The Impossible Representation of Wonder: Space Summons Memory

Actors typically create characters and thereby appropriate the time of the performance and the space of the stage. As a common denominator to the words spoken and actions performed, the character correlates dramatic time with real performance time. When Kant says of the human subject ‘the “I think” must be able to accompany all its representations‘, the actor might say of the character ‘it must be able to accompany all my presentations’. Similarly, the stage as a hostile, indeterminate, and empty space makes room for the character, it is appropriated as a necessary platform for the realization of the character or as the medium for the production of its history: in the name of the character the actor can step into this space as into a costume; it clothes, contours or profiles, and physically projects the character.