This paper mounts a philosophical defence of Peter Shaffer's 1973 play
Equus
by interpreting it from three perspectives: that of Freud, Jung, and Deleuze and Guattari. The latter's concept of ...becoming-animal is offered as a leading perspective which reveals the deep philosophical significance of the drama, belying the claims of those critics who have dismissed it as bogus or banal. This interpretation also allows
Equus
to be seen as an exemplary illustration of what Deleuze and Guattari mean by their intriguing concept of becoming-animal, and throws fresh light on this fascinating but difficult notion.
In his phenomenological manifesto (1911), Edmund Husserl presents the famous motto, which should be realized by the new philosophy: “Weg mit den hohlen Wortanalysen. Die Sachen selbst wir müssen ...befragen. … Ganz trefflich! Aber was sind denn die Sachen …?” Consequently, the history of phenomenology is presented as the sum of the efforts to reach the deeper level and more fundamental areas of the original “Sachen”. Husserl’s discovery of the domain of pure consciousness was only the beginning of a long way leading to more original areas, such as life, existence, body, intersubjectivity, historicity, humanity, etc. With this journey towards deeper fields of sense-constitution, the meaning of the phenomenological method was changed. Phenomenology cannot be a simple work of a lonely soul looking for self-transparency in the field of its own consciousness, but it must be a kind of action, a deed, an existential transformation, and an increase of experience. In my paper I would like to explore structural similarities between phenomenology and the theatrical practice of Polish theater reformer Jerzy Grotowski (1933–1999). Although he was neither a phenomenologist, nor a philosopher, in his notes on the human performance, collected and entitled Toward a Poor Theater, he presents a method of creating and conceiving of theatrical action which is marked with motivations, structure and process similar to what representatives of the phenomenological movement actually realize. In other words, between the works by Grotowski and representatives of the phenomenological movement, there are many analogies that the present paper purports to uncover and systematically illuminate.
Prologue Gobert, R. Darren
The Mind-Body Stage,
08/2013
Book Chapter
René Descartes’s articulation of subjectivity forever changed the way dramatic characters would be written and read, performed by actors and received by audiences. His coordinate system for geometry ...radically reshaped how theatrical space would be conceived and built. His theory of the passions revolutionized our understanding of the emotional exchange between spectacle and spectators—an emotional exchange whose elusive workings have anchored dramatic theory since Aristotle’s Poetics and antitheatrical discourse since Plato’s Republic. Yet theater scholars have not seen Descartes’s transformational impact on theater history. Neither have philosophers looked to this history in order to watch Descartes’s theories in action
Epilogue Gobert, R. Darren
The Mind-Body Stage,
08/2013
Book Chapter
Building on the success of their event of June 25, 2009—in which a live performance of Racine’s Phèdre at the Lyttelton Theatre was digitally captured and transmitted via satellite to movie theaters ...around the globe—London’s National Theatre held what it called a “live rebroadcast” on September 23, 2010. Audiences around the world streamed into movie theaters whose designs would make the Queen’s Theatre in the Haymarket seem intimate. In Toronto, for example, I walked down an aisle almost all the way to the massive, looming screen before turning 180 degrees and filing up the stairs of the steeply
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