The dictatorial power of screens

I used to study theatre, and I've been thinking for a long time about the use of screens on stage. Now I am studying communication and media, I realize how much it teaches us about the incredible power of screens in general. It's not something about the power of pictures, it's something else. Something I felt intuitively while watching these huge luminous surfaces, able to capture my attention without my knowing. Here is the much-touted power I was talking about.

I first noticed it when I was at Heiner Muller 's Quartett, staged by Matthias Langhoff in Paris. Although Muriel Mayette and François Chattot were brilliant, when pictures appeared on the screen, in a very pernicious way, my eyes were attracted to them like moths to a flame.

You can see the production I am talking about on the picture. There, maybe you would first look at the old car, the grass and the armchair, because they are very colourful. But this is a photograph. In reality, you would probably be more attracted by motion and light than colour. I first thought it was maybe something peculiar to my generation, raised in front of television sets, computers, mobile phones and so on. Now I think it is because of the nature of screens instead. Screens monopolise our attention, our thought. And as I began to become mistrustful towards this overweening power, I went to another show whose example seems particularly relevant to me.

It was Martin Crimp 's Attempts on her Life, staged by Joël Jouanneau. What was interesting was the fact that pictures on the screens were actually a live broadcast of the play, filmed while we were watching it. It created a disconcerting atmosphere, very disturbing. Moreover, the camera angles were not the same as the audience's viewing angle, which created a worrying strangeness (as Freud's Unheimliche). This is the moment I (and probably the rest of the audience with me) began to feel the oppressive nature of the power of screens. Then, it worsened. As a character was tortured on the stage, we saw an empty stage on the screens. As if it was a film taken by security cameras, but manipulated so nobody would ever know the truth. Spine-chilling.

Now I know why I love theatre so much. It opens our eyes. It helps us to distance ourselves enough from the world we are living it to understand it. On the contrary, screens snatch us.

This is precisely the limit of their power and the beginning of the power of theatre.

MM