Conflagration

Immoral Vignettes

by

D.P. Watt

This is not a manifesto; it is a dance of desire.

You know the old days are over; the playing with costumes and the giggling with make-up; the green room banter and the old rivalries; the useless mantelpiece acting and the puffing on chalk cigarettes. The wonderful baritones have degenerated into wheezes and groans; even the audiences are aged and their eyes no longer distinguish the players—all has homogenised into a colourful blur; widow Twankey has fused with the castle door frame and the props are dust in your hands. The old days are over, burn your photo-albums! The playbills have been whitewashed and their ridiculous names are now just a smutty rumour.

This is not a manifesto; it is a hymn to eternity.

Pray to the clowns and the troubadours. Worship in the stalls of the music halls and venerate the Punch and Judy booths. Let the puppets man the barricades; they are immortal, no bullet can harm them. Every harsh word screamed at the dancing bear is met with only a blank stare. In the heart of the inferno the girls still spring lithely upon the trapeze. The true theatre of ages is as ancient as a glacier and will freeze any heart as it adores the marvellous.

This is not a manifesto; it is a love song.

What was this terror, theatre? It was the soul of humanity; mystery, bodies in torment and flux. What is this luxury, theatre? It is a place in-between; the eruption of the crude and the incredible. Theatre? Cardboard and twine; rose petals and violins. Blood and betrayal; hope and empires. Sun and candlelight; oil on water and the magic of sweat.

Theatre: conflagration—the future!

∞

Dramatis Personae

Angel – August Strindberg

An aigrette of iridescent flames – Maurice Maeterlinck

Priest – Antonin Artaud

A long shadow cast against the cyclorama – Edward Gordon Craig

An infernal propeller – Filippo Marinetti

Language professor – Samuel Beckett

Violent shout (from the wings) – Alfred Jarry

Red flowers – Jean Genet

Macbeth or Clytemnestra – Tristan Tzara

Man bearing a placard with a Chinese symbol – Bertolt Brecht

Trumpet player – Vaclav Havel

Hanged Man – Stanislaw Witkiewicz

Pierrot and Juggler – Vsevolod Meyerhold

English schoolgirl – Eugene Ionesco

Charon – Tadeusz Kantor