School of Culture and Communication - Research Publications

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Bloody Roman narratives: gladiators, 'fatal charades' and Senecan Theatre

MONAGHAN, PAUL ( 2003)

In an interview not long before his death in 1995, East German playwright Heiner Müller predicted that the theatrical medium would soon be faced with an important decision. Provoked by the fact that one of his plays, Mauser, in which a character is executed, had been performed in a penitentiary by murderers awaiting the death penalty, Müller asked what it would mean for theatre if some one were to be really killed in a performance? A borderline would have been crossed and the medium would face a crisis: There will be gladiator games again in the not too distant future. There will be performances where people will be actually killed. There is already an indication of this in television, everything is moving in that direction: reality TV. What will that mean for the theatre? Will the theatre become part of it, will it be integrated or will it find another route and remain symbolic? That is the essential question (in Weber, 2001: 228).This paper seeks to ask a question: if it is the case that the audience of mainstream entertainment are showing an overwhelming preference for ‘reality television’ over fiction as represented in film and theatre, then what can we learn from history when the line between staged actual pain and staged fictional pain became blurred?