Thursday, June 21, 2007

On the other hand... though not so different, in a way...

"And what's the point of a revolution
without general
copulation copulation copulation"

Nine Inch Nails - Capital G (Music Video)

I am posting this more for the song than the video (one of many fan-made videos guided by misinterpretation, but interesting nonetheless - this was the least cheesy one I could find!)
This song really disturbs me, but I was reminded of it during scene 26, when Marat's ghosts question his motives and level of commitment - it's an underlying cruelty and cynicism, that which Sade believes is an inevitable and inescapable quality of human nature and the world in general...

Tuesday, June 12, 2007

history keeps us honest

Posted are two photos (from Ellis - see "Sources" below) from an East German production in 1964.

Weiss was friends with Perten, the director, and made public statements which implied that Perten's take on the play (which he somewhat adapted for his production) which posited Marat as a socialist hero and martyr-type figure, was the only correct interpretation of his work (despite the fact that Perten cut and changed much of Weiss's original script, though the source does not clarify if these changes were approved by Weiss before production - in fact Ellis suggests that Weiss was not even aware of these changes or seemed to ignore them when he saw the production).

Weiss's "opinions of the drama's meaning were also affected by different productions of the play" (Ellis 33), and Ellis argues that Weiss's own interpretation of "Marat as the unequivicol 'moral victor' of the piece is not supported in the text" (34), but was a result of his shifting political sentiments and the influence of friends like Perten - Weiss's wife also suggested something similar in regards to the controversy over the "meaning" of the play. At any rate, it is unclear what Weiss intended with his production, but he was involved in the rehearsal process of the first production in Berlin at the Schiller Theatre (which Brook attended) (Cohen 62) . . . .

Right now I tend to agree with Cohen's statement about the much-debated "meaning" and interpretations of the play: "statements about Marat/Sade should should always contain a measure of doubt" (65).

Sources:
Ellis, Roger. Peter Weiss in Exile. Ann Arbor: UMI Research, 1987.
Cohen, Robert. Understanding Peter Weiss. Columbia: University of South Carolina, 1993.

(from Joma)




the epidermis: just the beginning

Marat supposedly acquired his skin disease from hiding from his enemies in Paris's sewers . . .

(from Joma)

off to the turning space

well it wasn't easy getting here - but then, why should it be?
shuttle bus to Pearson broke down: we waited in the parking lot of Tim Horton's in Jordan, sunny but grim just the same . . . what goes on here? the rivers of?







Finnair: half-empty, we stretch out across seats
the large older and muscular Russian woman barks at anyone who tries to move her precious duty-free alcohol . . .














Vantaa - such a beautiful, small airport, but 6 painful hours of waiting waiting waiting for my connection . . . and at baggage inspection the Russian woman lost her bottles in the grip of the young woman at the security inspection . . . oh, and the other: was this a tease? or nostalghia of something that never happened?

Lufthansa: packed to the gills, industry everywhere . . .

Munich - grey, wet, smokey, and as if on another planet - an intermediate space of conspicuous consumption crying out from the boutique shelves . . . and then that guy having difficulty walking . . .

we get into the bus to take us out to the Air Dolomiti turboprop on the wet tarmac . . . he is rolling in his seat, turning green - we ignore him . . . and just as we stop at the plane he cries out "Everybody: Help Me - I am paralyzed and cannot move!" He lashes out at a well-heeled woman who tries to help, says he's Francais (!), can't describe how it feels - because it doesn't (!!) and declines my naive offer of language assistance in this southern corner of the German-speaking world . . . .

they drove him away in the same bus - the ambulance in pursuit, and that was the end of him.
on to the cute green cardboard boxes placed in front of me with great care by the striking Italian flight attendant, resplendent with little cellophane windows that framed the single roll of prosciutto that was to tide us over . . .


the sky over the Czech republic was ethereal
with a smoky damp 9 o'clock sunset
the airport shiny and new - vacant
(customs officer was not interested in us, not like the last time . . .)
the young driver was there to take us into town in his late model Skoda berline coach at a bristling speed

and the decisions begin

Sunday, June 3, 2007

future past in 2018 . . .

. . . where nothing is real but the beat keeps goin' on . . . . Baudrillard would have had a field day with this, R-I-P

our second phone meeting




ships on the radar/bugs on the windshield:

"minimize the impact' is not to say suppress pejoratively, but to sublimate, to seek alternate strategies, perhaps to inhabit the role of the oppressor

with reference to the heritage of the 60s: in this production we are not in a space and time where we can share mutual hope - this is not the Utopian vision of the flower child



rather, in 2018 we are in a Dark Age
where violence (real and virtual, physical, intellectual, emotional, biological, etc.) is not perpetrated with a well-defined notion of the potential outcome: where everything serves the short term satisfaction, whether to secure natural resources, spiritual fulfilment, or sexual satiation.

Gini referred me to Wag the Dog (2001) and an excellent Hollywood moment about the construction of media-meaning and it's manipulation

explore: asylum
explore: suberversive

when is the mentally-challenged state of mind an act of offense? an act of defense? (thinking about acting . . . )

DRUGS: prescription and recreational (but also 'proscribed'): atavan, zoloft, ritalin . . . how we are mediated and manifest the agenda driven by western medicine? pharmaceutical manufacturing and profit-mongering? government of the masses? all in 2018 . . .


police protect mcdonald's by elly sinclair . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . see Tish Stringer's paper The Revolution will be Televised

why/where/by whom is this play approved to be put on in the institution? and then what happens when it changes?

DO NOT FORGET the possibility of comedy and the comic moment!

and of course, this is all about zeroing in upon the meta-script of the play that we will put on stage in 2007, in that perhaps unfortunately very welcoming Sean O'Sullivan theatre: we are less interested in the particulars of the Weiss/Sade histories than we are the mechanics of change: how does the vacuum of power get filled - and what does it sound like? what is the nature of the theatrical immanence that is produced by this situation . . . ?

the stage is a safe space - but it keeps erupting
how is the safety maintained and for whom? electronic surveillance? electrical and mechanical fences?
where is the threshold of the safe space? the doors at the entrance from the lobby into the hall? from the hall into the lobby?

immanence
omniscience

the white-washed, paper-covered, or boarded up window: what is the strategic advantage?

a place in plain view, but that nobody knows about . . .

keep your eye on the upcoming G8 summit

Saturday, June 2, 2007

the Director yanks the Designer's cord :-P

from Gini:

"I went for a walk today and was trying to work on Shakespeare text. Instead, M/S pushed to the fore. I offer you the following (in no particular order - I handwrote them as soon as I came in) prior to our chat:

I started thinking about the 60's. And, although the Paris student demonstrations hadn't happened when the play was written, the Free Speech Movement in Berkeley certainly had (I was there). Then came all the student upheavals and repressions and then the militancy: Paris, Kent State, Minutemen, SDS, the explosion in the brownstone in Manhattan (I know the father of one of the people who died there). Other demonstrations and riots: Watts, Attica, etc.

freedom v repression - somehow linked to - sanity and insanity
freedom of the individual v freedom of society

governing structures, societal structures, fundamentalism

2018: students from all over, held with no legal process:
- crazy, drugged (self or by others), social misfits, shit disturbers,
non-conformists

the value of human life - institutionalize mass murder, purgings

sex as a commodity, an opiate, a freedom, a repression, a degradation (to be "fucked over")

fear & hatred of the "other"

economic repression
social repression
religious repression
creative repression

absolutism - on every side
"the poor will always be with us"
mass mind set

so, this group of asylumed students put on display (the play) to minimize/mock their impact
structure v chaos

intellectuals are dangerous
power is dangerous
attempt to unify groups, cultures, areas dangerous

Between 1789 and 1808 there were incredible about-faces. Not just governments and rulers, but ideologies, beliefs, values, structures (changed the calendar)

seismic, dangerous
this breeds fear, terror
terror, terroism, terrorists (!)

uniformity/non-conformity
fundamentalists/free thinkers
group/individual

Disney v free expression
artificial allegiance v committment
committed ?
calm v hysteria

mind control/out of mind
commmunicate/excommunicate
celebrate/denigrate

re-vol-u-tion
de-vol-u-tion
institution

Okay, so you make sense of all of this - if you can. . . . "