The easiest way to highlight
someone’s absence
is to introduce them
at the beginning
and remove them abruptly.
I took another option:
a standing naked woman
– the only “living accent”
of the mechanical performance
appears
not in its finale,
but in its epilogue.
Her activity
is brought down
to a simple action
(lowering her head
and raising her hands)
forced by
a show of the object
that she was
burdened with.
This is how I reveal
“Living Target”
– the final scene of the drama.
Its appearance on stage
puts the audience
in the place of
the firing squad.
Just a minor procedure,
and the big gun sight
features
not a defenseless woman,
but an unclothed figure
of enslaved justice.
I have long considered the possibility
of placing additional actors
on the stage,
because it is difficult to use this term
for the machinists
clad in black uniforms
who covertly operate the objects.
However,
to complete my doctrine,
I have decided
to include characters
depicted as
an inert body,
constituting
an imitation of a corpse,
“a troublesome by-product
of this Life Extermination Facility.”*
I concluded
that it is in this form
that they most clearly highlight
the conversion of tasks on-scene
– the modus operandi
of my mechanical theater.
The object
moves,
“lives,”
acts,
expresses,
offers meaning.
The actor is
inert,
“dead,”
passive
– he becomes
reduced
to a physical shell.
This is
a shipwreck,
reduced to the role of
useless trash,
that attests only
to the efficiency of the
“Machinery of Death”
that is gathered on the stage.
Hence,
after each completed cycle,
a platform with a body
resting on a cart
moves on rails closer and closer towards the proscenium.
This is where it is unloaded automatically,
growing into a pile over time.
Here the actor
is defeated by the machine,
not only by the enforcement of the verdict,
but more importantly
by being ousted
from the actor’s duties on stage.
This is how one can see
coincidentia oppositorum
in the new incarnation
of my “Theater of Madness.”
