Innovation and originality abounded at the Sock and Buskin-produced performance of Maurice Maeterlinck's "The Blind." Director Rebecca Schneider, associate professor of theater, speech and dance, and her skilled group of actors certainly maintained Maeterlinck's original artistic intentions that rejected realism and the boundaries of time and place - rather, both Maeterlinck and the production explore the subconscious and its mystical spirituality.
Rather than as individual characters, the assembly of actors worked seamlessly together as an embodiment of fears and questions. Subverting logical dialogue, the actors repeatedly posed questions that at first appeared rudimentary, such as "Where are we?" and "How much longer?" Through continuous reiteration, these questions shed light on the religious and other worldly undertones that nuance the play.
Despite its lack of substantial characterization and progression of plot, Saturday night's performance of "The Blind" attained a strong sense of dramatic structure and direction from the numerous dichotomies that re-occurred throughout the play. Schneider's directorial choices highlighted the universal clashes between silence and noise, light and dark, movement and inertia, knowledge and ignorance and comfort and anxiety, all of which are inherent in the dialogue of Maeterlinck's original script.
The play opens on a stage strewn with scrap paper. The blind, a group of six figures - all in black, eyes shaded by oversized sunglasses - sprawl on a bench center-stage. Behind them, two projection screens hang, displaying a montage of flashing text. Stage right, a giant plastic container holds the decaying remains of a priest's corpse, like an airtight Tupperware container attempting to preserve his leftovers. On both sides above the stage, three figures in orange prison jump suits stand erect. The contrasting array of colors and textures is overwhelming to the senses, yet the introductory moments of silence drag on portentously and create a clear sense of waiting and expectation.
The silence gives way to paper shuffling and falling. Classical music crescendos are cut short by a cacophony of metal clanging against metal. The dialogue begins suddenly and jars the audience with the unfamiliarity of the simple words, "Where are we?" The language immediately takes on the unpredictability and ambiguity of free verse. In this way, the performance of "The Blind" evokes a mystical and imaginative quality that defies realism and theatrical convention with its lack of specific time, scenes, setting and characters.
The fluidity of language toys with words and morphs their meaning. Lines are not merely spoken but rather chanted and sermonized. Eventually they take on a rhythmic beat, recalling a prayer or the recitation of the liturgy. In this way, the vague questions repetitively asked by the actors begin to recall questions about the mysteries of faith. The repetitions of "Where is he?" evolve from a basic question to a profound plea that probes God's presence. The initially confusing and ostensibly random question, "Why did we leave the big house?" beseeched over and over again in chanted unison begin to evoke uncertainty about original sin and the Garden of Eden.
Though the questions posed never seem to reach definite conclusions, the ceaseless cycle of guessing brings a coherent sense of struggle with the notions of mortality, fatalism and spirituality that have always challenged the motives of human action.
Despite the inaccessibility of some of these themes, Schneider and her well-rehearsed actors ably transcend Maeterlinck's esoteric queries into lively and energetic entertainment. The actors engage the audience and hold them in rapt attention with coordinated dance routines and harmonized incantations. A group of six actors clad in nurses' gowns, hairnets, pristine white sneakers and thick protective goggles intersperse themselves throughout the audience. They interact with both the figures on stage and the audience itself.
Calling out in sudden excitation their impulsive propositions and recommendations, like at some sort of raucous Pentecostal Church retreat, the six figures humorously and provocatively displace the boundaries between the theatrical realm and the real realm, and perhaps even between the real realm and the divine realm.
