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Theatre, because of its ability to represent through restaging, would seem to be the quintessential platform for reenactment. The Orestea (una commedia organica?) by R. Castelluci and Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio, restaged at the Paris Automne Festival in 2015, twenty years after its 1995 world premiere in Prato, is the starting point for a reflection on the status of restaging in theatre. This case study is the occasion to apply Walter Benjamin’s philosophical concept of the Jetztzeit to a theatrical context, and to consider also the ‘citational’ value of theatrical reenactment. These concepts are useful to study not only the reenactment of theatrical gesture and acting but also to consider the practice of restaging related to the theatrical event conceived in its entirety.
Keywords: Theatre; Castellucci, Romeo; Oresteia; Benjamin, Walter
Part of Over and Over and Over Again Containing:
The Reactivation of Time / Cristina Baldacci, Clio Nicastro, Arianna Sforzini
From Re- to Pre- and Back Again / Sven Lütticken
The Reenacted Double: Repetition as a Creative Paradox / Arianna Sforzini
‘The Reconstruction of the Past is the Task of Historians and not Agents’: Operative Reenactment in State Security Archives / Kata Krasznahorkai
The Collection of Jane Ryan & William Saunders: Reconstruction as ‘Democratic Gesture’ / Pio Abad
Insistence: The Temporality of the Death Fast and the Political / Özge Serin
‘Interrupting the Present’: Political and Artistic Forms of Reenactments in South Africa / Katja Gentric
Resounding Difficult Histories / Juliana Hodkinson
Archival Diffractions: A Response to Le Nemesiache’s Call / Giulia Damiani
Archival Reenactement and the Role of Fiction: Walid Raad and the Atlas Group Archive / Roberta Agnese
Unintentional Reenactments: Yella by Christian Petzold / Clio Nicastro
Everyday Aesthetics and the Practice of Historical Reenactment: Revisiting Cavell’s Emerson / Ulrike Wagner
Speculative Writing: Unfilmed Scripts and Premediation Events / Pablo Gonçalo
Reenactment in Theatre: Some Reflections on the Philosophical Status of Restaging
Re-search, Re-enactment, Re-design, Re-programmed Art / Serena Cangiano, Davide Fornari, Azalea Seratoni
In the Beginning There Is an End: Approaching Gina Pane, Approaching Discours mou et mat / Malin Arnell
Performance Art in the 1990s and the Generation Gap / Pierre Saurisse
Re-Presenting Art History: An Unfinished Process / Cristina Baldacci
Reconciling Authenticity and Reenactment: An Art Conservation Perspective / Amy Brost
UNFOLD: The Strategic Importance of Reinterpretation for Media Art Mediation and Conservation / Gaby Wijers
Unfold Nan Hoover: On the Importance of Actively Encouraging a Variable Understanding of Artworks for the Sake of their Preservation and Mediation / Vera Sofia Mota, Fransien van der Putt
Living Simulacrum: The Neoplastic Room in Łódź: 1948 / 1960 / 1966 / 1983 / 2006 / 2008 / 2010 / 2011 / 2013 / 2017 / ∞ / Joanna Kiliszek
‘Repetition: Summer Display 1983’ at Van Abbemuseum: Or, What Institutional Curatorial Archives Can Tell Us about the Museum / Michela Alessandrini
‘Political-Timing-Specific’ Performance Art in the Realm of the Museum: The Potential of Reenactment as Practice of Memorialization / Hélia Marçal, Daniela Salazar
‘We Are Gathering Experience’: Restaging the History of Art Education / Alethea Rockwell
Title
Reenactment in Theatre
Subtitle
Some Reflections on the Philosophical Status of Restaging
Author(s)
Daniela Sacco
Identifier
Description
Theatre, because of its ability to represent through restaging, would seem to be the quintessential platform for reenactment. The Orestea (una commedia organica?) by R. Castelluci and Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio, restaged at the Paris Automne Festival in 2015, twenty years after its 1995 world premiere in Prato, is the starting point for a reflection on the status of restaging in theatre. This case study is the occasion to apply Walter Benjamin’s philosophical concept of the Jetztzeit to a theatrical context, and to consider also the ‘citational’ value of theatrical reenactment. These concepts are useful to study not only the reenactment of theatrical gesture and acting but also to consider the practice of restaging related to the theatrical event conceived in its entirety.
Is Part Of
Place
Berlin
Publisher
ICI Berlin Press
Date
4 January 2022
Subject
Theatre
Castellucci, Romeo
Oresteia
Benjamin, Walter
Rights
© by the author(s)
Except for images or otherwise noted, this publication is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Language
en-GB
page start
131
page end
140
Source
Over and Over and Over Again: Reenactment Strategies in Contemporary Arts and Theory, ed. by Cristina Baldacci, Clio Nicastro, and Arianna Sforzini, Cultural Inquiry, 21 (Berlin: ICI Berlin Press, 2022), pp. 131–40

References

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  • Benjamin, Walter, Selected Writings, 4 vols (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996–2003)
  • Benjamin, Walter, ‘The Task of the Translator’, trans. by Harry Zohn, in Benjamin, Selected Writings, I: 1913–1926, ed. by Marcus Bullock and Michael W. Jennings (1996), pp. 253–63
  • Benjamin, Walter, ‘What Is Epic Theatre? [First version]’ and ‘What Is Epic Theatre? [Second Version]’, in Benjamin, Understanding Brecht, trans. by Anna Bostock, intro. by Stanley Mitchell (London: Verso, 1998), pp. 1–22
  • Benjamin, Walter, ‘On the Concept of History’, trans. by Harry Zohn, in Benjamin, Selected Writings, IV: 1938–1940, ed. by Howard Eiland and Michael W. Jennings (2003), pp. 389–400
  • Castellucci, Romeo, ‘Il silenzio dell’eroe’, interview by Anna Bandettini, La Repubblica, 29 September 2016
  • Freud, Sigmund, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, trans. by James Strachey (New York: Liveright, 1989)
  • Gombrich, Ernst, Aby Warburg: An Intellectual Biography (London: Warburg Institute, 1970)
  • Jones, Amelia, ‘The Artist Is Present: Artistic Re-enactments and the Impossibility of Presence’, TDR: The Drama Review, 55.1 (2011), pp. 16–45 <https://doi.org/10.1162/DRAM_a_00046>
  • Jullien, François, Près d’elle: présence opaque, présence intime (Paris: Galilée, 2016)
  • Lepecki, André, ‘The Body as Archive: Will to Re-enact and the Afterlives of Dance’, Dance Research Journal, 42.2 (Winter 2010), pp. 28–48 <https://doi.org/10.1017/S0149767700001029>
  • Pastore, Enrico, ‘Intervista a Milo Rau’, PASSPARnous Teatro, 22 (September 2014) <http://www.psychodreamtheater.org/rivista-passparnous-ndeg-22---teatro---intervista-a-milo-rau---a-cura-di-enrico-pastore.html> [accessed 24 November 2017]
  • Quaranta, Domenico, ‘RE:akt! Things that Happen Twice’, in RE: akt! Reconstruction, Re-enactment, Re-porting, ed. by Antonio Caronia, Janez Jansâ, and Domenico Quaranta (Brescia: LINK Editions, 2014), pp. 43–52
  • Rau, Milo, ‘Intervista a Milo Rau’, PASSPARnous, Teatro, ed. by Enrico Pastore <http://www.psychodreamtheater.org/rivista-passparnous-ndeg-22---teatro---intervista-a-milo-rau---a-cura-di-enrico-pastore.html> [accessed 28 September 2019]
  • Sacco, Daniela, ‘La Jetztzeit del teatro. L’Orestea della Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio/Romeo Castellucci venti anni dopo’, Biblioteca Teatrale, 119–120.2 (2016), pp. 65–84 <https://doi.org/10.1400/256739>
  • Sacco, Daniela, ‘Re-enactment e replica a teatro. Riflessioni sullo statuto filosofico della ri-presentazione’, Materiali di Estetica, 4.1 (2017), pp. 340–51
  • Weber, Samuel, Theatricality as Medium (New York: Fordham University Press, 2004) <https://doi.org/10.5422/fso/9780823224159.001.0001>
  • Weber, Samuel, Benjamin’s –abilities (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008)
  • Wind, Priscilla, ‘L’art du reenactment chez Milo Rau’, Intermédialités, 28–29 (2016) <https://doi.org/10.7202/1041080ar>

Cite as: Daniela Sacco, ‘Reenactment in Theatre: Some Reflections on the Philosophical Status of Restaging’, in Over and Over and Over Again: Reenactment Strategies in Contemporary Arts and Theory, ed. by Cristina Baldacci, Clio Nicastro, and Arianna Sforzini, Cultural Inquiry, 21 (Berlin: ICI Berlin Press, 2022), pp. 131-40 <https://doi.org/10.37050/ci-21_14>