Performance and Reception

I decided to title this chapter ‘performance and reception’ because I want to discuss the relationship between the performance of the play and the audience. I see this as an important aspect of this writing since it will inform my reader on how well the play was received. Background of audience also helps in understanding how the performance was received. Here I am talking of their cultural, social, historical and professional

backgrounds. Are they students, politicians, lecturers or just members of a civil society?

This will inform us of their horizon of expectation because these members of groups in the society will react differently based on their familiarity with the text or their

unfamiliarity with the text. A person watching the play for the first time without any knowledge of the text will have a different perception from the one who is in known of the text.

As Bennett defines, “yet all art forms rely on those cultural values for their existence and, among them, theatre is an obviously social phenomenon. It is an event which relies on the physical presence of an audience to confirm its cultural status” (92). This background of the audience which is accessed, informs us of the mindset of the audience because their social, cultural, historical and profession helps to shape the horizon of their expectation.

In other words, “Since theater is a social and political space, it may take on a

paradigmatic role for society. All that occurs publicly in the theater – both on stage and between actors and spectators – may reflect, condemn or negate the surrounding social conditions or anticipate future ones” (Lichte, Gronau & Weiler 2011: 7).

Unfolding events at the time the play was adapted also influence the audience in the interpretation of the performance. Here I am referring to the social and cultural

background in Egypt at the time the play was adapted. According to Selaiha, the political instability in Egypt at that time prompted Amin the director to stage the play. I will like to mention that the Egyptian production of An Enemy of the People does not fall within a

historical interpretation, here what I am trying to say is that because there has never been a performance of An Enemy of the People until this production, that analysis cannot be made but the reception of the performance can be traced through the aesthetic of the staged play and the horizon of expectation of the audience.

In defining what the horizon of expectation is, I will like to start with Hans Robert Jauss;

theory of reception which deals with “the identity of the poetic text in the changing horizon of understanding”. He writes, “If the horizon of our present did not always already include the original horizon of the past, historical understanding would be impossible, since the past in its otherness may only be grasped in so far as the interpreter is able to separate the alien from his own horizon” (Machor & Goldstein 7), what this means is that reader’s and audiences familiarity with the text’s reception when it was first performed and relating it to events at that time will help them to get the historical

perspective of the text but in interpreting the text in its present performance, the audience must not be influenced by previous reception but must be able to separate the past from the present to enable the reader or the spectator give an informed interpretation of the performance.

I will elaborate on Jauss horizon of expectation as the discussion goes on but lets first look at some reviews when the play was first staged and presented to the audiences the writer was writing for. I am including this in my discussion just for my reader to know how the text was received when it was performed for the first time. According to Michael Meyer in his book Ibsen a Biography “An Enemy of the People” was published on 28 November 1882, in an edition of ten thousand copies. Its reception was mixed. Not surprisely, Dr. Stockmann’s hard remarks about political parties offended all the reviewers who belonged to either; […] the theatres seized eagerly upon the play. The Christiania Theatre and the Royal Theatres of Copenhagen and Stockholm, all of which had rejected Ghosts as unfit for public presentation, immediately acquired production rights of An Enemy of the People, apparently unembarrassed by the fact that its theme was the unworthiness of those who “do not dare” (503-504).

These reviews inform me that the plays performances at various countries were a success though the reception from audiences was mixed. But that does not mean a current

production of a text cannot be viewed as a new piece of art if the circumstances that led to its writing is not decoded. As Jauss puts it “this approach held that a work which had become foreign could be understood either literally or through interpretation by

disregarding the distance in time and by studying the text alone, or by returning

historically to its sources and compiling factual knowledge about its time” (Machor &

Goldstein 17). To elaborate his point further he means to say that, a reception of a performance that is foreign to the viewer or audience can be understood without adding or trying to place the text in the originality of the period of which it was written but if one intend to do a historical interpretation then the information must be accurate.

From the above discussion on audiences’ horizon of expectation by Jauss, I will like to use the above information to decode the horizon of expectation of the audience in Egypt by looking at the performance. According to the director, the play was always adapted and some changes were done always to suit the present situation of political scene in Egypt every time it was performed. In this regard, “each public will clearly have a different horizon of expectations, and these can coexist among different publics in any given society”(Bennett 100). In January according to Selaiha when it was performed the expectation of the audience at that time was viewed against the back drop of recent political events in Egypt and urgently topical in view of the upcoming parliamentary elections within 2 months. But after June 30^th, Selaiha writes again that the horizon of expectation from the audience was different. “When Amin’s Enemy opened again, in August 2013, the political scene had dramatically changed, and with it the context of reception. Egypt had undergone a second revolution” (Al – Ahram Weekly, 18-09-2013).

I had the opportunity of seeing the performance at Skien conference last year September.

The audience was made up of students, lectures, literary critics, and Ibsen Scholars with various devise cultural background but I will like to say that in interacting with some of them after the performance there was a clear indication that they understood the

performance and related it to the ongoing crisis in Egypt at that time. The horizon of expectation from the audience there met with the ongoing crisis in Egypt at that time. For the audience who were present at the Skien conference it was only 2% who were not familiar with the play because they were students who were then studying Ibsen and had not read the play.

The performance itself can affect an audience horizon of expectation in the sense that actors performance skill, the ‘mise en scene’ of the performance as well as the crowd at the event can make an audience appreciate or deappreciate a performance. Even seeing the same performance at different venues can have an impact on the horizon of

expectation of an audience because “it is the creative use of the main materials – space, actors’ bodies, set, sound and their combination, synchronization or opposition that constitute the production. And it is the special relationship between stage /auditorium and actors/spectators that, each night, determines the success and impact of a performance”

(Lichte, Gronau & Weiler 2011: 6).

Bennett describes it as such “The horizon of expectations brought by an audience to the theatre are bound to interact with every aspect of the theatrical event, and, for this reason, it is useful to examine the idea of the event and its general implications for the act of reception”(Bennett 108) . “In other words, the horizon of expectation evoked by the work confirms or transcends the horizon of experience introduced by the recipient”

(Machor & Goldstein 23). Here we must note that the horizon of expectation do not only rest with the audience, but the director, actors and production team all go through levels of expectation in interpreting the text, through their directorial concept, performs skills, costume and set design.

“The performance is therefore characterized by ephemerality; it is transitory and its analysis will tend to emphasize the event and its impact on the spectators at a particular point in time. Because of the extremely complex cognitive, […] it is hermeneutical in orientation and might fall more properly in the realm of audience research” (Balme 132).

Another interesting point which establishes a relationship between the performance and the audience is the performance space. Bennett in her writing cites Hayes to support her argument. She writes “As Hays suggested it determines not only the physical and perceptual relationship of the audience to the stage, but the actual number of individuals who become the audience as a group” (Bennett 140). A plays success is also determine by this, if the auditorium is full it will have an impact on the horizon of expectation of the viewing public in the same way if its half full it will have an impact. “It is the interactive relations between audience and stage, spectator and spectator which constitute production and reception, and which cause the inner and outer frames to converge for the creation of a particular experience” (Bennett 149).

“A rejuvenating reception requires that the fusion of horizons not be silently presupposed but be consciously achieved as a dialectic mediation of the past and present horizons in a new actualization of meaning” (Machor & Goldstein 25). With this last point I move on to discuss the ‘mise en scene’ of the performance itself, through my own experience of seeing the performance and what reviewers had written about it.