As an intense and elaborate algorithmic rethinking of Hamlet, the process in many ways outweighs the product, at least in print form, but what a thingAs an intense and elaborate algorithmic rethinking of Hamlet, the process in many ways outweighs the product, at least in print form, but what a thing this would have been to see at BAM in 2013....more
It's funny that this is described as "one of Stein's most accessible plays", but I've not read her others, so that may be. Entertains with the arbitraIt's funny that this is described as "one of Stein's most accessible plays", but I've not read her others, so that may be. Entertains with the arbitrary, absurd euphony-logic of Tender Buttons, without being so magical as that work due to its less alien dialogue format. Maybe it's the accessibility getting in my way. Would be fun to stage, though....more
Within the labyrinth of uncertainties and repeated signs of 20th century memory/history. Basso uses the psychological remove of the theatrical space tWithin the labyrinth of uncertainties and repeated signs of 20th century memory/history. Basso uses the psychological remove of the theatrical space to great effect as identities and roles become fluid and changeable by will of the insistent logic of the words and scenes arrangements. The first two, more uncertain plays of the triptych are most mysterious and interesting, but the last veers towards more familiar (if oddly conveyed) historical drama. Still, I'd love to see this staged. Has it been, ever?...more
Existence is hateful, try to get that through your head. It's only thanks to the illusions of a small segment of society in the total life of our spec
Existence is hateful, try to get that through your head. It's only thanks to the illusions of a small segment of society in the total life of our species that anyone believes that there's any sense to life at all. It all comes down to the different classes eating one another up. The balance of power between fighting microbes makes our existence possible -- if there were no struggle, as long as the food held out, a single species would have covered the entire surface of the earth in a few days with a layer forty miles thick.
Nihilism, anarchy, hysteria, rabid individualism, hallucinatory anti-realism, apocalyptic clairvoyance, pure distilled vitriol. These are the traits of Witkacy's theater of Pure Forms.
[image]
Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz* (1885 - 1939) was a prolific Polish painter, playwrite, novelist, and philosopher, who lived his life as a game or performance, a friend of Bruno Schulz, early pharmaceutical experimenter, prophet of doom who declared that modern life between the rising specters of totalitarian communism and fascism was soon to become one big concentration camp and killed himself just after the fall of Warsaw to the Nazis from the west and the invasion of the Soviets from the east. Crushed between these dueling totalitarianisms just like so many of his characters and unwilling to face what he assumed would be the end of the world (for Poland, it nearly was), Witkiewicz headed out into the woods, poisoned himself, awoke anyway hours later, alive, and finally slashed his wrists.
[image] Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz, Autoportrait, 1913 (he was also an early photographer)
Three of his thirty plays are collected here, along with various highly useful essays and biographic information to give some kind of context (although in an inexplicably ugly volume**). Highly dissatisfied with the current trends in naturalism and social melodrama predominant in the drama of his day, Witkacy (his self-chosen name, designed to distinguish him from his realism-minded painter-father) sought to deal with social problems through a heightened theater of abstraction, unreality, and chaos. The three plays collected here, prone to extremes as described above, full of contradictions and intellectual convolutions, falling into implausible philosophical monologues so cumbersome that the characters actually begin to remark on them and on the boredom of the audience, utterly misanthropic -- these plays can be maddening, exhausting to read, but must have been amazing spectacles to see executed live, shocking and unpredictable and endlessly full of ideas and bizarre visual developments. I don't actually attend much theater or read many dramas, though -- perhaps others would visualize even more readily. For me, though, the translators' introductions to each play are invaluable in highlighting both the convoluted presentations of the themes, and the sheer insanity of the presentation.
[image] (some of the little annotations indicate which drugs he was on while painting -- he was nothing if not scientific)
I'll tell you what it is -- it's a machine for sucking dry what's left of mothers' corpses that haven't been completely sucked dry by their only sons.
The first work, "The Mother" sees an old women slaving to support her philosopher son so that he can advance his revolutionary ideas, first in the melodramatic naturalism of the Mother's favorite playwrights, Ibsen and Strindberg, then in gradually disintegrating reality. First a kind of raving intensity takes over, full of rapid reveals of lurid details, general turmoil, drugs; soon after any trace of reality is stripped away into a stylized theater-as-theater, Witkacy's Pure Forms in pure state, perhaps. Actually, the whole thing must have been highly stylized: the entire play would have been staged, but for a few notable details like the mother's knitting, in black and white.
[image]
"Them" involves a secret government bent on "total automation" of all of society, and to those ends, the abolishment of the individualism of modern art. As is typical for Witkacy, it's not immediately clear which side really stands which ideals and everyone on any side is pretty compromised in general. A smart, confusing, very angry play of politics and ideas.
Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz, Azot, Fosfor and Arsen, 1918
TERRIBLE VOICE (through a hypersupermegaphonopump): THEY HAVE ABSOLUTE POWER NOW!
Following out the progression, Witkacy's final play, "The Shoemakers" (1934) is perhaps most philosophically dense and the most seethingly furious. As a shoemaker and his apprentices are subjected to one revolution and lead another only to bear witness to the destruction of the world as they knew it, the characters spout crazedly disgusting invented obscenities ("you greasy ball of rancid bitch lard!"), bizarre personifications like the DREADFUL HYPERWORKOID and the MULCH-ABOUT-TOWN appear, repetitions of the stage directions invade the dialog, signs appear to chart the mounting apathy of the audience, a duchess becomes a bat-winged bird of paradise, the dead speak, and the action builds up into a miasma of tension -- sex, violence, and political theory pressure-cook without proper release. And finally, after a progression that sees a dying capitalism taken over by an empty fascism and then a briefly utopian communism that quickly collapses into the eradication of the individual in favor of mechanized society, after this progression, much of which hadn't actually happened to Poland yet, but soon would, after all of this the play ends with the stage direction that "all of the sudden, like lightning, the iron curtain falls down. Oh strange seer, how true.
[image]
(I'm giving this 4 stars because Witkacy is a fascinating figure and I bet these would be insane 5-star productions even if they can occasionally be 3-star messes to wade through in print. I know, a dubious recommendation, but I just want you to know about this guy, even if you don't run out and get his plays.)
*originally brought to my attention by .
**Let's just consider how unnecessarily ugly, especially given the vision of Witkacy's own art, this cover is: [image]
Ugh, yeah. Lest we end on that dreadful note, here's another of his paintings:
Loading...
