Four Deaths and a stone circle

Blog by Gareth Vile | 12 Mar 2010

Since my understanding of life is that wisdom is the gradual recognition of how utterly fucked I am, and that a series of traumas have taught me the moments of innocence that doomed to me to heart-break and, eventually, cynicism, it is no surprise that I am entranced by the doomy contours of Live Art and experimental theatre. Via Negativa, with promotional photographs that featured performers splayed out in pools of blood, the promise of envious imaginings of four art greats’ deaths and a company name that evoked the mystical ascent to Godhead through darkness and despair tickled my fancy. Yet Four Deaths betrayed me. From a wryly humorous introduction that compared the power of a dead composer with the meekness of a present, living actor, through to the final dissipation of creative life-force, the show was a reminder both that “theatre can be fun”, as the cast declared, and that meditations on death can be winningly life-affirming.

This week’s theoretical obsession has been Howard Barker, an often neglected British playwright and theorist. He roundly castigates the idea of “humanist” theatre- essentially positive and maintaining a status quo of craft and impartial audience observation. As a Jesuit trained anti-humanist, thrilled by Barker’s assertion that in his “catastrophe theatre” the critic suffers too, I am delighted to report that in Four Deaths, the laughter does, indeed, hide fear. We chuckle as the performer compares us to deceased celebrities. We smile at Pina Bausch’s last cigarette. We even force a smile when La Ribot’s voice intones that there is no magic, no meaning. By the time Tim Etchells’ mortal remains- a spiral of shattered light-bulbs- are swept off stage by three cleaners, we are, in the words of despairing school-teachers and, when the crowd wouldn’t shut up in the middle of one of his self-important lectures, Jim Morrison, only laughing at ourselves.

If Four Deaths claims to be motivated by envy, it is far more reverential. Each of the performers chosen for the killing are given a farewell speech that sums up why they mean so much.  The three female victims - La Ribot, Pina Bausch and Marina Abromovic, all make the body central to their work: the disappearance of their physicality is all the more final. Death is quite clearly not a passage to celestial joy- but by portraying these final moments in a mixture of gentle metaphors, it becomes acceptable, even poetic.

Abramovitch has a particular meaning for me- many years ago, in I parodied her Great Wall of China piece. Following the break up of her professional and personal relationship with Ulay, they walked the wall from opposite ends, kissed in the middle and walked on past each other. I cycled to Skye with my partner, made love in the stone circle at Callinish and spent three months negotiating a painful split. Knowing, however slightly, the great turmoil and confusion that comes from mixing the personal and artistic life, her sparkling demise-  a handful of soap bubbles bursting on the stage- transformed her hardcore struggles into a peaceful oblivion in an exquisite silence.

I went straight to the Art Club Cabaret, where a cheerfully drunk Buck Fast balloon popped his way through a sailor strip and Lucille Burn reminded me of how love lost has inspired great music. Hell’s Belle’s fan dance was a thing of abstract beauty and Rufus’ good-humoured mocking of the Not So Impressive Ben evoked genuine human warmth. If humanist theatre encourages a sense of identification with other people, maybe Via Negativa are humanists, and I enjoyed it against my will. But the abstraction of their technique, the tough subject matter and the medieval resonance of their name leaves me the hope that they are something altogether more atavistic.