Possible Worlds

Day two sitting in the gallery bought a second selection of fine readings courtesy of Sierra Metro’s pop-up school. The first I picked up had the best title in the world, ‘Embodiment: From Fish to Fantasy’ by Andy Clark yet two pages in the content had become, well, incomprehensible to say the least. I gleaned a little about embodiment being something to do with exploitation of the localised environment (some example of a Blue fin Tuna was selected). After that the scientific lingo sent me off course and I moved swiftly on to article 2: ‘Possible Worlds in the Theatre of the Absurd’ by Katerina Vassilopoulou 2006. This was fascinating. I am a keen theatre fan and am aware of the theatre of the absurd commonly summarised as being built on futility and meaninglessness of life and death bought about by the post-war period of the 1950s. I have seen Beckett’s ‘Waiting for Godot’, read a little of Ionesco’s ‘Jacques or Obedience’ and even was part of the costume team for an ammeter dramatics version of Ionesco’s ‘Rhinoceros’ but thought little about the mechanisms behind absurdity. What I came to see was that we have a certain expectation of a play which is based on reality, this can become absurd by slipping seamlessly into fantasy (or rather another type of reality - textual reality). The fact that the worlds created are then accepted by the characters expands an understanding of certain phases which adjust in tune to the characters’ purposes. Absurdity (as opposed to realistic fantasy) is created by the way characters deal with rational situations. Ionesco’s ‘Rhinoceros’ is considered absurd due to the characters’ acceptance of the situation where as Kafka’s ‘Metamorphosis’ is realistic fantasy for its characters’ rejection of the situation. The possible-worlds theory is no doubt a fascinating topic and one I shall endeavour to track further in the future but for now it is exciting merely to re-ignite my enjoyment of learning, reading and absorption of information.