Glocalized theatrum mundi: The case of comédie des comédiens

The article addresses the possibility of undermining the globality of the theatrum mundi metaphor and examines that globality in relation to the structure and ideological implications of the comédie des comédiens. The metaphor of the world as a stage has been around since ancient times, as has its globalizing thrust - turning the world into a theatrical community and blurring cultural differences. The metaphor's hierarchic value, its being a paradigm of power relations, and its oscillation between depicting the world as governed by logos and describing it as illusory are inherent characteristics. In its sociological manifestations, the metaphor's hierarchic impulse is supplanted by analyses of social interaction, blurring cultural pluralism in support of a perspective that views some social structures as universal. A duplication in which the theatre is a micro-cosmos that doubles the larger cosmos, theatre-withintheatre reflects a global outlook. However, this metatheatrical strategy, in a contemporary form of comédies des comédiens, can be used for intentional intercultural junctions. This is most evident when directors supplement productions of canonic foreign plays with local, contemporary variations, in an attempt to touch on current events. The article presents two Israeli cases of such supplementing: L'Avare, directed by Michael Gurevitch at the Jerusalem Khan Theater (2003) and Back to the Tempest, directed by Igal Ezraty at the Arab-Hebrew Theater in Jaffa, Tel Aviv (2005). It shows how, in both productions, the supplement that turns the play into a contemporary version of comédies des comédiens serves cultural appropriation as it points to local power relations, while at the same time the metaphor's global residue persists and ideological, local, and temporal differences are denied. This results in a liminal, local-global -glocalized - theatrical space.