The Roman Tragedies - The Illusion of Participation

The Roman Tragedies

This photo is unusual for a theatre blog - I took it myself.  In Ivo van Hove's production of The Roman Tragedies, many of the rules about theatre and spectatorship seem to be thrown out of the window.  You can take photos.  You can tweet about the show as it unfolds through its six-hour span, and the tweets are flashed across the stage during set changes.  You can move between seats, and onto the stage, where you sit in close proximity to the actors.  You watch the performance both live (at various distances) and on live filmed relays, both on the large screen above the stage and on the many TV monitors around the space (including, if you like, in the foyers).  Given that the Shakespeare text is spoken in a contemporary, prosaic Dutch, an eye on the screen is essential as that's also where the subtitles are.  In one of the most thrilling scenes, Hans Kesting  as Mark Antony delivered his eulogy to Caesar very close to me, and once or twice locked eyes with me (the spectator as crowd member) - but I also had to keep looking away from him to the broadcast version, so as to check what he was actually saying (the spectator as receiver of the mediated).  You can buy food and drink on stage, and eat it during the show.  You can check out the make-up area, where the performers are prepared to go on camera.  There's an info desk about the company's work, from where the set changes are announced, complete with musak.

The Roman Tragedies - the onstage make-up area.

It could all be incredibly gimmicky, I suppose - and it is certainly fun - but it seems to me that this is much more than an experiment with audience participation.  And that the participation is not actually participatory at all.  I saw the production when it first came to the Barbican in 2009, and then I wrote that "there's an element of real democracy about the whole thing. It raises endless questions about theatre and politics - not least whether politics might be turning into nothing but performance."   Reading that blog today, it feels like a memory of a more innocent time, as well as recognising the production as prophetic.  In its current manifestation, the production opens with the Trump inauguration being broadcast on TV, while Volumnia and Virgilia discuss the absent Martius, their private conversation also being broadcast.  There seems to be no boundary between the public and the private.

The Roman Tragedies - spectators and TVs

On one level, this reflects our current "politics as show-biz" - the desire to feel intimate with public figures, to be aware of their private lives, to have them live out those lives as a public display (Antony and Cleopatra is particularly strong in this way).  On another level, it suggests the privatisation of public space - the way in which reckless magnates like Trump, Farage and (the most immediate example) George Osborne have come to treat politics as just another part of their self-aggrandising, self-enriching projects.  And this is crucial to the way the performance works - or, at least, it felt so in the charged atmosphere of 2017, far more so than it had in 2009.  Because the apparent agency this production gives to the audience is not agency at all: we remain as passive recipients of the play.  If, as I said in 2009, the production is "democratic" (and at heart I believe theatre to be a fundamentally democratic form), then it is through the exposure of what is so profoundly undemocratic in the current moment.  We have ceased to be participants, and become mere consumers.

Van Hove cuts all the scenes where Shakespeare has the common people speak.  The actors address the audience as "Friends, Romans, countrymen" - partly live but more tellingly through the medium of broadcast.  We feel as if we could be part of the story, as if our role contains the potential for action - but in fact we spectate.  The performance provides us with basic needs - we can work out when to take a loo break and the food is pretty good.  But we retain our role as spectators even as we are offered the illusion of participation.  For the last section of the performance, we are ordered back to our original seats, facing the conventional proscenium stage in a conventional hierarchical relationship - and of course, we unquestioningly obey.  Even the final ovation, leaping to our feet as one, is somehow disturbing in this most uneasy of performances.

In June 2016, the people of Britain responded to a marketing campaign based on lies, misinformation and the manipulation of prejudice, conveyed through broadcast and social media.  This led to the shocking referendum result, which has since been exploited as an expression of "the will of the people" to chilling effect - the Brexit process is being rushed through without consultation or democratic process.  Trump's antics are only an Americanised manifestation of the same basic thing.  Last week I was grateful to the Dutch for an election that stemmed the tide of populism, and for a piece of theatre that clarified just what is going on.

Ramallah audience acclaims "This Flesh is Mine"

Here are a few responses from the audience in Palestine for our previews of This Flesh is Mine.

"Incredible.  I'm speechless in all honesty.  My heart was racing throughout the entire thing.  The emotion was overwhelming.  Tremendously inspiring."
"I loved this play.  It grasped my attention for every second."
"It had so many conflicts and the actors were more than perfect."
"It proves that mythology has been able to address human souls and dilemmas throughout time.  The performance was great."
"An astonishing mixing and understanding of both Israeli politics and the Palestinian mentality and behaviour."
"It is really great to see English and Palestinian actors work together with the source of the great Greek theatre.  We need more co-operation in the future."
"It was treasurable, modern and creative.  The actors were astonishing.  Actually, this is the first time I visit a theatre so I'm happy."
"I think that the play links with our situation in Palestine.  Particularly when it comes to fighting and power relations.  You bring an old story and tie it with the issues of the world nowadays."
"That was the craziest f***ing thing I've ever seen!  Loved the modern elements as the play went on.  Seriously you guys were amazing!"

Reactions from China

Roshni emails to tell me what the students had to say about the show on their return to Ningbo.

"Had an hour follow up discussion with the students. They were completely stunned by the play and said that, as I did to you, they found it difficult to know what their reactions actually were, having never experienced anything like this. We started by discussing what the play was about which was (rightly) tricky and we got a number of contradictory responses which was fruitful - play is about culture clash, play is about multiculturalism, play about culture mixing. I then asked for 5 most striking things to them as individuals and that have stayed with them since. We got some very good things, lesbianism being one. They almost all picked up on it - we were not convinced that they would. They were quite a literate audience by any standards. There was an energetic debate over the wrongs or not of Sammy selling his body. There was some good and honest reflection on the one child policy and female infanticide in China. I drew parallels to other countries, India being an obvious one. There was only a tiny bit of the-world-is-against-China paranoia. Someone suggested it was wrong and biased to represent China's past on the infanticide front but someone else said that this still happened. Big things happened in this class. Oh and someone said that lesbianism did not exist in China until foreigners introduced it. So, please send me details of the Chinese poetess so I can forward details to them. We talked openly about censorship! Someone had already leaked the answer to that last question to some of them. But the rest of them guessed or when they found out they were not suprised - ancestor worship being not even a religion and the kind of mumbo-jumbo that the Party disapproves of was the response. I pointed out that this is more than acceptable among the Chinese diasproa in Mauritius for example. And someone concluded that most Chinese do do these rites anyway in China, party line or not...

We talked about narrative techniques, non-linearity, multiple persepctives, paradox - all of which are the stuff that real and increasingly globalised life is made of.

Fascinating stuff. Several of them said that they found Linda to be an intriguing character - the packing in of a good job to be a dancer. I finished with the question of whether as English Studies students (as opposed to Business Studies which almost all parents try to coerce their children into) they were doing something similar?

I'm still gobsmacked by all this and it certainly gave me a sense of purpose and fulfilment as an academic that I would struggle to find amongst our more jaded English students."

And this is from a young Chinese audience member:

"You know, as human beings, we don’t really have the right to choose a lot of things; our gender is one of them. When we were born, we were decided to be girl or boy by the god. Usually we just accept it and go on to living as whom we are, and we maybe never thought of why we are women or men. When someone behaves in the opposite way, we just think “what’s wrong with him/her?” No one would think about the original life. And we cannot choose where to be born either.

Because of the gender and the place which we couldn’t even decide by ourselves, we living in very different ways. Someone faced to death directly, like Cuihua’s daughter. And someone who like to be a woman, but born to be a man, like Sammy. Though he is brave to change, and make money in his way, he has to burden a lot of course.

And as Alex, she is the one who cannot live with questions. She loves Song, Song loves her too, but her act of that, is escape, escape from the life, escape from “odd acting”. Maybe her parents’ marriage is a tragedy, which affects her; maybe she just wants to have the “mummy’s love”. She tried, but failed, so, to take rebirth is a better way for her, just like Velu’s feeling about his girl. She dances like a swan, and the swan lowed its head when Julian and Mary being together. Because of their acting, she came into this world, and that brings her a lot of sadness.

We should try new things, instead of ordered by other people or life. Actually, there are so many things in our life, which make us hard to change, hard to being ourselves, but that’s the real life. That’s what Linda. Maya and even Johan’s doing.

Just like this show, we couldn’t know what our life want to tell us, but we living in it.

In my opinion, this show is kind of having philosophy meaning. And I really surprised you can put those ideas into one show. The more I saw it, the more I want to re-consider my own life. That’s the interesting part for me---thinking.

One of my teachers said: yesterday is destiny, but you’re the master of your future. I like this, and it’s a good conclusion of Re-Orientations I think."