RATs in Italy

[Thomas Simpson <ths907@nwu.edu>]

Marco Martinelli of Italy's Ravenna Teatro, "On performing The Moor Arlecchino at the Piccolo Teatro in Milan"
"A girl was sitting in the row in front of me; at a certain point she burst out laughing. The girl next to her turned to her sharply, "Shut up!" Where are we, in school? In a hospital where you can't laugh or make noise? After the show, a friend told me about two girls who sat next to her immobile throughout the first act, in silence, and when she saw them in the bathroom during intermission they were bubbling with enthusiasm, saying, "Those African drums were great! I can't believe that music. And Arlecchino was so funny!" So I said to my friend, the next time we play at the Piccolo Teatro, let's perform in the bathroom! Where vital energies can express themselves without censure. Maybe those kids had been badly taught by their parents and teachers: "If you go to the Theatre, be good and don't make a disturbance."Š
The Greeks had two distinct words with the same root as the Latin word vita: bios and zoé. Bios indicates finite life, the life of a given person, a given animal, a given plant. Bios is finite; it will die. Zoé on the other hand means life without qualification; zoé is infinite life, indestructible life. The single bios can end, but zoé goes on, it lives beyond and against death. In his book on Dionysus, Karl Kerenyi uses a limpid image to describe their relationship: 'zoé is the string onto which each single bios is threaded like a pearl.' We have perception of zoé when we feel the tie that unites us with all living creatures, when we feel part of a single great breathing cosmos. An ancient experience, but even today, in these times of ferocious individualism, it is still possible and powerful. "I am We", says an African proverb.
Dionysus is the god of Theatre in ancient Greece, the god of drunkenness, the fruit of the vine, the god of Music, of the senses unleashed. He is the god that carries us beyond the prison house of the bios, who puts us into communion with the zoé. This is the origin of Theatre: the religion of the zoé. In The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche said that Theatre is the exultation of the zoé; even as tragedy, where we look the horror of death in the face, theatre is the triumph of vitality, the triumph of the poetry that allows us to bear death. Zoé is what connects actors and spectators; everyone's vibration in the unity of poetry, dance, and music.
Either the spectator is present and receptive, faithful to Dionysys, willing to carry out his or her part of the performance, to act on his or her zoé, or no meeting can take place, no poetic embrace. A spectator who represses laughter, who doesn't make a disturbance, offends the god and should be thrown out! The one who gives in to the rhythm of the zoé is herself an artist who contributes to the creation of the spectacleŠ 
-- 
Thomas Simpson
Northwestern University
ths907@nwu.edu