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The Invisible Stage Hand; or, Henrik Ibsen's Theatre of Capital
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 July 2018
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“Theatre is not political action. Political action happens in the streets.” This is how the German director Thomas Ostermeier addressed the audience in a recent conversation with Branden Jacobs-Jenkins at the Brooklyn Academy of Arts. All theatre can do is make us realize the “lies we tell ourselves.” Thomas Ostermeier made a name for himself staging the socially conscious dramas of Sarah Kane and Mark Ravenhill. After becoming the artistic director of Berlin's Schaubühne, Ostermeier turned to Henrik Ibsen because he thought that Ibsen's bourgeois world would appeal to the patrons of the Schaubühne: “Characters in Ibsen constantly worry about money.” Perhaps, this is also the reason behind Ostermeier's desire to bring his production of Ibsen's An Enemy of the People, adapted into English by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, to the patrons of Broadway in the fall of 2018. It's a Trojan Horse. Get the haves into the theatre and make them see their own complicity in perpetuating the injustices of capitalism. Ostermeier's version of An Enemy of the People breaks the fourth wall during the play's town hall meeting and invites the audience to share their thoughts about capitalism and democracy. Ultimately, this audience participation reveals the anxiety that theatre might simply be a distraction.
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References
Endnotes
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Adam Smith's “invisible hand” has at once become a powerful scare quote in its own right, and has a possible origin in Macbeth. Smith's suggestive figure conjures a supernatural index at the heart of a rationalized economy, pointing the way to, controlling, or grasping the wealth of nations. That the phrase so often appears outside its context is also germane to this study; as slogan, the scare tactic inherent in “the invisible hand” goes unexamined. The success of the phrase relies on its not being subject to examination; it is not part of a syllogism, but an article of economic faith. Indeed, the phrase discourages examination. It demarcates an area where investigation must necessarily encounter a dead end: the hand promises the faithful that the series of effects called the economy has an organizing force at its core, but at the same time warns that this force will never be seen. In the work of editorialists and speech writers, the “invisible hand” is then the perfect quotation of the kind Debord has in mind. The phrase alludes to an authoritative concept, but the phrase figures the concept in such a way that challenging it is impossible. If one illuminates the hand, it is no longer “invisible,” no longer the object one hoped to investigate. The phantom heart of the economy is unrepresentable. (14–15)
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55. Henrik Ibsen, John Gabriel Borkman (København: Gyldendalske Boghandels Forlag [F. Hegel & Søn], 1896). Subsequent citations are given parenthetically in the text.
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