Daulte Method
Game and Commitment: the Method by Javier Daulte
Between mid-2001 and late 2003 I wrote three theoretical works, all under the generic title of Game and Commitment. The connection between these three works is less obvious than what one might believe at first glance. In fact, I wrote the first of the three texts without suspecting that it would be followed by two more parts.
When I wrote the second (Responsibility) I was in the process of rehearsing Bésame Mucho and in that article I sought to systematize a thinking that was testimony to certain procedures used in the production of that show (in part, due to the fact that I had detected that the assumptions mentioned in Game and Commitment I, the Method –now transformed into the Truth—derived from the my experience with my previous performance, Gore). In exchange, while I worked on Responsibility, I already knew that there would be a third work, Freedom (I suppose that my most recent performances, ¿Estás ahí? and 4D Óptico were the reference points for its production).
Here I have reunited all three works. I don’t know if uniting them will end up being fruitful with regard to the thinking that each one of them seeks to express. In order to make it look less systematized, I have conserved that dates that each one was written. It is important to keep in mind that a lot happened in the spans of time that separate the emergence of each of these texts.
Javier Daulte
July 2004
Final clarification
The project is meant to be a displacement of the problem of commitment in theatre, moving it from its romantic fixation with the contents to an intrinsic pole of the theatre issue, which is the game.
Of course, nobody can detach themselves from the commitment to the contents produced in theatre. We all believe ourselves beings sensitive to the facts of reality. But our commitment to thesecontents always finds us in the place of the audience; that is, that place in which we can or not becomethe audience.
Commitment to the facts of reality is inevitable, it is a given; and in any case cannot be forced.In contrast, the commitment to the rule, loyalty to the method, is not a given, is easily avoidable andtherefore needs to be forced. This is perhaps the only ethical obligation in the task of theatre.
(The writing of Juego y Compromiso I, La Verdad, was dated 13 August 2001.)
Excerpt from the article “Batman vs. Hamlet. Plot at the Service of the Method and Content as Surprise”
by Javier Daulte
"Game and Commitment. The Method is a project I carried out a few years ago and consists ofthree parts, Truth, Responsibility and Freedom. In it I develop the idea that in the theatre the onlycommitment possible (and which must be forced) is the commitment to the rules of the game established.The commitment to the contents cannot be forced while the commitment to the rigorouspursuit of the method is established as an ethical obligation. I reproduce the conclusion to the firstpart of that project:
Conclusion
To summarise, here I will list the axioms developed during the current project:
- Theatre as a game tends to oppose reality.
- In theatre the only commitment possible is to the rule.
- Any system of mathematical relations which can be deduced from a material is a method.
- Any method is mathematical; that is, like mathematics, it is indifferent to the contents.
- The objective of all elements that make up the phenomenon of theatre is to make the methodefficient. Loyalty to a method can generate a truth.
- The key to any method must remain hidden from the spectators so that they become the audience.