False Representability of the Living Present
Cinematic Representation of Theological Theater in Interruption
Yorgos Zois’ recent lm Interruption (2015) retells the ancient Greek mythology Oresteia with a different contemporary setting, in which actors and audience gather in a theater to finish the play together. Through coordination by the chorus member, who often interacts with performers and audience for their individual opinions on future plot development, the play progresses and seems promising of creative autonomy for itself that in the moment, it has infinite possibilities for its path and destination. Every individual situated in the diegetic theater witnesses the actions on stage carrying on with their consequence to the next scene in the same linear and immediate temporality, whereby the living present seems to be represented. As Jacques Derrida describes, such effect could typically be achieved on a theological stage (9), where the representations by individual agents are interconnected despite always being dominated by speech from a sovereign creator-author empowered with more knowledge. In the context of Interruption, it is the chorus member who is always verbally organizing and regulating the theatrical representation. Thus, audience in the theater may be convinced that the play they witness reflects a freely evolved discourse of the present they have lived in; but given more sight into the cinematic representation, spectators of the lm would be able to discern subtle transformations of the typical theatrical theology as mentioned above and realize the falsity for the play to represent the living present as the story will always move on in the planned way no matter what.
Throughout the rst three parts of the play, the chorus man is established both theatrically and cinematically as an ultimate enterprising authority who invites the participants to speak and leads them to act. In the prologue, he publicly asks the participants, audience that are willing to perform, to introduce themselves and poses personal questions to learn about or challenge them. No matter what the participants’ answers are or if they are offended by the question, the chorus man seems invariably peaceful and surpriseless in his reaction, typically ending with a smile and thanks to their voice on stage (Fig.1). His emotional composure and follow up enunciation every time after the participant’s response make him seem prepared in an informationally advantageous position that superiotizes him from the others, someone that is “armed with a text” (Derrida, 9). In fact, when the actor Lucas tries to prove his professionality by crying and being emotionally vulnerable, shot of the chorus man switches from recurrent tight medium shots centering him and magnifying his facial expressions to an extreme long shot, in which he is still on the center line of the frame but placed high enough to the very top that tends to embody the position for a god perspective in Greek mythology (Fig.2). Here, through lm form comes an interplay of the chorus man’s role as a detached authority in theatrical theology and the cinematic visualization of him off stage at a distant position higher than that of the representative on stage. As his authority in the narration gradually builds up, the present represented in the play becomes even more credible later when individuals can interact with the authoritative figure, talk freely about their opinions on the plot development and contribute to where the story will go next. In Part Three of the play, the chorus announces to let the participants discuss if Orestes should take vengeance on his mother for murdering his father nowadays, based on which Orestes will make his decision. By enabling unplanned improvisation to influence the direction after the planned part, the trajectory of the narrative becomes more organic thus more representative of the living present.
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However, as the play develops, agency and authority of the chorus member is visually revealed to be merely ostensible through subtle change in the mise-en-scène. Though by Part Three of the play, multiple interruptions and intermissions have taken place, the linearity of the theatrical and lmic narrative is not really disrupted until the chorus man decides to re-perform the ending of Part Three, where Clytemnestra is either to be killed by Orestes or not. He revisits the theatrical representation by re-concluding the individuals’ voices for an alternative decision out of their discussion. By deliberately restarting from a previous moment in the theatrical diegesis, the chorus man starts losing his authority to be an “author-creator” with creative sovereignty and a primary language for the represented text (Derrida, 9). In fact, if referring to the ancient mythology Oresteia, after all interruptions and adjustments, every plot development in this contemporary version is “imitative and reproductive” of its original text (Derrida, 9), as in both of them, Orestes hesitates to kill Clytemnestra at first but is eventually persuaded to do so after Pylades’ reminder (Oresteia Wikipedia). It is thus plausible to reevaluate the chorus man merely as an enslaved interpreter who creates nothing but “only transcribes and makes available for reading a text” (Derrida, 9). After the re-performance of Part Three, the cinematic language starts to portray the chorus man as more passive that he is visually presented darker, lower and blurry than before. Different from the first three parts, where the chorus’s face is always in focus, lit up and visually highlighted among the audience in tight medium shots (Fig.3), right before the intermission to Part Four, a long and blurry shot features him standing on stage (Fig.4), while the lights around him gradually turn off and fade to black eventually. Such difference in lighting and focus suggests a possible interpretation that the chorus is no longer in keen control of the theological stage, instead, he descends in his agency and authority to be an artisan who is obligated to reenact a predestined text on stage. Later, in the scene where Clytemnestra’s ghost comes back to wake up the Furies, the source of narration is still signaled by light, but this time, much higher than the chorus’ face, it comes above from the projection light. For the first time, the chorus man sits in the dark and watches the story perform itself (Fig.5). In stark contrast to the previous framing of his position on top of all, a long shot shows him walking near the bottom of the frame, below all the audience that have moved up to the second floor, and sitting down in the dark to be barely noticeable (Fig.6). Through framing him at a lower altitude, the subtle change in the inner structure of the theatrical theology-the chorus’ role from a sovereign authority to an executive-is visually reflected.
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It is cinematically revealed that the living present could only represent what it should, the individuals ostensibly shaping the course of the present in fact are only allowed to speak along with the predestined text. Throughout the lm, the stage is recurrently shown through close-up lens that only the foreground centering the microphone can be seen with clarity (Fig.7-9). In these shots, the individual participant, by volunteering to approach and stand right behind the microphone, could be visually distinguished from others in the background and heard by the audience, fabricating an illusion of attention to their particular identity and opinion. However, the cinematic language of the lm suggests that only those individual voices supporting the development of the story would be encouraged. In the trial for the murder of Clytemnestra, the first actor for Orestes comes to the front and commits his crime in attempt to end the performance and dispel the audience earlier then they should. Here, the individual voice being amplified appears to be dissenting from the represented text, thus both the microphone and the actor are displaced from the center of the frame and the stage in the next shot (Fig.10), revealing irrepresentability of the living present as only the ones that speak accordingly are really favored. Moreover, individual identity is assigned to enslaved representative(s) only to embody actions in the predestined text. Such emphasis on the verb rather than the noun is implied through the plot and cinematic language. The role of Orestes is at first delegated to the theater actor at the beginning of the play, then generalized to a blurry reference among the group of participants on stage when the chorus only tells that one of them is Orestes now but keeps describing the plot; shortly afterwards, Orestes’ action is represented by another individual, Lucas, again. Despite the change of representative(s) for the text, the action of the character is continuously implemented. Such logic is also visualized in a long, repetitive out-of-focus shot near the end of the lm: when the chorus man’s body is carried away, one person in vague human shape first emerges on the black screen (Fig.11), then a group following the same action is introduced in blurred focus (Fig.12); while they continue walking away, the audience’s vision is narrowed to another individual among them (Fig.13). Such pattern in the cinematography recurs in this scene that the identity is not specifically referred to but generally represented throughout the action. Like the chorus says to the actors and participants on stage: they are “nobody” but representatives with fluid identity to speak for the character they will be assigned; they “don’t need anyone” as there’s nothing particular of the person randomly delegated as representative of the text (Interruption, 2015). The boundary of identity is not rigid, but the action to be performed is.
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Therefore, through the cinematic language of Interruption, the improvisation on stage and individual agency as result are both revealed to be false; moreover, the chorus is later shown less as an authority in the theater that he is only allowed to execute the play. Any voice deviating from the predestined text or any attempt to disrupt the representation will not be tolerated. Thus, the present being represented is not decided by the ones it tries to engage with but the original mythology.
Works Cited
Interruption. (2015) Film. Directed by Yorgos Zois. [DVD] Greece: Pan Entertainment.
Derrida, J. (1978) The Theater of Cruelty and Closure of Representation. 9 (3): 6-19. US: Duke University Press.
Oresteia. (2018) Available from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oresteia. [Accessed:5th November 2018].
