Voices of Spectators and Audience Power
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Christian Biet
Christian Biet is Professor of performing arts, theatrical and drama aesthetics, and French studies at the University of Paris X-Nanterre, and at the Institut Universitaire de France. He is Permanent Visiting Professor to NYU. He has published several articles and books on these topics. In France, he works as a dramaturgist, with directors and actors. Professor Biet is the author of numerous books on French theater, including
Droit et Littérature sous l'ancien régime (2002),Histoire du spectacle militant: Théâtre et cinéma militants 1966–1981 (2007),Théâtre français du XVIIe siècle (2009). He is also co-editor ofCommunications, No. 92: Performance: Le corps exposé (2013).
Abstract
Theatre and law are not so different. Generally, researchers work on the art of theatre, the rhetoric of the actors, or the dramaturgy built from law cases or from the questions that the law does not completely resolve. Trials, tragedies, even comedies are close: everybody can see the interpenetration of them on stage and in the courts. We know that, and we know that the dramas are made with/from/of law, we know that the art the actors are developing is not so far from the art of the lawyers, and conversely. In this paper, I would like to have a look at the action of the audience, at the session itself and at the way the spectators are here to evaluate and judge not only the dramatic action, not only the art of the actors, not only the text of the author, but also the other spectators, and themselves too. In particular, I will focus on the “common judgment” of the audience and on its judicial, aesthetic and social relationship. The spectators have been undisciplined, noisy, unruled, during such a long period that theatre still retains some prints of this behaviour, even if nowadays, the social and aesthetic rule is to be silent. But uncertainty, inattention, distraction, contradiction, heterogeneity are the notions which characterise the session, and the judgments of the spectators still depend on them. So, what was and what is the voice of the audience? And with what sort of voice do spectators give their judgments?
About the author
Christian Biet is Professor of performing arts, theatrical and drama aesthetics, and French studies at the University of Paris X-Nanterre, and at the Institut Universitaire de France. He is Permanent Visiting Professor to NYU. He has published several articles and books on these topics. In France, he works as a dramaturgist, with directors and actors. Professor Biet is the author of numerous books on French theater, including Droit et Littérature sous l'ancien régime (2002), Histoire du spectacle militant: Théâtre et cinéma militants 1966–1981 (2007), Théâtre français du XVIIe siècle (2009). He is also co-editor of Communications, No. 92: Performance: Le corps exposé (2013).
©2015 by De Gruyter
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Focus
- Focus: Voices of Power/Power of Voices
- Voices of Spectators and Audience Power
- “There Were No Longer Any Laws”: Voices of Authority, Complicity, and Resistance in Totalitarian Dystopias and Holocaust Imaginings
- Caesar’s Body in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar: Sacralization and De-sacralization of Power
- Legal Oracularism and Theological Prophetism. Fleshly Silences Across Memories and Traditions
- “What Is Royalty Without a Voice?” The Performance of Power in The King’s Speech
- Is There Voice Without Law? On The Road
- Voice, Incarnation and the United States Supreme Court
- Disputes and the Differend: Literary Strategies to Say the Unspeakable
- The Working Class Goes to the Movies: Labour Law and Thatcherism in British Films
- War in Words: The Tricycle Theatre’s Re-voicing of the Bloody Sunday Inquiry
- Research
- Legal Systemology and the Geopolitics of Roman Law: A Response to Stuart Elden’s Critique of Carl Schmitt’s Spatial Ontology
- Speech and Graphomena: The Power of Apuleius’ Words in Court and in Translation
- Book Review
- Mireille Hildebrandt and Jeanne Gaakeer: Human Law and Computer Law: Comparative Perspectives
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Focus
- Focus: Voices of Power/Power of Voices
- Voices of Spectators and Audience Power
- “There Were No Longer Any Laws”: Voices of Authority, Complicity, and Resistance in Totalitarian Dystopias and Holocaust Imaginings
- Caesar’s Body in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar: Sacralization and De-sacralization of Power
- Legal Oracularism and Theological Prophetism. Fleshly Silences Across Memories and Traditions
- “What Is Royalty Without a Voice?” The Performance of Power in The King’s Speech
- Is There Voice Without Law? On The Road
- Voice, Incarnation and the United States Supreme Court
- Disputes and the Differend: Literary Strategies to Say the Unspeakable
- The Working Class Goes to the Movies: Labour Law and Thatcherism in British Films
- War in Words: The Tricycle Theatre’s Re-voicing of the Bloody Sunday Inquiry
- Research
- Legal Systemology and the Geopolitics of Roman Law: A Response to Stuart Elden’s Critique of Carl Schmitt’s Spatial Ontology
- Speech and Graphomena: The Power of Apuleius’ Words in Court and in Translation
- Book Review
- Mireille Hildebrandt and Jeanne Gaakeer: Human Law and Computer Law: Comparative Perspectives
