Please answer briefly to each in a single blog post.
Q1. What different kinds of bodies were used and how were they used in this production?
Q2. What did the titles of the 3 Acts mean?
Q3. How was sound used?
Q4. What if any aspects of Artaud's ideas for the theatre were in evidence?
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The majority of the bodies used were in some way distorted or disfigured, with the exception of the children. The first person we were introduced to, the woman with one breast, then the "giant man" who was very tall and very well built and then onto the contortionist man who twists his body to form a tangle of arms and legs. You begin to see a pattern of abnormality occurring and the film seems to focus on these bodies as an intriguing and disturbing aesthetic. This is highlighted by their nudity, exposing their "difference". On the other hand the juxtaposition of the three children's partially naked bodies and the vast white stage made them seem isolated and highlighted their futility.
The titles of the acts were on one hand pretty self explanatory but seemed to be used to provoke a reaction from the viewers. "Auschwitz" has an obvious historical connotation; the entrapment of the people at the beginning in this industrial warehouse-like place could be seen as a representation of a concentration camp-esque place. The disfigured people could be seen to be highlighting this sense of difference. "Able and Cain" is obviously alluding to the story of Cain and Able in the bible, but the switching of names could be a way of bringing into question the power relation between the two brothers and indicates to the viewer who the two characters are.
The sound throughout the piece very dissonant and was used to provoke the audience to created atmosphere, especially the sound of metal clanking and the sound of churning machines, furthering this industrial feel. Along with this abstract high pitched tones were very harsh on the ear and the suddenness of the outbursts of these dissonant tones shocked the viewer and put you on edge. There were lots of repetition of these sounds but no sense of predictability to the score, and different layers were later incorporated to the sound montage, including music, (opera) and voiceover, Artaud's voice speaking from "to have done with the Judgment of God". The music created added to the disturbing aesthetic arousing the audience creating tension and anxiety.
I found the film quite unsettling and this was obviously the intention of the piece, and it shows clear links to Artaud's theatre of cruelty. The contortionist man was painful to watch and the viewer is made to squirm and withdraw, this rousing of the audience was exactly what Artaud would have wanted, it breaks the barrier between actor and spectator as we feel involved and are reacting to the piece, the camera almost lingers for too long on the main, which only furthers our exasperation and is in a sense cruel to the viewer. The music also has this affect; it unsettles and rouses the audience into a state of unease.
Q1
Elements of Artaud’s Theatre of Cruelty were evident in the use of bodies in this production. Actors with clearly visible deformities or unique factors had been cast, notably Cain’s crippled arm and the part of Adam as a contortionist. All of the bodies were uncomfortable to look at for an audience, whether it was dealing with physical discomfort, for example the woman with one breast, or emotionally challenging material, such as the children playing silently in what one can assume was a gas chamber in Auschwitz. In the third act, the juxtaposition of strong and weak bodies was significant, with the healthy and muscular Abel in comparison with the disabled Cain. The weeping woman and the man doing press-ups can also be seen to demonstrate weakness versus strength respectively. However, I felt that all the bodies were portrayed as weak when compared with their frightening and intimidating surroundings. This film seems to be questioning the strength and use of the body in the context of scientific developments such as genetic engineering.
The use of nudity also shows humans ‘stripped bare’, emphasised by the balding woman. As a result, humans are presented as vulnerable and no more powerful than any other element of nature.
Q2
By splitting the piece into three acts, each section could be viewed from a different perspective. For example, the performance seems to question the beginning and the destruction of the world and mankind and the second act examines this from the viewpoint of a Nazi death camp.
The Bible references, in a way similar to Artaud, lead the audience to question institutions and ideologies, in this instance the Church and religion. The reversal of the usual saying “Cain and Abel” so that Abel precedes Cain highlights the significance of the title. All of the titles, particularly Auschwitz, immediately rouse various emotions in the audience, which I felt were sinisterly dealt with through the use of children. The titles emphasise how humankind struggles repeatedly with the same issues. Abel, having been murdered by his brother, is often regarded as the first innocent victim of the power of evil. By naming the second act “Auschwitz”, a relatively recent historical event, the performance suggests that we have still not escaped this evil.
Q3
The use of unfamiliar and syncopated sounds at the beginning of the piece was unsettling and the guttural screams when the screen was blank had a frightening and disturbing effect.
Sound was used throughout to render the action more intense. The clicking and snapping noises during the contortionist’s performance certainly made the visual more disturbing. Another example is the use of religious music, such as choir song during Cain and Abel’s violence, to continually remind the audience of the original inspiration behind the piece.
The recording of Artaud reading his own material repeating “I am not mad” is particularly relevant when played alongside such events as the Holocaust. How can an institution possibly label an individual like Artaud as mad when so much “madness” occurs in the world?
Q4
- ugly/grotesque aesthetics
- actors very physically capable
- combination of media: theatre and film
- questioning institutions/ideologies (in this case, the church and christianity).
- In the words of Strommen, "image making".
- "Total theatre": everything served a function, from costumes, to lighting to sound.
- It's visual rhetoric was difficult to handle. Disturbing images, such as the quivering leg of a shackled person.
Q1. What different kinds of bodies were used and how were they used in this production?
The actors in the film are not psychological characters as we are used to them, but figures in a mise en scene. They’re brought forward, naked, out of the blackness like the figures of a Caravaggio, in white light. Chiaroscuro is the manner in which the bodies are framed. Their skins are pale, naked and vulnerable in the face of the void that surrounds and almost consumes them. These compositions are not arbitrary; the void is the space that precedes and succeeds the world, the figures that inhabit it those at its origin and its end. As one reviewer of the piece in live theatre surmised;
‘In the beginning there was nothing, then there was misery, murder, torture, genocide, nuclear destruction and the holocaust. In the beginning is the end: creation is linked to destruction. The Hebrew words that brought the world into being belong to the same language that was silenced in Auschwitz.’
The figures and the void stand in mutual need of one another in the depiction of this idea. They are the victims, sinners and abortions of a violent origin of the world as Romeo Castellucci conceives of it;
‘Genesis scares me more than the apocalypse: the terror of endless possibility, the open sea of potential. I get lost - the Book Of Genesis goes beyond the imagination, because it comes from chaos, its substance is chaos.’
Q2. What did the titles of the 3 Acts mean?
The titles that prefigure the episodes of the piece detract, as they do in Brecht, from the narrative character of dramatic work, directing focus instead onto the aesthetic or conceptual ideas within it. They also pertain to the content of the work as a series of Genesis’; Marie Curie’s Laboratory, Auschwitz, Cain and Abel, all connotate the creation or destruction of worlds, the technological and nuclear, Hebrew, and civilised world, the opening up of one mode of historicity or another. The titles refer to Castellucci’s fascination with the drama involved in what Martin Heidegger called a ‘rift’ or ‘thrust’; ‘whenever there is a beginning- a thrust enters history; history either begins or starts over again’. Derrida too referred to this opening up of a mode of historicity. The content of the titles recall the sacrificial act of Rene Girard, ‘an absolute beginning, signifying the passage from nonhuman to human’.
Q3. How was sound used?
Crucially there are no words in the soundscape of the production. The bones of a contortionist crack and the chemicals of a laboratory bubble. The only music occurs in the Auschwitz episode. Hollow, memorious, and sardonically innocent, it recalls one world as it is destroyed in the creation of another, as do the echoes of Tristan and Isolde in The Burial of the Dead.
The other sounds, some cries, some that sound perhaps industrial and some that sound geological, are indeterminate, alternating between an apparent arbitrariness and an obscure, but determined, rhythm, recalling that ‘passage from nonhuman to human’ and the passage back again.
Q4. What if any aspects of Artaud's ideas for the theatre were in evidence?
There are certainly themes and content within Genesis with which we could find echoes in the writings of and concerning Artaud, and these are as forthcoming as formal comparisons. We find the same reactionist atrophy of words and literary structure, if not any overt structure, but not the sensuous overload, not the same affirmation of signs but something more reductionist. But Castellucci, if but in part, does fulfil many of these formal conditions of Artaud’s theatre;
‘Once aware of this language in space, language of sounds, cries, lights, onomatopoeia, the theatre must organise it into veritable hieroglyphs, with the help of characters and objects, and make use of their symbolism and interconnections in relation to all organs on all levels.’
What it cannot fulfil is the necessity and the near sacred importance with which Artaud imbues his art. The Genesis was ‘a difficult night out’ for one reviewer, but not one of catharsis, sensuousness, bringing into being and spiritual renewal of Artaud.
The distortion and disfiguration of the human body highlighted its potential to communicate in a meaning greater than words. We are presented with a man trapped in a box who is contorting his body perhaps symbolising his inner turmoil and trappings. This aesthetic worked to both distance us and draw us further in. The small frames of the children behind the gauze were unsettling and caused a sense of helplessness as they seemed isolated and alone. Their white clothes echoed purity but still there was an underlying threat of danger.
The titles, as Lizzie said, can be viewed from a different perspective. There is this jarring that occurs in each section. In 'Auschwitz' there is the knowledge of the suffering that occurred which is juxtaposed with the visual image of children playing in virginal white. 'Abel and Cain' highlights the creation of mankind but also its greatest flaw, the destruction we inflict upon each other.
Sound was employed in a typically Artaudian way, the primal screams and the clanking of metal encouraged an unsettled sense of fear and suffering. The sound worked to intensify the visual aesthetic, for example the scene with the contortionist and the cracking of the bones. With the exception of the music in the Auschwitz scene, which Simon mentions, the sounds were mostly jagged and harsh.
the use of total theatre and the use of several mediums,
lack of spoken word,
strong stand-alone images,
incongrous juxtapositions of noise and image,
loud and unsettling sound,
disturbing images,
athletic actors, both of heart and mind,
no grand narrative but dealing with epic ideas such as Auschwitz,
What kind of different bodies were used and how were they used in this production?
The first piece of a body that we see is the feet of a chicken. By focusing on these inhuman, almost scaly, claws the audience prepares itself for visions of distortion and, possibly, absurdity.
First human figure: an emaciated, skeletal male. Although his build makes him appear fragile, the audience is taken aback to see his physical exertion as he pulls himself through bars. The man is perhaps Native American or at least not European. In a similar way to the chicken’s feet, Castellucci, a European filmmaker, presumably making a film intended for an art-house European/North American audience, distances his audience from the subject, placing the viewer in a more objective viewpoint.
2nd man: very fat, broadly-built, black – another “foreign body” – spinning and, latterly, covering his body with sand. Again, naked.
3rd man: young white male who is wearing black shorts, contortionist - shocking.
Woman: old, fat, losing her hair.
Children: bald, largely in smocks.
As Simon has said, the cast has been assembled because of its bodies. They are used to make images and the director’s focus is artistic composition.
What did the titles of the three acts mean?
‘At the beginning’ is an allusion to the Judaic book of Genesis and the creation story. Again as Simon has mentioned, the titles focus the piece on Hebraic ideas, what with the story of Cain and Abel (whose names are inverted from the standard appellation in the third act, promoting Abel – the victim) also coming from Genesis and Auschwitz (title of Act 2) being the name of the most famous Nazi concentration camp, the death place for at least 960,000 Jews. Not only do these titles connect creation with destruction, they link all murder back to the Judeo-Christian myth of the “first murder”. As the story of Cain and Abel comes after the Fall of Man, i.e. Adam and Eve’s expulsion from Eden, locating the story as the final act perhaps indicates Auschwitz, and the atrocities of the Nazi – and maybe all? – genocide as another Fall.
How was sound used?
To disconcert and to distort. A plethora of sounds were juxtaposed (e.g. water through pipes, whistling, orchestral music, screams, a car revving), keeping the audience on edge. Percussive rhythms were also used to agitate the audience. Sounds were suggestive, prompting the audience to make their own connections.
What if any aspects of Artaud's ideas for the theatre were in evidence?
- literariness does not dominate
- the aesthetic whole of the piece was not beautiful and refined
- ideas were communicated through codified images, composed with actors and visual and aural effects.
- a rejection, or breaking, of accepted thought
The screening of Societas Rafaello Sanzio’s piece remains a very intense experience for it displayed a genre of theatre that seems unique and profoundly disturbing. The images on stage remain hard to put into words without calling for everyone’s knowledge and their own interpretation of it. However it seems that the different techniques used in the piece highlights and puts into form some of the points that Artaud is in favour of in his Theatre of Cruelty. It is particularly relevant in Cristiano Carloni and Stefano Franceschetti’s use of the bodies which are being pushed to their limits to the point where it becomes painful to watch the bodies on stage. It is almost as if the Artaud’s theory on physicality has been pushed to such an extreme point that it is no longer bearable to watch the bodies on stage. The juxtaposition between fat and skinny naked bodies highlights Artaud’s thinking about the sickness of humankind for it carries the stigmata of the world’s as well as a spiritual’s decay. It therefore portrays the distinction between two different conceptions of life, one being in the excess and the vulgarity of ‘debauchery’ in its most literal sense, and the other one being in the drastic abstinence. The presence of animals as well children on stage also appears utterly shocking for it raises the question of the willingness of the performers on stage certainly not conscious or mature enough to distinguish reality and the stage. Again the main concern of this performance is to go further into the conception of a theatre implanted into daily lives, a conception which is similar to what we see in Balinese Theatre. Furthermore the use of mechanical objects into the piece certainly draws our attention on the dehumanising aspect of modern life where the blurring of the boundaries between humans and machines is increasingly undefined as many philosophers tend to disapprove the dualist theory on the existence of the ‘soul’ and the ‘body’ thus enabling them to compare humans to ‘hyper-robots’. Despite the religious connotations of the first and last act as well the title of the piece Genesis, the body is shown into its utter mortality when one of the performers lies dead on the moving floor. The final statement of the piece is thus bleak and carries no hope for the future. Although the director relates to one of the first episode of the Bible, there is no doubt that he wants to actualise the thesis according to which no one is to be trusted and that we remain solitary until our deaths. It is then rather unexpected to insert in this religious spectrum a precise historical reference as if Auschwitz should be for now part of the Bible in regard to the tremendous impact it had on the course of history and, to a certain extent, its irrationality. However the director shows the ‘unthinkable’ by creating a piece which does not show what happened in Auschwitz but rather conveys a personal and convincing adaptation of it, similar in some ways to Jerzy Grotowski’s Akropolis (1964) in which the famous practitioner “attacks the whole concept of natural behaviour, and divorces himself from the cult of psychological realism”. All the images created on this overtly too pure set calls for the unconscious aspect of such a trauma rather than a re-enactment piece of theatre. Nevertheless some of the sounds used during the performance illustrate clearly the horror of the concentration camps. Sobs, screams and metallic sounds are used with great persistence all the way through playing with the intensity of it in such an intense manner that the spectator is at a loss, completely disorientated for they, as Artaud would say, “bombard our senses” through sounds.
Q1. What different kinds of bodies were used and how were they used in this production?
The first image of a body was of a skinny, nude human. As the man’s arms stretched out, revealing the skeleton under the thin layer of skin, it immediately gives a sense of weakness as the figure reaches for an unknown desire but failing pathetically. This body then appears on all fours and performs this disgusting dislocation of the body parts. At first glance it looks like it is two bodies: one lifting another, but then the spectator realises it is just the individual movement of body parts which creates the illusion.
The second body, perhaps an antithesis of the first, is broadly built, verging on gluttonous. He covers himself with dust, perhaps soil from the earth. Conceivably he could represent gluttony, and the dirt could symbolically mean he is digging his own grave.
The next body is that of a woman. At first her pained voice is solely heard then walking into the light we can finally see her ache through movement as she struggles to walk. Like the second body, she is fat. She loses her hair and appears to be working and uses hair-like material for her threading machine. Falling to the floor, exhausted, she is too weak to lift herself up.
The second act introduced bodies of children. Most of the time they were running and trying to reach something, again unknown. (I completely agree with Bert’s point about the willingness of the child actors in this production; quite shocking). This idea of striving for something distant was seen later by two bodies, one kneeling and one standing. The figure stood up had his arms stretched out, like the first body we saw.
I agree with a lot of what has been said already; the ideas of nakedness and weakness. The majority, if not all, of the bodies looked ill and were often physically striving for something unknown to the spectator. Whether they were looking for repentance from something divine or simply endeavouring to be saved it was not clear.
Q2. What did the titles of the 3 Acts mean?
I feel the comments made for this question already are quite substantial. They do represent birth, social death and personal death.
Q3. How was sound used?
Often there was a constant clicking beat, but very subtle in the background, perhaps to represent a heartbeat of human life. The sounds were definitely distorted and usually sounded like working machinery. They were not natural sounds, as Jon pointed out they were created by water running through pipes and cars revving. The only ‘natural’ sound was that of screams from pained humans.
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