Superfluities Redux
On culture and theatre, by George Hunka
Saint Oedipus
2005
Piotr Tomaszuk and the Theatre Wierszalin's Saint Oedipus, about as aesthetically different from my own recent work as it's possible to get, continues its run at LaMama through this weekend, October 30. Shows like this provide enormous inspiration to me and remind me what theater is capable of doing at its best; I can only wanly hope that one day a show of mine might affect someone as deeply as their work has affected me, and that watching the work of Piotr and his actors can teach me how to do it in some way. Notes on the show and a link to my review for nytheatre.com are repeated below.
Before I disappeared into pre-production hell, I made some minor contributions to the "theater as religion" debate. In connection with this, I came across the following passage in Grotowski's Towards a Poor Theatre, which neatly summarizes some of what Saint Oedipus offered to me:
Just as only a great sinner can become a saint according to the theologians (let us not forget the Revelation, "So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth"), in the same way the actor's wretchedness can be transformed into a kind of holiness. The history of the theatre has numerous examples of this.
Don't get me wrong. I speak about "holiness" as an unbeliever. I mean a "secular holiness." If the actor, by setting himself a challenge publicly challenges others, and through excess, profanation and outrageous sacrilege reveals himself by casting off his everyday mask, he makes it possible for the spectator to undertake a similar process of self-penetration. If he does not exhibit his body, but annihilates it, burns it, frees it from every resistance to any psychic impulse, then he does not sell his body but sacrifices it. He repeats the atonement; he is close to holiness. If such acting is not to be something transient and fortuitous, a phenomenon which cannot be foreseen in time or space; if we want a theatre group whose daily bread is this kind of work -- then we must follow a special method of research and training.
*****
Even
erotic art
has a certain sanctity. -- Egon Schiele
My most recent review for nytheatre.com is up: a notice on the Wierszalin Theatre's Saint Oedipus by Piotr Tomaszuk, which runs at La Mama through October 30. This particular Oedipus follows a medieval version of the tale, which ends with the king's exile on an island and (I think) his deification as pope, but whatever I think it's about doesn't matter: the show reaches far beyond its temporal setting and grasps far into our own. I wrote:
Tomaszuk's script is not so much a play as a liturgy. As such, it's comprised of repetitive images and phrases ("As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be"; "The body is a trap") that serve to annotate the story of Jocasta and Oedipus, as they attempt to expiate the original sin of the body's entrapment of the soul. As son and mother, brother and sister, husband and wife, they exemplify all man-woman relationships; the guilt and terror accompanying sexual pleasure is demonstrated through a variety of images, from sadomasochistic costumes and practices to blood sacrifices. There is a beautiful, pure moment of physical calm and release in copulation here, bare bodies, having been self-anointed in a cleansing blue water that washes the blood from their hands, achieving graceful orgasmic precision; however, the pain of the play soon returns as Jocasta recognizes Oedipus as her son -- as a bodied individual -- in a moment of post-coital epiphany.
If there's something Sadean-sounding about all this, that's because there is, and quite beautifully so. Far from exploitative, Tomaszuk and the performers, Rafal Gasowski and Edyta Lukaszewicz-Lisowska, explore rather than condescend. I continue: "Somehow the Oedipus myth has remained with us as a reminder of our ambivalent sexuality down through the last three millennia; Saint Oedipus does not condescend to try to explain it to us, but dares instead to invite us to experience this mystery with the performers, the celebrants of this secular communion, as they trace it from the Old Testament to our own time." This has the effect of eradicating historical time; if you go back far enough, after all, we're all brother and sister. In short, a stunning work. My full review is here.
I don't feel that the reintroduction of religiosity per se into theater, especially as an aspect of culture that binds and unites it, is necessarily a laudable project, nor do I think it's possible, especially in a culture that lacks a state religion. Sacredness, yes; Saint Oedipus offers one utterly theatrical sense of sacredness appropriate to it, the flesh as flesh, and like any liturgy, the sense and mystery of human suffering is at the core of its ceremony. How very Artaud, and how very effective.
I fear, though, that Tomaszuk's understanding (and his cast's understanding) of this religious function of theater would emerge somehow differently here; Poland's state religion, for hundreds of years, was Catholicism, and this history inheres in every moment of the play; America's had no state religion or theological dogma controlling the spiritual lives of its citizens, and the religions we do tend to come up with, like Mormonism and Scientology, are made up of stupefying greeting-card mysticism, utilitarianism and charlantry in equal parts. We've never had to do the iconoclastic, taboo-smashing soul-searching that can separate spiritual depth from spiritual dogma; it's not appropriate for us; instead, we come up with things like The Passion of the Christ.
American attempts to re-spiritualize theater have been half-baked at best, destructive at worst. The idea of site-specific theater is indicative of this. At bottom, the project of taking theater out of theatrical spaces is an attempt to sacralize other spaces with some of the spiritual tradition of the drama, but so far as I can see, this project has backfired. It hasn't served to sacralize those non-theatrical spaces (parking garages, factories, what-have-you), but instead has had the unfortunate effect of de-sacralizing those spaces formerly reserved for the theatrical event; the theater, like the church, is just another big room now. Part of the significance of the ritual is to focus community attention in one place, at one time, in a sanctified location which renders the event, the sacrifice, meaningful. The communicants then depart, bearing this experience into the world and their everyday lives. The tradition of returning to this special place, regularly, is part of the ritual, a part destroyed if you begin to take the ritual to the individual congregation members.
This uniquely spiritual formalism (which is also present in the texts of dramatists like Charles Mee, Erik Ehn and Richard Foreman) is not entirely absent from the American theater. On a personal note, Saint Oedipus also has the effect of depressing me, and it's nothing that Tomaszuk has done which leads to this depression. My talent isn't for formal experimentation, and it's a deeply personal failing: so far as my more traditional plays can contain some of what I have to say, I feel at times that these traditions block what I can express, but the burden of formal innovation, I worry, renders the work more difficult. My burden to bear, though, and (to be rather more optimistic about it) something to think further about.
