Always Looking Back at the Voyeur: Jan Fabre’s Extreme Acts on Stage

In Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality Freud has identified scopophilia as the pleasure of looking (see Freud 1974 VII: 157). While actors and actresses are often said to secretly and unconsciously exult in a societally accepted form of exhibitionism, spectators take the role of voyeurs, indulging in different forms of scopophilia. It is worthwhile having a look at this comparison by outlining the contours of voyeurism, for even if this phenomenon unconsciously grounds the spectator’s pleasure of looking in a more Aristotelian theatre tradition of plays with a dramatic narrative, performed on a stage separated by the so-called fourth wall from the spectators who are sitting in a dark auditorium, contemporary postdramatic theatre has changed the conditions of the relation between actors and audience inasmuch that a new contract may not follow the same rules