different perception, one that believes in the possibility that nothing is fixed and everything is possible. I do this in a way that posits the subject as an already divine being, and that these stories might illuminate that aspect of themselves. This is what I believe and even though it may be considered naïve or foolish or even utterly unfounded, I have as much faith in it as Artaud did in his ability to reveal the heart of darkness in life itself. He too believed in the magic of theatre to reveal the true nature of the human condition, but his starting point was very different to mine. I see it as no less naïve to assume the worst of human nature than to assume the best, and I agree with the power of theatres ability to bring it to light.

Theatre then is, as I have stated, a church, a specific place that one goes to, to participate in an act of faith and reverence, hoping for an exchange to take place and seeking a kind of transformation.