Composed Theatre: Mapping the Field

Matthias Rebstock

Symptoms of Composed Theatre

In what follows, the question 'what is meant by the term "Composed Theatre"' will be addressed by taking a historical approach, looking for its traces and forerunners. The assumption is that, since the sixties, a field of artistic practice has arisen that is situated between the more classical conceptions – and institutions – of music, theatre and dance, and that is highly characterised and unified by making use of compositional strategies and techniques and, in a broader sense, by the application of compositional thinking. As a first step, this field can be exemplified by some of the main figures working in it and developing it: composers like Heiner Goebbels, Georges Aperghis, Manos Tsangaris, Carola Bauckholt, Daniel Ott, Robert Ashley or Meredith Monk; theatre directors like Robert Wilson, Christoph Marthaler or Ruedi Häusermann; in dance, part of the work of Xavier le Roy, William Forsythe and Sasha Waltz, ensembles and theatre-collectives such as Theater der Klänge in Düsseldorf, Die Maulwerker and the LOSE COMBO both in Berlin, Cryptic in Glasgow or the Post-Operativ Productions in Sussex; most of them having some roots in the work of composers such as John Cage, Mauricio Kagel, Dieter Schnebel or in the Fluxus movement.

By introducing the term 'Composed Theatre', the aim is to focus on this – necessarily non-homogeneous – field because within it, artistic processes are currently moving forward in a way that gain momentum from mutual influence and exchange of practices and positions, and that this, so far, has not been taken into account by academic research, which usually still focusses only on aspects, questions or positions relevant to the particular discipline of the researcher. But as Composed Theatre is something that may be said to exist between art forms, so an interdisciplinary approach is required to describe and account for it. This being in between not only has consequences for academic purposes but also for the educational system. If it is true that contemporary theatre and performance in general – not just within Composed Theatre – challenges the separation of the art forms that had taken place in the second half of the eighteenth century, somehow recalling or bringing forward an integrated concept of theatre, then this should also lead to changes in an educational system in which interdisciplinary courses are still very rare. I will return to this problem towards the end of this chapter.

But let us first go back to what is meant by the term 'Composed Theatre'. In the discussions during the two conferences on "Processes of Devising Composed Theatre" from which this book has emerged, it quickly became clear that the term 'Komposition' in German is very strongly linked to the field of music. 'Komposition' in German usually means musical composition. In English, however, it means something being put together in a much broader sense, which is not per se linked to music at all. So obviously the concept of Composed Theatre needs some clarification here, because if 'composition' or being 'composed' was to be taken in the broad sense – as the Latin origin 'componere' (= 'place together') suggests – Composed Theatre would cease to mean anything precise at all, as theatre in this sense is always composed. So a first important specification is that the term has to be taken in its musical sense. That means, if the field of interest is characterised by the use of compositional strategies and techniques, these strategies, techniques and ways of thinking are typical of musical composition and, moreover, are applied no longer just to musical material but to such extra-musical materials as movement, speech, actions, lighting or whatever you have in the realm of theatre.

A second characteristic or symptom of Composed Theatre consists in the aesthetic conviction of the independence and absence of hierarchy among the elements of theatre or, to put it another way, in the conviction that in principle no element should so dominate that the others would be reduced to illustrating, underpinning or reinforcing the first. Georges Aperghis makes this very clear when saying:

The visual elements should not be allowed to reinforce or emphasise the music, and the music should not be allowed to underline the narrative. Things must complement themselves; they must have different natures. This is an important rule for me: never say the same thing twice [...]. Another thing has to emerge that is neither one nor the other; it is something new.

(Aperghis 2001)

Similar statements could be found from most of the artists within the field. Interestingly enough, there is a certain latent tension between this first conviction – which implies that each element is not only treated with equal rights but also accorded its own rules and...