Miembros Inferiores (MIn)

Rapture

Devised and Performed by Barry Laing La Mama, Melbourne, 4–7 December, 1997

Rapture was part of a season of three solo performances entitled Soloscopy: Gherkin by Adam Broinowski, Rapture by Barry Laing, and Boat Pose by Dan Witton.

I would strike out my own eyes to unsee what my mind glimpses ahead of time, what my ears whisper, my tongue speaks, despite me, to spite me … I am nowhere gathered together … but I would burn, rather than last …

— Rapture

This project was devised in collaboration with:

Adam Broinowski — Lighting Operation

Dan Witton — Sound Design/Operation and dramaturgical assistance David Williams — Dramaturgical assistance

Texts by: Barry Laing, and adapted from and utilising texts by Deborah Levy, Tom Waits, Roland Barthes, and Ivan Goll

Music by: Dan Witton, Leonard Cohen, Charlie Haden/Pat Metheny, Peggy Lee, Marlene Deitrich

Many thanks to: Liz Jones and all at La Mama, Meg White, Margaret Cameron, Peter Fraser, David Williams, and Dan Witton

Rapture was the first in the series of three performances. The process was collaborative in a more direct and dependent way than with Rapture II & III. I offered direction and dramaturgical assistance to Dan Witton for Boat Pose. Dan Witton provided sound design, composition and, together with David Williams, dramaturgical assistance for Rapture. Dan Witton provided dramaturgical assistance for Adam Broinowski’s Gherkin. During performances, Dan, Adam and myself rotated responsibilities for each other’s sound and lighting operation.

Rapture did not employ any video projection. The design was spare, comprising a simple chair and table, no more than five or six lights, and fortuitously, walls painted a rustic, sepia tone (part of the design of another show at La Mama running concurrently with Soloscopy). The performance was an exercise in working with the extreme intimacy afforded by La Mama. I was concerned to experiment with multiple ‘voices’ or ‘roles’, and to maintain the tension of weaving an ambiguous representation of ‘me’ through the whole: an initial enquiry into subjectivity and performance, and a playful experiment in ‘truth’ and ‘lies’ — attempting to position myself between both, and the audience. There was little, if any ‘explanation’ or contextualisation of the ‘project’ of the performance. The audience was not privy to any of the working titles of the ‘episodes’.

Texts are a combination of original compositions by Barry Laing, and extracts from, and adaptations of, texts by others listed on the previous page. I have not attempted to ‘footnote’ these adaptations and extracts in any of the scripts. Disentangling the weave of adaptations in collision with my own writings would in most cases be a difficult, if not impossible, task. The works from which various writings have been drawn are all included in the Bibliography, and authors listed in notes to each of the scripts.

No video documentation is provided for Rapture due to the poor quality of the video, but stills lifted from a video of the final night of the performance are included as part of the layout of this script.

Design and layout of each of the three scripts is by Kim Cullen and Barry Laing. Photography is by Kim Cullen, Cullen Designs.

Opening:

Darkness …

FX — Rain, merging into Cohen’s One Minute Prologue ... rain lingering ...

[Lyrics — “I bin listenin’ to all the dissention. I bin listenin’ to all the pain. And I feel that no matter what I do for you, its gonna come back again. But I think that I can heal it. I think that I can heal it. I’m a fool, but I think that I can heal it – with this song …”]

LX —One light above, one from floor in front. Floor light casts shadow of Man on back wall. Walls a sepia, muddy, rustic brown …

Up slowly on Man in old black suit, polished black shoes, perfect antique red tie, computer/brief-case, fold up umbrella ... A table, a chair, a silver dictaphone sits on the table ... Man in fixed-point emerging from darkness/in ‘rain’ for a time, then ‘small dance’ with briefcase and umbrella …

Physical/imaginal worlds for the dance: young/old, crow, circus — passive figure to things that visit him, bent figure to one side, imbalance,‘1000 policeman’s “no” ’, moving, a ‘grey figure emerging through rain’, little shocks/shots, receiving the ‘bullet’, stones on the shoulders, hailing a bus, holding a woman ... horse/Spanish dancer ... moving, breaking up the suppositions of gesture — leading/pointing/ dividing/undoing ... A breeze ... fire, letting the face travel ... ‘the silo’, big space, soft light, the ‘rat’s hole’ ... the centaur ... ‘premonitions’ of the various ‘figures’ that will appear as the performance moves on …

Dance continues while text spoken ...

A Complete Stranger: Boy/man/lover/unloved

“ ... I went to visit my Mum the other day, first time in months ... She was playing chess with her next-door-neighbour and when I walked in, dressed specially in a new shirt, she said ‘Son, you’re a prat. Look after your Queen Mrs R.’ One day I’ll shoot her, and it’ll break my heart. Dunno how she expected her son to grow up. Dunno what she wants of me. Sometimes I catch her looking at me as if I’m a complete stranger. Her eyes settle on my suit like a half-starved fly. I feel stripped in front of her large, stupid body. I shuffle about the house trying to find words that will make her like me ... She makes me feel weird under my suntan ... She gave me some runner beans from the garden ... Well, I threw them out of the window on the way home ... ” While text is spoken — umbrella like a ‘windscreen wiper’, forms a ‘moustache’, then bar to the throat, water rising/sinking/swimming, tension ... ‘one day I’ll shoot her’ , teeth/tongue to the umbrella clip — undo, then umbrella held higher, half open, a ‘bird’. Subjugation ... equity and hierarchies in movement ... ‘shuffle about the house trying to find words that will make her like me’ ... Then tense, forward position with umbrella and case ... continually moving, mapping, visited/moved by the ‘figures’ of this ‘dance’ as above ... breaking ‘Self/Selves’ up ... raised case to the shoulder ...

Shiftin’ Sands: