What is Failure and Other Questions from First Submission

FAILURE, what is it?

Looking at the online etymology dictionary: Fail comes from the old french “fallir” which means be lacking, miss, not succeed, run out, come to an end, err, make a mistake, be dying, let down, dissapoint…

From the vulgar latin “fallire”- from latin, fallere:” To trip, cause to fall” figuratively “to deceive, trick, dupe, cheat, elude; fail, be lacking or defective.”

Failure, is the contrary of success . It is something that in our society is seen as undesirable.

In Performance failure can be used to open up new avanues that could not have been foreseen if everything would have gone according to plan. And also as a tool to push the boundaries of traditional theatre.

How can it be used as a theatrical device?

Bailes says that failure allows us to entry into a different place where subversion and resistance can be tried out and examined. That by examining that which has failed to be what initialy was expected the artist can ponder upon the ‘predicament of anticlimax’ and through that learn more about the human condition…..

Bailes suggests that by using experimanting with failure as a form of representation theatre companies like “Goat’s Island” Forced Entertainment” and “Elevator repair service” have found a way to test the boundaries and problematics and limitations of the conventional theatre event.

Cormac reiterates the above statements.

I think performing badly is a way of  letting go and making some issues more accessible by making them comic, also it allows more freedom to express…. It draws attention to paradox and contradiction. It draws attention to the non normative and different.

 

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