What is ‘“Not Performing”, Reciting’: A Formation Process of Speech in Straub Huillet’s Klassenverhältnisse

Abstract

This paper discusses the actor’s speech in Straub-Huillet’s works from the perspective of mise-en-scène. In previous studies, this peculiar actor’s speech with unnatural accents and pauses has been discussed with words such as “musical” and “alienation effect,” but only abstractly. In this paper, I aim to examine in detail the speech that Straub calls “recitation” by using materials such as interviews with the artist, rehearsal videos, and scripts with notes to explore the process of its production and the influence of other arts.

To this end, the first section takes as an example Klassenverhältnisse (1984), an adaptation of Franz Kafka’s Der Verschollene, and confirms the director’s pre-rehearsal conception. In the second section, based on the rehearsal footage, I analyze how certain words are actually embodied. The following section confirms what role the utterances play in the production. Finally in the last section, I will discuss the methodology of repetition which emphasizes both the actor’s body and the text.