The Architect and the Emperor of Assyria
Although he’s achieved only limited recognition in America, Arrabal is a major figure in France, where he’s lived in self-imposed exile since the 1950s (though he was for a time officially prohibited from entering Spain). His complete plays have been published in 19 volumes in France, and his works have been staged in Europe almost continually since 1959, when his first play–The Tricycle, a surrealist fable about a childlike murder–was produced in Paris. Since then he’s written 12 novels, six collections of poetry, and some 70 plays and made numerous sculptures, paintings, and collages. He’s even managed to direct seven full-length films, including the 1981 Odyssey of the Pacific, starring Mickey Rooney, of all people. Arrabal must be busy, but he still manages to send an elaborate, hand-decorated Christmas card each year to Beata Pilch, artistic director of Chicago’s tiny Trap Door Theatre, whom he knows only by reputation.
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The audience witnesses the play’s events without identifying with the action, as if this were a carnival pageant. It’s a difficult position, especially since we’ve been trained in this country to applaud theater only insofar as it “moves” or “reflects” us. But to experience the totality of Arrabal’s play, the action must seem a nightmarish exhibition and the logic of the waking world must vanish. Cause and effect don’t hold, and human behavior becomes a cavalcade of mysterious, often contradictory impulses. Rather than being led through a story or even a coherent world, the audience is cajoled, provoked, teased, and insulted.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Beata Pilch.
