Session 2, part 2: Open Theater’s Images, Our Images

-by gwethalyn

We began our reading of The Open Theater’s “ceremony” The Serpent by reading a scene titled “Kennedy-King Assassination.”  In the scene four actors visually recreate the figures in the convertible from the iconic video clip of JFK’s assassination, the rest of the actors are bystanders although one stands aside miming the act of taking the shot.  Once the image is established it breaks down, different parts of the image repeating and happening in different orders. The bystanders speak a series of overlapping lines including:

I was not involved.
I am a small person.
I hold no opinions.
I stay alive.
. . .
I am no assassin.
I’m no president.
I don’t know who did the killing,
I stay alive.

After the scene has broken down into cacophony of agonizing movement and sound a figure emerges and speaks lines from Dr. King’s final prescient I’ve Seen the Promised Land speech. During his speech the figures in the car continue their unending pantomime of death, the only change in action is a slowing of the repeated actions in the car and the assassin, who now repeatedly enacts the pain of being shot and dying, himself. After the King figure finishes speaking we also begin to make out make out the words of the president’s wife “I’ve got his brains in my . . .”  After this the earlier evasive lines of the crowd are repeated again by the crowd and the assassin.

One of the participants commented after we were done reading: “I don’t think I could handle watching this live.” A sure testament to the power of such imagery, if this image has such a strong effect on someone who was born decades after the events being evoked.

 The Serpent goes on to include images of the creation of the Garden of Eden, The Seprent tempting Eve into the original sin, and the first murder of Able by Cain. Interspersed are sections of earnest statements by the performers, mostly small confessions of things they regret in their own pasts.  The result is a communal meditation on guilt, regret, and accountability.  The Open Theater believed that theater could be used to restore the sense of community they believed had been lost in modern culture. They always performed in simple clothes with simple lights and props and music and sound made only by their own bodies in the space so that it was clear to the audience that anyone could be a part of the ceremony, not just trained performers. Powerful stuff full of rhythm and movement that sometimes builds to exultation, even in the face of the hard truths being presented.

After reading how the Open Theater used images in their theater we tried our hands at creating some images of our own. Working in small groups, and working without speaking, each group member formed an image using the bodies of those in the group and then placed themselves in the image too.  The first concept we tried was “destruction.” I expected some big crazy destruction, but ever the hard thinking, contemplative group, most of this year’s participants built images of personal, small, destructions. There were a few abstract images mostly portraying destruction as extremely controlled interruptions. The images were extremely varied and fascinating.  For our second set of images the groups worked together again to make images of “unity.” The final step was to create a transition from an image of destruction to an image of unity.  Each group tackled the problem in a very different way, resulting in several interesting scenes.  We ran out of time before getting to add the last step to make these more like something the Open Theater would have used: rhythm. I was very disappointed we had to call it quits before this all-important last step, but we’ll get there. Can’t have MXTW without at least one good jam session!