The theatrical praxis and its visual roots: Sarah

Kane, Maurice Maeterlinck and the Post-Dramatic

Eduardo Tudella

To cite this article:

TUDELLA, Eduardo. The theatrical praxis and its visual

roots: Sarah Kane, Maurice Maeterlinck and the Post-

Dramatic

. Urdimento

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Cênicas, Florianópolis, v. 4, n. 49, dez. 2023.

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The theatrical praxis and its visual roots: Sarah Kane, Maurice Maeterlinck and the Post-Dramatic

Eduardo Tudella

Florianópolis, v.4, n.49, p.1-26, dez. 2023

The theatrical praxis and its visual roots: Sarah Kane, Maurice Maeterlinck and

the Post-Dramatic1

Eduardo Tudella2

Abstract

This article discusses probable visual roots for theatrical praxis. I observed

derivations originating in the Greek verb

théa

, as well as in the noun

theatron

, found

in ancient Greece. Starting from this context, I identified theoretical links with Hans-

Thies Lehmann, Peter Szondi and Ewald Hackler. Two works of international

dramaturgy written at different times were incorporated into the argument, namely:

Les Aveugles

(1890) and

4.48 Psychosis

(2000), whose authors they are, respectively,

Maurice Maeterlinck (1862-1949) and Sarah Kane (1971-1999). This approach found

excerpts that reveal consistent application of verbal images in the dramaturgical

corpus of each of these works. Given this, I suggest academic attention to

systematized studies of visual praxis in the theater.

Keywords

: Theatrical praxis. Image. Postdramatic theater. Theater lighting. Design.

práxis

teatral e suas raízes visuais: Kane, Maeterlinck e o pós-dramático

Resumo

Discute-se neste artigo prováveis raízes visuais para a

práxis

teatral. Observei

derivações originadas no verbo grego

théa

, assim como no substantivo

theatron

encontrados já na Grécia antiga. Partindo desse contexto, identifiquei elos teóricos

com Hans-Thies Lehmann, Peter Szondi e Ewald Hackler. Foram incorporadas à

argumentação duas obras da dramaturgia internacional escritas em épocas distintas,

a saber:

Les Aveugles

(1890) e

4.48 Psychosis

(2000), cujos autores são

respectivamente, Maurice Maeterlinck (1862-1949) e Sarah Kane (1971-1999). Tal

abordagem encontrou trechos que revelam aplicação consistente de imagens

verbais no corpus dramatúrgico de cada uma dessas obras. Diante disso, sugiro

atenção acadêmica para estudos sistematizados da práxis visual no teatro.

Palavras-chave

Práxis

teatral. Imagem. Teatro pós-dramático. Iluminação para o

teatro. Projeto.

1 Spelling, grammatical and contextual review of the article carried out by André Luiz Nogueira Batista, PhD in

Literature and Culture from the Federal University of Bahia. al.batista@hotmail.com.

2 PhD in Performing Arts from the Federal University of Bahia - PPGAC. Master in Theater Design - Lighting -

New York University. Bachelor of Performing Arts - Theater Direction from the Federal University of Bahia.

Associate Professor at the Federal University of Bahia. Director, Designer and Professor-Researcher.

Awarded, both in theoretical and artistic production.etudella@gmail.com

http://lattes.cnpq.br/3273156956850260 https://orcid.org/0009-0009-4449-5395

The theatrical praxis and its visual roots: Sarah Kane, Maurice Maeterlinck and the Post-Dramatic

Eduardo Tudella

Florianópolis, v.4, n.49, p.1-26, dez. 2023

La praxis teatral y sus raíces visuales: Sarah Kane, Maurice Maeterlinck y el

posdramático

Resumen

Este artículo analiza las probables raíces visuales de la praxis teatral. Observé

derivaciones originadas en el verbo griego

théa

, así como en el sustantivo

theatron

que se encuentra en la antigua Grecia. A partir de este contexto, identifiqué vínculos

teóricos con Hans-Thies Lehmann, Peter Szondi y Ewald Hackler. Se incorporaron al

argumento dos obras de dramaturgia internacional escritas en diferentes épocas, a

saber:

Les Aveugles

(1890) y

4.48 Psychosis

(2000), cuyos autores son,

respectivamente, Maurice Maeterlinck (1862-1949) y Sarah Kane (1971-1999). . Este

enfoque encontró extractos que revelan una aplicación consistente de imágenes

verbales en el corpus dramatúrgico de cada una de estas obras. Ante esto, sugiero

atención académica a los estudios sistematizados de la praxis visual en teatro.

Palabras clave

: Praxis teatral. Imagen. Teatro posdramático. Iluminación del teatro.

Diseño.

The theatrical praxis and its visual roots: Sarah Kane, Maurice Maeterlinck and the Post-Dramatic

Eduardo Tudella

Florianópolis, v.4, n.49, p.1-26, dez. 2023

Introduction

The observations on theatrical praxis presented herein may include certain

limitations, since it is impossible to present statements about theater that I have

not witnessed. After all, I have only attended plays in the last six decades, and this

art has been practiced for at least twenty-five centuries. When someone decides

to describe and/or analyze a play that they have not watched, they exercise their

freedom to apply personal judgment, consult different writings, ideological models,

and subjective standards. Talking about the theater of the past, therefore, can

involve imagination, fantasy, suggestion, speculation. On the other hand, although

there are many methods of recording and reproducing a play, the rebellious spirit

of theater does not accept such a process, since it is transformed into another

phenomenon, such as painting, engraving, drawing, photography, video, among

others, with the intervention of third parties and the use of artificial media.

Furthermore, even such examples will not come to life unless someone sees them,

since they assert themselves as physicalized visual images waiting for an observer.

Ultimately, once a play is over, the images submerge in the spectator's perception

and the next performance will only come to life in an activity that depends on the

audience.

Therefore, when referring to theatrical praxis, to theater, I am dealing with the

theatrical event itself, whose effectiveness depends on at least two individuals:

the one who conceives it ─ the artist ─, and the other ─ the spectator. Such an

event may include the desire to discuss, reflect, and investigate the human

condition, finding aesthetic-poetic ways to build a certain degree of

presentation/representation, constituting a spectacular quality, a show. I

understand that the visual roots of the theater could be found in ancient Greek

theater, in the meaning organically present in the Greek verb

théa

, which connects

to theatron, both linked to vision. Theater was conceived by an individual as an

action to be seen by another one.

Excerpts from my doctoral dissertation were included in this article, in order

to bring the reader closer to the notions and concepts that support the discussions

The theatrical praxis and its visual roots: Sarah Kane, Maurice Maeterlinck and the Post-Dramatic

Eduardo Tudella

Florianópolis, v.4, n.49, p.1-26, dez. 2023

presented here, attaching a certain degree of autonomy to the text. Observations

about the work of Maurice Maeterlinck and Sarah Kane arise in the text herein to

highlight the forcefulness of the visual provocations latent in the dramaturgy, in a

concise presentation.

In the specific approach developed herein, such nuances interact with the

work by Hans-Thies Lehmann,

The Postdramatic Theater

(2006). Since its original

publication in German, 1999, this book has caused international discussion. It was

translated into several languages: first in French and Japanese (2002), followed by

Slovenian (2003), and Persian (2005), reverberating loudly in Brazilian university

theatrical praxis since its Portuguese publication, in 2007. It seemed that a

manifesto had emerged, a definitive document of support – or a timely poetics of

programming – quickly incorporated by artists and theorists (Tudella, 2017). The

deconstruction

of the dramatic character had become real. However, despite the

initial reaction, post-dramatic theater soon had its appeal relativized. It is

noteworthy that Lehmann's ideas provoked some dissensions. Elinor Fuchs (2008)

considers them to be a generalization, when he brings together several theatrical

manifestations in the same expression.

Opening her translation into English, Karen Jürs-Munby (2006, p. 1)

summarizes Lehmann's proposition:

Hans-Thies Lehmann’s study has obviously answered a vital need for a

comprehensive and accessible theory articulating the relationship

between drama and the ‘no longer dramatic’ forms of theatre that have

emerged since the 1970s.

This translation, which was praised by the author himself, was used in this

work. Lehmann's first attention-grabbing observation appears right in the preface

to this Anglo-American edition. In other words, highlighting his interest in theatrical

performance, not in the text (literary-dramatic), he mentioned the tension between

theater and what he called

new

or post-dramatic theater. Lehmann's declared

intention focuses on the theatrical event rather than the text, the words that

precedes it. On the other hand, he recognizes the importance of Sarah Kane as an

author who, in his own judgment, produces one of the most important works in

the context. His observations generated consistent material for this article, since

The theatrical praxis and its visual roots: Sarah Kane, Maurice Maeterlinck and the Post-Dramatic

Eduardo Tudella

Florianópolis, v.4, n.49, p.1-26, dez. 2023

they allowed a kind of link between theory, playwright, and theatrical praxis.

Concerns about the role of the text in the postdramatic scene and the

subversion of the spoken word as one of the aspects of action (of a character)

strongly imply the need for something to be seen in the theater (from the afore

mentioned Greek verb

théa

─ to see. The most remarkable approach to the Greek

theater, which would appear in Aristotle’s work, had such repercussions among

scholars throughout Modernity, to the point of making Greek tragedy academically

known as Aristotelian. However, the poetic discourse included in the manifestation

called

theater

by the Greeks and the importance of the words heard in the

Greek-

Aristotelian

tragedy, in the dialogues constructed through the prism of tragic

events, originated over deep desires of the characters, would eventually disappear

under the postdramatic theater (Tudella, 2017).

In any case, the degree of heterogeneity of both the postdramatic thinking

and the manifestations that it validates can lead to a certain derivation,

commented on in the translation published in London and New York.: “[...] the

notion of postdramatic theater and its valorization of the performance dimension

does not imply that texts written for the theater are no longer relevant or cannot

be considered in this context.” (Jürs-Munby, 2006, p. 9) Such assertion may seem

like a mere supplement to a tradition condemned by the “vanguards” of the 20th

century. However, it can also include some strategic acumen of the revolution in

vogue. After all, the theatrical praxis questioned, modified, and subverted the

dramatic text throughout history without, however, disregarding its decisive role in

relevant moments of the theater (Tudella, 2013).

On the other hand, the eagerness for questioning the Aristotelian observations

gives way to initiatives as the one mentioned by Tim Etchells, director of the British

theater company Forced Entertainment: “The piece talks about physical action and

set construction as forms of writing, it talks about writing words to be seen and

read on-stage rather than spoken […].” (Etchells apud Jürs-Munby, 2006, p. 9) The

desire to deconstruct the dialogue originated in the Greek initiative deeply

incorporates, then, the visibility, in the diversified postdramatic model that

assumes a type of radical interpretation of the Greek idea of scene ─ derived from

the Greek notion of

skene

, a space that was transformed into a place of action by

The theatrical praxis and its visual roots: Sarah Kane, Maurice Maeterlinck and the Post-Dramatic

Eduardo Tudella

Florianópolis, v.4, n.49, p.1-26, dez. 2023

the presence of the performer (the character). In other words, disregarding the

spoken dialogue, remains in the postdramatic – as a legacy of the theater

conceived by Greek thinking – what is latent in the noun that names theater itself,

that is, the emphasis on theater as physicalized visual image (Tudella, 2017). The

preliminary considerations of the translation, whose key aspects will be mentioned

below, represent excellent effort to introduce the new theater envisaged by

Lehmann:

The adjective ‘postdramatic’ denotes a theatre that feels bound to

operate beyond drama, at a time ‘after’ the authority of the dramatic

paradigm in theatre. What it does not mean is an abstract negation and

mere looking away from the tradition of drama. ‘After’ drama means that

it lives on as a structure – however weakened and exhausted – of the

‘normal’ theatre: as an expectation of large parts of its audience, as a

foundation for many of its means of representation, as a quasi-

automatically working norm of its dramaturgy (Lehmann, p.27).

In the postdramatic theater, the text must ─ or should ─ present certain

latent

theatricality

which pulls it away from the dramatic representation of a

closed fictional cosmos and from the mimetics of a fable. Separated from drama

in the second half of the twentieth century, the new theater brought the imposition

of the materiality of the action and the deconstruction of the hegemony of the

(literary-dramatic) text. The language sought by what Lehmann called “new

postdramatic theater” required a new posture that incorporated diverse

instruments, accessories, and control, to promote visual excellence. Therefore,

even in the confrontation with drama, there was still a line that connected theater

and post-dramatic, the context of the visual image, mental and/or physicalized

(Tudella, 2017).

The play, the text, the words, the lines, had to be transformed into one or

more aspects of set design and the scenography, sometimes revealed in images

reproduced by a variety of audio and video media. Dealing with the notion of

scenography, it is crucial to avoid superficial translations that reduce the meaning

of ‘graph’ just to write, and to consider the amplitude of this term in its Greek

origin,

graphein

. That is, more than expressing by written characters, but rather in

the classic sense, drawing, representing by lines drawn, and originally: scraping,

scratching. Thus, it is worth observing the notion of scenography with the scope

The theatrical praxis and its visual roots: Sarah Kane, Maurice Maeterlinck and the Post-Dramatic

Eduardo Tudella

Florianópolis, v.4, n.49, p.1-26, dez. 2023

that includes meanings aligned with graphic representation, layout, and drawing.

Once again, we are dealing with the theatre to be seen.

Even when the spectator was invited to act as a co-creator of the play, which

implies a process of recycling, reusing, and remaking, free of norms, similarly linked

to the palimpsest3 by Jürs-Munby. It is worth noting the combat between

Aristotelian notions of balance, as well as the totality of the drama that presents

approaches of extension and duration inherent to its logical and manageable

construction, as a mirror of an apprehensible world.

The postdramatic theater could be related to disbelief in control, based on

what they call a slippery and fragmented contemporary daily life revolved by

technological entrails. According to Jürs-Munby (2006, p. 12), the world was no

longer the fictional totality enclosed by the fourth wall, as Denis Diderot (1713-

1784), André Antoine (1858-1943), and August Strindberg (1849-1912) believed. In

short, the performer would no longer represent a character: he/she performs

himself/herself with the audience. This is not fiction. The performance takes place

at that defined time and place, like a celebration. Perhaps it is possible to say that

the desire of postdramatic action was to be

true

, living, present, or

real

(?!) action.

Was it another “naturalism” or a naturalism elevated to the highest and radical

power? If Emile Zola had lived in post-dramatic times, would he have applauded

it? Would the theme cease to be the human condition and instead turn to the

desire to celebrate a certain fragment, in a space and time chosen by the

performer, implying a ritual? In order to build his approach to

theater, Lehmann returned to the notion of totality. It sounds like a theatrical

totality, not primarily dramatic, characterizing the spectacle as a type of absolute

text. The value of a play is reduced, and the written word is treated as one aspect

of the theater, sharing importance with the visual and sound aspects, as well as

the tactile and olfactory senses.

Eliminating the famous hegemony (of drama) made way for a partnership that

demands flexibility from the text since it ceased to represent the speech of

characters – if they could still be found – assuming certain autonomous

3 Papyrus or parchment, whose original text has been scraped off to make room for another.

The theatrical praxis and its visual roots: Sarah Kane, Maurice Maeterlinck and the Post-Dramatic

Eduardo Tudella

Florianópolis, v.4, n.49, p.1-26, dez. 2023

theatricality. This new function of the word destroyed the figures (characters) of

supposed depth that, in the old ‘dramatic’ theater, used to speak. Immersed in the

universe of vision, Lehmann made a statement full of clues to the profound

commitments of his new theater: “[…] instead of the illusion of three-dimensional

space, what is being ‘staged’ is the picture’s planeness, its two-dimensional reality,

and the reality of color as an autonomous quality". (Lehmann, 2006, p. 18)

Confronting the notion of three-dimensionality with these new two-

dimensional patches of color, he indicates relationships between scene and

painting, delving into visual thinking. The spectator would look at a multiplicity of

layers produced by a performer or a group of performers, including technology

(electro-electronic-digital), but still choosing a moment and a meeting place in

which the life should open and accommodate this new theatricality. Nevertheless,

still defining a moment and a meeting place with a particular order in which the

everyday life would be invaded by events. Could the new theater be a new

“multiform” typology of theatrical discourse, caused by the lack of stability in the

everyday life? As some self-reflective meditation that incorporated rhythm, tone,

and silence – highlighting its musical quality – in a theater based on grotesque

gestures and forms, sometimes in the so-called

empty

spaces (Tudella, 2017).

Therefore, we would find some radicalization in post-dramatic theatrical praxis,

implemented in visual assertions. In terms of the treatment of space, Lehmann

left a vigorous visual articulation of his new theater. One of its most important

indications is found in the prologue:

Although it remains debatable to what degree and in what way the

audiences of former centuries were taken in by the ‘illusions’ offered by

stage tricks, artful lighting, musical background, costumes and set, it can

be stated that dramatic theatre was the formation of illusion (Lehmann,

2006, p. 22).

Following the reasoning that constructs such a statement, it is possible to

underline the decisive role of the physicalized visual image in the illusion to which

the author refers, since the theater needed – and depended – on light to show, on

stage, devices and arrangements used to visually deceive the spectator.

Furthermore, lighting becomes increasingly artful through the incorporation of

The theatrical praxis and its visual roots: Sarah Kane, Maurice Maeterlinck and the Post-Dramatic

Eduardo Tudella

Florianópolis, v.4, n.49, p.1-26, dez. 2023

technology. Therefore, when considering the visual commitment assumed by the

postdramatic theater, all possible care will be appreciated within the work of the

lighting designer who is still interested in Lehmann's proposals, otherwise they

may repeat the named

tricks

of the realistic theater that Lehmann intends to

condemn.

Even the first commitment to lighting already appears in the verbal images

inserted by Lehmann:

With respect to newer theatre texts, scholars have talked about ‘no long

dramatic theatre texts’, as already mentioned, but what is still missing is

an attempt to survey the new theatre and the diversity of its theatrical

means in more detail in the light of postdramatic aesthetics (Lehmann,

2006, p. 26).

As one can see in the example above, he applies the term ‘light’ to refer to

the ideas of postdramatic theater. In addition, Lehmann confirms and reinforces

his confidence in the contribution of light, at certain times, although, when

discussing Aristotle's Poetics, he makes an important remark:

Aristotle is concerned with the philosophical in tragedy. He regards

mimesis as a kind of ‘mathesis’, a learning that becomes more

pleasurable through the enjoyment of recognizing the object of mimesis

– a pleasure only needed by the masses, not actually by the philosopher

(Lehmann, 2006, p. 40).

Since the audience is not exclusively composed of philosophers, one may

infer that the theater decided to incorporate the relevance of the physicalized

visual image (the recognition of objects), making it indispensable in its constitution.

Quoting Aristotle himself, Lehmann presents what can be considered a relevant

argument for designing lights to theatrical praxis:

Understanding is extremely pleasant, not just for philosophers but for

others too in the same way, despite their limited capacity for it. This is

the reason why people take delight in seeing images; what happens is

that as they view them, they come to understand and work out what each

thing is (Aristotle apud Lehmann, 2006, p. 40).

After all, with the image having the power to be in the place of the thing,

Aristotle seemed to be right. If today it is not possible to accurately assess the

relationship between human beings of our time and the image, at least we can

The theatrical praxis and its visual roots: Sarah Kane, Maurice Maeterlinck and the Post-Dramatic

Eduardo Tudella

Florianópolis, v.4, n.49, p.1-26, dez. 2023

witness the role of that same image in the construction of culture, recorded by

Lehmann himself throughout his book. In the discourse about the first historical

manifestations of modern vanguards, he quotes Michael Kirby:

Symbolist aesthetics demonstrate a turning inward, away from the

bourgeois world and its standards to a more personal, private, and

extraordinary world. Symbolist performance was done in small theatres.

It was detached, distant, and static, involving little physical energy. The

lighting was often dim. The actors often worked behind scrims [...] The art

was self-contained, isolated, complete. We can call this the ‘hermetic’

model of avant-garde performance” (Kirby apud Lehmann, 2006, p. 57).

An imagination trained and familiar with the study of theatrical iconography

from different phases of history would portray, in its own way, the visual quality,

the atmosphere inscribed in, or desired by post-dramatic theater, after identifying

that the use of screen and penumbra are not necessarily innovations of the

symbolists. One of the most relevant nuances of the issue is that, since their first

incursions, the so-called theatrical avant-gardes that emerged in the 19th century

treated lighting as an integrative and indispensable aspect for the praxis in

question. Presenting radical marks of what Lehmann sees as the prehistory of the

vanguards, Symbolism brought in its aesthetic proposition a deepening in

commitments with visual image:

With this, the dissolution of the traditional amalgamation of text and

stage became possible, in addition to the possibility of a new way to

reconnect them. Looking at the play with an independent poetic

dimension and, simultaneously, considering the 'poetry' of the stage

decoupled from the word, as an atmospheric poetry of space and light, a

new theatrical disposition became possible (Lehmann, 2006, p. 59).

In a certain sense, by pointing out the contribution of lighting to the new

theatrical forces, to its “atmospheric poetry of space and light”, Lehmann

challenged the criticism that attacked the connections between atmosphere and

the theatrical image of realism. Although the post-dramatic revolution has lost its

appeal, we still can highlight the visual commitments of this theater and assess to

what extent this visual yearning has been discarded, whether it has been discarded

at all. Postmodernism asserted itself through the independent elaboration of the

poetics of theatrical visual images, demanding very particular aesthetic

The theatrical praxis and its visual roots: Sarah Kane, Maurice Maeterlinck and the Post-Dramatic

Eduardo Tudella

Florianópolis, v.4, n.49, p.1-26, dez. 2023

contributions from visual discourse.

Lehmann underlined the text

4.48 Psychosis

, by the English author Sarah

Kane, whose premiere took place on June 23, 2000, just over a year after her death

in February 1999, as a relevant text to approach the postdramatic paradigms.

4.48 Psychosis

To work on Sarah Kane's dramaturgy I avoid medical analyses, relationships

with presumed disorders or mental illness, since my fields of study are of aesthetic

interest, seeking aspects of the visual, physical and/or mental image.

In Lehmann's own understanding, the radical dynamics of post-dramatic

theater can incorporate various texts that interact with its propositions.

4.48

Psychosis

was read as a challenge regarding visual propositions to a performance,

avoiding detailing the analysis to keep this writing within the limits of an article. On

the other hand, seeking an approximation with the visual roots in the genesis of

the theater, the main objective is to find latent visual provocations. It can even be

argued that the construction of

4.48 Psychosis

does not determine the explicit

intention of theatrical production since there is no conventional construction of

dialogue or identification of speaking characters. In a certain sense, nothing

prevents the text from being understood as a poem to be read, nothing connects

it to the acknowledged literary-dramatic structure in which the logical elaboration

of an environment where the theatrical action will be physicalized.

Conversely, it is possible to observe in the text the efforts of the author to

communicate and express a certain disorder in the speech, as if the appearance

of chaos was created by whoever wrote it. The boundaries between Kane's

possible mental illness and her choices as an artist are avoided in the present

study. Although, when one considers the speech she brings up – the voice of

someone talking about disequilibrium, suffering, guilt, relationships with death and

cry for help – it is possible to observe an organization of the discourse that

demonstrates interest in verisimilitude. One can see herein the considerations of

a reader moved by a visual understanding of the text, without the depth of a

theorist, critic, or director, much less of a neurobiologist, a psychiatrist or even a

The theatrical praxis and its visual roots: Sarah Kane, Maurice Maeterlinck and the Post-Dramatic

Eduardo Tudella

Florianópolis, v.4, n.49, p.1-26, dez. 2023

psychoanalyst (Tudella, 2013).

The theatrical event is projected beyond its primeval moment. In the situation

built by Kane two presences can be perceived: one that asks and another that

answers (or not), in addition to the spectator (the one who observes), who can be

interpreted as a witness, a present third-party. If the opening moment is treated

as a dialogue – even if performed by an actor or actress alone in the performance

– the witness may ask: “Where and when does it take place?”

Sarah Kane wrote:

I am sad | I feel that the future is hopeless and that things cannot improve

| I am bored and dissatisfied with everything | I am a complete failure as

a person | I am guilty, I am being punished | I would like to kill myself | I

used to be able to cry but now I am beyond tears | I have lost interest in

other people | I can’t make decisions | I can’t eat | I can’t sleep | I can’t

think | I cannot overcome my loneliness, my fear, my disgust | I am fat | I

cannot write | I cannot love | My brother is dying, my lover is dying, I am

killing them both | I am charging towards my death | I am terrified of

medication I cannot make love | I cannot fuck | I cannot be alone | I cannot

be with others | My hips are too big | I dislike my genitals [...] (2001, p.

206).

A set of speeches, single or fragmented, referring to what, in realistic drama,

could be presented in the opening

didaskalia

(διδασκαλία) and/or during the action,

even if a realistic character does not declare himself so explicitly. She may be sad

or heading towards her own death, to the point of not being able to show it in her

own writing. On the other hand, Sarah Kane presents a situation that can represent

a considerable challenge and a trap for theatrical lighting designers. The character

may constitute, or the performer may be referring to someone crying for help. In

any case, the person is in a specific place, at a specific time. With the decision to

move the text away from the dramatic-realistic approach, this place and this time

must be those in which the action takes place, such as a shopping mall, any city

square, the stage of the country's main opera house, or wherever an artist (or group

of artists) decides to work with Sarah Kane's text.

The fragment above seems to indicate a crude exposition of someone

describing herself. Superficial

over spectacular

effects can negatively mask or

over theatricalize

the environment, destroying an atmosphere that might be

revealing a cry for help: “I don't want to die [...] I don't want to live”.51 (Kane, 2001,

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Florianópolis, v.4, n.49, p.1-26, dez. 2023

p. 207) If one can listen to fragments of speech, it is plausible that they could be

able to see dynamic fragments of images, or fragmented images ─ to perceive

through process of afference and efference involving the sensory nervous system,

vision system, and including the oculomotor contribution to perception. In short,

what the spectator, as a human being, wants to see, actually sees, or is allowed to

see.

In the title, psychosis is followed by the number 4.48. Therefore, it is worth

asking why she chose such a title for the play if we can consider her text to be a

play. It is known that the author woke up every morning at that time and saw, in

that moment of darkness, great flashes of light that dispelled confused feelings or

episodes of psychosis. The term psychosis stands out in the text (without the

interference of other interpretations, including those aimed at non-theatrical

approaches to the issue), through isolation, as it is not explicitly repeated at any

other time. Regarding the visual context, isolation and positioning, in general, are

important indications for the composition, for the

in situ

(the character on stage,

the performer at the scene of the action) as a physicalized visual image. On the

other hand, the term psychosis – even if in a superficial and unscientific way – can

refer to a certain state of maladjustment, suggesting the action.

The image text 4:48 appears right after the presentation mentioned above:

“At 4:48 | when depression visits | I'm going to hang myself | to the sound of my

lover’s breathing [...].” (Kane, 2001, p. 207) Read after the title, these words can

indicate an action that occurs at a time and in a place, a moment that precedes

4:48 am, before the visit of despair, in the company of the lover. Or perhaps the

action starts at 4:48 am sharp. Why 4:48 and why does 4:48 reappear? The text

reads:

After 4.48 I shall not speak again.” 53(Kane, 2001, p. 213). At 4.48 | when

sanity visits | for one hour and twelve minutes I am in my right mind. |

When it has passed, I shall be gone again, [...] (Kane, 2001, p. 229).

And more: “At 4:48 | I shall sleep […]” (Kane, 2001, p. 233). Did she mean

forever?

After all, does time flow or does it stand still? Will the mind control, related

to the precise moment, at 4:48am, lead to silence, to sleep, to death?

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Eduardo Tudella

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In other words, elaborate lighting movements can propose moments in which

time and its variations, such as tempo and pulse, rhythm, are considered in a

musical sense. Kane may have suggested, in the evocation of the title and

throughout the text, a temporal provocation that could be incorporated into the

performance´s treatment, not necessarily in the sense of linear time or realistic

assumptions. That is, lighting movements may design and physicalize these

moments, without including compromises with figurative representation, but with

extreme attention and emphasis on the person who is speaking, as a body and as

an image, a body-image ─

body

that generously acts as a

medium

to build

image

(Tudella, 2013).

Objectively, angles arising from the positioning of artificial light sources that

operate in the place where the body is located can generate shadows that visually

determine the relationships between whoever speaks, in the literary-dramatic text,

and whoever acts (including speech) in the theatrical environment or place. For

instance, a shadow that firmly projects the physical limits of the performer’s body,

suggesting attention to the point where it/he/she (the shadow) reaches the

environment, or the whole body can have its shadow diluted, fading away,

suggesting the removal of its logical limits. We are dealing with aspects of the

visual approach that can provide artistic consistency to the treatment conceived

by a lighting designer. Such observations refer only to one unit (instrument). What

if other sources of artificial light are added, multiplying the shadows?

In relation to colors and textures, what relations can be established? The

intention here is not to exhaust possibilities, as neither does it seem possible, nor

necessary to provide an extensive and complete enumeration of probable paths

of visual approach to any work. However, it is recommended to visit other

moments of the text to support the argument. Then, there is a reference to time,

duration, presence, and permanence:

(A very long silence.)

– But you have friends.

(A long silence.)

You have a lot of friends.

What do you offer your friends to make them so supportive?

(A long silence.)

What do you offer your friends to make them

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Eduardo Tudella

Florianópolis, v.4, n.49, p.1-26, dez. 2023

so supportive?

(A long silence.)

What do you offer?

(Silence.)” (Kane, 2001, p. 205).

Kane operates with a great deal of generosity as the reader (the director) is

free to determine the duration referring to quantifications of silence, such as ‘long’

or ‘very long’ silence. What extent is suggested, or determined by the term

‘silence’? Moreover: it is possible to understand this indication as a vocal silence,

but not necessarily, gestural and/or a movement, ‘body silence’. If the lighting

designer is working with a director who is familiar with Lehmann´s research, there

is a great possibility that some observations of Lehmann will emerge in the

production meetings:

It cannot be reduced to a merely external visual effect. When physical

movement is slowed down to such an extent that the time of its

development itself seems to be enlarged as through a magnifying glass,

the body itself is inevitably exposed in its concreteness. It is being

zoomed in on as through the lens of an observer and is simultaneously

‘cut out’ of the time-space continuum as an art object. At the same time,

the motor apparatus is alienated: every action (walking, standing, getting

up and sitting down) remains recognizable but is changed, as never seen

(Lehmann, 2006, p. 164).

The body made radically concrete has the power to reveal more than the

mere external appearance of the person on stage. It can expose the internal

laceration of the being. Light plays a unique role in this context; a role that belongs

solely to its domain, encompassing lighting and visual revelation, building

physicalized visual image.

The silence mentioned in the text, of initially unknown duration, could

represent an excellent research topic for the designer ─ a type of research

different from the one that searches for answers to theoretical problems. This is

an investigation in search of images, of a succession of visual images, which will

be physicalized, inscribed in the fictional/theatrical time. There are no ‘rabbits to

be pulled out of hat’. In other words, there are no ready-made answers, but rather

specific questions. Smoke tricks may not have any value in these images. Digital

gobos that swarm, circle, or squirm may not contribute. Colors that are ‘being used

a lot’ may even continue to be used, but in other instances. In other words, there

The theatrical praxis and its visual roots: Sarah Kane, Maurice Maeterlinck and the Post-Dramatic

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are no ready-made answers, but specific design issues (Tudella, 2017).

In a possible performance, visual images will contribute to raising a wide

variety of questions. Moving further into the text, one can observe that the author

made a visual, graphic decision, making her text also operate as a physicalized

visual image: after the initial dialogue, she divides the page with a line, marks it

with a dash that seems to indicate the end of one fragment and the beginning of

another, which may suggest a diversity of places and times. Who is the person

who remains silent in the opening and where is she? Does she exist? Is she

physicalized in the action?

Afterwards, separated by the incisively drawn line, one sees an unfolding of

verbal images that mix the figurative description of a place with hints of fantasy:

A consolidated consciousness resides in a darkened banqueting hall near

the ceiling of a mind whose floor shifts as ten thousand cockroaches

when a shaft of light enters as all thoughts unite in an instant of accord

body no longer expellant as the cockroaches comprise a truth which no

one ever utters [...] (Kane, 2001, p. 205).

The person responsible for the lighting design will find many questions,

possibilities, and provocations in this fragment. The author immersed herself in a

visual mode of thought; the poetic aspects of literary construction can mix with

the verbal images latent in the words. Difficult to determine, and perhaps not

important, where does the accent or relevance lies: in the poetic/verbal elaboration

or in the visual images? There is a challenge: to reveal a banquet hall in the dark,

a universe of heightened visual provocation. Furthermore, the salon has a

particularity: it is located close to the ceiling of a mind whose floor resembles the

movement of 10,000 cockroaches. Why are there cockroaches? Will the subject-

narrator who describes the environment be afraid of cockroaches? Who likes

cockroaches and why?

What is the relationship between the person narrating and the cockroaches?

The darkened environment is suddenly invaded by a beam of light that can connect

thought, body, and cockroaches. However, already in the darkened room, it was

possible to see the movement of the cockroaches and identify the room itself. The

intense light, however, breaks the darkness ─ or the penumbra. Plagues, darkness,

light, and revelation; it suggests a mythical, mystical, and even biblical atmosphere.

The theatrical praxis and its visual roots: Sarah Kane, Maurice Maeterlinck and the Post-Dramatic

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Florianópolis, v.4, n.49, p.1-26, dez. 2023

The questions pile up. If, in a spectacle provoked by Kane's text, artists decide

to physicalize that mind in which the movement of the cockroaches would be

installed, responding to the provocation originated by the dialogue that precedes

the description, the fantasy generated by a verbal image can lead the spectator to

incorporate plausibility in any action (including sounds, words, dialogue) that is

presented or represented. Therefore, the guiding thread in the unity of the

discourse will be a visual fantasy, a kind of guide for the game proposed by the

performance. Thus, everything will be validated in the context of this fantasy. In

other words, what is possible in a place like this?

Both the fragments/moments and the state of the person can be linked to

the

states of image

mentioned by Lehmann when he relates the theater to the

elaboration of images in a painting whose process is invisible to the viewer,

the observer: “The theater here showed less a succession, a development of a

story, more an involvement of inner and outer states” (Lehmann, 2006, p. 68). At

4:48, depression visits (who?) (Kane, 2001). At the same time, however, sanity

appears (Kane, 2001). Is it possible to establish a contrast between the moments

(states) in which the person with depression incorporates different ways of

thinking about the world and about themselves, and those in which the same

person is behaving, as in the second occurrence at 4:48 am, under the rules of

sanity?

After all, there is a moment when it reads: “I’m seeing things | I’m hearing

things | I don’t know who I am [...]” (Kane, 2001, p. 225). Here the author may be

pointing at images inscribed throughout the text. Many images, besides those

already mentioned, invoke the inside of a mind: “I will drown in dysphoria | in the

cold black pond of myself | the pit of my immaterial mind […]” (Kane, 2001, p. 213).

That is, in order to understand what can be read and glimpsed in what is inserted

in “I am seeing things”, it is worth starting with a close look that underlines these

mental images, and facing the challenge of incorporating, as an example, this dark

and cold lagoon, lodged in the pit of a mind devoid of matter.

Yet, and not less important, it is necessary to highlight the dozens of specific

references to light and lighting, as already mentioned, including darkness, vision,

eye, sight, night, color, day, brightness, and time. When the noun “light” is

The theatrical praxis and its visual roots: Sarah Kane, Maurice Maeterlinck and the Post-Dramatic

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Florianópolis, v.4, n.49, p.1-26, dez. 2023

particularly considered, certain periods draw attention: “Remember the light and

believe the light” (Kane, 2001, p. 206). “Hatch opens | Stark light” (Kane, 2001, p.

225). Such invocations of light establish links with faith and truth, but also with

imprisonment and violence, accentuating situations that are repeated throughout

the text. It is also worth mentioning the numerous references to the Bible, among

those cited below, to bring the reader closer to the images that burned in the

author's mind: “[...] it shall come to pass [...]” (Kane, 2001, p. 228). There is another

example, also evoking darkness: “[...] Behold the light of despair | the glare of

anguish | and ye shall be driven to darkness [...]” (Kane, 2001, p. 228).

Moments of great imagery provocation for the lighting design amplify: “I saw

visions of God” (2001, p. 228): God, whose invocation is repeated seven times,

number also present in the mentions of tests to which patients with mental

illnesses are submitted, to observe levels of concentration and memory. As if that

were not enough, it is worth highlighting the visual mode that guides the

construction of the text, the special arrangement of words as visual interference

on the page itself, which can be seen in the example below:

Hatch opens

Stark light

A table two chairs and no windows

Here I am

and there is my body

dancing on glass [...} (Kane, 2001, p. 230).

Given the situation (or events that guide the text), this fragment may suggest,

or indicate psychosis, intertwined with the elaboration of visual images: the hatch

(a door, a way in or out?) leads to an environment harshly exposed by the

starkness, the crudeness of the lighting. Insulated, table and chairs. Those who

stay there find themselves alienated from the outside, as there are no windows.

For the narrator who has a voice at that moment, life embodies the feeling

of a disposed dancing body on a surface that can be cold, slippery, cutting, finely

dangerous, and so on. Insecurity, despair, uncertainty, loneliness, pain and anguish

The theatrical praxis and its visual roots: Sarah Kane, Maurice Maeterlinck and the Post-Dramatic

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Florianópolis, v.4, n.49, p.1-26, dez. 2023

gathered in a small but full of visual logos fragment/moment. The lighting designer

could try to make the spectator perceive the interval, the gap, an empty space, or

silence graphically expressed in the next page.

This brief approach refers to verbally printed text as an example of visual

provocation. In a performance, such a category of observations could play a crucial

role in a designer's point of view. Comparing it with that of the person, or group of

people who carry it out, this process may contribute to a concept that will support

the lighting design (Cf, Watson, 1990, p. 8). Therefore, note the possibility of

establishing the environments in which situations and fragments occur. After all,

Kane permeated her text with different instances of light and lighting, opening

routes for diverse approaches. The theatrical event that results from it, in its

entirety or in fragments, gives the artists involved the opportunity to incorporate

distinctive visual logos.

Therefore, it is observed that, based on the critical considerations of Hans-

Thies Lehmann, going through the work of a director who he cites as an exponent

of post-dramatic theater, Robert (Bob) Wilson, and ending with the text of an

author who recently caused buzz as an extreme novelty, Sarah Kane, whose work

was endorsed by Lehmann's theatrical thinking, the interaction between scene and

visual context has proven to be intense (Tudella, 2017).

The movement in Maurice Maeterlinck`s dramaturgy

Contributing to the discussion of the central theme of this article, that is, the

investigation of theater's probable visual roots, I propose a connection that may

seem unusual from a chronological point of view. I observe a common ground with

Maurice Maeterlinck, in whose work I glimpse movements of visual expression in

the pulse of theater. It is worth highlighting Maeterlinck's text mentioning his static

theater (drama statique), as an embodiment of the image in theatrical praxis. This

image is seen here beyond the recording and reproduction carried out by current

analogue and electronic-digital media and I see them as primeval images present

in spectacular ancestry.

It can be said that Maeterlinck was an atypical author, having received the

The theatrical praxis and its visual roots: Sarah Kane, Maurice Maeterlinck and the Post-Dramatic

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Florianópolis, v.4, n.49, p.1-26, dez. 2023

Nobel Prize for Literature in 1911.

“[…] in appreciation of his many-sided literary activities, and especially of

his dramatic works, which are distinguished by a wealth of imagination

and by a poetic fancy, which reveals, sometimes in the guise of a fairy

tale, a deep inspiration, while in a mysterious way they appeal to the

readers’ own feelings and stimulate their imaginations” (The Nobel, 2012).

Maeterlinck’s treatment of the scene impressed Peter Szondi (1983), who

considered him responsible for a new direction in drama. Szondi mentions the

opening notes of

The Blind

[

Les Aveugles

, (1890)] in which the playwright “paints”

what can be considered the ‘zero’ verbal image of the play, a kind of imagery

suspension where the visual logos inscribed in a play is introduced. The expanse

of the image created by Maeterlinck, whose fragments are mentioned by Szondi,

is full of provocations that refer to light:

A northern forest, very ancient, eternal in appearance, under a brilliantly

starry sky. In the center, and facing the depths of the night, sits a very old

priest, wrapped in a large black cloak. Your back and head, slightly facing

upwards and mortally immobile, they rest on the trunk of an enormous

and cavernous oak. The face has an immutable waxy lividity, where purple

lips are parted. Mute, staring eyes no longer look at the visible side of

eternity and seem bloodied under a great volume of ancient pains and

tears. The hair, of a serious whiteness, falls in hard and rare locks on the

face more illuminated and more tired than anything around him, in the

attentive silence of the same forest. Thin hands are rigidly attached to

the thighs. On the right, six blind old men are sitting on rocks, dead

stumps, and leaves. To the left and separated from them by an uprooted

tree and pieces of rock, six women, also blind, are sitting in front of the

old men. Three of them pray and lament in a deaf and broken voice.

Another is very old. The fifth, in an attitude of mute dementia, has a

sleeping child on her knees. The sixth is a luminous young woman, whose

hair floods her entire being. They, like the old men, wear loose, dark,

uniform garments. Most wait, elbows on knees, face in hands; and they

all seem to have lost the habit of the useless gesture and no longer turn

their heads towards the muffled murmurs of the island. Great sepulchral

trees, yews, willows, cypresses, cover them with their faithful shadows. A

tuft of long, diseased asphodel blooms near the priest in the night. There

is a profound darkness, despite the brightness of the moon, which here

and there, tries to remove, for a moment, the darkness from the foliage

(Maeterlinck, 1890, p. 75-76).

Ewald Hackler, in his unpublished article dealing with tangencies that connect

Maeterlinck and Samuel Beckett (1906-1989), emphasizes the dramaturgical

The theatrical praxis and its visual roots: Sarah Kane, Maurice Maeterlinck and the Post-Dramatic

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quality with which the play

The Blind

is imbued. According to Hackler (1983, p. 25),

the play does not include a plot: “[...] the guide of a group of blind people, a priest,

had died during an excursion through the forest; the blind are seated around the

dead priest and await his return”. Hackler suggests a first comparison between

Maeterlinck and Beckett pointing out the similarity with

Waiting for Godot

(1948/1949): “[...] the category of action, in drama, is replaced by the category of

situation, the description of the condition”. (Hackler, idem) He complements: “The

drama as a traditional space of action has lost its original function.

Les aveugles

no longer drama, in the Greek sense of

dran (

δρᾶμα - if it is true that this word is

indeed the origin of the noun 'action')" (Hackler, 1983, p. 25). There is an implicit

suggestion of the root of what would be named the

theater of the absurd

Szondi, in turn, comments on speeches that move in parallel or even in the

opposite direction, in a ‘dialogue’ that mischaracterize the acknowledged condition

of drama, as can be read in the excerpt below:

Third Blind Man – It's time to go back to the asylum.

First Blind – We need to know where we are.

Second Blind – Cooled down since his departure4

(Maeterlinck, 1890, p. 77).

Maeterlinck incorporated precise verbal images into his fragmented dialogue

– if we can call his text a dialogue, interrupted by the sounds of the island. There

is a kind of presence-absence embodied inside the immobility, as the only one

who could see and guide the group is now a corpse. Besides, even the blind people

who have been together for years don't know each other. Now they can only wait

for someone who will remain absent because, although the priest is very close and

at the center of the situation, he is immersed in the silence and immobility of

death. The lament expressed in the prayer of the three blind women establishes

the sound atmosphere that works as an essential aspect of the situation, settled

in the darkness of a forest of sepulchral trees, located on the island (Tudella, 2013).

The body of a dead old man, however, expresses the visual force of

immobility that advances the “invisible” intrigue of the dialogue. The postures can

4 From original French; Troisième Aveugle-né. II serait temps de rentrer à l’hospice. | Premier Aveugle-né. II

faudrait savoir oú nous sommes!| Deuxièmes Aveugle-né. | Il fait froit depuis son depart.

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Florianópolis, v.4, n.49, p.1-26, dez. 2023

be observed as rationing of physical action, and the depth of the

mute and deaf

sound is amplified in death, projected from the purple lips of an inert face, in a

kind of ritual, or ceremony. Szondi states: “All this finally says that the

dramatis

personae

are far from being causal agents or subjects of an action. They are, quite

simply, objects of an action.” (Ibidem, p. 221)

The categorization of

static theater

can be understood since the situation

created by Maeterlinck does not seem to contain or undertake dramatic action.

According to Hackler (1983, p. 25), as in other works from the initial phase of his

dramaturgy, Maeterlinck (1890) conceives a play whose musical character seems

to overlap with the visual/theatrical purpose. It's a kind of paradox since theater

was conceived as an art to be seen. In his first attempt to trespass the limits

imposed by the absence of sight, the First Blind Man does nothing but get up and

grope. Soon afterwards, when he tries to take a step, he stumbles, falls, and says:

“There is something between us [...]”.5 (Maeterlinck, 1890, p. 78, our translation)

Between him and his “interlocutor” an immeasurable barrier is solidified, built by

the blindness that defines the extension of the world to the limit of the gesture, in

the motionless body. The play is visually inscribed through events in which the

inability to see defines the extreme of the situation.

Hackler also quotes the analysis by Max Dvořák6 (1874-1921) of the painting

The Fall of the Blind Man

(

Der blindensturz

, 1568), by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1525-

1569):

[...] Nature is indifferent [...] Somewhere some poor blind people were

victims of an accident... Nobody will pay attention [...] But what could

seem like a chance, a unique event, temporally and spatially limited, it

embodies the fate from which no one can escape and to which all of

humanity is blindly]7 (Dvorák apud Hackler, 1983, p. 29).

Bruegel allowed himself to be provoked by the parable of contamination

written by the evangelist Matthew (15:1-20), from which he questions the attitude

5 From original French: ll y a quelque chose entre nous [...]

6 Austrian historian, born Czech, one of the most important names of the Vienna School of Art History.

7 From Portuguese original [...] A natureza é indiferente... Em algum lugar alguns pobres cegos foram vítimas

de um acidente [...] ninguém vai dar atenção [...], mas o que podia parecer um acaso, um acontecimento

único, temporal e espacialmente limitado, incorpora o destino do qual ninguém consegue escapar e ao qual

a humanidade inteira é cegamente submissa [Figura 110]. (Dvorák apud Hackler, 1983, p. 29)

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of the blind who, guided by other blind people, run the risk of falling into the next

abyss. In the version presented by Bruegel's painting, the first blind man who was

guiding his fellow travelers has just fallen and will inevitably take the others with

him. The environment includes a church in the background. Could he be saying

that not even being close to God will prevent the fall of human beings who cannot

see their own path and continue to follow a dead guide?

Maeterlinck, in turn, incarcerates

The Blind

to the isolation of a darkened

island and brings a dog which appears on stage, able to see and choose its way,

its place in the world. The human being, however, is trapped in impotence and

ignorance. Hackler suggests correspondences between Symbolist theater and the

Theater of the Absurd, or rather between Maeterlinck and Beckett, underline what

he calls the artistic principle of contraction, characterized by the exclusion of

everything that is not essential to the situation. He also emphasizes the passivity

and highlights Maeterlinck’s ‘strategic dialectic’, which paints humanity immersed

in the mortal isolation of an infinite void, whose destiny is death. As Hackler defines

it, there is a terrible and precise portrait of what the modern human being has

become, as seen in

Waiting for Godot

, in which one does not recognize a person

and, if there are names like Estragron and Vladimir (Tudella, 2013), you can

incorporate a certain tragicomic variation of Pozzo and Bozzo. Is postmodern

humanity the expression of the most refined excellence? Do traces of isolation,

passivity, ignorance, deformation, brutalization, romanticization, and imbalance

suggest the disappearance of culture and, subsequently, of the human species?

Conclusive aspects

Anyone can

illuminate

a situation in any way they consider suitable. However,

if we investigate dramaturgy as a visual problematization, a question arises: what

lighting can interact with the verbal images created by Maeterlinck? Or is it worth

disregarding this issue and

drawing your own light

, achieving the quasi-divine

power of

creation

, taking the risk of trying to invent something that already exists,

that is already found in dramaturgy? On the other hand, even when the lighting

designer exercises freedom to carefully analyze the verbal images created by

The theatrical praxis and its visual roots: Sarah Kane, Maurice Maeterlinck and the Post-Dramatic

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Florianópolis, v.4, n.49, p.1-26, dez. 2023

Maeterlinck, when creating the situation, each artist must include his or her own

mark

– or

kharakter

, in Greek. This mark will be effective if the lighting designer

introduces visually relevant variables in the interaction with the logos of each

theatrical work.

Even in the face of an extreme situation that occurs in the depths of the night,

in a forest where blind men and women depend on a corpse to stay alive, there is

a strong presence that is there to see the events: the spectator. The theatrical

praxis is inscribed by the visual force of a situation in which, being the only one

who can see, the spectator gains immense power. Such power will only be affected

by light and lighting, through the theatrical image in all its expressions: sound,

musical, verbal, visual, mental, or physicalized on the action.

Instead of imposing settled conclusions and fixing a discourse, it seems

possible to suggest opening the perspective, involving the entire body to include

the heart and mind in seeing theater as a profound human expression and visual

communication. This suggests not just emotion, but also feeling, not just sensation,

but also perception (inserting neuroscientific understanding),

Attention and investigation of theatre, with the interaction of the intricacies

of theoretical thinking with visual praxis, can promote the education of artists,

contributing to the simplicity of theatrical art, freed from the imposition of

idiosyncrasies that erase the theater's interest in discussing the human condition.

References

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London: Routledge, 2006. p. 1-15.

HACKLER, Ewald.

O teatro pioneiro de Maurice Maeterlinck

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Complete plays

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Postdramatic theatre

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L’Intruse; Les aveugles

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Lighting design handbook

. New York: McGraw-Hill, Inc., 1990.

Recebido em: 22/11/23

Aprovado em: 23/11/23

Universidade do Estado de Santa Catarina

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UDESC

Programa de Pós-Graduação em Teatro

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PPGT

Centro de Arte – CEART

Urdimento

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