Drama as ideology

BY JON REFSDAL MOE

As the contemporary arts kissed their grand narratives goodbye, theatre stood in the wings ready to take delivery of them. Never having developed aesthetic self-awareness and autonomy, theatre easily fell prey to the ideologies that the other arts had kicked out. As the contemporary arts developed a new aesthetics by discussing their particular ideological and socio-economical implications, theatre became a dustbin for its lost ideologies. A sanatorium where the myths of the other media came to die, or prolong their agony.

Grand narratives swamp the stages of Scandinavia. And these narratives have all already been told. Whereas the novel has been a favoured exhibit object on Scandinavian stages for the last couple of years, film might be about to conquer this position. And as a far more visually potent medium than literature, film might in the future destabilize theatre's frail existence as an art-form yet more. Thanks to this politics of re-staging in Scandinavian theatre, not only words, but also images will be re-enactments, representations of something already said.

General consensus

Every year in Norway the debate returns concerning the sad plight of New Norwegian Drama. Every year a general consensus is reached on how immensely important New Norwegian Drama is, and that immediate action must be taken to revitalise it. Every new manager promises to place New Norwegian Drama at the top of his agenda, and every next season the stages fill up with re-enactments of best-selling novels and films: narratives with a stronger relation to the circulation of money. Perhaps it is time to acknowledge this state of affairs: that there might be no such basis for the theatre's own stories. Theatre might have lost the ideology production battle.

Culture is capitalism. Narratives flourish on capitalist soil. Withdrawn from circulation of goods and services, every expression, whatever its inherent value, is doomed to wither and die. That is, if it ever reaches the production stage, of which in reality there is little chance. In Norway, theatre's main economic function is to supply symbolic capital to the Norwegian nation-state. And the Nation reciprocates by injecting piles of money in an effort to maintain the standards of this symbolic capital. Consequently, Norwegian theatre is completely removed from the circulation of capital. And if symbolic capital is a function of economic capital, how is Norwegian theatre ever going to manage and produce competitive narratives?

Getting its money back

Unlike Norwegian theatre, which is Art by virtue of being almost fully subsidized, Norwegian literature is a product of supply and demand. But to justify its privileged position in the state-regulated market and state-owned media, literature, being a strictly commercial endeavour, simulates aesthetic autonomy or inherent value. Coming from the opposite direction, Norwegian theatre, paradoxically simulates submission to the market to justify its total withdrawal from the market. Norwegian theatres are massive constructions whose budgets run far beyond economic viability. Which is why they underwritten to the nth degree by the nation-state. In comparison with most patrons of the arts, though, Norway is not your usual arts patron and is not satisfied merely to shore up the Great Art Form or sit back to enjoy the symbolic capital it ascribes to it. This particular social-democratic sugar daddy wants its money back. Every year, the state asks for, or rather compels these massively underwritten theatrical mastodons to give to the state part of their revenue from ticket sales.

By allowing theatre to survive outside the normal paths taken by circulating capital, the Norwegian state deprives it of an opportunity to create its own competitive narratives. And by forcing it into this extra-circulatory position, the Norwegian state compels it to look for competitive narratives elsewhere. This two-pronged strategy on the part of the authorities ensures the continued impotence of its artistic institutions, a theatre without commercial potential run within inflexible commercial aesthetic constraints. This simulating submission to commercialism keeps ticket sales ticking comfortably over and, in consequence, any discussion of theatre's raison d' être ever less likely. There is always some success or other to point to.

Given this strange mixture of withdrawal and submission, theatre will always play second fiddle to other means of expression. There will be no market for theatre's own narratives, i.e. drama - which anyway now boast the status of autonomous brands thanks to the convoluted circulatory movement of symbolic and economic capital - as long as there is so much else to choose from.

Aesthetic autonomy

As every other vital cultural form of expression, literature has long since succumbed to the logic of supply and demand. And as any other market commodity or service, literature has to simulate an idea of its own excellence to retain market shares and privileges. In terms of circulating symbolic capital, such excellence is maintained by simulating aesthetic autonomy, the fiction that quality is untouched by the mechanisms of the market. The Norwegian literature establishment has been very successful in marketing this ideology, widening its market shares - both symbolic and the economic - even more. Disengaged from the rotation of economic capital, theatre will never succeed in forming its own narrative basis. Drama will live on in obscurity, and theatre must search for its narratives elsewhere.

Playwrights could always oppose the prevailing political order, but history shows us how futile those efforts often are. A different ruse could be to cultivate one of Art's noblest functions: to criticise ideology. Separate from, but subjected nonetheless to the whims of circulating capital, theatre must look for its narratives elsewhere. Subjected to, but separate from circulating capital, on the other hand, theatre need not involve itself in the ideological strategies associated with the production of culture. Using a technique not unlike literary sampling, dramatists could take the grand narratives circulating in the market today, strip them of their authority to expose the soft underbelly of cultural production.

"So wird es, in Zeiten die dem Drama feindlich gesinnt sind, der Dramatiker zum Mörder seiner eigenen Geschöpfe", wrote Peter Szondi in 1956. In an age that is hostile to drama, the dramatist becomes the assassin of his own characters. And if hostility to drama is caused by the grand narratives of cultural production, it may be time to put them all on stage.

Jon Refsdal Moe is a university lecturer and theatre critic