Buster Keaton and Modern European Drama. An American Filmmaker Anticipating Aesthetic Multiplicity

Textprobe:Kapitel 2.1. Discontinuity through the multiplicity of narratives and their presentation:As Walter Benjamin explains in Versuche über Brecht, European theatre in the twentieth century evolved into 'episches Theater', epic theatre, with the stage becoming a so-called 'Ausstellungsraum', that is an exhibition space where the act of representation is literally made visible and every spectator is an observer with their own special interests. Buster Keaton, of course, never chose such a radical approach. At times, though, he does allow the audience to focus on the act of storytelling rather than the story itself. He achieves this effect primarily by interspersing the plot with gags and twists that are more essential for the story than logical smoothness.One device to underline the act of telling a story consists in presenting it in various versions. In The Three Ages (1923), Buster Keaton's first feature-length comedy and a parody of D.W. Griffith's Intolerance, the same story is told three times (with the same actors). The first version takes place in the Stone Age, the second one in the Roman Age, and the third one in the 1920s. Every plot is divided into sequences, with each sequence being presented separately in the respective period of time. By choosing this method of representation, Keaton draws the spectator's attention away from the storyline. As Robert Knopf observes, '[s]ince the story and outcome remain essentially the same in each era, the focus shifts from what will happen to how it will happen, emphasizing the variety of ways Keaton performs similar gags from era to era'. The spectator is invited to consciously watch the artist's techniques of storytelling just as the artist consciously uses them. Through their respective awareness of the act of representation, both the artist and the spectator gain their own distance in relation to the story.With regard to Keaton, this awareness is essentially vital as his art originated from improvisation. An

Esther Reginbogin was born in 1975 in Gera, Germany. She studied English, French and Comparative Literature at the University of East Anglia in Norwich and the Université Stendhal in Grenoble. She completed her Master of Arts in Drama and Theatre Studies at Royal Holloway, University of London. After her studies, she spent a year in Italy where she worked as a German language teacher. During that time, she began to work as a freelance translator. In recent years, she has mostly translated non-fiction texts and screenplays from English and French into German. She has now turned her attention to becoming an author. Her focus lies on the history of theatre and cinema in France, Great Britain and the United States between the beginning of the twentieth century and the 1960s, and especially on character actors from these countries and that time and their respective styles of acting.