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by Alexander Gedeon

In the dark acting-theory classroom, illuminated only by the light of the television screen, I encountered the sublime. It was the springtime of my sophomore year at the Arts High School. The class watched the videotape, hypnotized and jaws agape, as sheer magic generated from the divine child on Earth, Fando.

"You know how they always told us in acting class," asked my older friend Solomon, "that you shouldn't try to play a child character seriously, because after puberty you've lost that fundamental innocence that is intrinsic in the nature of a child?" Solomon had witnessed, in person, the performance that would stay etched in my memory for the rest of my life, and he spoke with an intense, controlled focus, hands on the steering wheel, never looking away from the road.

"Uh-huh," I replied.

"Well," he hesitated, then spoke very deliberately, "Jesse Perez threw that rule out the window. The audience was watching in horror as this giant, six-foot tall child, completely uncontrollable and innocent-and, at the same time, as terrifying as the devil himself-utterly dominated the stage as Fando, totally captivating the audience."

We were watching the art school's production of Fernando Arrabal's surrealistic play, Fando and Lis, presented in May of 1996 (a year before I matriculated), documented on videotape, and subsequently shown to younger students by the instructors as the heralded paragon of student performance. The lead actor, Jesse Perez, possessed a power and presence on stage that I had never encountered in my life. The mere witnessing of his performance, on video, completely changed the course that my life would take-inspiring me, in the strongest sense of the word.

"Jesse Perez," Mr. Davies once remarked to me-almost a year after his student had graduated, "was a god." My acting teacher was meditatively smoking a cigarette, eyes fixed on the horizon. Now, Mr. Davies knew that the eighteen year-old actor was not an actual god-a Zeus hanging above the Arts High campus, with lightning bolt in-hand. Mr. Davies understood thoroughly well that Jesse was only a mere mortal, and nothing more. So why, then, was my acting teacher so moved to call Jesse Perez a god?

I dwell on this remark because, in it, there is an element of truth. I do not mean to imply that the young actor in question was a god, in any respect. However, there existed in Mr. Perez's performance on that evening in May of 1996, something divine; something sublime. I might better be able to pinpoint the nature of this sublimity by returning to the text of philosopher Immanuel Kant's "Analytic of the Sublime," an essay in which the author audaciously attempts to characterize the "absolutely great, . . . that which is great beyond all comparison" (86). The sublime is that which the mere witnessing of is an experience inand of itself. It is that which leaves our mouths agape, that which evokes terror and awe, that which is captivating. Most important, that which, simply by its magnitude, makes us feel insignificant. Kant gives some examples:

Bold, overhanging, and as it were threatening rocks; clouds piling up in the sky, moving with lightning flashes and thunder peals; volcanoes in all their violence and destruction . . . and such like-these exhibit our faculty of resistance as insignificantly small in comparison with their might. But the sight of them is more attractive, the more fearful it is. (100)

Let it not be overlooked that there is a purpose in all of these sublime phenomena; they do not exist simply to scare us out of our wits and laugh brutally as we wet our own pants in trepidation. Rather, these natural phenomena "produce in us a purposiveness independent to nature" (84), or, a supernatural purpose in our lives. The phenomena, you'll recall, are immeasurable in their magnitude, and cannot be comprehended by our rational faculties. Thus, in confrontation with the phenomena, we catch a glimpse of that which has the sense of being infinite, and the quality of "boundlessness" (82).

Yet, the concept of the infinite, Kant explains, is not concretely comprehensible, and will not fit within the realms of logic. Thus, when we encounter the sublime, it "excites in us a sense of supersensible faculty . . . merely by thinking about it, we surpass sense" (89-90). Though it is difficult for us to reason with the essencewe encounter in the sublime, we get off on this failure of comprehension. An "emotional satisfaction is produced" in the collapse of our reasoning; it excites us to have our senses broken down, because it reminds us of "our own supersensible destination" (91). This transcendence of our own faculties to the infinite and timeless is what Kant calls "negative pleasure" (83), a particular sort of bittersweet experience-painfully bitter and infinitely sweet. I am most struck by Kant's claim that the dynamically sublime could never be the product of man, that the aspirations of architects to create a 'sublime' edifice are futile (90), that the "infinite" and the "boundlessness" of the sublime rest outside of man's rational powers, and can only be understood by man through the collapse of such reason. The sublime, according to Kant, is "a state of mind" (103) triggered by man's fearful confrontation with the "absolutely great" in nature. Therefore, the object or phenomena triggering such a response is the vessel through which that universal, infinite essence (named "God," some religions might argue) reveals itself to man, and thus is, for a quick moment, apprehended by man.

What bothers me about this equation is its lack of reciprocity. For it is clear that, in the realm of artistic expression, another sort of sublimity exists, that in which man, himself, is the vessel through which the infinite and boundless essence can pass. This is not to say that the artists themselves take on this sublime quality (though many will attribute the divine expression to the persona of the artist, not recognizing the greater forces behind him). This concept of the artist being a "vessel" or a "channel" for some greater essence has been addressed before. In his book, Conversations with Igor Stravinsky, the composer-considered by many to have been the most important of the 20th century-remarked on his creative process for "Le Sacre du Printemps" (tr. "The Rite of Spring") that he "was the vessel through which 'Le Sacre' passed"' (55), as if the essence of the composition had come from somethingoutside of the composer's realm. At the Parisian debut of the ballet (centered on the theme of an ancient Russian pagan ritual), the music was so powerful, ground-breaking, and intensely charged, that the audience rioted violently both in support and in protest of Stravinsky's work. It is quite possible that the composer had, indeed, been the vessel for something superhuman.

A similar sort of vessel-dynamic is mentioned by Modern dancer Martha Graham. Writing in a letter to Agnes DeMille, Graham addresses the nature of artistic expression as such:

There is vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and be lost. . . . It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. (7)

I submit, in this discussion, that the "life force" that is "translated through" the artist is made up of the same stuff as the "sublime." And to limit the scope of this discussion (for clarity's sake), we will focus on the dynamics of this sublimity, this elusive "life force," in the theatre-the realm most personally known to me.

Earlier, I included the reference to Jesse Perez's performance because it seemed to meet many of Immanuel Kant's prerequisites for sublimity. Granted, I don't believe that every viewer of the Fando and Lis performance video would hold Perez's performance in such high esteem. Within the realm of the Arts High School theatre department, however, the thing was undisputedly, "absolutely great." Anyone, I maintain, who had undergone a year of strenuous acting training at the school, could not have viewed the performance without recognizing its sublimity. The average acting student undergoes endless hours of technical training in the crafts of speaking, speech, movement and scene-work, frequently yielding results that look accordingly:technical, stale, and devoid of vitality. Yet, Jesse Perez created a student performance that not only went beyond this training, it seemed to transcend the stage and reality altogether.

It could be argued that the basic element of the theatre which gives it this potential to reside within the realm of the sublime is the concept of the emotional catharsis. This idea was first written about some 2300 years ago by Aristotle, in his Poetics-the first and fundamental text of theatre theory. The concept of the catharsis rests within Aristotle's proposed definition of tragedy: "Tragedy, then, is an imitation of an action that is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude . . . in the form of action, not of narrative; through pity and fear effecting the proper purgation of these emotions" (61). In other words, during the development of a play's action, the audience experiences a growing empathy for the protagonist, and at the climax of the conflict, the audience's emotions of pity and fear are purged. "The action," comments theatre historian Jack Watson, "has magnitude because it has been developed to the point that the universal significance of the action is evident" (22). All of the emotions of the audience, then, are borne of empathy; the audience has participated directly in the emotional life generated by the protagonist. The audience experiences an emotional pain (i.e. pity and fear), but this is an essentially "pleasurable" experience.

We see within this dynamic the same dichotomy of pain and pleasure found in Kant's concept of the "sublime." Here, Aristotle speaks on the nature of imitation:

Objects which in themselves we view with pain, we delight to contemplate when reproduced with minute fidelity. . . . The cause of this again is that to learn gives the liveliest pleasure. . . . Thus the reason why men enjoy seeing a likeness is that in contemplating it they find themselves learning or inferring. (55-56)

The audience has a safe margin of distance from the spectacle-the "pain" is not real enough to be dangerous. This element of safety is also an essential ingredient in Kant's recipe for the sublime. Recall, if you will, the natural phenomena (threatening rocks, lightning, volcanoes) delineated by Kant as sublime: "The sight of them is more attractive, the more fearful it is, provided only that we are in security" (100). It is important that the sublime be held at a safe arm's length, for it is not the experience with the phenomenon that enlightens us, but rather the perception of what the sublime thing represents.

Now, if we dig a bit deeper, we find that the cathartic act has its roots in the ancient ritual worship of the Greek god Dionysus. Historical evidence suggests that these rituals were based entirely on the goal of emotional ecstasy. The female worshippers, known as the Bacchae, began these practices at least 17,000 years ago (Watson 15). According to dramaturge and theatre historian Larry Oliver, the Bacchae traveled into the Grecian hills at night, intoxicating themselves with an indigenous, hallucinogenic plant. They then began the celebration in honor of Dionysus: fervent dancing and singing which grew to a climax, until it was believed that the god had actually infused his spirit into a designated livestock animal. The women would then commence to eat the unlucky sheep or goat, alive (Gr. sporagmos omphagaia), and subsequently become possessed by Dionysus himself. Finally, they achieved a climactic state, called "ecstasis," the term from which we derive the word "ecstasy." Thus, the cathartic act, at least in its origins, involved the possession of a human participant by a supernatural force.

From an analytical standpoint, we might say that this possession is a form of imitation; an imitation by the human of the qualities presumed to be possessed by the god. Aristotle writes:

The instinct of imitation is implanted in man from childhood, one difference between him and other animals being that he is the most imitative of living creatures, and through imitation learns his earliest lessons; and no less universal in the pleasure felt in things imitated. (55)

This act, formally known as "mimesis," is the basis for stage acting in all of its forms. At the root of the act of acting are the elements of catharsis, ecstasy, possession by gods, and transcendence. It is precisely these divine elements that allow acting, mimesis, and theatrical perforrmance to be sublime. In this sense, Mr. Davies was correct: Jesse Perez was "a god." In giving himself over completely to the performance and to the spectators, he transcended himself, left his mortal body behind, and began canalizing "the life force." And, insofar as Immanuel Kant is concerned, I know for certain that at least my sense of a "supersensible destination" was stimulated by Jesse's performance. This performance will forever be etched in my memory, and it has inspired my life to where it is now, and where I want it to be. And for all of this, I cannot give thanks to the actor himself for his talent, his brilliance, or his acting insight; but I can thank him, as Martha Graham says, for "keeping the channel open."

Works Cited

Aristotle. Aristotle's Poetics. Trans. Francis Ferguson. New York: Hill & Wang, 1961.

Graham, Marthat. The Notebooks of Martha Graham. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1973.

Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Judgment. Trans. J.H. Bernard. New York: Hapfner Press, 1951.

Oliver, Larry. "Literature and Criticism: Ancient Greek Theatre." Los Angeles County High School for the Arts (at the California State University, Los Angeles). Los Angeles. September-December 1996.

Stravinsky, Igor. Conversations with Igor Stravinsky. New York: Doubleday, 1959.

Watson, Jack. And Grant McKernie. A Cultural History of the Theatre. New York: Longman, 1993.

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