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Tragedy is a sacred art. If you do not understand the sacred, do not enter the theatre.

(Barker in Shuttleworth 2010)

[R]eligion is the moving force behind the breaking of taboos. Now religion is founded on feelings of terror and awe, indeed it can hardly be thought of without them, and their existence causes some confusion. The recoil that inevitably follows the forward movement is constantly being presented as the essence of religion. […] More than any other state of mind consciousness of the void about us throws us into exaltation. This does not mean that we feel an emptiness in ourselves, far from it; but we pass beyond that into an awareness of the act of transgression.

(Bataille 2006, p. 68)

This quotation from Bataille is a reminder of the irrational and spiritual dimension of religion, a dimension that arguably exists before the moral, philosophical and theological structures form within the human mind and

(subsequently) the wider society or community. This idea of a void before

theology is a very useful concept when considering the relationship between religion and tragedy, both when tragedy emerges for the first time in ancient Greece in the sixth century and also in its re-emergence in the late twentieth century in the mystical and spiritual theatre of Howard Barker.48 This chapter initially examines some recent contemporary ideas of the sacred in theatre and how they relate to Howard Barker’s tragic drama. Having established this model, the chapter then explores the spiritual and religious aspects of tragic drama in the pagan context of classical Greece in order to examine similar spiritual elements in Barker’s Theatre of Catastrophe.

We have seen in the previous chapter how the spiritual and (pseudo-) religious dimension to his poetry, dramatic theory and theatrical writing owes much to the medieval mystical theologian Eckhart. However, two core areas of Barker’s work that are not covered by this theology are the privileging of sexual ecstasy as a subject within his writing and also the use of tragic drama as the genre and art form of primary expression in his spiritual theatre.49 Both of these elements were firmly connected to religion in Greek and Roman culture before they were both marginalised or excluded in Christian Europe. Sexual desire had become increasingly alienated from religion in Christian Europe because of its growing association with sin, a surprising shift from the Greek and Roman pagan tradition, and such a significant change of focus that Batialle even suggests that ‘the Christian religion is possibly the least religious

48 _{I am aware that Barker’s modernist and, more specifically, Brechtian roots make it difficult}

for his theatre to fully disconnect from a rationalising sensibility.

49 _{Barker of course also writes poetry and radio drama. However it is clear from the relative}

output of plays to poems that drama is his primary medium, and the vast majority of these plays are written specifically for the theatre.

of them all’ (Bataille 2006, p. 32).50 Tragic drama, and drama in general, also suffered in Christian Europe in that there was no ‘officially sanctioned theatre’ (Kubiak 1993, p. 49, emphasis his) during the Middle Ages following severe and hostile restrictions placed on theatre at the end of the fourth century by the relatively new Christian administration of the Roman Empire:51

[I]n 398 A.D. the Council of Carthage voted to excommunicate anyone attending the theatre instead of church on holy days. Also, actors were denied the sacraments unless they denounced their profession.

(Bruch 2004, p. 4)

It is interesting to note that the two potential aspects of spirituality that Christianity felt the need to so sharply repress, drama and sexual desire, were both previously celebrated and embraced in ancient Greece through the worship of Dionysus, the popular god of theatrical performance and sexual ecstasy. It therefore makes sense to explore the possible relationship of Dionysus to Greek culture in search of a pre-Christian and pre-enlightenment spirituality and religious expression. This Dionysiac spirituality seems to have made a significant contribution to the cultural matrix in which tragic drama emerged as an art form. Once this influence has been outlined, spiritual (or

50 _{‘It goes without saying that the development of eroticism is in no respect foreign to the}

domain of religion, but in fact Christianity sets its face against eroticism and thereby condemns most religions. In one sense, the Christian religion is possibly the least religious of them all.’ (Bataille 2006, p. 32)

51 _{Dramatic performance reappeared in Christian Europe over 500 years later in the ‘tenth-}

century Latin trope for Easter, which was the beginning of liturgical drama’ (Cawley 1993, p. xiii).

ideological) parallels will then be established with Barker’s post-Christian and post-enlightenment return to tragedy.

Sacred Tragedy

Tragedy is not a demonstration, it is a terrible ignorance that admits itself … a disarming naïveté clings to all its protagonists …

(Barker 2005, p.45)

Let us return to Bataille’s observation at the start of this chapter, and its location of the religious experience before theology. This definition is particularly useful when examining any religious experience or even experiences not formally defined as religious, but rather spiritual. For this reason Bataille’s atheistic spirituality is one of the key influences on a recent examination of spirituality in performance, Sacred Theatre (2007). In this multi-authored book edited by Ralph Yarrow, five theatre academics reflect on the idea of the sacred in relation to theatre and its significance for contemporary theatre practice. The universality of this conception of the sacred usefully serves as an initial way into considering the spiritual dimension to tragic dramas across 2,500 years. Barker, himself, employed the term sacred in the programme notes to his 2002 production of Gertrude – The Cry writing that ‘Tragedy is a sacred art. If you do not understand the sacred, do not enter the theatre’ (Barker in Shuttleworth 2002). In Sacred Theatre the authors also assert the sacred nature of certain forms of contemporary theatre

(although no mention is made of Barker) and they offer a very positive and pluralistic assessment of this term/experience.52 The positive and universal approach to the sacred is clear from the fact that they argue for an inclusive conception of this mode of experience, one that is not restricted to a particular religious tradition, in fact they view such a focus as restrictive and unhelpfully limiting of the sacred:

We want to be clear about this – the notion of the scared discussed in this book has nothing in common with theological or religious notions of the sacred, which, with the exception of marginalized mystic traditions within them, generally try to ‘positivise’ the sacred by making it knowable, that is to say, reducible to a set of precepts or commandments.

(Yarrow 2007, p. 10)

One of the principal stated aims of the book is to ‘rescue’ the sacred from ‘monotheological and prescriptive use’ (2007, p. 10). This anti- monotheological position chimes with post-structural and postmodern suspicions towards anything orthodox and opposed to inclusive notions of pluralism, for example Derrida’s critique of what he defines as phallologocentrism and Lyotard’s incredulity towards meta-narratives and his

52 _{The positive assessment in this book is in contrast to either a more neutral anthropological}

reading of the sacred in relation to theatre or one that argues against such ‘spiritual’ modes of theatre in favour of more political and rational objectives (and therefore views sacred theatre as a deception that manipulates the audience).

subsequent suggestion that we are now experiencing a new paganism.53 Subsequently, their notion of the sacred causes a similar radical reassessment of what was thought to be known about the world: ‘[We] argue that the sacred, as experience, mode of being and perception, is central to theatre practice, which thereby locates a radical refiguring of engagement with the world’ (Yarrow 2007, p. 10). So, if the experience of the sacred is not related to a religious tradition then what can it consist of which causes such a transformation and new engagement with the world? Yarrow et al argue for the absence of fixed thought and ideas as the very nature of the sacred suggesting that ‘[It] entails a voiding of thought, and by implication a shift of consciousness that effects a blurring of boundaries between subject and object, self and other’ (Haney in Yarrow 2007, p. 16).

The collapse of individual identity and the dissolution of binary opposites are, as we will see, aspects of experience commonly attributed to Dionysus. As well as Bataille’s philosophy, Victor Turner’s anthropology, and particularly his term liminality, is drawn upon in Sacred Theatre to define the sacred in theatre. ‘[V]oiding of thought’ (going beyond pairs of opposites) and a condition of liminality; and claims that the optimal subjective experience of liminality is performance’ (Yarrow 2007, p. 15). Liminal means a state of change and fluidity where nothing is fixed and all definition and identity is uncertain but not necessarily a concern. According to Richard Schechner, ‘Turner’s liminality is like death, being in the womb or darkness; it is a state of being ‘not-this-nor-that’, ‘open to change’ (Schechner 2002, p. 66). The

53 _{Caputo defines Lyotard’s paganism as: ‘the affirmation of radical and irreducible pluralism’}

sacred space is further defined by Carl Lavery as: ‘an empty fullness, a full emptiness’ (Lavery in Yarrow 2007, p. 16, emphasis his) suggesting the surprisingly positive experience of liminality which could be connected to the sense of freedom in the Eckhartian ‘now’ and Barker’s ‘hope-lessness’ (see Chapter 2).

The dominance of the anthropological term ‘liminality’ in Sacred Theatre as a definition of the spiritual experience in modern theatres, reflects a wider interest in this concept in Performance Studies, a discipline where dance, drama and theatre studies merge with anthropology and other social sciences, to expand the focus beyond the theatrical space so it can consider performances in the wider human community and culture. Turner’s influential concept ‘liminality’ stems initially from Arnold van Gennep in his study Rites of Passage (1908), in which he ‘distinguishes three phases in a rite of passage:

separation, transition, and incorporation’ (Turner 1985, p. 24). The intervening phase of transition is also known by Van Gennep as “margin” or “limen” (meaning “threshold” in Latin)’ (Turner 1985, p. 24). The first stage involves rituals that separate those undertaking the process, the ‘initiands’, from an awareness of secular society and their current role and relationship to this society. This is achieved in the performance of rituals that generate a sense of sacred time and space through a process of symbolic detachment (Turner 1985, p. 24). Immediately we can see similarities with Eckhart and Barker, where detachment allows an escape from the individual’s dependence on everyday life and the beliefs and ideals that inform this existence. In the transition or liminal stage ‘the ritual subjects pass through a period and area

of ambiguity, a sort of social limbo’ (Turner 1985, p. 24). This is the space of sacred theatre where identity is unraveled. The final stage of incorporation, also described by Van Gennep as ‘reaggregation’, is where the subjects are returned to society with a sense of closure with their ‘new, relatively stable, well defined position in the total society’ (Turner 1985, p. 24).

The spiritual and apophatic focus of Barker’s theatre makes the transitional and liminal space of particular interest and Turner’s definition of this state shows how thoroughly ideological structures are temporarily suspended:

Liminal entities are neither here nor there; they are betwixt and between the positions assigned and arrayed by law, custom, convention, and ceremonial. As such, their ambiguous and indeterminate attributes are expressed by a rich variety of symbols in the many societies that ritualize social and cultural transitions. Thus, liminality is frequently likened to death, to being in the womb, to invisibility, to darkness, to bisexuality, to the wilderness, and to an eclipse of the sun or moon. Liminal entities, such as neophytes in initiation or puberty rites, may be represented as possessing nothing.

(Turner in Schechner 2002, p. 58)

The connections with both Greek tragedy and Barker’s Theatre of Catastrophe are clear, with the tragic protagonist, like the initiand in the ritual process, being distanced from social structures through the invocation of

extra-human forces: death, the wilderness, and unfettered and (previously) illicit sexual desire, so that their identity becomes highly unstable. The ritual process and tragedy will be explored in greater detail in the next chapter.

Turner’s collaborator Schechner draws upon the concept of ritual as a significant influence on his notion of Performance Studies.54 In The Performance Studies Reader (2004) Jon McKenzie’s chapter ‘The Liminal Norm’ examines the surprising level of twentieth century theoretical interest in the middle stage of ritual and lack of interest or wariness towards the end point and purpose of ritual where order is re-established. McKenzie warns against this preoccupation with the liminal state, resulting in it becoming too dominant an idea in Performance Studies. Clearly, the subversive potential of the liminal makes it of interest to radical political agendas despite the fact that anthropologists conclude that the majority of the time the ritual ends with the ‘reinforcement of existing social structure’ rather than ‘schism’ (McKenzie 2004, p. 28). Sacred Theatre’s injunction to ‘rescue’ the sacred from ‘monotheological and prescriptive use’ is clearly part of this cultural-political movement. The sacred space of theatre is the liminal space and although primarily used historically as a process towards entry into a new and stable religious identity, this closure is viewed as oppressive by twentieth and twenty-first century notions of freedom and individualism. Arguably, Barker’s political and radical past attracts him to a strikingly similar notion of the sacred without closure for the same reason.

54 _{Performance Studies emerged as a new model for performing arts delivery in the 1990s. It}

had become established enough by the turn of the century to warrant an introductory textbook: Performance Studies: An Introduction, first published in 2002 and the most recent version, the third edition, was published in 2013.

Sacred Theatre’s central argument, that theatre/performance is the ‘optimal subjective experience’ of the sacred, may begin to explain the relationship between the tragedy and the sacred. Barker argues for a connection between the sacred and tragedy in Death, The One and the Art of Theatre:

By making death the sacred object of our meditations the art of theatre

[tragedy] at once dispenses with the pitiful paraphernalia of representation that so disfigures the stage of the theatre [commercial / humanist theatre].

(Barker 2005, p. 53)

Rationalism and Tragedy

For Barker the return to tragedy allows for the creation of a cultural space in which reason is no longer privileged, allowing ecstasy to emerge in the vacuum: ‘The ecstasy of not knowing for once / The sheer suspension of not knowing’ (Barker 1997, p. 41, emphasis his). This perception of tragedy has a clear connection to the ‘voiding of thought’ in sacred theatre, although, for Barker, anxiety dominates this emotional state.55 Barker therefore establishes

55 _{Barker’s focus on anxiety as a primary emotional experience for the audience may not}

clearly correspond with a more meditative experience of the sacred. This is also a separation between Eckhartian and Barkerian (apparent) models of mystical experience (see Chapter 1). Barker describes the role of anxiety in his theatre in an interview with David Ian Rabey: ‘But I think of anxiety in my theatre as a state quite different to fear … rather it is a troubling of the fixed strata of moral conventions … a sort of low quaking that threatens the foundations of the stable personality … the public doesn’t quite know where to place its feet, there is an insecurity, but one which is simultaneously exhilarating’ (Barker in Gritzner and Rabey 2006, p.34)

an antithesis between tragedy and reason that offers the audience member an atheistic and yet irrational world-view. Because this tragedy/reason antithesis is so central to Barker’s vision of (theatrical) art I would like to explore this idea in relation to Greek rationalism, atheism and tragedy in order to interrogate the relationship between these two positions.

Two of the most influential theorists on contemporary conceptions of Greek tragedy are the philosophers Aristotle and Nietzsche. The level of this influence can be seen in Heiner Zimmermann’s article entitled ‘Howard Barker’s Appropriation of Classical Tragedy’ (1999). Zimmermann’s engagement with what constitutes Greek tragedy is almost exclusively based on the theoretical frameworks set out by these two philosophers. Zimmermann does not engage directly with Greek tragic plays in his comparison, which means that the model he compares Barker to is mostly dependant on these two constructions. Zimmermann also utilises Barker’s own theoretical model for how his tragedy functions, therefore accepting that the plays/productions achieve what Barker perceives them to achieve.56 The result of this is that the article primarily compares theoretical models of tragedy rather than two sets of tragic plays. However, this focus on ‘models’ of tragedy suits the particular focus of Zimmermann’s study, which is considering how Barker is appropriating tragedy by redefining the form through challenging dominant ideas of classical tragedy, notably, for Barker, Aristotle’s

56 _{This study has the advantage over Zimmermann of being undertaken after Barker has}

written a greater number of Theatre of Catastrophe tragedies and has also expanded his own theoretical explorations of (his) tragedy. Zimmermann’s article was published in 1999 so before Barker’s Death, The One and the Art of Theatre (2005). His reference to the second rather than the third edition of Arguments for a Theatre (1993 and 1997, respectively) would also suggest the final version of this text was not engaged with. Hated Nightfall is the most recent play referred to in this study (1994).

model of tragedy. In contrast to Zimmerman’s study this thesis will attempt to examine beyond these models, looking at religious and spiritual aspects of Greek tragedy and consider their relationship to Barker’s Theatre of Catastrophe.

Barker explicitly rejects Aristotle’s model in Arguments for a Theatre: ‘[Tragedy] asserts nothing in its own defence – not its therapeutic essences, its cathartic effects on social behaviour, nothing Aristotelian at all’ (Barker 1993, p. 113).57 In Death, The One and the Art of Theatre (2005) Barker suggests that Aristotle’s definition of Attic tragedy was unhelpfully informed by his rationalising and moralising philosophy:

Aristotle and tragedy – nothing too great that it cannot be annexed in the interests of social order …

Aristotle – forcing politics onto the supremely apolitical …

(Barker 2005, p. 68)

57 _{Although Barker rejects Aristotle’s view of social catharsis he previously describes the}

effects of tragedy as reducing instincts for social change: ‘theatre of the Enlightenment requires its teachers, those who will promote the false ideal that Theatre Changes the World. It never changed the world, of course, but at its best it complicated it, making action even less