Hypertheatre or Media Entanglement in the Theatre of Jay Scheib

Abstract

Abstract The theatre of Jay Scheib blends theatrical and filmic features, allowing for a theoretical investigation of the manner in which two different media coexist on the same expressive support. How can two distinct media like film and theatre fuse and, at the same time, be apprehended as separate artistic means in a single artifact? The present article uses a theoretical interpretive metaphor that rests on an application of the mechanisms of relationship between two physical systems issued from the quantum mechanical view of reality. From this perspective, the two afore-mentioned media are in an entangled state. Media is understood as “potential materials or forms for future practices,” or “automatisms” (Rodowick 2007, 42). At the same time, theatrical or cinematic media is apprehended by the audience in a dynamic way, not defined as a static bundle of defining features. Dynamic conceptualization will modulate or “tune” the comprehension of one of the media considered to be a subordinate system in the duplex. The blending of the two media presupposes a local conceptualization unfolding dynamically and an entangled one manifested nonlocal. The distinction between film and theatre is also to be seen as a difference in the cognitive model which posits a detached display (a screen/a scene), an imaginary world (a diegesis) and a spectator (observer). In theatre, the body of the observer is inside the theatrical display setting, while in film, the body of the viewer is conceptualized to be separated from the cinematic display. The notion of threshold, introduced by Dudley Andrew (2010), renders this shift of attention from one side of the display to the other.