Žabe
Some observations, then some questions.
Žabe is Slovene for frogs. This play was written by one of the most inaccessible of Slovene writers in the fifties. The group who put on this play "Balkanized" it and turned it into an accordion-fueled musical. I don't know Serbian. Duh. So, everything I got out of this play was visual, musical, allegorical.
The actor who played Satan, the fisherman, the husband, etc. was mesmerizing, completely entrancing. Every movement, every gesture was filled with altrenating fey giddiness and severe "hand of God" force. The performance revolved around him.
The protagonist was penniless, then rich, then poor, then on and on.
The illusory quality of the hanging chains reinforced the ilusion of the square pool of water the actors dipped into--a sunken platform. It took me a few minutes to realize the water was real, and not a trick of the light.
Mechanisms became a metaphor. The toy car assumed underneath the unfeasted frog appeared as a toy reinforcement of the childishness of striving for material extravagance.
The pitchfork: that which catches the frog is that which catches the man. The ancient mariner, liar, birthday boy, Satan is dancing slowly into sin.
Eve is the embodiment of temptation, but where does an apple cease to be a symbol and become merely food. Only the hungry and the religious know.
If you die six deaths and live seven lives, what have you learned? Possibly only survival.
And what is a theatre of survival? Is it a metaphor in itself to define why art exists against political and economic odds? Or is theatre a taxation on the rich for having too much idle money?
If I use story to alert you of poor people, is that an effective use of art? Can art truly care about poverty, which is temporal, in comparison to itself, which is supposedly timeless? Or, does art too die six deaths to live seven times?
Žabe is Slovene for frogs. This play was written by one of the most inaccessible of Slovene writers in the fifties. The group who put on this play "Balkanized" it and turned it into an accordion-fueled musical. I don't know Serbian. Duh. So, everything I got out of this play was visual, musical, allegorical.
The actor who played Satan, the fisherman, the husband, etc. was mesmerizing, completely entrancing. Every movement, every gesture was filled with altrenating fey giddiness and severe "hand of God" force. The performance revolved around him.
The protagonist was penniless, then rich, then poor, then on and on.
The illusory quality of the hanging chains reinforced the ilusion of the square pool of water the actors dipped into--a sunken platform. It took me a few minutes to realize the water was real, and not a trick of the light.
Mechanisms became a metaphor. The toy car assumed underneath the unfeasted frog appeared as a toy reinforcement of the childishness of striving for material extravagance.
The pitchfork: that which catches the frog is that which catches the man. The ancient mariner, liar, birthday boy, Satan is dancing slowly into sin.
Eve is the embodiment of temptation, but where does an apple cease to be a symbol and become merely food. Only the hungry and the religious know.
If you die six deaths and live seven lives, what have you learned? Possibly only survival.
And what is a theatre of survival? Is it a metaphor in itself to define why art exists against political and economic odds? Or is theatre a taxation on the rich for having too much idle money?
If I use story to alert you of poor people, is that an effective use of art? Can art truly care about poverty, which is temporal, in comparison to itself, which is supposedly timeless? Or, does art too die six deaths to live seven times?
posted by J Wilson at Monday, September 26, 2005
1 Comments:
I have been dissecting Žabe for the past month. I hate Žabe. Although, from what I've seen, the legs might be tasty.
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