Mimo di voci, mimo di corpi: intervocalità in scena
As one of the keynote conferences at the Lyon Firth Congress of 2000 on Theater: Sound Space, virtual Space, this text proposes the concept of intervocality to seize the phenomena of plural vocal quotations (colour, timber and melos of voice conduction) in one single voice. Intervocality is first discussed in its general aspects as result of psychogenesis and socialization as well as gender, and second as an esthetic vocal feature in theatre praxis. Considering voice as a heterotopic phenomenon between body and language (Guy Rosolato) its force to project utopian and imaginary bodies in daily life is shown as giving place to vocal rhetoric of scene personae in theatre. In this context, Artaud’s voice experiments reveal intervocality as being part as well of the vocal psychogenesis as of the social vocal norms of language and voice delivery. Artaud’s extreme personal and theatrical voice is than confronted to the extreme public voice of Hitler, both defying the rhetoric code of decency of their time. The quotation of these extreme voices by performers of different contemporary productions (I magazzini, Jan Fabre, Einar Schleef, Bert Brecht/Heiner Müller, Christoph Marthaler, Robert Wilson etc.) is analyzed in its psycho-semiotic and historical functions implicating a History of theatrical voice and their dialectics with public historical voices as for instance the voice battle of Fritz Kortner against Hitler’s voice , The conclusion enounces eight theses on intervocality modellized on the conceptualization of intertextuality as proposed for the text by Julia Kristeva and Michael Riffaterre: they focuse for the voice the impact of intervocality on the projection of body and/mind of the staged persona as well as its affirmative or analyzed status.