I recognize my need
or maybe it’s just a desire…
to construct an idea of an author
but this project seems
hypothetical
transitive
complicit in the dynamics of ideology
I can easily identify
the irreconcilable differences among
Coleridge’s Shakespeare
Bradley’s Shakespeare
Wilson Knight’s Shakespeare
Arthur Harbage’s Shakespeare
Stephen Greenblatt’s Shakespeare
or Sartre’s Genet
Bernard Frechtman’s Genet
Edmund White’s Genet
I understand each of these Shakespeares
each of these Genets
is inextricably implicated
in one of a series of present moments
in which an aesthetic premise
provided the method of authorial construction
even the collision of the unconscious
Derrida’s chance
and the predetermination of codified systems
constitutes a model of author
in its image of that aspect of the psyche
that is either most free
(of rational control)
or most bound
(to the accidents of unconscious determination)
coming into contact
with the externally given structures of language
my reluctance
to leave the post-structural game of displacing the subject
is Derrida’s fault
Derridean instability
offers an attractive model
in my thinking about the rehearsal process
as I prepare for a future performance
I enjoy
(as well as fear)
the instability of the process
where I can offer or accept
almost any interpretative act
as a possibility for a moment
what is least pleasurable for me
is that moment
where I trade that instability
for the relative permanence of a fixed point of interpretation
that moment
at which I begin the process of constructing a performance
defining the parameters of a site
limiting the play
the freedom of the actors
and myself
at this point
as artists
we cease playing
initiating a series of repetitions
in order to write the selected rhythms
tempos
movements
and inflections
into the space, the actors and the musicians
that I
as director
think most satisfactory
this is the moment when I am most self-conscious
about inscribing “myself” into the performance
through imposing limits on others
appropriating the work to my own purposes
and foregrounding myself as an authority
this discomfort
occasioned by my knowledge
of the arbitrariness of interpretation as an activity
often provokes me
to de-stabilize the performance structurally
foregrounding
for a spectator
the idea of the event as a performance
just a “take” on the text
not a definitive “reading” of the text
on the other hand
I am equally discomfited
by the inability of an audience
a colleague
a friend
a mentor
to recognize the
“validity”
“timeliness”
“perceptiveness”
“originality”
even “veracity”
of my “take”
I am like Malvolio’s perception of the “boy” Cesario
within “standing water, between boy and man”
caught at that moment between a changing tide
I apprehend the possibility
of a reconstitution of the subject
yet I wear my sense of myself and the playwright
as reconstituted subjects
somewhat in the way
the boy actor In the original productions of this play a male actor played Viola: a female character who disguises herself as a man wears the male clothes provided to Viola
as I dress myself in the related concepts of an authorial
and an interpretating subject
I am putting on a costume
with which I am naturally familiar
in my non-theoretical/academic
modes of speaking and thinking
these are the clothes I wear off-stage
yet
to fulfill the game of the performance
I must not wear these clothes with an apparent ease and naturalness
but rather inhabit the garments as though they belonged to the opposite
the sexual other
and yet
within the game itself
I find alignments between role and self
that make the “alien” quality of the stage costume
seem precisely that
unnatural
an arbitrary and temporary disguise
not the familiar dress that the irony of the convention calls for
I find a third sex
an androgyny that makes either role, Viola or Cesario
seem to be a construct formed for the relational structure
that the conventions of comedy demand
somewhere in the movement between Viola and Cesario
that moment in between childhood and adulthood
I’ve lost my confidence in what that maturity may be
if it will be more authentic
than the ambiguous role this performance elicits