a confusion of dichotomies
by
Douglas Messerli
Stanisław
Ignacy Witkiewicz (Witkacy) The Two-Headed Calf / a production of
CalArts Center for New Performance and STUDIO teargaleria / performed at Redcat (Roy
and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater) in Los Angeles, the performance I attended was
on October 19, 2019
First
performed in 1921, The Two-Headed Calf, by the noted Polish writer Stanisław Ignacy
Witkiewicz (known to Poles as Witkacy),
is a bizarre family drama, which originally shuffled between Papua-New Guinea
and Australia as the play’s young neurotic hero, Karmazyniello, after the suicide of his beloved fiancée, attempts
to determine who and what he is and how he was born into the mad family in which
he exists.
As in other such avant-garde productions
of the time, which were later major influences on everyone from Artaud to
Ionesco and Beckett, there is little coherent plot and no clear trajectory for
where the play is moving. All we can truly be sure of is that the climate—an
important factor here, as it may be in all of our futures—heats up the body,
inner and outer, of the protagonist until he is confused about a great many
things, as is the audience, perhaps a perfect metaphor for the way most of feel
much of the time today.
This spectacular new production by Warsaw’s
Teatr Studio, headed by Natalia Korczakowska, transforms the location to Sydney
and the California desert, ending in Death Valley. The character is now named Patricianello (performed through two hooded personas,
representing obviously the two-headed calf, by Rett Keeter and Robert Wasieciz),
the name suggesting both his patriarchally-controlled world and the Italian
ribald jester, clown, fool and wit that defines the puppet Punchinello.
This 2019 version of Witkacy’s major play asks
many of the same unanswerable questions of the original but in ways that seem more
contemporary. Is our young hero in love with his father, suggesting an almost
pedophilic attachment, with his sister, his brother, or is the entire
family—since three of the major male family figures at one point appear in full
white gowns—transgender?
Except for the highly languid Lady
Leocladia Clay (Ewa Blaszczyk), most of the other figures, particularly the males,
seem throughout to literally bounce off one another, in a remarkably athletic
representation of both their loves and hates for the people with whom they
live.
There is also a Queen (Symone Holmes) and
a beautiful blonde-haired man, which represents the best of the Parvis family,
and the always suffering boy, who seems unable to determine whom he most loves
or even what his sexuality might be or become. Witkacy suggests that perhaps he
loves himself far more than anyone else.
Scenic designer Salman Beydoun, along
with the costume designer Marek Adamski and lighting designer Marek Adamski
stir up this strange pot-au-feu with amazing visual transformations,
accompanied with music by Beethoven and original compositions by Chris
Kallmyer.
In short, in this engaging production
there is a lot for the ear and the eye, while the play fevers up the
imagination in the viewer’s attempt to make coherent meaning of what is going
on. Yet that is Witkiewicz’s real point: it is impossible to truly make linear
sense of the psyche of any individual, let alone to try to explain the devastation
we all suffer, to some extent, through family life. Meaning, “coming through”
to whatever we mean by the “real” self, is nearly impossible, and it is only by
facing the always heated-up landscape of pasts that we can comfortably move
into relative stable future, perhaps simply to pass on our confusions to the
next generations.
The two-headed calf is always an
abomination, even if it might be seen as a kind of wonder, for yes cannot mean
yes, and no cannot mean no (for the opposite of which, at one point, a
character argues) if you’ve got two minds in one. You are always of two minds,
as anyone who carefully thinks will be for their entire lives. And that is the
true dilemma of our handsome and plainer looking Patricianello, trapped in the
confusion of dichotomies.
Los
Angeles, October 25, 2019
Reprinted
from USTheater, Opera, and Performance (October 2019).
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