Dramaturgy

About Dramaturgy by José Capela

Drama

Even though it's composed by a series of narratives, or a serial narrative, the performance establishes on the first place a situation. A man inhabits a room with the ease of one who inhabits his own home. He acts in a rhythm without eloquence: neither exciting nor contemplativea - a rhythm that is not the one of the eficiency of the performance. He fulfills tasks. But not the ones usual in a domestic routine. The domestic objects in the room (a table, a bathtub, a mirror...) are used to create several suicide scenes; scenes in which he places himself, aiming to shoot his image with a camera. He acts as if he was in a studio. The "naturality" of his actions serves a purpose as artificial as the consecutive scenic assembling of his own death. Hardly a suicide portrayal could be more artificial and, therefore, more de-afected. The theatrical resources are reduced to their most schematic and less believable condition. Only from this assumption can one establish an emotional relationship with the performance. Beyond that which regards the metaphor around the authorship: that is the situation set up by the performance.