THEATRICAL REVELATIONS - The Power of Theatrical Madness

A performance conceived by Jan Fabre, given at the ICA in 1984 & The Royal Albert Hall in 1985.

In the mid 80's I would go to the ICA in London, and take in some performance work or exhibition. Often just on hearsay alone. This prompted my first encountered with Jan Fabre's work The Power of Theatrical Madness. I guess, buoyed by Laurie Anderson's recent breakthrough into the mainstream, everyone was on the look out for who the next performance artist might be, to do a similar cross over. 

Fabre's work had shock value. It had its moment of ART charging into the rarefied halls of middle brow culture. Robert Mapplethorpe produced a book of photos of it. But these days I think its largely forgotten, quite how impactful and influential The Power of Theatrical Madness was at the time.

Jan Fabre's The Power of Theatrical Madness, was, as the title indicates, quite a bit more of a 'theatrical' than an art performance event. Large set piece dramatic happenings that evolved into these often bizarre rituals across the stage. This was a collective ensemble presentation, tightly choreographed, executed with devotion, physical stamina and passion. At over four hours in length this performance was not for sissys. Click here to see trailer -The Power of Theatrical Madness

With no particular narrative thread, The Power of Theatrical Madness, had more the air of a lunatic grand opera, with its evocatively lush background of minimalist music by Wim Merton. What the piece celebrates is the strength of grand dramatic events on stage as a window into the soul of humanity. Whilst also showing us its darker Wagnerian shadow side.

One major theme is our desire to think we are in control of our lives, relationships and reality itself. In this we always fail. By falling into habits, we are touching on an air of regret and ennui. The larger this is writ upon the stage, the more powerful it becomes as a theatrical staging. But also more dangerous, as Fabre's work points toward the use by monarchical and fascistic powers, of all our present elite forms of theatre.

This work exploits the drama inherent in  simple human movement endlessly repeated. A gesture, that might start out as banal, changes in our perception as we watch it repeated, into drudgery, irritability, exhaustion, empathy, beauty, pathos, and on occasions, transcendence.

We have a line up of men in black fatigues and shirts, forced to carry and hold up stacks of plates. At the conclusion the plates are deliberately shattered. In a crashing cascade of rebelliousness and creative carnage. There are also naked kings wearing crowns waltzing around  together. Yeah, it's a bit kinky too.

The piece was long, it tested your power of endurance to be sure. But, for me it was entirely worth it for the last plaintive element in the entire performance. This was set to the a beautiful elegiac movement by Merton, called Whisper Me. In it there is a man and woman. The man down stage moves upstage and lifts the woman into his arms, taking her down stage where he places her on the floor. The woman rises and initially with a certain playful coquettish spirit moves back to where she was at the start. 

This scenario is repeated over and over for the duration of twenty minutes. By which time the man is becoming increasingly tired and clumsy in the execution of picking her up and carrying her upstage. Whilst the woman progressively asserts her own agency with more stridency. This one section of The Power of Theatrical Madness, was worth the entrance fee. It was probably the most beautiful moving piece of theatre I've ever seen. Both poignant and profound. 

Such was its success at the ICA. A much larger venue, the Royal Albert Hall was booked. And I went along to see the same piece on much a larger stage, with larger back projections. The power of the grand gesture in a small space, did feel diminished when you placed it in a performance venue that possessed huge size and grandeur itself. Whilst I understood why they'd chosen to do this. The whole piece lost the sense of human intimacy by that transference. A long gallery in a stately home, or a smaller opera house might have worked better. Though it did strike me that it's ironic gloss of the fascistic rally, was made even more unpalatable by the vastness of the elliptical hall context. Over forty years later, it is still something I'm really glad I saw.