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How to Revive a Myth
Lisbet Grandjean
(Copenhagen)
Documentation et Art de
l'Acteur
Records and Images of the Art of the Performer
18ème Congrès
International, Stockholm 3-7 septembre 1990 / 18th
International Congress, Stockholm 3-7 September 1990
Editor: Barbro Stribolt (Drottningholms Teatermuseum).
Stockholm : 1992, p. 93-94
One day in the last
century the Danish poet Herman Bang (1857-1912) met the
French painter Claude Monet (1857-1926) at a
boarding-house in Norway. At that time Monet's picture,
named Impression. Soleil levant had just attracted
attention. During their stay Monet told Herman Bang of
the artists of the new direction, Impressionism, which
derived its name from the above-mentioned picture. Monet
described the very nature of this direction.
"I can't, like other painters," Monet said,
"only paint a house, a tree or a bridge. For me it
is essential to describe the light, which is so important
for the right perception of the house, the tree or the
bridge. But to paint the effect of light is tantamount to
painting the impossible."
As impossible as it may have appeared to Monet to paint a
moment's light effect on a given landscape, just as
impossible it seems to me to recall a vivid
interpretation of the rôles of an actor long since dead.
For what is left for posterity when the curtain comes
down after an evening's performance seems only to be dead
material such as photos, drawings, costumes and verbal
descriptions - and an impression perpetuated in the mind
of the spectator. And how to visualize an impression?
That was the question for Monet. This is also the
question for a theatre museum, whenever it decides to
mount an exhibition about prominent actors of the past.
For what is a museum for Performing Art but a house where
you try to keep impressions from theatrical performances
by means of physical things. And how can you put this
second-hand material together in such a way that it gives
an impression of a performer's art?
Many times the Theatre Museum in Copenhagen has asked
itself that question, most recently in the autumn of 1989
when we were planning a commemorative exhibition about
the Danish actress Bodil Ipsen on the occasion of the
centenary of her birth.
We knew that people who had seen Bodil Ipsen appear on
the stage were convinced that they retained a vivid
recollection of the way she acted (she died in 1964). But
was this recollection due to reliable memories or a myth?
Would it be possible for the museum to give a true
picture of Bodil Ipsen's art in such a way that we
intensified the memories among those who could still
remember her, and created a clear picture in the minds of
those who had never seen her? And if the existing
memories were more myths than real memories, what would
happen if we pushed the myth aside?
These were the questions we had to answer before we
started to build up the exhibition. And on second
thoughts the whole project seemed doomed to failure
because all the information we collected about the
actress asked for visibility. And how were we to create
visibility out of paper material? Her fluttering,
expressive gestures we couldn't reproduce; the way she
carried herself on the stage, we couldn't reproduce; the
simple way in which she acted, we couldn't reproduce.
But suddenly we found one single thing that everyone
associated with Bodil Ipsen and which we could reproduce
- her voice. Her indescribable voice. And a peculiar
presentiment told us that if we used the voice in the
right way, it would probably turn out to be the key to
all our hopes. For whenever we mentioned Bodil Ipsen's
voice to people who had seen her, many associations were
recalled. If we could link Bodil Ipsen's voice to
pictures from her many, varied roles, we were sure that
we could conjure up an image of the unforgettable moments
she had given her spectators.
First of all the museum got a tape recorder unit at which
several persons at a time could listen to Bodil Ipsen's
voice. To this unit we transmitted recordings from her
most characteristic rôles. Very close to the unit we
placed a lifelike and sensitive bust of the actress. Our
visitors were exposed to this audio-visual impression at
the very beginning as they entered the exhibition. The
effect was amazing.
Long before people reached the exhibition itself, we
noted that the actress had come alive for them, and it is
my firm opinion that they didn't see the rest of the
exhibition the way it really was - an exhibition merely
consisting of paper: photos and drawings representing the
whole artistic life of the actress. Or almost paper. For
in addition to the paper material, we had borrowed from
the Royal Theatre three costumes of Bodil Ipsen's:
Elmire's from Molière's Tartuffe, Diktatorinden's
from the Danish writer Kaj Munk's play of the same name,
and Queen Elisabeth's from Schiller's Maria Stuart.
The following episode tells us with what intensity some
of our visitors relived Bodil Ipsen.
With Queen Elisabeth's costume Bodil Ipsen wore a big,
imaginative red wig. That wig the museum didn't exhibit.
I don't think it exists any more. Nevertheless several of
the visitors at the museum vigorously asserted that they
had seen the wig, placed floating over the costume. This
incident convinced me of the fact that one single memory
handed down to posterity had hypnotized our visitors into
believing that Bodil Ipsen had come alive: the voice in
connection with the mounted costumes.
In that way I think theatre museums have the possibility
to revive what has been dead a long time. Impressions of
sound and light are very helpful media when you wish to
refresh people's memories. But the above-mentioned method
does not make it possible in a direct way to recall an
artist's body language. Which means that it does not help
the researcher, who wants to explore an actor's style.
But while trying to evoke strong memory-pictures, you
could probably ask people for information, which you
would not be able to read from photos.
Nowadays documentation on videotapes gives the researcher
great possibilities of exploring the performer's art, and
our generation, thanks to these living pictures, will be
able to hand down to posterity a better understanding of
the performing art in the twentieth century than we can
ever get of the past.
Today we have not developed the right way to reach an
objective reproduction of a performance on videotape. But
that won't last long. By then we at the theatre museums
won't have to ask ourselves whether we are reviving a
myth or not. We can give our visitors a true impression
of the art of the performer.
18th Congress
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