"The Stage, a skull": scenic poetry and the role of light in Martin Crimp's Fewer "Emergencies" (2005)

• Autores: Clara Escoda Agustí
• Localización: Proceedings from the 31st AEDEAN Conference: [electronic resource] / María Jesús Lorenzo Modia (ed. lit.), José Miguel Alonso Giráldez (ed. lit.), Mónica Amenedo Costa (ed. lit.), María J. Cabarcos-Traseira (ed. lit.), Begoña Lasa Álvarez (ed. lit.), 2008, ISBN 978-84-9749-278-2, págs. 461-474
• Idioma: inglés
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  • This paper explores the role of light in James Macdonald's production of Martin Crimp's triptych Fewer "Emergencies". For his 2005 staged production at the Royal Court Theatre, London, Macdonald turned light into one of the play's major operative elements, and had each play enacted in front of a screen of light.

    Light and text thus created a space of synesthesia, or of interrelation between different perceptive fields, which sought to render the conventional separation between stage and audience, or "fourth wall", fuzzy and ambiguous. Such strategy came to its full political potential in the triptych's middle play, Face to the Wall, where it was used in order to interpellate the audience as responsible subjects with respect to a situation of violence that was portrayed on stage, thus inviting it to experience some of the most totalitarian aspects of contemporary society, so that they might resist them outside the theatre.