Theatre photography and voyeurism - research for assignment 2

After reading the entitled 'The subject as an object: photography and the human body' in 'Photography: A Critical Introduction, Liz Wells. I was interested to note the discussion on voyeurism in photography, where a Freudian approach considers the spectator's experience of visual pleasure, usually understood as an erotic pleasure gained in looking at another person or at images of other bodies. This pleasure is voyeuristic when it is dependent on the subject of the gaze being unaware, not looking back. To some extent photography, by the very nature of the medium, invites voyeuristic looking. (Sontag 1977: 11-14).

This then, suggests that voyeurism is only considered to be voyeurism when the gaze relates to the subjects being viewed in relation to eroticism. During my research for my next assignment, I came across a conflicting view:

David Greg, British Playwright, whose award winning work has been commissioned by, among others, the Royal Shakespeare Company, the National Theatre of Scotland to name but a few. Greg creates works of extreme visual beauty and emotional directness in lyrical soundscapes. In an interview in June 2010, he discusses the themes of politics and national identities, language, music, and experimental forms; directors, directing, and adaptations; and watching bodies on stage. Grieg believes that theatre is a form of voyeurism, 'a consensual exchange' to 'look at people and watch how they behave'. In his work, the  act of watching thus acquires a new role surpassing the simple function of pleasure, and enabling the viewer to engage further with the theatre's mediation to comment, justify, explain, and promote a better understanding of the complexities of human nature - voyeurism in theatre being re-read as a new freedom of the gaze. Research article: 'I let the language lead the dance': Politics, Musicality, and Voyeurism, David Greig in conversation with George Rodosthenous.

With the discussion of voyeurism being from erotic in nature, Grieg's opinions differ with quite a contrasting approach, that voyeurism is something not erotic (although not discounting this is what most would think and what is historically the background), but a 'consensual exchange' suggesting that in theatre, the viewers are there to view the performers with the performers in full knowledge of this, in fact by the very nature of theatre, the performers objective is to be viewed, listened to with an overall objective of enjoyment, but not always in the same way Freud suggested. There is also the commonly enjoyed pastime known as 'people watching' enjoyed by many, although this isn't the 'consensual exchange' one enters into when at the theatre, still an activity of the gaze as an activity that results in general enjoyment based on curiosity.

For my next assignment, I intend to take photographs at a theatre production, one where the audience take an 'interactive' role, where they are part of the stage and move about freely to watch the performers in close proximity during the production. I will be particularly interested in assessing the gaze of those watching the performance.