Corruption is our only hope—  Bertolt Brecht

When reading One Flea Spare, before you even get to the dialogue you will find this quote. I was intrigued by this insert when I first read it— especially in relationship to this play and what Naomi Wallace was ultimately trying to tell us. Corruption hardly seems like any source of hope. Indeed, if anything, it should conjure up the opposite/ not hope but despair.

corruption: 1 a : impairment of integrity, virtue, or moral principle : depravity b : decay, decomposition c : inducement to wrong by improper or unlawful means (as bribery) d : a departure from the original or from what is pure or correct

The definition of corruption that stood out to me the most in relation to One Flea Spare was “a departure from the original or from what is pure or correct.”  Marriage. Hierarchy of class. Politeness. Religion. Morality. These are a few of the things many of the characters in this play to believe to be “correct.” All of these things were designed to keep order and, yet, you will find that in the midst of a devastating plague, at the exact moment when order is needed most— these constructions become insufficient. And, as we watch these constructions slowly decay in the presence of chaos, we become aware of their defects. We realized that while we may have seen some semblance of order on the outside, on the inside, there has always been chaos. The only way to free ourselves from such constraints, is corruption. The only way to find ourselves and relieve ourselves of such binding oppressions, is corruption.

In this way, I believe we can all take something away from this play. If nothing else, at least we can begin to acknowledge our own self-afflicted constraints.

Only then can we finally see everything for what it actually is, and the hope comes with knowing that at least now we can move in the directions we choose and not the ones that have been so intricately mapped out in front of us.



~nijae

When: February 25, 26, 2010 8:00 pm
February 27, 2010 3:00 pm and 8:00 pm

Where: The Powerhouse Theater

I was genuinely moved by the open dress tonight, you guys. Thank you for allowing me to be your dramaturg. Most of all, thank you for being so receptive and engaging. It has been a wonderful experience.

Love,
Nijae

link to the “Bells of St. Clements” song, actual nursery rhyme/song.

to/ morse

Lust in his limbs and rust in his skin
A bear without and a worse beast within

to/ bunce

(rough recording, sorry)

oh, and also…

the pamphlet to a sort of Leveller manifesto/list of demands (shoulda given you this link first)
http://www.bilderberg.org/land/leveller.htm

a. One who advocates the abolition of social inequities. b. Leveller A member of an English radical political movement arising in the Parliamentarian forces of the 1640s and advocating universal male suffrage, equality before the law, parliamentary democracy, and religious tolerance.

Heres the link to a pamplet printed by the  Levellers in 1649 in defense of mutineers (those who refuse to obey authority)  in Burford, England. —- http://www.bilderberg.org/land/case.htm

“Yeah, well, I’m thinking about how there’s so much that we do every day that’s about sensuality but it’s fulfilled in a very hollow way, like through buying, eating fast food, all this stuff, as though we’re constantly filling ourselves. We have a great spiritual need but it’s filled by things you can buy, things you can bet on. There is a way that we interact physically with the world, and touching is one of the things, that’s how we live, through touching. We take the boxes off the shelves, we take the shirt to the cash register, but it’s a kind of touching that can’t be reciprocated by things, of course. Touching each other is a whole different thing because it’s a living being, and there’s the possibility of touching being returned.

In this culture we are sexualized in a certain way, not only to be heterosexual, but we are told there is one story of the body, and that is how you interact with the body. You know, the attention is put on the breasts or the groin and these other parts of the body are neglected, right? [laughs] But it’s not so much just finding, “Oh, my toe is erotic,” it’s not about that, it’s that if we’re trying to re-imagine ourselves, then maybe we need to touch the world and what’s out there in a different way, and grasp it in a different way. It’s through making it strange to ourselves that we sometimes get into a new place, and then we can look at ourselves differently or look at our possibilities differently.

While I have also written about queer sexuality, I’ve mostly done what you’re talking about in heterosexual relations in my plays because how heterosexuals touch and act out their sexuality is extremely overdetermined and restrictive. I’ve tried to break that down. The Trestle at Popelick Creek was an experiment in trying to write a heterosexual love story which is not dead at the gate in terms of being a site for change.

I do not believe that any sexuality is inherently liberatory or resistant. It depends on where it’s sitting in history. So the challenge for me is how can I take a relationship between a boy and a girl and remake that desire in a way that they’re not just a boy and a girl any more. They have to look at what it means to be a boy and a girl, how they are supposed to act, how they are supposed to touch and what they want to do with that knowledge. That’s why a lot of folks have felt that it’s a very queer play in that way. Because the sex that the boy and girl have is not your typical teenager sex when they finally get down to it. Because they are strangled by the norm, what they are allowed to do, what their choices are, which are so few. So it’s a boy and a girl trying to break out of how they are meant to interact as young heterosexuals.

I think there’s also a way of looking at the body, the way the body is so overused in this society in terms of selling it, or the way it labors, or the way the body is used up, by capitalism you could say, used and thrown out the back door. How we’re these incredible bodies, with this enormous capacity to feel and desire, and how that’s destroyed or how that’s harnessed for other means, like channeling our desires into buying or consuming. So to try to relook at the body, and almost retrain our bodies to respond in a different way, or go to a different place than where the legal touch requires it to go. I’ve always been interested in that.”

Interview— Naomi Wallace: Looking for Fire
http://revcom.us/a/1232/naomirwinterview.htm

“man against the elements”
”man against the captain”

In the face of devastation, its less about banding together to fight the elements/ forces of nature and more about fighting amongst ourselves. The structures designed to keep us in order, break down. The people trying to survive just the same as we are, become our enemies. The bubonic plague places all of these characters inside this house but, once they are together, the plague becomes less of a threat to them when compared to the threat they have become to each other.

we are a risk to ourselves. limit exposure. (witty, i know.)

also, take notice: none of the characters die from the plague. one could argue that their deaths were a result of their exposure to one another.

Friedrich Nietzsche on Women:

“Translated into reality: the danger for artists, for geniuses…is woman: adoring women confront them with corruption. Hardly any of them have character enough not to be corrupted-or “redeemed”-when they find themselves treated like gods: soon they condescend to the level of the women.-Man is a coward, confronted with the Eternal-Feminine-and the females know it.-In many cases of feminine love, perhaps including the most famous ones above all, love is merely a more refined form of parasitism, a form of nestling down in another soul, sometimes even in the flesh of another-alas, always decidedly at the expense of “the host”!”

Amusing sexism aside, how do the characters in “One Flea Spare” corrupt each other through love? What do these characters lose when they nestle down in another soul? When another soul nestles down within them? ESPECIALLY with the context of the John Donne poem, how is love parasitic in this show? What kinds of love are parasitic?

Nietzche, Friedrich. “The Case of Wagner.” Turinese letter of May 1888. (sorry, read it as a doc for a class, and that prof didn’t give us the full citation)

-Christine

http://web.ku.edu/~idea/

http://accent.gmu.edu/