a real gun on stage during his performance and, whether purposefully or not, shoots the nose off his face. This comes at the heightened conclusion of a rehearsal process where the actor Mike Shiner( Edward Norton) is continually pushing to bring out the‘ real’ within the cast’ s performance; instead of tricking the audience by simulating love affairs or drinking alcohol on stage, Shiner insists on remaining truthful on both counts, with real sex and real spirits. The way in which Iñárritu manipulates the entire piece seemingly into one take and his casting decisions translate this fictional‘ supra-realism’ into his cinematic language, where the form replicates the content in order to create a metafictional, self-reflexive piece of cinema.
The decision to present theatre on film seems to be an attempt to manipulate and play with reality. Theatre is often regarded as largely metaphorical and symbolic when contrasted to cinema 3. Due to the scale and realism of the form, a cinematic audience can often be more easily lured into accepting the fictional world with which they are faced, as unseen spectators to a situation which imitates real life. In Visible Fictions, for example, Ellis explores the idea of the spectator as voyeur:
The spectator is involved in looking at something that does not( except in very exceptional circumstances) look back at the spectator […]. This activity of looking can be described as voyeurism. This is the activity of looking at something without being seen looking at the thing seen. 4
The unperceived presence of the spectator allows the viewer to accept what is projected in front of them because there is no interruption to their role as a voyeur, they are not spotted and caught out. However, due to the theatrical setting of Birdman, this acceptance is disrupted. There are moments in which the cinema audience is faced with the theatre audience. The two audiences watch each other simultaneously, leading to the unsettling acknowledgement of their status as a voyeur. Witnessing the audience and then the work of the actors and director‘ behind the scenes’ of a production can lead the viewer to recognise the fact that they too are being fooled by the façade of production. Actors acting as actors allows the consumers of the work to take a step back and comprehend the fictional layers that are being built and established, they are reminded that these characters are actors in the‘ real’ world. In a theatrical context, this jarring effect is reminiscent of Brechtian techniques, used to alienate the audience and alert them to the key themes of the work that they are watching. 5 In relation to the phenomenon of theatres
3
Russell Jackson, Theatres on Film: How the Cinema Imagines the Stage( Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013), 7.
4
John Ellis, Visible Fictions( London: Routledge, 1982), 45.
5
Bertolt Brecht, Brecht on Theatre,( London: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2014), 110.
44