. . . I digress
The Author … a review, pt 2.
| Phil |
Ah! I think I get it now. A play about making another play, a play that sounds pretty horrific. Four actors. Tim, the writer and director, who seems to have some strange ideas about art and society. Vic, who plays …
IF
Excuse me! Strange ideas? I haven’t heard any strange ideas … don’t know what he’s up to mind you. Why’s he naked? Why’s he crying? And what’s all the talk about blood? He seems a bit obsessed.
Phil
He’s not really naked, is he. Just talking about it, simply telling us a story. I’m sure it’ll be clear in the end.
And the strange ideas? Something about society being defined by its edges and art operating at the extremes. Maybe its just his character talking, Tim Crouch pretending to be Tim Crouch? Doesn’t matter.
Anyway, the other actors. Vic, who plays mild mannered, middle class nice guy who gets to play the villain in the other play. Esther, lovely but lightweight and a little self-absorbed, who plays the very young victim in the other play
.
IF
She’s just sung a song. Did you recognise it?
Wonder what would have happened if people had said no, don’t sing. I suppose the exit strategy is the main way an audience influences what’s going on. The audience is hardly a collective entity. Just a bunch of like minded individuals going along for the ride. If the don’t like where its going they can always leave.
But we’ll never alter the destination.
Phil
Thank you for that insight, very profound. May I move on?
Chris, the actor who spoke first, plays a member of the audience. In both plays. One of us. And one of them.
A “delicate flower” who admits he delights in all the bombings, blood, beheadings and buggery … if it helps to secure the future of new writing.
Space.
IF
The play’s about images then? How we deal with the horrors of the world. How we represent the horror without becoming the horror.
Phil
Something like that I think.
Vic becomes the monster he plays, re-enacts the violence he’s absorbed, even though “we all know he’s not like that.”
IF
He keeps saying he’s not the person he used to be. Somehow he’s been taken over by the character he’s playing.
Is that possible? It’s just acting? He’s just said he once came into the theatre “as” his character and smashed a table up. Scared the hell out of the stage manager. That’s not acting. That’s being a dickhead.
Phil
Yes, yes! Like Tim just said, the point is to represent the horror, not live it
.
IF
But does seem like the whole play is pointing towards some contamination theory. The images they talk about get more and more violent … Esther just said something about Vic tearing out her womb. That sort of stuff must send you a bit crackers.
Even though it’s not meant to be taken literally. Nobody is thinking allegorically when there’s a bag of raw liver dripping down between your legs. The poetics of the piece must get a bit lost.
Oh look, Chris is handing out chocolates. Maltesers.
Shall I grab us some? I know you’ll not reach over. Too scared he’ll ask you to say something.
Wonder what would happen if he offered Rolo’s instead.
Space
Phil
Hell. That was a bit intense.
IF
Wasn’t expecting that.
Were you?
Phil
Err … no.
Well, I kinda guessed something bad was gonna happen to Chris. But not quite that harsh.
Did it feel like some sort of karmic comeuppance? Chris always said the theatre was safe. Okay to indulge in gore and gruesomeness because it’s just pretend. Was that the return of the repressed, the visceral back with a vengeance?
IF
Maybe the point was that theatre is built on horror stories. Paying your fiver, becoming a friend of the theatre, handing out chocolates to fellow audience members doesn’t make the reality any more palatable.
Nowhere is safe.
Tim though. Shocking
.
Phil
Yes, shocking. But cleverly constructed.
It became shatteringly clear why the only actual representation shown in the whole play and not just talked about was the eight month old baby, Finn.
As he says, nobody was hurt. Nobody would have remembered. Nobody would have noticed … but still, after all that talk of blood and gore and inhuman horror, he still managed to present a situation that was completely abhorrent and unforgivable.
IF
I couldn’t have said those words.
Even acting. I couldn’t
.
Phil
No, me neither.
Blood and guts and bum sex I can handle, but I found that hard to listen to.
I was impressed with the way it was written though. Almost as if he were watching himself abstractly, from a distance, through a lens. His crime is represented as just happening, as if it was just one of the images he’s been researching.
He has the choice to continue. He has the choice to stop.
But either choice is represented as a click. Remote. Removed. Just like switching on a porn channel.
IF
He only gets away with saying it because we all know he hasn’t done it.
He’s just pretending.
Phil
Pretending, of course. There’d be the police and a whole section of social workers waiting outside if anyone were dense enough to believe what he just said.
That’s the point, maybe. Theatre is a way of talking about reality, not reality itself. When we let that distinction blur we become like Vic. As bad as reality.
IF
Well, it’s certainly left me wondering what the heck to think. And that’s good, isn’t it?
Time to stop pretending. Don’t you want to go to the pub?
Phil
What a great idea … time to stop pretending.
