Despite the title of this post generally echoes what I usually say when I see the level of stupidity dangerously rising in our society and in different fields, from arts to fashion, politics and style, for today’s post I’d like to explore the more literal meaning of this Conradian exclamation in conjunction with the recent events in Greece.
The images of the strikes and the rage of protesters taking part in the daily demonstrations, their fear for a future with lower wages and pensions and very few jobs, left me thinking which country will be next, yet they also made me go back in time to my school years.
One of the first things the classic Greek teacher would teach you at the grammar school while lecturing on theatre was that a tragedy was something conceived to bring catharsis in the audience.
There is a performance by the “Buzz Productions Theater” currently being staged at the Michael Cacoyannis Foundation in Athens (the director was mentioned in a previous post in conjunction with the costumes for The Day the Fish Came Out) that made me wonder if a new catharsis from the financial crisis can be achieved through strong theatre pieces and maybe through fear and horror as well.
The performance in question is entitled “Tales of Mystery and Horror from Japan” and was adapted and directed by Athens-based Cypriot artist Philippos Philippou, a graduate of the Drama School of the Athens Conservatory, moving from Ryūnosuke Akutagawa’s Rashōmon and Other Stories and Lafcadio Hearn’s Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things.
This is not the first time Philippou tackles horror themes: after realising how complex oral narration and storytelling can be during a seminar with Mania Maratou, the artist and theatre director studied stories of terror and mystery by Edgar Allan Poe, Saki (Hector Hugh Munro), Rionosouke Akoutagkava and Lafcadio Hern and organised a research seminar entitled “Storytelling in theatre in response to stories of horror and mystery”.
During the seminar, Philippou started finding the Japanese texts analysed as more interesting and fascinating than their European counterparts for their minimalist philosophy, since all the roles could have been played by just three actors wearing masks.
The seminar also opened new paths towards the exploration of dichotomic extremes, that is the drama and the comedy, the fear and the laughter in horror and mystery tales and eventually took the form of the performance currently on at the Cacoyannis Foundation.
Starring Giorgos Stylianopoulos, Leonardo Sfontouris and Christos Tantalakis, “Tales of Mystery and Horror from Japan” tries to find an innovative discourse and approach in narrative paths for the theatre, developing the narration through character masks portraying Japanese spirits such as the Oni (gigantic creatures with sharp claws that devour humans), Kitsune (magical spirits), Yuki-Omna (a doomed snow woman), Rokurokubi (neck-stretching creatures) and Nukekubi (monsters with detachable heads).
It may be a little bit hard to ask the folk oral horror Japanese tradition to provide a catharsis for an entire country in political and financial turmoil, yet I think contemporary theatre can still have the same meaning and power of the early Greek tragedy and maybe make us ponder on our condition in such difficult times.
Besides, in the last few seasons, the Japanese horror tradition has proved as very inspiring for the fashion scene.
This is an interesting point considering that up until a few years ago it was still Edgar Allan Poe to have connections with fashion, inspiring specific collections, photo shoots that focused on the fashion and death dichotomy and films with some fashion elements as well (remember the catwalk show in Fellini's "Toby Dammit", one of the episodes of the film Histoires Extraordinaires, based on Poe's stories?).
As highlighted in a previous post, the Rodarte sisters turned Japanese horror films into a successfully fashionable inspiration, while masks are never out of fashion, as they are often employed in photo shoots and catwalk shows as vital elements to transform the human face or simply erase it in Martin Margiela’s style.
I'm sure some of Philippou’s new narrative paths can be tweaked and applied to fashion as well, since, in many ways, creating a fashion collection is a bit like telling a story through images, clothes and fabrics.
“Tales of Mystery and Horror from Japan” is on at the Michael Cacoyannis Foundation, Athens, until 30th may 2010.
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