Resumen de Shaping the spectacle: faking, making and performing reality through Shakespeare
As a starting point for its argument, this essay uses a broad understanding of performance as a tool for producing knowledge, and relies on this definition to move towards a specific example where a theatrical production provides not only a self-reflexive account of what performance does, but also makes its audience aware of the stakes of their participation. The essay first takes a look at the logic of the visual dramaturgy of a contemporary theatrical adaptation of Shakespeare by the Hungarian Theatre of Cluj, Romania (Richard III, dir. Gábor Tompa, 2008). Questions that are raised by the analysis focus on the multiple functions of spectator positions created by visual scenic choices. A major assumption is that the use of multimetlia technolohy in this especific performance contributes to the self-reflexive staging of reality, and is offered as a parallel to the way contemporary mass-metlia shape our perceptions of the world. Thus, the protluction invites the audience to participate critically in the process of interpreting, or even shaping reality through performance, offering a critique of a passive consumption of spectacle. The second part of the paper, in the light of the ambiguous presentation of performance as both making anti faking reality in the examined production, argues that some strands within twentieth-century Shakespeare criticism have construed him him as an 'illusionist' specifically because his work is tied to the performative power of theatre - anti thus take him as interesting similar to the figure of Gloucester in the examined performance. As the production suggests, however, the difference is not so much in whether a performance is faithful or not to a supposed preexistent reality, but rather in the audience's awareness both of its position and responsability in the communal making of knowledge.
