Performance Texts: Homages to Samuel Beckett & Antonin Artaud

Full performance texts are given here in full, along with a contexualisation. These works have not, as yet, been publically seen on stage or elsewhere, despite their creator spending many months in the capacity of director & designer in preparation for this, but unfortunately being prevented to complete by unforseen circimstances. Should any Theatre Company wish to perform them, editor/writer to reference or include, or student desiring to use them in any way, please contact beforehand for permissions & copyright clearance.

TWO-EIGHT-ZERO: THREE SKETCHES.

(Inspired by the work of Samuel Beckett).

SKETCH ONE: No Title

N.B. In Sketch One the players are referenced as male, in Sketch Two no reference as to sex is made, and in Sketch Three indications are given that the players are female. Consequently, the players may either be male or female - or interchanging gender.

Bare stage: a‘ black box’. Three white downward spotlights cast circles of no more than one metre circumference on the floor, rest of the stage in shadow. Performer A jumps to and fro between the circles of light cast by two of the spots, foot falls are amplified. Beneath the remaining spot performer B tosses and turns in sleep under a sheet of crumpled paper, the rustling of which is amplified. Both are dressed in tattered and torn clothing: A in red and B in green (hereafter referred to as Redtatters and Greentatters respectively).

Greentatters stirs, pushes back the paper and sighs.

GREENTATTERS: Ah, my beautiful, beautiful Hyacinth Rose.

One of the pools of light created by a spotlight is moved quickly and slightly outside of the stride of Redtatters. He gives a shrug gets to his knees and pulls it back with his hands. Continues to move from one to the other as before. A disembodied voice laughs. Greentatters sits up, rubs his eyes.

GREENTATTERS: One day, one very fine day my lady of dreams shall share my bed.

REDTATTERS: Not a feather-down quilt or a velvet couch, just a hard floor and old paper, eh?

GREENTATTERS: And I’ll be plenty rich, a wealthy man. My lady shall be dressed in the very best of fur and diamonds, silk and satin, feathers and lace and all that stuff. And it won’t be long, won’t be long now, my cute, pretty, pretty Hyacinth Rose.

He lies down, curls up, turns over, sits up again, lies down, curls up, and turns over a number of times before finally settling to sleep.

REDTATTERS: Ships don’t come in at such places as this. No water to carry ‘em. No trains. No boats. No planes. No buses…nothing ever comes. Nothing. Ever.

GREENTATTERS (crooning in his sleep): Ah, Lucy, sweet, sweet Lucy. Sugar and spice an’ all things nice. Sweet, sweet, sweet Lucy…ah…ooh…Lucy…Lucy…

REDTATTERS: Well, a Rose by any other name is not one. Not that I s’pose it was in the first place, anyhow or way.

Greentatters fidgets and turns over, curls, uncurls, turns over, curls up a number of times. Settles and begins to snore, quietly at first, then louder and louder.

GREENTATTERS (crooning in the midst of heavy snoring): Oh, oh, Madeline, oh… Mad…Mad…Mad…

REDTATTERS: And a Lucy is not a Lucy if that is not her name. Yes, he is mad, quite mad, mad as old Sam’s idiots who waited for someone or something named Godot. Not that I s’pose he, or it, was ever named that in the first place, anyway.

Again the spot is moved, the pool of light shifts out of reach. Redtatters leaps but misses, falls over, gets up, brushes himself down, kneels on the floor and drags it back into position with his hands. The disembodied voice laughs again. Redtatters stands, pauses, then resumes jumping. This sequence is repeated a number of times, the light moving in different directions. All the while Greentatters tosses and turns, snoring and murmuring a variety of feminine names.

GREENTATTTERS (jerking then suddenly sitting up): Aagggghhhhh!!!

Redtatters stops jumping. Both remain statuesque for a while. At the moment Greentatters begins to speak, Redtatters continues his movements between the pools of light.

GREENTATTERS (with a tremble): ‘orrible, ‘orrible, ‘orrible! Two grey eyes in craggy, crinkled flesh… piercing the dark… silver squirrel mop on top of a bone skull…just staring… staring at me out of the black… a ghoul…. a ghost… ‘orrible, ‘orrible, ‘orrible it was…as white as the grave….just looked straight at me it did…its lips didn’t move they didn’t….had no lips to move it didn’t…but it hissed at me…said its name was Buckett… or Bockitt… or some such thing…just gaped at me….out of a hole in the dark…all craggy and crinkly it was… ‘orrible it was! Calming down, looking around Glad I’m here and not there with that Bickitt thing.

REDTATTERS: Well, if its name was not Bockitt….or Buckett…it was maybe not Bickitt either, which means it wasn’t really there at all. Mad, mad, crazy you are. Always thinking somethink’s there that isn’t.

GREENTATTERS: Glad I’m here and not there with that Blackitt.

Greentatters pulls the paper over himself, curls up, fidgets, tosses and turns, curls up, uncurls, grunts, snores and mumbles inaudible words with the interjection of audible female names. Intermittently he utters variations of ‘Bockitt’, ‘Bickett’ etc. upon which he suddenly jerks up and awake, looks around before resuming tossing, turning and mumbling. Redtatters tumbles over as one of the pools of light darts away from him. He gets up, brushes himself down, kneels down, pulls back the light circle with his hands, stands, looks around bemused before resuming again. These actions continue for a length of time with intermittent laughs from disembodied voice. Lights fade slowly down, almost to blackout then slowly up again. Redtatter’s tumbles over again as the pool of light at which he was aiming shifts out of stride’s length. He stands, peering around, agitated. Fugitively he drops to his knees and pulls the pool of light over the other, carefully aligning them then stands upon both hopping from one foot to another. Greentatters’ words and actions synchronise with Redtatters rhythmic hopping. One spotlight shifts and its cast light circles round the other, Redtatters jumps from one to the other going round with it. Suddenly the patterning breaks and the spotlight is moved randomly back and forth, through and out, of the other circle of light. Redtatters attempts to keep his steps within the circles with difficulty. Very quickly the spots move apart and dart in opposite directions stopping at either extreme sides of the stage. Redtatters looks from one to the other then at his feet a few times.

REDTATTERS (facing front, shouts): Blackitt!!!?

Sudden blackout..

SKETCH TWO: Ssshhhhhhhh!!!!!

Greentatters is now silent and still, curled up in sleep. One single spot alights on Redtatters who has stopped jumping and stands facing audience.

REDTATTERS:

Self

self

which

self

what

Self

this

self

that

self

your

self

where

here

there

which

that

one

this

one

what

one

that

one

this

one

self

your

self

Self

self

selves

real

self

false

self

not

self

true

self

which

self

that

self

this

self

what

self

which

where

here

there

one

self

two

self

three

self

four

Self

self

selves

one

self

two

self

three

self

four

where

here

over

there

where

which

what

one

your

self

their

selves

your

selves

which

where

over

there

Self

self

selves

which

selves

what

selves

where

over

there

here

where

one

self

two

self

three

self

four

yes

selves

self

for

Self

and

your

Self

and

their

Selves

one

self

two

self

three

self

four

and

there

where

every

where

but

here

self

Self

self

not

Sudden blackout.

SKETCH THREE: Cloutie.

N. B. The Cloutie tree is from Irish Celtic folk custom. It was said that whoever left a rag on one of its boughs would witness an end to their troubles. The tree stands,thus, draped in sorrows and tomorrows wishes.

Two spotlights fade up on performers. Redtatters, as before, now drawing figures of eight from a point in centre of body (navel) in three directions: back and forth, side to side, up and down. The movement continues throughout the sketch, starting large and gradually decreasing in size, the movement becomes faster and faster. Greentatters, sitting facing the audience, bottom half of body wrapped and concealed with paper, arms stretching outwards and upwards, quietly mumbling inaudible disjointed words before getting louder and delivering audible text.

GREENTATTERS: Once there was a time. And once there was not. Long, long, long ago. Yesterday. Never. Far, far, far way. Tomorrow. Nowhere. Double loop. A figure of eight. Receding into shadow. Fading into light. Betwixt. Between. Rock. Back and forth. To and fro. Looping into past gone. Looping into future not. Returning. Again, again, again. To axis. Not having ventured anywhere. But here. Betwixt. Between. Never and nowhere. Where. Here. At crossover point. In twilight. Not black. Not white. But misty grey. Here. Buried. Crotch deep. Rooted. In a mound. Mound of earth. Crippled. Hung with rags. Shrouded in tatters. Tied with ribbons. No other. None like myself. Nothing to do. Nothing to do. Dress. Undress. Open. Close. Little purses of green. Count. Rags. One. Two. Three. Four. Eight. And cry. No tears. For who. Not she. Not I. But Sidhe. Bean-si. And wait, wait, wait for the Faerie to come. So. Rocking. Rocking. Rocking. To and fro. Back and forth. Pushed. Pulled. By unseen outside inside. Knock. Knock. Who’s there. No one. Continue. Loop to future not. Apple blossom. Pretty palace. When my ship comes in. Casket of gold. Lottery ticket. Raffle tab. Growing stale. Growing old. Dissolve in sand. Melt to void. Returning again, again. To rock of ever return. Scatter the seeds. Empty dreams. Goblin desire. Cyclic rainbow. Eats own tail. No end. No crock. All gone. Blind. Mirror, mirror. No reflection. See nothing. Nothing to do. Open and shut. Purses of green. Dress. Undress. Tinkle. Tinkle. Rag of blue. Baby in a bag. Forget-me-not. They did. No matter. No blame. No tears. Wait, wait for the Faerie to come. Rock. Rock. Rocking. Loop to past never. His face. His hair. His voice. His poem. Who for. Not she. Not I. But Sidhe. Bean-si. Prince is dead. See-saw. Jackdaw. Peck the carcass. No regret. Not I. For he. Was not. As she. Not like herself. Myself. Not he. Turn away. Ever return. Betwixt. Between. One. Two. Thud. Thud. Ribbon of red. A bruise on the heart. Love-lies-bleeding. Love it was not. No matter. No tears. Here. Fingers stretch. Reach. Expand. Recoil. Contract. Touch nothing. No other. No one. No thing. Mute. Only listen. Crack of bone. Muscle creak. Hiss of blood. No meaning. No blame. No matter. Misty grey. Nothing to do. Open and close. Open and close. Dress. Undress. Knock. Knock. Knock. Continue. Loop to the right. Pumpkin carriage. Into nowhere. Glittered in jewels. A cape of lace. Dancing ghosts. Corpse ballet. Decay away. Out of light. Into grey. Crippled in clay. Crippled in clay. Click. Clack. Trim of Yellow. Adder in the head. Sweat on the brow. Cuckoo spit and feverfew. Too many whats. Wherefores. And whys. Not so wise. None of it matters. No concern. No concern. Here. Here. Nothing to do. Betwixt. Between. Never and nowhere. One. Two. Three. Four. Open and shut. Little purses of green. Reach. Recoil. Cry. Cry. No tears. No tears. Not for not. Not for I. Wait for Sidhe. Bean-si. Wait, wait, wait for the Faerie to come. And rock. Rock. Tick. Toc. Tickety.-toc. Stop. Knock. Continue. Forward and back. Loop to the left. Into the black. Slap of the face. Kick to floor. Toys come tumbling after. Turn the key. Lock her up. Swollen face. Bleeding sore. Fist the door. Fist the door. Scream till hoarse. Scream in silence. Evermore. Come, come, come away. No guilt. No shame. No blame. Rock, rock, rocking. To and fro. Back and forth. Forth. Twilight grey. Betwixt. Between. Nothing to say. Nothing to do. Count. Count. Open and close. Cloth of green. A chicken bone choke. Jack-in-the-hedge and clover leaf. A wish cannot be granted. No tears. No cry. No matter. Girdled abyss. An empty void. A ring-pass-not. Sway. Sway. Sway. Sway. Dress. Undress. Mud up to crotch. Open and close. Reach. Recoil. Expand. Contract. Push. Pull. Back and forth. To and fro. To. Fro. To. Fro. Open and close. Open and close. Little purses of green. One. Two. Two. One. Eight. No tears. No cry. Not for she. Not for I. No guilt. No shame. No blame. No matter. Rock, rock, rocking. Nothing to do. Nothing to do. But call. Call. Call for who. Not for she. Not for I. But for Sidhe. Bean-si. Goblin desire. Desire. Desire. And wait, wait, wait, wait, wait for the Faerie to come.

Greentatters’ voice quietens to inaudible mumbling of disjointed words speeding up. Redtatters’ movements get faster and faster, smaller and smaller still until the movement is not externally discernable but the intensity of effort unmistakably visible. Both performers continue in this vein for a while. Sudden blackout. Mumbling is prolonged for a short while, then silence.

INSPIRED BY BECKETT

Samuel Beckett invariably refused to comment about his theatrical pieces let alone write about them, but in this I do not follow his example and offer the reader a form of contextualisation and an accounting of the preceeding work Two-Eight-Zero: Three Sketches. That this should come as a postscript, as opposed to an introduction, is a deliberated calculation born of the desire for the performance text to be read unencumbered by the prior explanations and justifications of its author, thereby allowing for any impact it may (or, indeed, may not) have to be pure and direct.

Two-Eight-Zero: Three Sketches could well, in one sense, be described as a re-mixing, re-fashioning of Beckett’s own works, which may be deemed as taking an unprecedented liberty with the writings of one of the most notable playwrights of the last century, or, alternatively, as a respectful tribute. In my defence I shall state that the intention is certainly the latter. Moreover, this way of working enabled an adherence to the main aim of Two-Eight-Zero: Three Sketches: essentially to create a fresh presentation of fundamental themes, concerns and stylistics of Beckett’s theatrical oeuvre woven into a new text for performance. A close embrace of Beckett’s works was, therefore, a quintessential part of the process. Professor Noel Witts, in an introductory seminar in March 2001 stated that, in his view: ”The only way to know Beckett is through performance“. Having performed Beckett in the past I understand the basis upon which this viewpoint rests. Engaging with Beckett in an experiential manner as performer offers a means of burrowing under the skin of performance text(s), giving the opportunity to surrender and allow the work(s) to act on one’s own being directly. With Beckett this can be an especially insightful, a unique and haunting experience. During the process of producing the current work, however, it would seem I have discovered another way, that of creating a directly inspired text, which has proven to be equally valid and possessed of the same opportunities and effectiveness. Not, then, exclusively an academic exercise, or solely a performative endeavour, Two-Eight-Zero: Three Sketches has been a deeper probing into Beckett’s theatrical work on an empirical and distinctively individual level.

The completed text of Two-Eight-Zero: Three sketches is peppered with allusions to many of Beckett’s plays: Waiting for Godot, Happy Days, Rock-a-bye, Ohio Impromptu, Knapp’s Last Tape, Not I…. even to Beckett himself, and those familiar with the playwright and his plays will be able to easily discern such references in both the textual monologues and dialogues, as well as within the stage directions. Detailed explication on this point, therefore, may be dispensed with. The concerns and stylistics of Beckett’s work for theatre, however, and their application within the contextual framework of Two-Eight-Zero: Three Sketches calls, perhaps, for further elucidation. Although space does not allow for a detailed exposition of all the deliberations involved in the creation of the text, particularly the more intricate, and, indeed those that are personally related, the selected criteria and brief indications of their transposition/interpretation as set out here are some of the most vital ones that instructed and directed the project and will provide a skeletal referential framework.

Waiting, time (the problems of filling it), memory, hope (or lack of it), the repetitive rituals of the everyday, the search for self-identity (and the futility of this search), the impossibility of communication, the babblings of the mind and the cyclic nature of things are some of the most prominent concerns apparent and recurring again and again throughout Beckett’s work, and thus accentuated in Two-Eight-Zero: Three Sketches. The typical Beckett character is at once physically connected though mentally/emotionally alienated from the world and its society in a torturous Descartesian I-world dualism. Severed, though clinging still to illusionary pasts and nonsensical futures, suspended in an infinity, superfluous to the universe, trapped in an existential monotony, caught between the instinct to survive and the longing for death, s/he is face to face with self but avoiding the stare back. The Beckett character, give or take away details, is, to some extent, every wo/man and such a typical portrait is deliberately drawn within my own text.

Invariably considered by many as bleak, nihilistic and depressing, Beckett’s work nonetheless exhibits an essential humanism and wry black humour. Furthermore, his presentations of the human condition and states of mind may be seen as potentially cathartic in effect by virtue of their penetrative mental acuity that exhibits no propensity to judge, moralise or dictate. The themetics of Two-Eight-Zero: Three Sketches is, therefore, more than a mere collage of various Beckett pieces in that it not only seeks a re-focusing of the concerns cited above, combining them in one short text, and a re-drawing of the quintessence of the Beckett character, but also aims at cathartic potentiality with the self-same smattering of black humour.

The utilisation of two performers of contrasting characters echoes many of Beckett’s works and likewise gives the hint of suggestion of a vaudeville double-act (as evidenced in Waiting for Godot and other works). No real communication occurs between them. In Sketch One, although Redtatters responds to Greentatters, the latter is deaf to anything the other says and their minds run on such different tracking that convergence is precluded. In the preceding Sketches one performer is given a voice whilst the other’s is taken away. Throughout the whole piece contrasts are accentuated: wakefulness/dreaming, cynicism/idealism, self-consciousness/unconsciousness, mental action/physical action, colour oppositions, light and shadow and so forth: a chiaroscuro across many levels. As one character struggles mentally with the concept of self, the other seeks unconsciousness of it in sleep, and, in the subsequent phase one is caught in the mental double-looping failing to stay on its axis of comparative quietitude and resolution as the other internally physically draws a figure of eight smaller and smaller in order to diminish it to nothing. The dichotomy of body and mind is strongly accentuated and exaggerated particularly in the action/non action of the character interplay. In Cloutie, for example, this is seen where one performer is caught in physical action whilst the other remains static, despite the fact that both are giving expression to the same configuration (one through movement of the torso, the other through the verbal vomiting forth of mind contents). The configuration of eight, itself, is the trap in which the performers are snared: infinity, a zero point between two zeros, Nietzsche’s ‘eternal return’.

Each character, throughout all three phases, is caught in a private ritual and each one of these rituals is essentially meaningless and futile. Greentatters dreams as Redtatters aims for something that an unseen ‘other’ periodically prevents. This ‘other’ is deliberately left ambiguous as in the case of Beckett’s Godot, or in final section of Two-Eight-Zero: Three Sketches: the Fairie. In truth both could hold multifarious interpretations yet essentially Godot, or the Fairie, are not any one thing, being or event, but an embodiment of expectations and desires for something else, something better but which in reality has no existence, tangible or otherwise. Godot and the Fairie do not come, the wish is not fulfilled, the waiting and hoping is futile, and the predicament meets with no solution. All there is to do in the waiting is to fill the painful silence and emptiness with idiot games, puerile acts and spew forth streams of words, all of which are ultimately meaningless and produce no effective change.

Disconnected and alienated from the successive sequential events that normally create the illusion of the flux of time, linearity is dispensed with in the text of Two-Eight-Zero: Three Sketches as it is in Beckett’s works. Movement, both physical and mental, occurs in confined patterning, looping and circling a static moment that shatters the delusion of time as either natural or progressive. With the absence of linearity, the traditional narrative or plot of the ‘well-made play’ is additionally discarded. The piece has no story line and no development in the usual sense and the characters remain unchanged, doomed and powerless to change circumstance. In the dialogues, monologues, movement, stage properties, costume and lighting that go to make up the mise-en-scene of Two-Eight-Zero: Three Sketches, what is presented, in Beckettian manner, is nothing more than a state of being. Indeed, such is the absence of linearity that the three separate pieces may be re-ordered without any detriment to the piece as a composite.

In an interview with Israel Shenker of The New York Times (6 May, 1956) Beckett stated: ”I’m working with impotence, ignorance. […] My little exploration is the whole zone of being that has always been set aside by artists as something unusable – as something by definition incompatible with art“ (Seaver, R., 1976: pp. ix). The staging of a state of being necessitates a particular, and perhaps a more intense, scrutiny of all visual, gestural and audible aspects than other subject matters may require, and a more deliberated consideration as to how these elements interact for a successful conveyance. It may well be that many of Beckett’s stage instructions were so precise and that his works continue to be guarded for this very reason; the danger of allowing too much directorial leeway would surely run a foreseeable risk of jeopardising, even destroying completely, the author’s perspective and intent. Unfashionable though this stance may be for many postmodernist theatre practitioners, I can feel nothing but respect for the position taken by Beckett, and the trustees of the Beckett estate for protecting the author’s works. Indeed, I would hope that should Two-Eight-Zero: Three Sketches ever be staged I would be in a position to employ the same restrictions: that is, it be staged in exactly the manner in which it is written.

Like Beckett’s own works, in Two-Eight-Zero: Three Sketches much emphasis is laid upon, not only words, but also sound, vision, gesture and how these are woven together. This has been exercised, not in an elaborate way but subtly, minimalistically in the manner of Beckett. Beckett’s love of the visual arts and of music is well known, and he stressed the power of gesture in his theatrical oeuvre, albeit in reduced, essential repetitions, and often in simple mathematical choreographed formats (i.e. Footfalls, Quad). Though these gestural considerations are more overtly apparent in his later works his earlier recognition of their value is evidenced in a lecture on Moliere given at Trinity College, Dublin, in 1931 in which he upheld the import of: ”muscular dialogue generated by gesture“ (Knowlson. J., 1996: pp. 56). In a very similar vein gestural choreography plays its part in my own text. Redtatters jumps from one area of light to another, knees, pulls, repeats as Greentatters rolls over, sits up and lies down. In a subsequent section Redtatters dances a figure of eight with the body in echo of the latter’s monologue drawing of a mental process.

Influenced by Beckett’s very precise directions for lighting designs found in many of his texts for theatre the interplay of light and shadow and the stark contrasts in Two-Eight-Zero: Three Sketches find approximate similitude, likewise, to the old master painters he so admired, and here, in particular, to the Italian Michelangelo Merisi Caravaggio (1571-1610) whose dramatic chiaroscuro remains unparalleled. Additionally, light has been utilised as a sculptural means and a demarcation of space for the performer’s physical form, as, for instance, did Beckett in Footfalls, and each performer is given a differently coloured attire as in version one of Quad. The instruction that the costuming for the performers in Two-Eight-Zero: Three Sketches be tattered garments is, on the one hand, instigated by Beckett’s propensity to drape his characters in the clothing a little worn and worse for wear, and also to provide a visual reverberation to the allusions to the rags and ribbons in the sketch entitled Cloutie. The lonely tree in a landscape depicted in many of the paintings Beckett admired (i.e. Caspar David Friedrich 1774-1840) and that makes it appearance in some of his own texts (i.e. Waiting for Godot) is re-configured in Cloutie as character. Additionally this also makes an allusion to Beckett’s Irish descent, as does, indeed, the use ‘Sidhe’, ‘Fairie’ and ‘Bean-shi’, similarly drawn from Irish mythology, legend and folklore. Visually, the stage properties, lighting instruction and costuming as set down in Two-Eight-Zero: Three Sketches finds a resonance with, and underlines, the dualistic contrasts and conflicts inherent in the dialogues and monologues, the actions and the disposition of the characters, in an endeavour to emulate Beckett’s painterly, sculptural approach to theatre and exercise a similar visual precision.

Moreover, there has also been an attempt to replicate the inherent musicality of Beckett’s work within my own text. The amplification of the fall of feet and the rustling of paper, the rhythmical nature of the monologues and dialogues, the silences between and the patterning of seemingly endless repetitions, provide a sound-score that supports and gives emphasis to the words spoken, the dance-like gesticulations, the visual components and the fundamental theme of the piece. As previously stated, my experience of performing Beckett had a hypnotic quality and during the process of creating Two-Eight-Zero: Three Sketches I found myself searching for the approximated rhythms that would induce this past experience, only coming close to satisfaction when I became haunted by pulsing cadences that were being interjected into the text almost by default. Unlike Beckett, I am neither poet nor musician and initially this facet proved the most difficult. The orchestration of sound and rhythm, not as adjunct, but as an integral part of a synthesised whole, a whole in which all parts are equal, only became possible by allowing dictation by the other elements, deliberated imposition of such being completely untenable.

The endeavour of writing a performance text inspired by and in the style of Beckett has been challenging, even more so than performing one of his texts. Less emotive than performance, a creation such as this has necessitated working on multifarious levels simultaneously. To construct, then enter into a character constructed for the purposes of exposing the flaws of its reasoning in the context of a de-personalised yet generalised human condition; to be writer, director, painter, sculptor, choreographer, musician, and philosopher all at once, as well as the conductor orchestrating all of these into a cohesive whole, and all this to be guided by the influence and work of an artist other than myself, has, indeed been a difficult enterprise. Two-Eight-Zero: Three Sketches as a completed Beckett inspired text stands now in its own right, with or without merit. Certainly the process of its production has yielded its own rewards: a more complete understanding of Beckett, his concerns and stylistics, along with a deeper appreciation of his works and a growing respect for him as a unique and outstanding artist.

BLOOD MASQUERADE

Creators Preface

The foundation of, and the soil from which this work has sprung, is Edgar Allen Poe's tale The Masque of the Red Death. It is the loom upon which the threads are woven. Some of these threads have been chosen at random, others more consciously selected by virtue of their felt rightness. Their number is seven:

1. A flight of stairs.

2. A doll.

3. A chalice.

4. The sound of a fire engine siren.

5. Three songs by Diamanda Galas.

6. Fragments of personal letters.

7. Extracts from the writings of Antonin Artaud.

As the disparate elements were drawn together, interwoven, a patterning of meaning, directive and intention engaged -. during, rather than prior to the creation of the piece. The fundamental focus of this work became the unmasking of the fear of death, that most universal and primary of all fears, and the transmutation of this fear into surrender and alchemical union.

Within the fear of death resides the fear of the unknown and of change, a psychic crippling that impedes development for this fear manifests in many forms. The literal portrayal of fear of death as the simple expiration of life /existence of the body, or the plague as physical disease, however, had no appeal for me. It is rather this fear manifested in its less blatant forms that held my interest. Since three areas fought for prominence here, all equally fascinating, I settled for incorporating them all. As a consequence, the work is multi-layered and contains shifting perspectives.

One of these manifestations takes the form of the threat of death in relation to the loss of personal identity. By 'personal identity' I mean the deliberated ego artifice, the forged personae projection, clung to so desperately in the belief it shields from vulnerability, and ultimately denies death. The plague, in this instance, is read as the disintegration of the individual persdona. the plague-carrier thus becomes one who would expose this rtificiaslity, unmercifully point to the cracks, lift the mask off the face. As the creator of this work - I am plague- carrier.

Of the 'Red Death', Poe writes: "Blood was its Avatar and its Seal - the redness and the horror of blood." Nowhere does the horror of blood and fear of death seethe with such vehemence as in the religious prohibitions and culturasl menstrual taboos that negate, demonise even, woman's body. With this in mind, the Poe's tale takes on a different dimensionality in reading. The black room into which the guests are loathe to tread is tranformed into a symbol of the emptied womb and the splatterings upon the vestments of 'the stranger' become mestrual blood. as woman - I am plague.

The third manifestation highlighted is the soothing of the fear of death by the clutching at religious belief and dogma. Promises of ever-lasting life and the continuum of the individual soul beyond the grave are here seen to be the ultimate denial.

The work does not follow narrative linearity to a conclusion, utilises stylistic shifts and employs meta-theatre techniques, not only to underscore other layers but to pull back the security blanket of rational expectancy. moreover, the curtailing of the performance action is not finality but rather denotes a cyclic return, a death and another birth . This work itself, therefore - is plague-ridden.

Life cannot exist alone. Its dance partner is death. What is full is becoming empty and what is empty is becoming - nothing is still or constant. The attempted flight from this basic fact leads an individual into neurosis and a society into a conglomeration of insanity. In the context of this work, and inspired by Antonin Artaud, the plague is salvation itself, the great cleanser and restorer of balance within the human psyche, the truth revealer. It is hoped the work infects.

BLOOD MASQUERADE

Performance Text

Performers:

VARNISH: A male loosely based upon Prince Prospero.

THE VOID: A femal personification of death.

Male disembodied voice.

Female disembodied voice.

The Set:

All action takes place upon a flight of stairs. Any site-specific stairway, inside or outside (i.e.) steps leading up to a main entrance, fire-escape, landscape garden feature, stairways witin an art gallery, civic or community hall, theatre foyer, cinema etc. etc.)An outdoor setting may be lit with flaming torches, an indoor one by candles, as alternatives to electrics. A major important requirement is that adequate space should be available for spectators and easy viewing. The spectatators are meant to sit, stand and move around, for they are the guests at the masquerade. the venue must also be able to facilitate the instalment of, or already possess, a resource for amplified sound to be incorporated in the performance (both live and recorded) and a seperated, hidden area from which this may be transmitted.

Costume:

VARNISH: All in black. Elaborate and flamboyant. Breeches, boots, shirt, waistcoat, cloak and plumed hat (silks/velvets). Heavy make-up (eyeshadow, rouge and lipstick).

THE VOID: A white torn and tattered gown splattered in blood red. Bare feet. Body and face with thick white make-up. Hair long and tangled, dusted in white powder.

Sound/Music:

Live Voice.

Recording of a Fire siren.

Three recorded somgs by Diamanda Galas.

Props:

A doll.

INCOMPLETE - IN PROCESS OF TYPING ON!!!!!!