What would Jane’s Addiction do?
Photo by: Lukia Costello, 2011.
Almost 150 years after Nietzsche pronounced, “God is dead,” we are hardly without our rituals. Some religious, some secular–repetition, community, and belief in something larger than oneself remain proven hallmarks of a satisfying life. Theatre, of course, got the early jump on this when it turned the rituals of Dionysius into community events that over time sharpened themselves into studies of the individual, society, and the tangled connections between them. Now, in a media-infused culture it can be difficult to see these ritualistic origins through webs of self-referential irony and the nearest glowing screen flashing away.
Enter Torn Space. Or, in this case you’ll enter Procession, TST’s newest offering tearing up the inside of Buffalo’s Immanuel Church of Christ, home to the Theosophical Society in Black Rock. As revised and re-imagined by Dan Shanahan and his collaborative team, the previously unused sanctuary of this 100+ year-old church has been transformed into a pageant of late 20th-century American pop culture iconography. Think the original Lollapalooza goes to Sunday School. Devised for and set in and among the original architecture (there are even dusty hymnals in the pews), the production includes everything from krumping as sermon, to gorgeous videos flashing on vaulted ceilings, and exterior lighting designed to make the stained glass windows pulse. In one triumphant moment, a giant, lit-up vacuum cleaner takes center stage. It’s everything your typical Sunday morning visit isn’t.
Which is not to say that the theatrical images Shanahan presents are at odds with their sacred setting. On the contrary, nearly every aspect of the show is reverential. The objects of reverence, however, are drawn from late 20th-century alternative pop culture and a palpable obsession with theatre (a goat fetus is sacrificed in the opening moments as a nod to the original meaning of tragōidia, or, “goat song”), grunge-punk, and the unheimlich, or “uncanny.” Bodies are tested and tortured–a similarity between theatre and religion that emphasizes their mutual origins–and higher powers are frequently invoked. Instead of saints, however, the tortured bodies beaten belong to compulsively smiling teenage girls gone awry and a goth-like figure in combat boots and dark eyeliner. The higher power manifests itself as a green laser beam, and a church singer accompanies herself with a series of distortions and waa waa pedals in lieu of an organ. A crucifixion-like climax happens not once, but three times, one of which includes the black hood that will forever be associated with the horrific images from Iraq’s Abu Gharib prison. Those flashing, abstract images overhead? No, not angels; it’s a skateboarder performing a kickflip.
In many ways, Procession owes a debt to the Italian director and provocateur, Romeo Castellucci. In 1981 Castellucci with his
sister Claudia and their collaborators Chiara Guidi and Paolo Guidi founded the Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio, which is widely recognized as one of the most radical theatre groups working today. Their interpretation of Dante’s Divine Comedy at the Festival d’Avignon in 2008, for instance, featured a nearly naked man climbing the interior of the Palais des Papes, Castellucci himself attacked by wild dogs, a son imagining his abusive father trapped in a forest of frighteningly scaled flowers, and a piano surrounded by water in a 14th-century church ruin.
Whereas Catellucci draws on his Italian Catholic upbringing for inspiration–imagining, for instance, purgatory as a stultifying bourgeois family–Shanahan filters religious iconography through the grunge-punk aesthetic of the 1990s. Well known for his fascination with staging unusual bodies, Castellucci’s influence radiates through TST’s eclectic and exciting cast, which includes both hauntingly precise movements and chants, and a man painfully dragging himself down the center aisle for most of the hour-long show.
The other notable influence appears to be Torn Space’s own annual fundraiser, Prom of the Dead (scheduled this year for October 22), which transforms the familiar, if painful, rite of the high school dance into a kind of revenge fantasy party. (Trust me, it’s a wicked good time.) In Procession there’s a similar shift that transforms the familiar gestures of life–holding hands, vacuuming the rug, going to church(!)–into weird mediations on popular culture.
In the interest of full disclosure, I’m a member of the Torn Space board and I came of age during late 1980s and 1990s while attending Catholic school. So I’m hardly objective when I say that the fusion of these elements work to create an exhilarating hour of performance. If you see the show (which I recommend), don’t expect a narrative. Of course, you’re welcome to read one into it (and the program suggests a kind of life cycle structure to the evening), but I would suggest watching the performance like a Hans Richter film. Don’t worry about meaning; just enjoy the images. Watch the bodies and figure out the details later. And, if all that fails, just watch Brian Milbrand’s fantastic video images overhead. After all, you are in church. What better place to look than up?
I’m pretty sure it’s what Perry Farrell and Dave Navarro would do.
