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Beginners On Stage: Arendt, Natality and the Appearance of Children in Contemporary Performance

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2016

ADELE SENIOR
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Abstract

This paper examines the complex questions that arise around the appearance of children in contemporary performance. Drawing on performances by Nottingham-based theatre company Zoo Indigo and by Tim Etchells and the Flemish theatre company Victoria, I consider the extent to which Hannah Arendt's theorization of natality as ‘the new beginning inherent in birth’ that gives rise to the political potential to ‘begin something anew’ can help us to understand the ethico-political dimensions of children's appearance as natal, biological and relational beings in contemporary performance. In particular, I draw on feminist interpretations of Arendt's work to articulate the significance of the embodied aspects and ethical quality of children's relation to adult spectators and performers. I argue that these performances prompt a rethinking of the child's potential to generate political intervention, which moves beyond Arendt's gendered account of political agency in a public sphere from which children are excluded.

Type
Articles
Information
Theatre Research International , Volume 41 , Issue 1 , March 2016 , pp. 70 - 84
Copyright
Copyright © International Federation for Theatre Research 2016 

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References

NOTES

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5 Arendt, Hannah, The Human Condition (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1958)Google Scholar. The paper draws on the three meanings of natality that Diprose, Rosalyn and Ponowska, Ewa Ziarek identify in ‘Time for Beginners: Natality, Biopolitics, and Political Theology,’ philoSOPHIA, 3, 2 (2013), pp. 107–20, here pp. 110–11Google Scholar.

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7 Arendt, Hannah makes her position concerning children's status within the public arena more explicit in a later essay: ‘The Crisis of Education’, in Between Past and Future: Eight Exercises in Political Thought (New York: Viking Press, 1993; first published 1961), pp. 173–96Google Scholar.

8 Arendt, The Human Condition, pp. 198–9.

9 I refer predominantly to performances made for adults and multi-generational audiences that include children as performers (and sometimes collaborators) and that are presented in the context of live-art festivals or programmes of experimental work, as opposed to pantomimes, musicals or applied theatre.

10 Escolme, Bridget, ‘Authority, Empowerment and Fairy Tales: Theatre for Young People’, in Kelleher, Joe and Ridout, Nicholas, eds., Contemporary Theatres in Europe: A Critical Companion (New York: Routledge, 2006), pp. 163–74Google Scholar, here p. 164.

11 Arendt, Hannah, On Revolution (London: Penguin Books, 1990; first published 1963), p. 211Google Scholar.

12 Ibid.

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15 Rosie Garton and Ildiko Rippel, ‘Under the Covers’, www.zooindigo.co.uk/zoo-performance-3/under-the-covers, accessed 2 October 2015.

16 Zoo Indigo, ‘Under the Covers’, unpublished script, pp. 4, 1. Courtesy of Rosie Garton.

17 Ibid., p. 1.

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19 Stone, ‘Natality and Mortality’, pp. 355, 356.

20 Ibid.

21 Betz, ‘An Introduction to the Thought of Hannah Arendt’, p. 385.

22 Zoo Indigo, ‘Under the Covers’, p. 12.

23 Garton and Rippel, ‘Virtual Infants’, p. 2.

24 Diprose and Ziarek, ‘Time for Beginners’, p. 111.

25 Arendt, The Human Condition, p. 188.

26 Ibid., p. 198.

27 Judith Butler, ‘Bodies in Alliance and the Politics of the Street’, at www.eipcp.net/transversal/1011/butler/en, accessed 2 October 2015.

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29 Etchells, Tim, That Night Follows Day (Ghent: Carl Gydé, 2007), pp. 13, 21Google Scholar.

30 Tim Etchells, ‘Natural Is Not In It’, at www.timetchells.com/index.php?option=com_tag&tag=performance&limit=30&limitstart=90, accessed 2 October 2015.

31 Ibid.

32 Lupton, Julia, ‘Hannah Arendt's Renaissance: Remarks on Natality’, Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory, 7, 2 (2006), pp. 7–18Google Scholar, here pp. 11–12. Here Lupton is drawing on Viola Kolarov's argument that natality is employed by Arendt to govern the threat of the new that is posed by children. See Kolarov, , ‘Gems for Creatures: Care and Natality between Hannah Arendt and Shakespeare’, Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory, 7, 2 (2006), pp. 47–62Google Scholar.

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34 Terry O’Donovan, ‘That Night Follows Day’, at www.britishtheatreguide.info/reviews/thatnightfollows-rev, accessed 2 October 2015.

35 Etchells, That Night Follows Day, pp. 38, 16.

36 Arendt, The Human Condition, pp. 176–7.

37 Arendt, Between Past and Future, p. 186.

38 Etchells, That Night Follows Day, pp. 32, 15.

39 Ibid., pp. 35, 34.

40 Lupton, ‘Hannah Arendt's Renaissance’, p. 11.

41 Etchells, That Night Follows Day, p. 35.

42 Sarah Bloomer, ‘That Night Follows Day (Manchester)’, WhatsOnStage, 3 November 2013, at www.whatsonstage.com/manchester-theatre/reviews/11-2013/that-night-follows-day-manchester_32528.html, accessed September 2015.

43 Abrams, Joshua, ‘Effective Presents/Effective Presence: Intensity, Futurity, and the Theatrical Politics of the Child’, in Walsh, Fintan, ed. Performance, Identity and the Neo-Political Subject (London: Routledge, 2012), pp. 201–14, here p. 203Google Scholar.

44 For Jacques Derrida l’avenir means the unanticipated future ‘to come’ rather than a future that can be predicted and determined. See, for example, Derrida, Jacques, ‘Force of Law: The “Mystical Foundation of Authority”’, in Cornell, Drucilla, Rosenfeld, Michel and Carlson, David Gray, eds., Deconstruction and the Possibility of Justice (New York: Routledge, 1992), pp. 3–67Google Scholar, here p. 27.

45 Champlin, Jeffrey, ‘Born Again: Arendt's “Natality” as Figure and Concept’, Germanic Review: Literature, Culture, Theory, 88, 2 (2013), p. 151CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

46 Ibid., p. 150

47 Lyn Gardner, ‘Theatre for Adults Is Child's Play’, The Guardian, 27 October 2008, at www.theguardian.com/stage/theatreblog/2008/oct/27/children-teenagers-theatre, accessed 2 October 2015.

48 See Ridout, Nicholas, Passionate Amateurs: Theatre, Communism, and Love (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2013), p. 17Google Scholar.

49 Arendt, Between Past and Future, p. 209; Arendt, The Human Condition, p. 7.

50 Etchells, ‘Natural Is Not In It’, n.p.

51 Honig, Bonnie, Feminist Interpretations of Hannah Arendt (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University, 1995), p. 2Google Scholar.

52 Anon, ‘Comments’, in Gardner, ‘Theatre for Adults Is Child's Play’, n.p.

53 Abrams, ‘Effective Presents/Effective Presence’, p. 212. On exploitation see Ridout, Nicholas, Stage Fright, Animals and Other Theatrical Problems (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 98–100CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On risk and responsibility see Orozco, Lourdes, ‘“Never Work with Children and Animals”: Risk, Mistake and the Real in Performance’, Performance Research: A Journal of Performing Arts, 15, 2 (2010), pp. 80–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

54 Gardner, ‘Theatre for Adults Is Child's Play’, n.p.

55 Ridout, Nicholas, Theatre & Ethics (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), p. 70CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Diprose and Ziarek, ‘Time for Beginners’, p. 111.

56 Phelan, Peggy, ‘Marina Abramović: Witnessing Shadows’, Theatre Journal, 56, 4, (2004), p. 569–77, here p. 571CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

57 Arendt, The Human Condition, p. 246.