DO NOT EAT AT THE WRAP PLACE NEAR MUSEUM ISLAND. I REPEAT DO NOT EAT AT THE WRAP PLACE NEAR MUSEUM ISLAND AND MORE SPECIFICALLY DO NOT EAT THE BEEF. IT CANNOT BE TRUSTED.
Thursday, June 2, 2016
Realer than Realism
In acting school we strive to be "truthful," to perform as if we aren't performing, but living through the circumstances our character is experiencing. But we are performing. We are. We're on a stage and there are bright colored lights aimed at us and there are hundreds of people watching and we're pretending to be in a living room but there aren't any walls and if you walk past the couch and through a propped up door to where the bathroom is meant to be you'll bump into a young woman clad all in black waiting to unzip your dress.
It's. Not. Real.
All the shows we've seen so far have accepted and embraced the fact that they are live performances. As an audience member, I have never felt compelled to believe the actors in front of me were anywhere except in the theater, in this moment, with me. Not in a forest or a battlefield or a coffee shop or - heaven forbid - a living room. Fog machines are operated in full view by actors, costume changes happen on stage, actors who aren't involved in the present dialogue lounge upstage and watch.
More than the fact that the performers acknowledge the fact that they are performing, the performances themselves are larger than life. In Berliner Ensemble's production of Schiller's Die Räuber, Franz has a complex response to his father's death. First he examines the body and contemplates what to do next - perhaps a "realistic" response. Next, he lifts his father's body in his arms and animates it like a grotesque doll, puppeting it to sing But I Might Die Tonight by Cat Stevens. At the conclusion of the song, he drags the body to the bed and curls up next to it, wrapping his father's lifeless arms around himself. After a moment, he realizes the arms are locked in rigor mortis around him, and he violently fights to release himself, removing all of his clothing in the process. At this point the body comes back to life, and Franz smothers his father with a pillow. Finally he rolls the again lifeless body into a body bag, and zips it shut. As he is dragging it offstage, the body awakens again. The final solution - he leaves the body offstage and returns with a gasoline can. He spills a line across the space between himself and his father's body and lights a match. We watch the spark travel slowly across the dark stage, closer and closer to the offstage space where the body bag was left. We hold our breath from the edge of our seats, waiting for the explosion. When it comes, it is the houselights bursting on - an explosion of self-awareness as we are thrust into the interval.
This sequence wouldn't pass as "truth" in my acting class, but I have never seen a more truthful representation of loss. The grotesquely playful song sequence speaks to the absurdity and disbelief that accompanies death. Whether or not a person actually curls up in bed with the body of their lost loved one, or whether or not the body would actually come to life, these moments illuminated the bigger Truth underneath the reality of that circumstance. Curling up with the body - the desire to wrap yourself in the person you've lost. Becoming trapped by rigor mortis - the horror at one's inability to escape from the reality of the loss. Nudity - the absolute vulnerability and rawness of losing a parent. Smothering his reanimated father - the violence of trying to free oneself from the inescapable reality of death. Blowing up the body - the impulse to destroy even the memory of the loss.
Of course I am reading this sequence through the thick lens my own personal experience, but isn't that the point? To invite each audience member to have a personal relationship with the work? If I had seen the "realism" version of Franz's reaction to his father's death, I likely would have seen a man experiencing some version of sadness or anger as someone else covered the body. Perhaps that's the real "truth" of what it usually looks like when someone dies, but who cares? The version we saw uncovered a larger Truth and gave us all something more human and more visceral than realism is capable of.
It's. Not. Real.
All the shows we've seen so far have accepted and embraced the fact that they are live performances. As an audience member, I have never felt compelled to believe the actors in front of me were anywhere except in the theater, in this moment, with me. Not in a forest or a battlefield or a coffee shop or - heaven forbid - a living room. Fog machines are operated in full view by actors, costume changes happen on stage, actors who aren't involved in the present dialogue lounge upstage and watch.
More than the fact that the performers acknowledge the fact that they are performing, the performances themselves are larger than life. In Berliner Ensemble's production of Schiller's Die Räuber, Franz has a complex response to his father's death. First he examines the body and contemplates what to do next - perhaps a "realistic" response. Next, he lifts his father's body in his arms and animates it like a grotesque doll, puppeting it to sing But I Might Die Tonight by Cat Stevens. At the conclusion of the song, he drags the body to the bed and curls up next to it, wrapping his father's lifeless arms around himself. After a moment, he realizes the arms are locked in rigor mortis around him, and he violently fights to release himself, removing all of his clothing in the process. At this point the body comes back to life, and Franz smothers his father with a pillow. Finally he rolls the again lifeless body into a body bag, and zips it shut. As he is dragging it offstage, the body awakens again. The final solution - he leaves the body offstage and returns with a gasoline can. He spills a line across the space between himself and his father's body and lights a match. We watch the spark travel slowly across the dark stage, closer and closer to the offstage space where the body bag was left. We hold our breath from the edge of our seats, waiting for the explosion. When it comes, it is the houselights bursting on - an explosion of self-awareness as we are thrust into the interval.
This sequence wouldn't pass as "truth" in my acting class, but I have never seen a more truthful representation of loss. The grotesquely playful song sequence speaks to the absurdity and disbelief that accompanies death. Whether or not a person actually curls up in bed with the body of their lost loved one, or whether or not the body would actually come to life, these moments illuminated the bigger Truth underneath the reality of that circumstance. Curling up with the body - the desire to wrap yourself in the person you've lost. Becoming trapped by rigor mortis - the horror at one's inability to escape from the reality of the loss. Nudity - the absolute vulnerability and rawness of losing a parent. Smothering his reanimated father - the violence of trying to free oneself from the inescapable reality of death. Blowing up the body - the impulse to destroy even the memory of the loss.
Of course I am reading this sequence through the thick lens my own personal experience, but isn't that the point? To invite each audience member to have a personal relationship with the work? If I had seen the "realism" version of Franz's reaction to his father's death, I likely would have seen a man experiencing some version of sadness or anger as someone else covered the body. Perhaps that's the real "truth" of what it usually looks like when someone dies, but who cares? The version we saw uncovered a larger Truth and gave us all something more human and more visceral than realism is capable of.
Wednesday, June 1, 2016
Our First Five Shows!
 |
| FEAR at Schaubühne |
 |
| DIE (S)PANISCHE FLIEGE at Volksbühne |
 |
| SMALL TOWN BOY at Gorki |
 |
| THE SITUATION at Gorki |
 |
| DIE RÄUBER (THE ROBBERS) at the Berliner Ensemble |
The In Memoriam:
Doris Hausmann was the mother of the director (Leander) and herself an important costume designer. She died just before the premiere of THE ROBBERS.
This is from an article of two days ago recording both the play's (her son's) success and her passing.
Tuesday, May 31, 2016
why i came
why i came
maybe zoo animals felt the same as i
maybe my pet fish felt it too
tapping on the glass
this is the life i have always known
this is the water i have always tasted
this is the trap i've been caught in
and this is where i'll stay
step by step always the same
open the blinds
the sun shines a bit duller each day
my face getting old
my hair getting short
my patience getting shorter
and my capacity for love nearly demolished
disheartened by the media
disheartened by my people
disheartened by my thoughts
always searching for something that wasn't there
i hoped for a tap on the glass
when you check to see if your pet fish is still alive
is anyone in there?
they say it sounds like an explosion to the fish
to tap on the glass
i prayed for the first time in my life
for that explosion of life, love,
christ--even hate is better than this empty
empty fishbowl
i stopped swimming
my fins disintegrated
my tail stopped working
barely afloat
thirsting
parched
panting
i tasted
for the first time in a while i tasted opportunity
a second chance at life
a chance to tap on my own glass
to wake myself up
to be self-reliant
the self-reliant fish
my gills grew back
oxygen dissolving into my capillaries
color came back to my scales and i
left my bowl
and i won't come back until i can swim again
Some Soul Healing (Ya Know, Hopefully)
Still battling the jetlag, I keep thinking about our dinner the first night and Christopher’s question about why we all decided to come on this trip. My answer was something along the lines of experiencing the culture and that it would hopefully help me to stop overthinking theater and plays because it stops me from really understanding them or doesn’t let me really walk away from the play feeling what I’m feeling. Another big reason (maybe bigger than the reason I listed above) is that I have a lot of people in my life who have done a lot of traveling and I have grown into who I am today thinking that traveling is something that everyone needs or should do if they have the chance. Since I started at Mason Gross I thought I wouldn’t have the chance to study abroad so this trip was sort of a godsent to me. I have 3 very important women in my life who have traveled all over the world when they were my age and they have never said anything negative about traveling and have told me so many amazing stories from when they traveled around the world. So I also came here not only because of the theater or because I was raised knowing that I should, but because I think it will be good for my actual self and think it’s something that my soul actually needs. (Not to make this too dramatic but) this past year has been a lot for me emotionally and I think this chance to let go of all that, and all the normalcy and routine at home and to get a little break from my friends and my Mason Gross family (even though I love them). I just hope I don’t get sucked into a routine here…
xx
xx
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