draft potato piece with [] Phoenix Theatre June

π Performers A & B.
Title: the title is announced as follows,
The Potato piece with Brackets [ ] engaging with the word to make some other sense.

a performer A is speaking, with radio mike, seated in the auditorium imperceptible to the audience. The auditorium is darkn’d. The proscenium stage is floodlit lit centrally, emphasising attention for an audience on a ‘table’ and stool. The table has 3 largish potatoes evenly placed, balancing on the central hinged and slightly retracted folded top, elevating the potatoes. A microphone on a metal stand is adjacent to the stool.

A [ken]. voice “For what can remain over when the whole world is bracketed, including ourselves and all our thinking.”
Husserl.

Sequence 1.
performer B [jane] suddenly enters stage left. In profile moving frieze like upper torso flatt’nd to the audience – with even steps walking purposefully to centre stage. B. is holding both behind and in front two right angled metal brackets to the hip. B. stops then turning to align the body arms extended.

A. Voice, urging..... brackets!

stepping backwards, repositioning, lifting the brackets in line with either ear, bracketing the face.

A. Voice.... normal brackets

extending the left arm and swivelling.

A. Voice, seeking definition..... normalcy, that’s normal!

with back, facing the audience B purposefully places the brackets either side the apex of the table

A. Voice, determined..... common agreement, signs and rules, that’s normal.

B. turns poised for a second or two then sits inclined over the mike one heel upturned positioned, leg extended, knee relaxed

performer A immediately stands uttering the word “this’ just audible questioning moving through the audience to a central marker in the auditorium up to the stage and now facing the audience.

A. Voice, demonstrative/firm......... THIS!




Sequence 2.
B. Voice to microphone....... what! pause name it!

performer A extends and lifts the right hand. The left hand is glov’d, not visible. The right hand finds a line that is discernable from finger tip to wrist, through the arm to the elbow, then lifts gradually on count of 6, 7, 8, beat slightly up, upwards, then ¬¬– holding the line the finger suspends a beat.


A. repeatedly obsessively..................................... THIS!

performer A continues, the beat establish’d [6, 7, 8] this, [6, 7, 8], this 6, 7, 8, THIS! Stronger louder ss the hand arm finger in line continues to beat,

B. announcement. ‘Tanoy voice’ sounds like, can the owner of the blue car please remove it as it is blocking……. “Deconstruction is a challenge to the covert privileging of language by classical philosophy.”

A. pause........................ THIS, pause THIS,

B. “Deconstruction is not a defence of formlessness but a regulated overflowing of established boundaries.”

B. “the word ‘this’ has been called the only genuine name.


Sequence 3.

A. turns and steps up onto the stage, in one movement the left and glov’d hand emerges – firmly clasping a large potato, continuing the movement about turn, until positioned in profile to the auditorium the right hand draws a large carving knife. The potato is fixed to the point. The right arm lifts in line the hand finger to point at the potato.

A. Voice.........high staccato THIS !

B. Voice.........imperceptibly “before” “after”

A. Voice.........this THING!

A. Voice......... thisssssssssng thing

A. Voice................................................ this thissssing thing

A. in a gesture throwing the knife upwards the potato up and off the point of the knife; as the potato descends – cuts it clean into two pieces/ immediately,

LIGHTS darken

Sequence 4.
again immediately

LIGHTS up

B. takes a knife from the table surface, stands.

A/B Bow. A and B exit stage left.






Aims:
lifting off the ‘form’ of philosophy from the page into a sculptural and poetic dramatisation.

lifting the philosophical text off the page into a sculptural dramatisation.

A numbered series or sequence of performances forming an eventual live programme / that enters the real virtuality of the language itself – in the first instance as a sculptural and poetic articulation of the philosophical term DECONSTRUCTION – represented in the case of both Wittgenstein and Derrida, as the break/historically where ‘deconstruction’ is generated by an intense, sustained confrontation with philosophy. The recognition of Western Metaphysics in its earliest form established by Parmenides poem and the relation of thought to being / the relation of “words to things” the opposition between form and matter which inaugurates Metaphysics.

The historical present in dramatic form;

1. ‘Deconstruction’

Derrida describes the deconstructive standpoint as something like the lateral displacement of a method of writing, each moment of which is orientated toward the precise articulation of some moment of philosophical discourse, and which proceeds to veer away from philosophy while taking its bearings, in a disciplined and methodical fashion, from this articulation.

Deconstruction makes sense only in terms of the relation of the text of philosophy; treating the chain of philosophical works since Plato as “one great discourse” to be read and interpreted.

could it follow that extensive reading of the reference text is therefore required for an understanding of the ‘rules’ of deconstruction. How, we might ask then do we go about the business of asking the question –
What are the rules?


Wittgenstein is SO concerned to pay little attention to the history of philosophy – he wants to be self engendered so to speak. Wittgenstein’s own practice in the ‘normalcy’ of language points to the necessity of establishing communal agreement as to how we understand signs and rules.

It was in an extensive reading of Husserl that Derrida worked out the foundations of his own practice
Husserl considered his phenomenology to be something like the fulfilment or culmination of the history of philosophy.

2. Bracketing
‘Husserl’s Natural consciousness Reduction’

3. The illusion embodied in the idea of “This” “intelligible form” “to the sensible thing”
‘This thisssing thing’ the potato piece with brackets. The compulsion which primarily philosophical problems exercise over us, in the form of lyric poetry – satirical, figurative ‘ war of language’ real thought, active forgetfulness.


jane whitaker.