Barbarous Nights: Impossible Theatre

Barbarous Nights: Impossible Theatre
Excerpt: Looking at Lorquian 'Receptivity':

Impossible Theatre

Selected quotes from “Toward and Impossible Theatre: An Introduction and Imagined Manifesto” by Caridad Svich...

“To begin, there must be space. In it, an image of yearning—the yearning to fill said space with one’s soul. The soul is composed of signs and metaphors, symbols and lines. Odd disruptions are marked by time, which is incessant and not to be trusted. In the most innocent object lies malice. Trust nothing. Trust only heartbreak. Make theatre out of that which is broken. Then take it apart again.”

“This is a naked theatre, a poetic theatre, a theatre of the impossible because it wishes to present on stage elements of the divine, the inexplicable and the unnamed…Too much is at stake here…The impossible theatre…is forever marked by the culture from which it springs.”

“What is Spanish here is everything: the emphasis on the lyric; the felicitous intrusion of low humor within the tragic or the refined; the inescapable, suffocating nostalgia for a time other than the present; and the coded behavior the restricts relationships and places them in the realm of the public even if what is happening is private.”

“The audience is positioned as decoder of the event being witnessed, not merely as spectator…The irrational holds the key.”

“Talk is abolished. In its place is poetry or musical interchanges that owe as much to the world of commedia as avant-garde song. Phrases are repeated at intervals. Each time they are repeated, the meaning changes. The very repetition makes the audience and the characters question the meaning of what is being said. Characters in the impossible theatre function as mutable fractals in a fickle universe over which they have little to no control. Fate overhangs…a more cruel, less defined fate colored by Catholicism and inevitably marked by sacrifice.”

“The refuge that is found in this theatre is the one offered by the free mixing of forms. Here are the flickering images and devices of the silent screen…There is also a profound use of the techniques of animation. In this theatre, objects move and talk, mannequins weep and sing, and it is only natural…”