Superfluities Redux |
A Theatre Surrounds a City: |
Notes on Theatre Wierszalin's Saint Oedipus2005
Jerzy Grotowski
Egon Schiele
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. Copyright © 2005 by George Hunka |
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