Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

Theatre is Hell

Theatre is Hell THEATRE IS HELL Paige McGinley Orpheus X, written by Rinde Eckert and directed by Robert Woodruff.  American Repertory Theatre, Boston, March 25–April 23, 2006. pon  entering  the  Zero  Arrow  Theatre,  audience  members  participate in the familiar ritual  of  exchange:  here  is  my  ticket,  here  is  your  program.  But  over  the  shoulder  of the usher, underneath the risers, is a  woman, naked on her hands and knees,  scribbling  compulsively,  all  over  the  floor. And yet this is not a space where an  audience can linger. The flow of people  moves me swiftly away, into the theatre  space so quickly that one wonders: Did  I really see that? Was she really there?  This  first  moment  of  Orpheus X,  written  and  composed  by  Rinde  Eckert  and  directed  by  Robert  Woodruff,  is  a  distillation  of  the  prevailing  themes  of the  piece  as  a  whole:  the  trauma  of  the  missed  event,  the  missed  event  of  trauma,  and  the  seductive  unreliability  of memory. Orpheus X asks its audience  to consider multiple modes of memory,  from  objects,  to  music,  to  writing,  to  embodied  knowledge,  to  the  voices  in  one’s head. In this retelling of the myth  of  Orpheus  and  Eurydice,  Orpheus  (played by Eckert) is a famous rock star,  U paralyzed  with  grief  over  the  death  of  Eurydice (Suzan Hanson). The score, sung by Eckert, who also plays  electric guitar, Hanson, and John Kelly  (as Persephone), and accompanied by a  four-person band that plays bass, piano,  guitar,  percussion,  and  viola,  is  dense  and  complex.  Eschewing  sentimental  pop  melodies,  Eckert  finds  a  baroque  density of rock rage, operatic theatricality,  and  the  minimalist  repetition  of  a  place  with  no  past,  no  future,  and  no  memories, only accumulation. The nearconstant underscoring lends a texture to  the  piece  that  is  industrial,  discordant,  chaotic.  Both  the  world  of  the  living  and the world of the dead embody this  chaos.  Eurydice,  Persephone  predicts,  will  thrive  in  the  underworld  because,  as  a  poet,  she  doesn’t  have  the  “narrative  junkie’s”  investment  in  futurity.  Orpheus and Eurydice both sustain an  uncomfortable relationship to narrative,  trapped, it seems, in their own traumatic  repetition.  He  http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art MIT Press

Theatre is Hell

McGinley, Paige
PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art , Volume 28 (3) – Sep 1, 2006
Download PDF
4 pages

Loading next page...
 
/lp/mit-press/theatre-is-hell-mq28oJkgUT

References

References for this paper are not available at this time. We will be adding them shortly, thank you for your patience.

Publisher
MIT Press
Copyright
© 2006 Paige McGinley
ISSN
1520-281X
eISSN
1537-9477
DOI
10.1162/pajj.2006.28.3.56
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

THEATRE IS HELL Paige McGinley Orpheus X, written by Rinde Eckert and directed by Robert Woodruff.  American Repertory Theatre, Boston, March 25–April 23, 2006. pon  entering  the  Zero  Arrow  Theatre,  audience  members  participate in the familiar ritual  of  exchange:  here  is  my  ticket,  here  is  your  program.  But  over  the  shoulder  of the usher, underneath the risers, is a  woman, naked on her hands and knees,  scribbling  compulsively,  all  over  the  floor. And yet this is not a space where an  audience can linger. The flow of people  moves me swiftly away, into the theatre  space so quickly that one wonders: Did  I really see that? Was she really there?  This  first  moment  of  Orpheus X,  written  and  composed  by  Rinde  Eckert  and  directed  by  Robert  Woodruff,  is  a  distillation  of  the  prevailing  themes  of the  piece  as  a  whole:  the  trauma  of  the  missed  event,  the  missed  event  of  trauma,  and  the  seductive  unreliability  of memory. Orpheus X asks its audience  to consider multiple modes of memory,  from  objects,  to  music,  to  writing,  to  embodied  knowledge,  to  the  voices  in  one’s head. In this retelling of the myth  of  Orpheus  and  Eurydice,  Orpheus  (played by Eckert) is a famous rock star,  U paralyzed  with  grief  over  the  death  of  Eurydice (Suzan Hanson). The score, sung by Eckert, who also plays  electric guitar, Hanson, and John Kelly  (as Persephone), and accompanied by a  four-person band that plays bass, piano,  guitar,  percussion,  and  viola,  is  dense  and  complex.  Eschewing  sentimental  pop  melodies,  Eckert  finds  a  baroque  density of rock rage, operatic theatricality,  and  the  minimalist  repetition  of  a  place  with  no  past,  no  future,  and  no  memories, only accumulation. The nearconstant underscoring lends a texture to  the  piece  that  is  industrial,  discordant,  chaotic.  Both  the  world  of  the  living  and the world of the dead embody this  chaos.  Eurydice,  Persephone  predicts,  will  thrive  in  the  underworld  because,  as  a  poet,  she  doesn’t  have  the  “narrative  junkie’s”  investment  in  futurity.  Orpheus and Eurydice both sustain an  uncomfortable relationship to narrative,  trapped, it seems, in their own traumatic  repetition.  He 

Journal

PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art – MIT Press

Published: Sep 1, 2006

There are no references for this article.