Performance Preliminaries

The constant source of energy for Italian futurism since its founding (in 1909) was indisputably F. T. Marinetti (1876–1944), and the year of his death was the year Joan Brossa (1919–98) started writing for the stage in a Barcelona still recovering from the Spanish Civil War (1936–39). The chronological jump from the theatrical adventures of futurism to the main plays and actions of the Catalan poet would thus appear to indicate a considerable development within modernist performance, as well as a range of contextual differences. However, the similarities between these two bodies of work are striking. Both are part of a wider avant-garde aesthetic style (futurist art and literature; Brossa's written and visual poetry). Both had strongly political features linked to the period of their creation, if at opposing ends of the ideological spectrum: futurist proto-and pro-fascism to Brossa's anti-Francoism. And there are also significant parallels in form between the two.

While both the futurists and Brossa were responsible for full-length plays, they also became known for short performative interventions often comprising under a page of stage directions or dialogue. The action is necessarily elliptical, psychologically consistent characters are absent, cause-and-effect dramaturgy disappears, time is compressed, and aural or visual effect sometimes takes over entirely. Negative Act (1915), by Bruno Corra and Emilio Settimelli, consists of the entry of a man who exclaims that something is fantastic and incredible, then tells the audience he has nothing to say to them. In one of Brossa's Spectacle-Actions (written between 1946 and 1962), the instructions are to tell the audience of something exceptional, such as an accident or a piece of good news, create great interest, then suddenly refute what has been said and end the performance. In Old Age (1915), also by Corra and Settimelli, fifty years go by in three tiny acts in which a couple sit at a table opposite each other until they die. For Brossa, a meal becomes the span of life itself as waiters range from two boys (who serve the first course) to two old men (who serve the dessert and coffee), passing through two adolescents and two middleaged men for intermediate courses.