staging death

In Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead there is an interesting line: "You can't act death. The fact of it is nothing to do with seeing it happen – it's not gasps and blood and falling about. It's just a man failing to reappear." Alfred Hickling uses it as a contradiction to an event at the Liverpool Shakespeare Festival last week, the so called Stage-death contest, organized by Lodestar Theatre Company. I have thought about it quite a lot, probably because I used death in most of my performances. What was the driving force for such an unconscious decision? I have to admit that death is everywhere and nowhere, one of the most used conventions in alternative theatre and one of the most life-affirming technique but the question is: what is behind it? Used as a convention, death becomes a Brechtian comment. If it is just a form of affirming life on stage, as in Judith Butler’s amateur theatre act of playing dead-of-AIDS gays, then the act in itself is full of hysterical creative energy, the dead is not actually dead, is just an identification for the living. The focus in many cases is on the impossibility of representing death, just like in Tom Stoppard comment: it is not death that we see on stage but just a form of avoiding its representation. Because we know actors are not dead: we can feel their breath and their aliveness. They are showing us something and their staged death is not in vain, it comes with a reason.
But back to the stage death contest: the basic requirement was to turn up and expire for as long as possible. The proposed scenarios included Death By Chocolate, Death By Liposuction and Death By Misadventure. Marks were awarded for overacting, self-indulgence and shoddiness of costume. I have no idea who won. And to close this post I found a photo on flickr with a theatrical sketch from Brazil where thousands of mothers loose their children to armed violence. Few of these mothers staged a performance for the Hummingbird Project in connection with the Social Communication Programme, Urban Outcries. This is from their show, staging the death of their children:

Brecht – The Hardcore Machine at MU Theatre Budapest

A few words about Dunapart and the performing arts platform: a huge personal disappointment. An awful crowd, snobbish fancy dressed theatre goers and critics, talking some disgusting French, probably just for the beautiful intonations, claiming the last pantheon of being bourgeois: the experimental theatre.

I went to see one show that was so promising: Brecht the Hardcore Machine from Andras Urban Company, based on Brecht’s Buckow Elegies. It had its premiere last year in Berlin and it is supposed to represent a break with literary drama and post-dramatic theatre that is not performative enough for them and still too much based on texts. “This performance is not a play” they say. And I remember using the exactly same words two weeks ago about my Beckett trilogy. Not following a particular narrative, the performance approaches a young working girl that enters “the wonderful world of ideology and corporeality.”

And more they say: “Labour. Starvation. Sex. Power. Fun. Class struggle is not dead.” Not to mention the goody goody focus on the body of actors, very third theatre style. Very Barbaesque. Very exciting. The first feeling that something is fishy about this show was when I entered the small MU and I saw an awful exhibition a la bible belt post-feminism with pop art playmates spreading messages like “Dworkin and Queer are Dead”. Nothing to do with the show one might say. Not really I say. A show for me cannot exist outside the space of the performance, the artists’ usage of spectators with their breaths, their bodies, their nicely combed hair and their greedy eyes. And this public was just horrible. Together with the unfit space of MU for such a show.

Continuing with the show: beautiful ideas, generous attempts, ingenious solutions, hard working actors but a limited vision, a shitty director shitting his pants, not leaving the actors think with their bodies and dilate them just for the sake of some shitty fixed images, weak scenes and a personal gratification. And no hysterical creativity here. Trying to tell a retro-political revue they ended up with the most horrible clichés that made me feel embarrassed. But on the other hand, the commodification of Brecht is not new-fangled and it doesn’t have to be subtle all the time. Maybe the good news is that Brecht sells and is sold again and these guys proved it once again. Because as good ol’ Brecht said “What is theatre if not a night of good entertainment?”

Like Arpad Schilling after this bitter taste performance, I ended up dreaming of a theatre made in the forest where no one dares to come. Or like Tadeusz Kantor to secretly dream of all artists dropping dead.

The Tiger Lillies at Trafo - Budapest

First impact, the audience. Kind of scary. I definitely had different expectations when I entered the big Trafo studio. The chairs were put in nice rows and old women with their husbands were waiting for the musical performance. No freaks, no Goths, no clowns, nothing that I expected. The Budapest crowd was formed of old ladies, corporate middle-agers and a bunch of nice Western lost tourists. This should be interesting, I said to myself, knowing the songs and Tiger Lillies reputation. And indeed it was. But straight to the show: cabaret to the bone, cheap clown makeup, slap-stick comedy show outfits, typical gags with poor acting, falsetto voice a la castrato opera, playing with toy music instruments and so on. All the Tiger Lillies arsenal that I could dream of. And everything functioned brilliantly. I had a 10 times stronger feeling than watching a John Waters movie: everything is so bad and theatrical that strikes you and makes you stay there into the illusion, in their sad and hysterical world, with their pimps and whores and freaks and killers and circus kids. By keeping an eye on the beautiful theatricality you are not getting out of the illusion but in a Brechtian way, you follow what’s beneath, you get straight into its reality. That you know it’s illusionary. This was my first musical experience of this type: through music, I even got into their characters’ stories, their little gags and their melancholic parts. The public was incredibly receptive: they laughed and cried and applauded. They knew their songs and asked for more. But one thing I still missed: a good old cabaret atmosphere, loud and smoky, drinking alcohol and joking during the show. Coming from the other side of the performance, we, the audience, were not doing the right thing, we were out of the picture. And that was most impressive in their show: a certain type of performance asks for a certain type of spectators that they should slowly become, and that has power and trangressive force. What I thought I would never like in a show I liked it here: their great mannerism, the fact that they played the same songs and gags that they played over and over again for thousand times and you could see that. Their apparent boredom only made them more intense and the atmosphere more potent. All the time during the show I had one friend in mind: Olli (this is his website, just in case), an old clown from Switzerland who told me one amazing thing: a good clown doesn’t have to bring anything new, you need only one good gag that you can do it all your life, till it becomes perfect, a clown is not an actor, we function different. Tiger Lillies are not clowns for sure but they function in a similar way to Olli.

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007)

director: Andrew Dominik

An unexpected delight, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, offers an extreme cinematic interpretation of a Western story with well known characters. The narrative gets lost in an incredible exposure. The meta-cinematic discourse, brechtian to the core, that finds its climax in the scenes of the theatrical event of the shooting that rememorizes the scene that we saw minutes earlier, is constantly present. The characters of Jesse and Robert are constructed through a process of alienation. Brad Pitt is telling the story of Jesse James and we recognize him, Casey Affleck is an incredible presence, hysterically mimicking the Jesse construction in a dizzying myse-en-abyme. Dominik, the director, considers his film "a dark, contemplative examination of fame and infamy" and I can see that his examination goes beyond the Jesse James story into the acting method, character construction, narrative and cinematic expression. Dominik is making, in my reading, first of all an examination that gives new captivating film aesthetics that can chill your spine without taking you mind&body in the realist milieu. It transports you on a different path in the cinematic world, in the analysis of characters and images, sound and narration, in a complex process of reception. Dominik reveals the reality in illusion a la Zizek but this dark contemplative reality is much alive and fascinating than what the possible illusion without revealing itself can give you as spectator.

by Bertolt Brecht

Bad Time for Poetry

Yes, I know: only the happy man
Is liked. His voice

Is good to hear. His face is handsome.

In my poetry a rhyme

Would seem to me almost insolent.

Inside me contend

Delight at the apple tree in blossom

And horror at the house-painter’s speeches.

But only the second

Drives me to my desk.

Changing the Wheel

I sit by the roadside

The driver changes the wheel.

I do not like the place I have come from.

I do not like the place I am going to.

Why with impatience do I

Watch him changing the wheel?

from Letter to the Actor Charles Laughton

Concerning the Work on the Play

The Life of Galileo

Again and again I turned actor, demonstrating

A character’s gestures and tone of voice, and you

Turned writer. Yet neither I nor you

Stepped outside his proffesion.

I, the Survivor

I know of course: it’s simply luck

That I’ve survived so many friends. But last night in a dream

I heard those friends say of me: ‘Survival of the fittest’

And I hated myself.

100% Bertolt Brecht

Despre sarmanul B.B.


1
Eu, Bertolt Brecht, vin din padurile negre.
Maica-mea m-a adus in spatii citadine
in timp ce ma purta in ea. Si raceala padurilor
pana la moarte o sa ramana in mine.


2
In orasul de asfalt ma simt la mine acasa.
Cu slujba de inmormantare asigurat,
cu ziare, cu tutun si cu alcool,
neincrezator si lenes si, pana la urma, impacat.


3
Spre seara, imi adun cativa domni aproapte
si ne spunem "gentleman" pe rand.
Pe masa mea isi pun picioarele
si spun: o sa fie bine. Iar eu ma intreb: cand?

4
Spre ziua, in zorii cenusii, urineaza brazii
si ganganiile lor - pasarile - incep sa tipe.
La ora aceea imi beau paharul in oras, arunc mucul de tigara
si adorm nelinistit peste cateva clipe.

5
Cine o sa ramana viu in aceste orase? Vantul!
Cel care le strabate si le goleste in sfarsit.
Stim ca suntem provizorii
iar ceea ce urmeaza dupa noi nici nu merita amintit.

6
Sper ca la viitoarele cutremure, tigara mea Virginia
sa n-o las sa se stinga, de-amaraciune grea,
eu, Bertold Brecht, naufragiat in orase,
din padurile negre, adus de maica-mea.



Intrebarile unui muncitor care citeste

Cine a cladit Teba cu cele sapte porti?
In carti, e trecut numele regilor.
Oare regii au carat bucatile de stanca?
Si Babilonul, de mai multe ori daramat,
cine l-a recladit de atatea ori? In ce case
locuiau ziditorii Limei, cea stralucitoare ca aurul?
Unde s-au dus zidarii, in seara in care zidul chinezesc a fost terminat?
Marea Roma
e plina de arcuri de triumf. Cine le-a ridicat? Asupra cui
au triumfat Cezarii? Locuitorii multcantatului Bizant
au locuit oare numai in palate? Chiar in legendara
Atlantida, in timp ce marea-i inghitea, scufundatii urlau
in noapte, dupa sclavii lor.

Tanarul Alexandru cuceri Indiile.
El singur?
Cezar ii batea pe gali.
N-a avut cu el macar un bucatar?
Filip al Spaniei planse, cand flota lui
se scufunda. Nimeni n-a mai plans in afara de el?
Frederic al II-lea a invins in razboiul de sapte ani.
Cine a mai invins in afara de el?
Pe fiecare pagina, o victorie.
Cine-a gatit praznicul victoriei?
La fiecare zece ani, un mare om.
Cine i-a platit intretinerea?

Atatea relatari;
Atatea intrebari.