An alien in the world of the theatre

BY LEIF ZERN

The theatre was far from the obvious choice, hardly a road that lay open to Jon Fosse when he made his debut as a dramatist in 1994 with Og aldri skal vi skiljast (And we'll never be parted) on Den Nationale Scene in Bergen. In his own eyes, he was not a man of the theatre, quite the contrary -- he was a writer of prose, preoccupied with what he called the "eige særlege være" of literature, its 'own special being'.

At the time of his drama debut, Fosse had published seven prose works and three collections of poetry. He stood hesitating at the threshold of an art form he felt alien to. He belonged in the arts climate of the 80s; more than that, he had helped create it. If the seventies was the decade of theatre, with the audience as a symbol of the public, the eighties represented a return to literature as a solitary activity. The seventies, thus defined, embodied almost everything that Fosse would dissociate himself from in his theoretical writings: "And I want to make it clear that for me as a playwright it is impossible to write with 'social conscience', as they say, while also writing good drama." (From the theatre programme for Mor og barn (Mother and child) and Sonen (The son) at Nationaltheatret in 1997).

A paradox

In his essays, collected in two volumes, Frå telling via showing til writing (From telling via showing to writing, 1989) and Gnostiske essay (Gnostic essays, 1999), he sketches the outlines of a prose style in fiction which turns its back on the epic and seeks the unique character of literature in 'skriftstemmen', the voice of writing. Literature can have no principal apart from itself, it comes into being in the production of meaning by the writing itself, what Fosse called a "negative mysticism for a godless age" in one of his pieces from the eighties in a paraphrase of György Lukács.

There was absolutely nothing in what he had already written to suggest that he actually had in him plays which -- only a few seasons later -- would turn out to be among the most interesting and controversial that the theatre in this corner of the world could produce. Fosse the dramatist was a paradox from the very start. What was it that finally brought him to the theatre?

I recall my first encounter with Fosse's drama as both a confusing and unsettling experience. The play I saw was Barnet (The Child) at Nationaltheatret in Oslo. I had read his novels and found it hard to imagine how his expressive inner monologues could be transplanted to the stage; they seemed to me to have more in common with the novels of Virginia Woolf than with contemporary drama by Lars Norén or Botho Strauss. Norén belonged in the mainstream of psychological theatre, heir to Eugene O'Neill and Tennessee Williams. Fosse belonged nowhere, he wrote in a sort of absence which was both social aesthetic at once, as if he were speaking from another place, barely audibly and in defiance of a long line of the axioms we link with the theatre as a phenomenon.

A hatred of the theatre

Jon Fosse has expressed his hatred of the theatre on a number of occasions. Hatred is a strong word but it is apt in this context. He felt completely alien to the art of the theatre. In Gnostiske essay, he writes about his view of the theatre in a hitherto unpublished text in English: "I am a playwright, but to tell the truth, I never really wanted to be one. On the contrary, I didn't like theatre and I said, on different occasions, for instance in interviews, that I actually hated theatre, at least Norwegian theatre."

In the same article, however, he admits that when he first attempted to write drama, he felt inspired by the intrinsic minimalist conditions of theatre (time, place, a limited number of characters) and that he, who hated theatre, at least at present (this was 1997) can view himself as a writer who writes mainly plays.

Ten years after his debut and twenty-odd plays later, it is difficult to hold on to the image of Jon Fosse as a theatre hater. But I think it is necessary, not in order to prove him a liar -- why would he be? -- but because the alienation he once felt when confronted with the art of theatre has remained a driving force in his career as a dramatist.

Deep roots

Hatred of the theatre is a tradition with deep roots, as deep as the roots of theatre itself. It is no coincidence that it should emerge in a writer who places such stringent demands on the seriousness of literature. Fosse's anathema is only the latest in a succession of condemnations which have been aimed at the dubious virtue of theatre since it was born, focusing either on its moral or aesthetic character (this has varied according to times and customs). Theatre has always been a poor cousin in the family of the Beaux Arts.

The first theatre hater of distinction was Plato, who had no room for poets or actors in his Ideal State. Plato's mistrust of all forms of mimesis (imitative representation) held a fear of the uncertainty and lack of predictability that the art of theatre embodies. As we know, a Greek tragedy always ends with the chorus saying essentially that "none of it turned out the way we thought it would".

Between the rituals of the church and the festivitas of the theatre, a similar competition is established from the outset, vividly embodied by St. Augustine, whose Confessions tells the story a young man who wishes to become an actor and who is then converted and renounces the art of theatre because it plays with illusions and tricks its audience into seeing "as through a glass darkly".

Two traditions

French theatre scholar Georges Banu notes in one of his books that hatred of the theatre is in fact divided into two distinct traditions: one external and one internal. The former comprises the moralists following in the footsteps of Plato, the church fathers and the Medieval bishops, but also modern intellectuals who despise the theatre -- and there are many of them -- because it is tasteless and panders to the public, in short, because it is lower than art forms such as literature or painting.

In the latter tradition, the internal one, we find theatre people themselves, that is to say, dramatists and directors who, possessed by the same derision for the shallowness of theatre, are moved to try to reform it and save it from the decay which appears to be its normal state. A hatred of the theatre has become a way for the modern theatre to understand itself. In this school we must include not only Craig, Artaud and Grotowski, but also a contemporary reformer such as Peter Brook, who speaks words of warning about the state of theatre.

In writing his first play, this was the shadow whence Jon Fosse emerged, and he has not yet fully shaken it off. He is an alien in the world of the theatre.

Leif Zern is a theatre critic