BLACK AND WHITE NIGHT

«BLACK AND WHITE NIGHT»

 

By Lars Øyno

 

‘Black and White Night’ had its world premiere at Grusomhetens Teater (The Theatre of Cruelty) in Oslo on the 26th of February 2025 and played until the 22nd of March 2025. The French surrealist Antonin Artaud (1896 – 1948) never got to realise his vision for the Theater of Cruelty, but in his text, Seraphim’s Theatre, written during his stay in Mexico, he may have most expressively articulated how he envisioned this theater to exist.

 

Artaud questioned our perception of reality, suggesting that neither dreams nor theater are less real than the material reality that we in the Western world recognise as the only one. He challenged Western principles and societal norms, suggesting that we look towards Eastern philosophy and theater to inspire an art form that is more in touch with the earth and our natural instincts. For Artaud this started with the breath – life in its most organic form, corporeally releasing itself in a scream. Today, one would be quite naive if reality does not make it clear that it is precisely capitalism that is destroying the climate and ecological diversity – and which shamelessly profits from wars.

 

Purged of the oppressive masculine principles that gave birth to capitalism, and which have created an apathetic and individualistic existence in the Western world, “Black and White Night” attempts Artaud’s terrific feminine. A cry of claims, of trampled down rebellion, of steeled anguish at war. A theatre so viscerally ejective that people are forced out of their falsehoods and learned behaviors. The eight performers move across the stage. At first we present an anatomical study of an existence tied to a materialistic and rigid reality – one which we can recognise in our own Western world and its obsession with the systematic, and formulaic structures that we exist within. Then we start to challenge the individual by inspiring something new, together we undergo a violent transformation, subject to a cathartic release, succumbing to nature, to discover a liberated life more in touch with the Earth. In contact with Artaud, let man take to the stage to transform their own anatomy. Only through a profound physiological recalibration can man change and a real revolution arise.

 

Since 1992, Grusomhetens Teater has created theatre based on Antonin Artaud’s ideas of an anatomical and metaphysical theatre, but not since 2013, with «Revolusjonære Budskap», have we attempted to stage one of his texts. In that spirit, “Black and White Night” is one of our purest attempts at Artaud in recent times.

 

Photo: Magnus Skrede

 

REVIEWS:

“The performance is not a reproduction of this rather absurd text (Seraphim’s Theatre), but an inspired interpretation in which the importance of breathing in particular for the sacred theatre is accentuated through the actors’ expressions. The office workers appear as ideological robots in a system which values economic gain over humanity’s physical existence in the world. In an era where artificial intelligence is moving into the realm of art, I read the performance as a protest against the automated human…the performance is funny and precise, and what I ultimately appreciate the most is the insistence on creating theater that’s critical of capitalism in a dark basement, and art that never deviates from its ambitions to say something significant about the human condition. – Julie Rongved Amundsen, Klassekampen

 

“What we have before us is a gradual process in which the capitalist archetypes (and thus capitalism itself) gradually lose their masks, where all defenses disintegrate and they are ultimately mercilessly left to themselves and their helpless screams… It is the rhythmic and repetitive that is by far the core of the unfailing progress that characterizes the performance. It gets a little worse and a little more extreme each time, until they all end up as people without qualities, without suit jackets and ties, with their pants hanging down to their buttocks, their hair in a wild mess, bewildered, with their individual personalities peeled off, and with only the scream left as the only expression in their personal repertoire.” … “I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: If Grusomhetens Teater didn’t exist, we would have to invent it. Descending into the basement there is like coming home to what it’s really all about.” -Chris Erichsen, Scenekunst

 

“As the performance slowly progresses with its many repetitions of individual elements, the office workers encounter “something”, it is unclear what, but suit jackets are torn off, dramatic music is played and suddenly they are all glued to a wall and whining like cats. The office workers have gone to seed, capitalism has eaten itself. Then we hear repeated “screams of repressed rebellion, of steeled anguish”, to use the theatre’s own words for instruments of Artaudian theatre.” … “A critique of capitalism, however, could not have come more timely. After all, we live in a time when even presidents believe that everything (including peace and other countries) can be bought with money. We see today how money and power can be combined in grotesque ways that we could never have imagined were possible just a few years ago.” -Inger Marie Kjølstadmyr, Dagsavisen

 

 

The production was funded by the Arts Council Norway and Oslo Council.