Thursday, April 28, 2011

CANADA - Bertrand Cantat, Wajdi Mouawad and the spectacle of violence

Already, rumors media obliges, Sophocles seems evacuated in favor of Wajdi Mouawad and Bertrand Cantat, and there is concern that there is no tragedy at the Theatre du Nouveau Monde [which will be presented The Cycle women], but a ceremony around the impossible spectacle of violence. I love the theater beyond the show.

Of course, the spectacular amuses me, but my real expectation is that the theater gives me the feeling of touching a piece of truth. And to experience this truth, I must be able to feel free, beyond the show. It's bad start. I already feel trapped. Yet it is a place where we should protect the most complete freedom of the public, it is theater.

But in this case, the question is: how do you go see this show? Because the trial of the viewer is already committed: someone who refuses to go see the play is already saying that lack of openness and cons is the rehabilitation of murderers. However, the person who will see the room is open, generous and able to forgive.

Here, it helps to go back to Sophocles. The tragedy appears in Greece when the worship of gods switches to human culture. This is a kind of quiet revolution. Sophocles is his work up to the City. It is separated from religion by establishing a distance between representation and truth. The spectator, he is not arrested as a believer, but as a citizen.

Sophocles wrote more than four centuries before Christ, his work is by no means Christian. The idea of a single, omniscient god who forgives our sins washed, relieve our anxieties and feeds our sense of guilt is totally foreign to him. Greek gods, born of primordial chaos, a mixture of matter and energy, were as chaotic and unpredictable as the universe.

These gods had moods, and it could be turn in their good graces or bad. From the perspective of humans, it was to face his destiny as we faced nature: assuming his actions and with our eyes open. Sophocles always tells the story of a man unable to keep their eyes open. The tragedy comes at the point of blindness, as the Greeks called "hubris." The most famous catharsis assumed that the characters represented on stage lacked lucidity and committing acts blindly, most viewers had to be perceptive and lucid.

For Sophocles, the spectacle of violence is impossible. We can not show the inconceivable. It is a black hole. His work seeks to understand the preconditions for violence and shows the disastrous consequences. Sophocles tries to see clearly and speaks to our lucidity. If I bring myself to go see Sophocles - not the show-Mouawad Cantat in TNM - is that I have done preliminary work to free myself from the media impact of the provocation, and will feel free of the malaise generated a staging of the irreparable act of a man who hit it eight years ago, its ineffable point of blindness.

1 comment:

  1. It's hard to believe a major capitol city, a continent, would behave so animalistically towards another human being, much like you people are accusing him of behaving!
    Any of us, any! are capable of exactly the same behavior, the same crime and as someone who has not only worked with Bertrand Cantat, but consider him a best friend and brother who made a horrible mistake that, knowing him, he'll think about and never forgive himself so he doesn't need your help politicizing the issue any farthur.
    Sincerely
    Ted Niceley
    Producer
    Tostaky
    666.667 CLUB

    ReplyDelete