Sascha Förster

Projections of History. Zeitgeist and the Scenes of Imagination

Good afternoon,

the Oxford English Dictionary defines zeitgeist as “[t]he spirit or genius which marks the

thought or a feeling of a period or age”. The verb to mark shows the active process that has to

take place so that something can be called zeitgeist. My PhD thesis investigates on this idea

of zeitgeist as something actively negotiating. In my eyes, this is not only happening within the

contemporary culture but this active process does also happen with history and memories.

Thus, zeitgeist serves my dissertation as a figure of thought to theatre historiographically re-

search on phenomena that negotiate past and current culture.

In today‘s paper, I would like to sketch out my broader ideas that lead my research on Projec-

tions of History. Zeitgeist and the Scences of Imagination. Therefore, I would like to shed a

light on:

1) my notions of zeitgeist as a conceptual approach

2) my understanding of another German word, this time “Fundus”, I will explain that later

3) I want to try to explain and establish some ideas I had around the production of Mike

Bartlett‘s 13 at the National Theatre 2011 and especially on its programme

Part One: Zeitgeist

Fundamental to my understanding of the term zeitgeist is the dismantling of the word into its

two parts: zeit and geist – time and ghost. This leads to Marvin Carlson‘s study The Haunted

Stage in which he examines different examples in which the theatre experience might be

haunted by memories. For example, when you see the third production of Shakespeare‘s King

Lear, you will be haunted by your memories of the two productions that you saw before. In my

opinion, you won‘t be haunted by theatrical memories only but also by – broadly speaking –

cultural memories.

I want to point out two more theories that are fundamental to my approach to zeitgeist. The

first is David Román‘s engagement with the word “contemporary” which he puts on the begin-

ning of his study Performance in America. He defines the “contemporary” as “a critical tempo-

rality that engages the past without being held captive to it and that instantiates the present

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without defining a future.” (Román 2005, p. 1) I am interested in this idea of the contemporary

as a “critical temporality” and want to use this notion for my understanding of the term zeit-

geist.

The second theory that I want to introduce is Rebecca Schneider‘s Performing Remains. Con-

sidering reenactments of the US-american Civil War, Schneider is interested in “history‘s theat-

rical returns” (Schneider 2011, p. 2). She characterises her focus on theatrical remaining as:

“passing on, staying alive, in order to pass on the past as past, not, indeed, as (only) present.

Never (only) present” (Ibid., p. 7). The process of theatrical remaining as reenactment can be

understood as multi-layered and complex.

To sum up, my understanding of zeitgeist is an understanding of a cultural feeling that has the

means to characterise a specific time-frame of experiences that are always negotiating history

actively, critically and multi-layered. Thus, the engagement with the cultural and the individual

memory constitutes experiences of and with culture in the here and now. In my PhD thesis, I

want to establish this approach by taking into account imagination in theatre.

My understanding of imagination is, amongst others, influenced by Niklaus Largier‘s study Die

Kunst des Begehrens. In my opinion, imagination as a construction of inner images can be

understood as a cultural technique that is always linked to zeitgeist. How imagination functions

and how zeitgeist is always a part of a cultural imagination, will be questions at the core of my

research.

Part Two: Fundus

Additionally to zeitgeist, I want to introduce the German word Fundus. The Fundus is the place

of a theatre where props, costumes and parts of set designs are stored. There, these remains

are waiting for their afterlife. They could be re-used in the choir of a large opera production or

in the studio production of an assistant director. This afterlife must not take into consideration

how the object was used before. It could also happen that the re-use means something very

new. Nevertheless, a loyal visitor of a specific theatre might recognise the object from before,

might remember its importance for the other production and might think about this – now nego-

tiating the past experience with the current one. This can be seen very well at the National

Theatre in London in their bar project Propstore.

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But what interests me especially is the specific possibility of new re-uses. In my opinion, every

theatre building can be understood as a Fundus for past imaginations that are always stored to

be negotiated again on stage. Thus, with Fundus I locate what Tracy C. Davis wrote on Reper-

toire: “By thinking of repertoire not merely as generic but associational, polytextual, intertheat-

rically citational, recombinant patterns that sustain intelligibility, historians may begin to recog-

nize where the critical and observational lacunae lie” (Davis 2012, p. 14)

The stage as a space for the negotiations of inner images, shall be referred to with the term

Scene. Peter Marx sees the Scene – or Scena as he calls it – as “the marked place of show-

ing, the culturally given frame of a place of imagination. Thus, the term is fundamental for an

anthropology of imagination because it refers to the framing and to the cultural and social em-

bedment at the same time” (Marx 2012, p. 14, translation my own).

Taking these notions of the Scene and Fundus into account, I want to re-establish ideas of

place. Following the spatial turn, ideas of place were lost because ideas of space as some-

thing that is constructed by performative means became more and more important. I want to

think about the placedness of theatrical experiences and imagination specifically. Thereby, I do

not only refer to set designs but also to theatre architecture and to cultural scenographies, like

the bar I mentioned before.

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Part Three: Example – 13 (National Theatre London, 2011)

To flesh out some of my ideas, I want to talk about my experience of the National Theatre‘s

production of Mike Bartlett‘s 13 that premièred on the 25th of October 2011. This show, di-

rected by Thea Sharrock, was also my first experience of the the building in London‘s South-

bank. The building was designed by Denys Lasdun. Lasdun planned this concrete building as

a dialogue with the city. For example, St. Paul‘s Cathedral was very important to him as an ur-

ban reference. You can see this in this sketch he made.

When I came to London to see 13, the Occupy movement was just recently erecting its camps

around St. Paul‘s. 13 is a piece that, in some way like a thriller, is about a dystopic future of

Great Britain declaring war on Iran. John, played by Trystan Gravelle, becomes a prophet-like

figure leading a youth movement demonstrating against the decision of the government. Being

in the National Theatre in October 2011, I couldn‘t help myself but combining the feeling of this

youth movement with the Occupy camps on the other side of the River Thamse in my imagina-

tion. Without closely relating to it, the placedness of my experience helped my imagination ne-

gotiating what I saw on stage and what took place in London at the same time. Without directly

illustrating the contemporary culture, I nevertheless could feel the contemporary zeitgeist in

the production and, thus, imagine the youth movement on stage as something like the Occupy

movement.

As a Theatre Studies scholar who works at a Department for Media Culture and Theatre, I do

not want to refer to the performance only. I also want to focus on the media of a theatre – pro-

grammes, newspapers, websites, etc.

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To finish my paper, I want to briefly take a look into the programme of 13. When you stroll

around the building of the National Theatre, you will stumble over this: In the Circle‘s area of

the Olivier, there is a poster advertising the high quality of the National Theatre‘s programmes.

“Researched, edited and designed by the National‘s in-house team, NT progammes are clas-

sics of their kind and build into a fascinating collection.”

This poster leads to my hypothesis that every experience of a performance at the National

Theatre can be influenced by the reading of a programme. Taking programmes into account of

the analysis, also brings me to an understanding of the theatre experience as more than only

the performance. You might read the programme a few days later, imagining the performance

again or re-contextualising your imaginations differently. In the programme for 13, you will find

snippets from articles on revolutions like the Arabic Spring that used social media like Face-

book or Twitter

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But I am especially interested in this picture in the middle of the programme. It is a rehearsal

wall photograph by Clare Parker, showing the set design and something like a dramaturgical

wall with image and text material. In my opinion, this photo broadens the audience‘s ap-

proaches to 13. You can read the headings quite quickly and thereby, your imaginations might

ground the dystopic future of the drama within your contemporary culture.

With this paper, I tried to show you my approaches to zeitgeist and imagination. I also wanted

to show you how these figures of thought influence my theatre historiographical thinking as an

ambivalent and suspenseful thinking between forgetting and remembering.

Literature

Davis, Tracy C. “Introduction: Repertoire.” The Broadview Anthology of Nineteenth Century

British Performance. Ed. Tracy C. Davis. Peterborough: Broadview Press, 2012. pp. 13–26, p.

14.

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Marx, Peter W. “Scena Mundi. Prolegomena zu einer Anthropologie der Imagination.” Raum-

Maschine Theater. Szene und Architektur. Eds. Hesse, Petra, and Peter W. Marx. Köln: Wien-

and, 2012, pp. 10–23, p. 14.

Román, David. Performance in America. Contemporary U.S. Culture and the Performing Arts.

Durham, London: Duke University Press, 2005, p. 1.

Schneider, Rebecca. Performing Remains. Art and War in Times of Theatrical Reenactment.

Abingdon, New York: Routledge, 2011, p. 7.

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