Photography by John Ranard
The commercials are already airing for the Christmas movies and while we will all debate over whether it is too early, too commercializing, we must all agree that these kinds of things, the release of Christmas movies and books, help us celebrate the holiday. But now the question of its prematurity comes into play, as I realize that Thanksgiving does not get this same kind of attention and so we have very little in terms of cinematic, dramatic, or literary production to help us celebrate the holiday. But this year we have New Science, based on Neapolitan philosopher Giambattista Vico's Nuova Scienza. This, of course, is not properly a Thanksgiving play, but it is timely for this week. As we celebrate what is essentially a holiday that marks our civilization, that is itself a human construct (the holiday comes literally from a human production, from William Bradford's Of Plymouth Plantation), it is an appropriate time to consider civilizations, particularly our civilization, and in light of past November elections, to consider what it means to shape a new vision.
The play, set against realism, in the tradition of The Living Theater, immediately destroys the fourth wall, as four actors take four positions all around the room, and a screen at the head of the room displays various images projected from below by the man behind the computer. One struggles to figure out what it is you are supposed to look at. What seems at first to be an onslaught of information challenges the viewer to select what he or she will look at. I noticed that the play itself provided very little cues on whatever you would choose to see. As you watch, you begin to build your autonomy and watching is no longer passive, but truly active. At the play’s opening, actors Sheila Dabney, Claire Lebowitz, Pamela Mayo, and Thomas Walker, playing the Scientists in the mode of the Greek chorus, from their respective corners give a litany of cities while Naisha Walton on upright bass and singer Adela Maria Bolet provide the music that is the backbone of the play. But more on the music later. The litany is at the same time disorienting and captivating. At the performance this past Saturday, it became participatory as one of the audience members supplied cities to the litany herself. This I read as the power of the fourth wall breakdown, the development of audience autonomy and activity already in effect.
The play seems to follow Vico's outline of the three stages of civilization. The first segment is the divinity stage. Johnson Anthony as the Divinity wails and rails watching the humans in their displays of emotions, vanities, anguish, misunderstanding, etc., and their tales of civilization. The charging of the ramp to the city and the battle of civilizations closes out the divinity stage and opens to the heroic, laid bare and grotesque by the image of humans munching on the bones of the other. Amidst displays of what seems to be the history of science and human development (or lack thereof), Sheila Dabney delivers a captivating performance of the rationales that justify human behavior in the context of civilization, and exposes what really lies behind the so-called "heroic." The final stage, the human, brings us to the family. Pamela Mayo takes on the image of the phallus while Thomas Walker dons breasts to portray Manwoman and Womanwo, while Claire Lebowitz powerfully evokes the frustration of innocence in jaded world.
This is an at best, crude organization of what perhaps should not be organized. One of the central themes at work in the play is the chaos of information and the hunger for meaning, a meaning that is provided only by stories. As your eyes dart from corner to corner to screen and you try to figure out the relationship, if there be any, between all the visual materials, one comes to see the fundamental cooperation between science and art that is seldom acknowledged anymore, probably since late Romanticism. Science, as an attempt to create new things and organize the world, mirrors the arts, the literary and creative imagination. The play, though, testifies that the current vision, one predominantly of science and technology, that has been organizing and creating our world is flawed, that we need a new vision. In the final scene, the stage of the human, Womanwo and Manwoman sing the cultural attitudes of the time, in all the tones of all the isms. From their interchange breaks the shrieking of the Baby, "wanna know, wanna know, wanna know." As the parents sing their song, the Baby delivers a powerful soliloquy of existential despair, and breaking from the parents, alone on the Ramp, the Baby cries. While this is the one scene that concentrates the action in a single place, it still fights against the fourth wall as you notice the screen continues. And on the screen is the face of the Baby crying, and the screen becomes a canvas for a powerful portrait. The collapse of science and art, it would seem. The Baby alone on the ramp is in the middle of this Kierkegaardian moment, overwhelmed with fear and trembling by her complete moral freedom, broken off from the codes and concepts of her parents' generation, as she realizes her existential aloneness in the world. The Divinity meets her and takes her hand, and they walk off the ramp of civilization, towards, perhaps, the dawning of a new vision.
For those like myself with a limited understanding of Vico, the play might be a harder, though still worthwhile, exercise in mental concepts and philosophies. Where, I would argue, the play reaches its greatest power is in its emotional appeal. The onslaught of information disarms your mind from trying to figure it all out and you have to submit to the sensitivity of the emotions. This is where the music must be discussed. Music seems to be the one true organizing principle of the play, and it is an emotional instrument. The litany of saints, the blowing wind, and the vision of the "vast distant city" serve as the chorus of civilizations; chorus in many respects, as in the Greek chorus of drama but also as a musical chorus, the repeated lines of a song. Amidst all the chaos of the human speech and
activity, Bolet's singing provides harmony in counterpoint. At the end, the characters recede out of sight, and all we are left with is music. Music qualifies as an organizing principle for this play because it is a collapse of science and art, mathematical and emotional, imaginative. The play itself becomes a song, that age-old bearer of history, or vision and poetry, and of freedom.
This is the month of our civilization, and New Science may be precisely what will bring this season into focus. After the turkey has been eaten and you're stuffed with stuffing, it may be a good time to reflect and to feel, what does it all mean? Where do we go from here?
The play, set against realism, in the tradition of The Living Theater, immediately destroys the fourth wall, as four actors take four positions all around the room, and a screen at the head of the room displays various images projected from below by the man behind the computer. One struggles to figure out what it is you are supposed to look at. What seems at first to be an onslaught of information challenges the viewer to select what he or she will look at. I noticed that the play itself provided very little cues on whatever you would choose to see. As you watch, you begin to build your autonomy and watching is no longer passive, but truly active. At the play’s opening, actors Sheila Dabney, Claire Lebowitz, Pamela Mayo, and Thomas Walker, playing the Scientists in the mode of the Greek chorus, from their respective corners give a litany of cities while Naisha Walton on upright bass and singer Adela Maria Bolet provide the music that is the backbone of the play. But more on the music later. The litany is at the same time disorienting and captivating. At the performance this past Saturday, it became participatory as one of the audience members supplied cities to the litany herself. This I read as the power of the fourth wall breakdown, the development of audience autonomy and activity already in effect.
The play seems to follow Vico's outline of the three stages of civilization. The first segment is the divinity stage. Johnson Anthony as the Divinity wails and rails watching the humans in their displays of emotions, vanities, anguish, misunderstanding, etc., and their tales of civilization. The charging of the ramp to the city and the battle of civilizations closes out the divinity stage and opens to the heroic, laid bare and grotesque by the image of humans munching on the bones of the other. Amidst displays of what seems to be the history of science and human development (or lack thereof), Sheila Dabney delivers a captivating performance of the rationales that justify human behavior in the context of civilization, and exposes what really lies behind the so-called "heroic." The final stage, the human, brings us to the family. Pamela Mayo takes on the image of the phallus while Thomas Walker dons breasts to portray Manwoman and Womanwo, while Claire Lebowitz powerfully evokes the frustration of innocence in jaded world.
This is an at best, crude organization of what perhaps should not be organized. One of the central themes at work in the play is the chaos of information and the hunger for meaning, a meaning that is provided only by stories. As your eyes dart from corner to corner to screen and you try to figure out the relationship, if there be any, between all the visual materials, one comes to see the fundamental cooperation between science and art that is seldom acknowledged anymore, probably since late Romanticism. Science, as an attempt to create new things and organize the world, mirrors the arts, the literary and creative imagination. The play, though, testifies that the current vision, one predominantly of science and technology, that has been organizing and creating our world is flawed, that we need a new vision. In the final scene, the stage of the human, Womanwo and Manwoman sing the cultural attitudes of the time, in all the tones of all the isms. From their interchange breaks the shrieking of the Baby, "wanna know, wanna know, wanna know." As the parents sing their song, the Baby delivers a powerful soliloquy of existential despair, and breaking from the parents, alone on the Ramp, the Baby cries. While this is the one scene that concentrates the action in a single place, it still fights against the fourth wall as you notice the screen continues. And on the screen is the face of the Baby crying, and the screen becomes a canvas for a powerful portrait. The collapse of science and art, it would seem. The Baby alone on the ramp is in the middle of this Kierkegaardian moment, overwhelmed with fear and trembling by her complete moral freedom, broken off from the codes and concepts of her parents' generation, as she realizes her existential aloneness in the world. The Divinity meets her and takes her hand, and they walk off the ramp of civilization, towards, perhaps, the dawning of a new vision.
For those like myself with a limited understanding of Vico, the play might be a harder, though still worthwhile, exercise in mental concepts and philosophies. Where, I would argue, the play reaches its greatest power is in its emotional appeal. The onslaught of information disarms your mind from trying to figure it all out and you have to submit to the sensitivity of the emotions. This is where the music must be discussed. Music seems to be the one true organizing principle of the play, and it is an emotional instrument. The litany of saints, the blowing wind, and the vision of the "vast distant city" serve as the chorus of civilizations; chorus in many respects, as in the Greek chorus of drama but also as a musical chorus, the repeated lines of a song. Amidst all the chaos of the human speech and
activity, Bolet's singing provides harmony in counterpoint. At the end, the characters recede out of sight, and all we are left with is music. Music qualifies as an organizing principle for this play because it is a collapse of science and art, mathematical and emotional, imaginative. The play itself becomes a song, that age-old bearer of history, or vision and poetry, and of freedom.
This is the month of our civilization, and New Science may be precisely what will bring this season into focus. After the turkey has been eaten and you're stuffed with stuffing, it may be a good time to reflect and to feel, what does it all mean? Where do we go from here?
