Re: RATs in Italy

["Adam Gertsacov" <kafclown@well.com>]

I saw the production of Ravenna Black Harlequin in Copenhagen.  It was a 
great production!  (I saw it at the Commedia Festival in 1996)

----------
>From: Thomas Simpson <ths907@nwu.edu>
>To: rat-list@ratconference.com
>Subject: RATs in Italy
>Date: Mon, Feb 28, 2000, 3:10 PM
>

> 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