Looking Back with Orpheus

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size

Notes

1 Mulciber is another name for the Roman god Vulcan. In Milton’s Paradise Lost, before his fall into Hell, he had been the architect of palaces in Heaven.

2 In 2011 Tate Britain (London) curated an exhibition titled John Martin: Apocalypse. In contextualizing essays for the Tate journal, film historian and curator Ian Christie refers to the derisory use of this term initially in Blackwood’s Magazine, and then in general opprobrium for Martin, Benjamin Haydon and Francis Danby, who appeared to be producing ever-larger pictures ‘to an adoring public’.

3 For a full account of the Eidophusikon, its development and impact on theatre and cinema, see McGillivray 2008.

4 An ‘appearance of a diorama plagiarising Belshazzar’s Feast causes Martin to request an injunction to prohibit its display and ruining his reputation’ (Morden 2010). It was reproduced and increased to a colossal 2,000 square feet but his court order failed. He subsequently became involved in petitioning the government on issues pertaining to copyright.

5 Jonathan Martin suffered several episodes of mental breakdown and was briefly incarcerated in an asylum after attempting to shoot the Bishop of Oxford. Although at the trial at York Castle following the fire, the jury found him guilty of the capital offence of arson, the judge overruled and proclaimed him not guilty on the grounds of insanity. Jonathan Martin was therefore ‘saved’ from a death sentence.

6 York Minster suffered even greater destruction by fire on the early morning of 8 July 1984. Although uncertain, it is believed the cause was a lightning bolt. The fire brigade decided to collapse the roof of the cathedral to save it from further destruction. See: https://bbc.in/3kMFOSR .

7 John Milton’s Paradise Lost and Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy, specifically sections from the Inferno (but also Purgatory), were perhaps obvious choices but it was the readings of C. S. Lewis (from The Screwtape Letters and the alarmingly titled The Hideous Strength) that were disturbing for being more measured and reasoned.

8 Epidiascopes were forerunners to photographic slide and digital projectors and widely used in schools and colleges for illustrated talks throughout the twentieth century. Technically known as ‘opaque projectors’, using intense light and reflection, pictures from books or any opaque objects could be projected onto a screen.

9 Journey’s End is entirely set in a British officers’ dugout in the trenches in northern France in the increasingly tense days immediately preceding Operation Michael (21 March 1918), the major German Spring Offensive of the First World War. It is a three-act play with a cast of eleven men and its opening two-year run starred a young Laurence Olivier playing the disintegrating Captain Stanhope. It was adapted for cinema in 2017, for a feature film directed by Saul Dibb.

10 Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon were British officers and poets of the First World War. Suffering from ‘shell shock’ Owen was sent to recuperate at the Craiglockhart Hospital, Edinburgh, Scotland (renowned for its innovative treatments). Sassoon was sent there for his anti-war protestations. Sassoon and Owen formed a deep friendship, wrote for the hospital magazine and helped define a genre of Western literature -- war poetry.

11 Throughout this text I am referring to the understage of a theatre as ‘hell’. See Geraint D’Arcy’s article ‘L’Enfer du Théatre’ in this issue of Performance Research for a historical account of the term, its currency in stage management and as a concept in other world theatre cultures.

12 Cardiff Laboratory for Theatrical Research, as it was first titled, was founded by Mike Pearson in January 1974. It was a loose association of young performers making physical and experimental theatre on a project-to-project basis. I joined the team (more a gang) at the end 1974. In 1980 Mike Pearson and I, having generated many projects and toured Europe together, amicably split the company into two: Brith Gof (Pearson), a Welsh theatre company based in Aberystwyth, and Cardiff Laboratory Theatre (Gough) continuing at Chapter Arts Centre in Cardiff. A full chronology of Cardiff Lab and its successor, CPR, can be found here: https:// thecpr.org.uk/archived-projects/.

13 Odin Teatret, the performance ensemble of the Nordisk Teaterlaboratorium, was founded by Eugenio Barba in 1964, initially in Oslo, Norway, and since 1965 in Holstebro, Denmark. A full history of Odin/NTL and its continuing activities can be found here: https://odinteatret. dk. The four members of Odin Teatret who collaborated throughout the Blaenau Ffestiniog Residency were Else Marie Laukvik, Gustavo Riondet, Ulrik Skeel and Julia Varley.

14 Odin in Wales was a month-long residency (August 1980) of Odin Teatret in Wales. The first ten days in Cardiff were an exposition of their complete repertoire of shows and films, five parallel workshops and an international conference. This was followed by two weeks of touring Anabasis and The Million throughout Wales (including Blaenau Ffestiniog) and a week of collaborating with Cardiff Lab members, guests and communities in Machynlleth, Lampeter and Denbigh. It concluded with two days of meetings and reflection back in Cardiff.

15 As described on the Odin Teatret website: ‘a journey among the carnivals of different cultures, from India to Bali, from Japan to Brazil, from Africa to European ballroom dancing. A “musical” à la Odin: a mocking album of exoticism whose figures of flesh and blood prance about in front of a strange traveller … ’. See: https:// bit.ly/3qM87lW .

16 As I completed this article, Blaenau Ffestiniog and the surrounding areas of slate landscapes were assigned the status of a UNESCO World Heritage Site (July 2021), becoming the UK’s thirty-second such site and the fourth in Wales. This was a result of a fifteen-year-long campaign that sought recognition for the industrial heritage of north-west Wales.

17 On the site of the Oakeley Quarry, the other major slate mine of Blaenau Ffestiniog, opposite Llechwedd, a Museum of Slate Industry was opened in 1974 -- Gloddfa Ganol. For many years the Llechwedd Slate Caverns and Gloddfa Ganol were competing and yet complementary tourist attractions but in 1998 Gloddfa Ganol closed, and all the artefacts and machinery were auctioned.

18 An entirely different workforce laboured above the surface, splitting and finishing the slate in the mill. Once a block was sawn and gauged it would be split in half, and then in quarters and in eighths. These eight ‘chips’ would form a ‘book’ and until the mid-twentieth century this was done by hand with a hammer and chisel and continued this way in smaller artisan quarries.

19 Since the early 1980s Llechwedd Slate Cavern has developed attractions above and below ground: Slate Mountain Adventure (an off-road quarry 4x4 exploration); Zip World, comprising zip wires across open quarries and a zip trail in the caverns (including the longest zip wire in Europe); the original loop cavern tour, now the Deep Mine experience; and, on the extensive site, glamping facilities and a boutique hotel. See: https:// llechwedd.co.uk.

20 For its time (mid-1970s), this was a state-of-the-art, audio-visual tour. The pace of the journey was fixed by the soundtrack, amplified in the caverns. The light shows crossfaded and revealed the depth or specific features of each cavern. The narrator performed as if a quarryman, and offered factual information together with personal observations, and all was mixed with ‘traditional’ Welsh music, harp playing, folk song and a male voice choir.

21 The members of Cardiff Laboratory Theatre were Yvonne Cheal, Richard Gough, Jill Greenhalgh, John Hardy, Philip McKenzie, Dave Southern, Siân Thomas, Melanie Thompson, Simon Thorne, with guests Joan Mills and Paul Roylance.

22 Jill Greenhalgh captures the frantic creative process of making this ‘special event’ in her essay ‘And Before I Know It’ (2006).

23 In Greek mythology, Orpheus is a renowned musician, prophet and poet and is often depicted with a lyre. He descends into the underworld attempting to retrieve his wife, Eurydice, who had died from a snake bite while dancing in the forest. Through his music, Orpheus persuades Hades to release his wife and return to the world. Hades grants permission on the condition that Orpheus does not look back to see that Eurydice is accompanying him during their ascent. Towards the end of their journey, Orpheus loses his resolve and glances backwards. Eurydice disappears to remain in the underworld forever.

24 I had been told about the Living Theatre’s 1965 ‘total theatre’ production of Frankenstein by James Roose Evans (visiting our school) and I then read Roose Evans’ 1970 book Experimental Theatre, which had a seminal influence on me. I became fascinated by the Living Theatre but in an age long before the internet it was not easy to gather much information. For a full history see: https:// bit.ly/3kXZnYJ .

25 I rented a 16mm reel-to-reel film of Marty Topps’ documentary Paradise Now, distributed in the 1970s by Contemporary Films. It is a quintessential 1968 film capturing the non-violent and sexually liberated revolution the Living Theatre were seeking. Excerpts can be found on YouTube and a four-hour compilation, The Living Theatre in Amerika, comprising Topps’ film and Gwen Brown’s Emergency, is available from ArtFilms (Australia): https://bit.ly/3zQ8qPp .

26 Corporal punishment was institutionalized in this school and brutally implemented by the Master of the House I was ‘resident’ in -- across the hands and on the backside. This housemaster had a rack of canes permanently on display in his study, to intimidate and to zealously dispatch.

27 The Odin Teatret were well known for their street theatre works (including Anabasis) that included fantastical figures in black and red on high stilts with disturbing masks and often skulls. The most famous (and enduring) being ‘Mr Peanuts’ (he is still performing forty-five years later) -- a looming skeleton as if from a Mexican Day of the Dead carnival.

28 The funicular tram could only take approximately twenty- five passengers, but the tourist attraction could operate in relays. We could only take one set of travellers at a time and then had to reset and recycle the scenes. The Widow’s Dream was only staged for residents of Blaenau Ffestiniog and consequently fewer than one hundred people witnessed this ‘one-off’ event.

29 This, and the English folk song mentioned below, were from The Child Ballads, a collection of English and Scottish traditional songs anthologized by Francis James Child in the late nineteenth century. Welsh and Danish traditional songs were also incorporated into the musical score, and the choral work was Central European inspired and learnt from British folk singer Frankie Armstrong.

30 Reversing the routes travelled and resetting the scenes below was a major logistical task, with several Llechwedd Slate Cavern staff assisting. No sooner had the Widow settled back in her bed above ground than the whole dream and descent began again.

31 Locus Solus was originally published in Paris in 1914 and reissued by Jean-Jacques Pauvert Editions in 1965. First published in the UK in 1970 by John Calder, translated by Rupert Copeland Cunningham, Calder Publications, London, UK.

32 My memory of this account has been refreshed by reading Laura Facchi’s text that accompanies Marco Lanza’s photographic album The Living Dead: Inside the Palermo Crypt (2000). For a more elaborate and fantastical rendition please read her text to which I am in part indebted.

33 Mother’s Pride was a national brand of white bread, most popular in 1970s and 1980s, produced by British Bakeries throughout the UK, with distinctive TV advertisements and jingles.

34 A fine example of Victorian engineering, the Gurney Stove was invented by Sir Goldsworthy Gurney and installed in thousands of churches and schools throughout the UK, including St Pauls, London. In addition to a girdle of cast iron fins, the entire stove rested in a trough of water, evaporation generating more heat. Some still exist in a few cathedrals and have been converted to burn gas.

35 The Guizer Project was inspired by a book edited by Alan Garner, The Guizer: A book of fools, a collection of folk tales from around the world about tricksters, fools and shape-shifters. Three site-specific projects, taking the audience on journeys by foot and coach to disused buildings and seaside coves, led to the creation of a studio-based production, Shadowlands (January to April 1977, Cardiff).

36 Owls or Flowers was a retelling of the Blodeuwedd story of Welsh mythology. A woman made of flowers by magicians, she figures centrally in the fourth branch of the Mabinogion (Britain’s earliest prose text, written from oral traditions in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries). It is a complex tale of shape-shifting and chase -- she is turned into an owl by Gwydion. Dancing on the Volcano was loosely based on Josef von Sternberg’s 1930 feature film The Blue Angel (Der blaue Engel). Immanuel Rath (Emil Jannings), a respectable schoolteacher, becomes infatuated with Lola Lola (Marlene Dietrich), the star of the Blue Angel cabaret. The film (and play) depicts Rath’s obsession and descent into a cabaret clown and fragmentation to madness.

37 Lira was the currency of Italy until 1999, when it was replaced by the euro. A single lira was worth very little and even in 1977 banknotes of L50,000 or L100,000 were not uncommon. However, seeing vast sums transacted in such squalid circumstances added frisson to the witnessing.

38 Abbanniata is the market tradition of calling out your wares very loudly, sometimes as cries and shouts, almost heckling the passer-by and prospective customers, purposefully creating a commotion. It is mainly practised by the greengrocers. As with so many traditions in Sicily, it hails from North Africa. See: https://bit.ly/2WleyRY .

39 La Vucciria was painted in oil by Renato Guttuso in 1974. It is a huge canvas (300 x 300cm). It has returned to Palermo and is currently in the Palazzo Chiaramonte-Steri in Piazza Marina, now part of the University of Palermo. Copyright forbids inclusion in this essay but the painting can be seen via this link and on many websites: https://bit.ly/2ZBhpHH .

40 Monreale is a town 7 kilometres south of Palermo and is famous for its Norman-Byzantine cathedral, a National Monument of Italy. The cathedral together with its surrounding buildings is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

41 Francesco Rosi’s film Illustrious Corpses (Cadaveri eccellenti) is set in Palermo and the opening sequence tracks (soon to be murdered) Judge Vargas, wandering the catacombs and through squinting and crumpled eyes he peers into the faces of the dead. Later an elderly monk tells the investigator (from Rome): ‘He liked talking to the mummies. He’d make the dead reveal the secrets of the living’. The entire film is available here: https://bit.ly/39Kqhgd

42 Our Late Familiars is a collaboration between the artist/printmaker Ian Wilkinson and writer Iain Sinclair and the result of another collaboration between the mummies in Palermo and a flock of desiccated birds Wilkinson discovered entombed in a chimney. Wilkinson arranges a series of ‘still lifes’ -- ‘photographic images of catacombed saints and sinners, still dressed in their finery. Attending them are a company of portentous birds, bearers of tidings good and ill, in similar states of mummification’ (Sinclair 2020). A gallery of images and a film can be seen here: https://www. ourlatefamiliars.com.

43 The official website of the Palermo Catacombs describes the mummification process in clinical detail. Once eviscerated the bodies were placed in the colatoio -- a draining room -- and the bodies were stuffed with straw and bay leaves to ‘facilitate the process of dehydration’. Then the ‘bodies were placed in a supine position on grids made of terracotta tubes, so their bodily fluids could drain away and their flesh desiccate. … Afterwards the corpses were exposed to the air, washed with vinegar and dressed, often in clothes of their own choosing, before being inserted in the wall niches’. See: https://bit.ly/2YeeK6q

44 I returned to the Capuchin Catacombs the next day and bought multiple sets of postcards as I did not have a camera. I used these in the Cardiff Lab production of Moths in Amber (1978--9) and in several workshops over the last forty-five years. I have visited Palermo twice since and in recent decades unlicensed photography is forbidden, the corridors have railings to create a semblance of separation between life and death and surveillance cameras have been installed.

45 The world-renowned Copenhagen-based Hotel Pro Forma was founded by Kirsten Dehlholm in 1985. ‘We are recognized for our genre-wide and innovative works, which transcend the boundaries between visual arts, text, music, theatre, installations and architecture. We work with themes of a universal nature in conceptual, visual and musical settings with the application of the latest technology and artistic innovation’ — from their website, see: https://www. hotelproforma.dk.

46 Full production details of COSMOS+, programme notes, gallery of images and a 13-minute video can be found here: https://bit.ly/3zPiKqL .

47 OBERIU, the Association of Real Art, was co-founded by Daniil Kharms and Alexander Vvedensky in 1928 and flourished briefly with many of its associated artists being arrested in the early 1930s. As an art ‘movement’ it resembled the Dadaists (and especially their cabarets) but is often referred to as Russian Futurist. The OBERIU celebrated trans-sense and infuriated many by their nonsensical verse. Elizaveta Bam was written in a few days by Kharms for one of their notorious (and long) evenings of poetry, film, theatre and jazz -- Three Left Hours.

48 A profile of Oskaras Koršunovas can be found through the link below. In addition to directing at the LNDT he has his own company, Oskaras Koršunovas Teatras -- OKT -- full details of past and current productions can be found on their website: https://bit.ly/3m2kB6U.

49 Consistent with Koršunovas’ commitment to developing ‘new realities’ for theatre and continuing the legacy of Meyerhold (and the studio and theatre laboratory traditions) Koršunovas runs masterclasses. Connected to OKT is a Koršunovas Student Actors’ Course, and at the time of developing this edition of Elizaveta Bam, Koršunovas involved most of the students in the production -- the menacing figures and crowds heard above. Greta Petrovskytė was an outstanding member of that cohort.

50 The official website of the museum, including the history of the building, the activities of the KGB in Lithuania, museum expositions and archives can be found here: https://bit.ly/3uoxWub.

51 Theatre gauze is made from an open-weave fabric, known as sharkstooth, and is hung or stretched as if a curtain (vertically) at any depth in a stage. When lit from the front, when the upper stage is dimmed, it becomes opaque and whatever lies behind is invisible. When the upper stage is lit and the front stage lighting dimmed, the figures or scenes are revealed. Any variety of crossfading light can play with this pulse of revelation and disappearance. Multiple gauzes (or scrims) can also be hung.

52 DasArts was founded in 1994 by the grandfather of Dutch experimental theatre, Ritsaert ten Cate (Director/Producer of the Mickery Theatre, Amsterdam 1965--1995), as an independent foundation in association with the Amsterdam University of the Arts. It functioned as a performance laboratory through themed thirteen-week ‘Blocks’ (terms) and attracted ‘post-academic students’ from around the globe who were already highly experienced and emerging artists in a variety of disciplines. Each Block was co-directed by two international artists. Block 11 (1999) was themed: What’s Cooking? Still Lives. Turbulent Recipes, and curated by Richard Gough and Rob Berends. In 2009 DasArts became part of the Academy of Theatre and Dance, Amsterdam University of the Arts; it is now known as DAS Theatre: https://bit.ly/2XZ7SJG .

53 The Social Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, which had been formed of six republics after the Second World War, began to disaggregate in 1991 following the weakening of the Communist Party and a Serbian ambition to form a ‘Greater Serbia’. The Yugoslav Wars (1991--2001) were a series of interrelated ethnic conflicts and wars of independence that occurred separately and at different times over ten years, impacting on each of the nations that had formed the federation. The violent disaggregation has led to the formation of seven independent countries.

54 Opsis derives from the ancient Greek word for ‘sight’ or ‘appearance’ and is the origin of the English word ‘optic’. In ancient Greek it denotes the ‘spectacle’ component of theatre and performance. For many centuries the visual (or spectacular) dimension of ancient Greek theatre has been regarded as secondary to the spoken or auditory. The dynamic between word and spectacle is being radically reconsidered from a scholarly perspective and re-visioned through practice.