Rainer
Werner Fassbinder’s Blood on the Cat’s
Neck presented by Torn Space Theater is an erratic labyrinth of unresolved
psychological problems, explosive emotions and unspoken desires that is so
overpowering it looks nothing less than surreal. At the same time however,
there isn’t a single line in the winding dialogues which is not genuinely human
and thus close to our own experiences and thoughts.
This
is precisely what makes Fassbinder one of the greatest ideologues of
contemporary cinema and theater – the ability to bring together so many
different facets of reality and come up with a work that seems to be out of
this world. In Blood on the Cat’s Neck this
ethereal atmosphere is enhanced by the presence of a member of another planet, Phoebe
Zeitgeist, who is sent to the Earth in order to report on the state of
democracy.
The
play, under Dan Shanahan’s direction, can be roughly divided into two parts –
the first one, in which the action is driven by the eight earthlings, four
women and four men, who converse with each other in series of changing pairs,
and a second one in which Phoebe herself takes over the scene and carries out
her mission.
As
Dan Shanahan himself remarked after the end of the performance, Fassbinder has
left no specific stage directions in his script, so the entire concept of the
stage and costume design has been created by the Torn Space Theater production
crew. The set designer, Kristina Siegel, talks about the “clinical white” of
the stage and the white costumes of the eight humans merging with the
surrounding space. In sharp contrast to them, Phoebe is dressed in black, to
separate herself not just from the appearance of the human beings but also from
their moral and emotional weaknesses and sensibilities.
Indeed,
the spatial construction of the stage induces associations with the lens of a
camera, the camera through which Phoebe inspects the life of the humans.
Instead of the proverbial fourth wall, here Fassbinder breaks the first wall,
the barrier between front stage and back stage, opening up the space between
the voyeuristic alien and her observees and hence between them and the audience
who feels somewhat uneasy, or perhaps on the contrary – a bit more relaxed –
knowing it is not the only one watching what is going on on the stage.
Phoebe
is by far not just a voyeur, at least not a conventional one, for she is not
concerned so much with the actual actors she is observing, with their specific
characters and traits, as she is with their interactions. The figures
themselves matter to her to the extent to which she is able to learn to copy
them perfectly in order to use their own weapons against them. And their
weapons are precisely what they use to harm and humiliate each other – their
words. Soon, it becomes clear that the suffering they cause each other through
them is, despite the way it may actually appear, not deliberate; that perhaps
the exchange of deeply-penetrating, emotionally-condensed phrases each pair
utilizes is in actuality a monologue derived not from the desire to inflict
pain on the other but rather to get rid of the pain inside one’s own soul and
conscience.
In
this sense, even the harshest insults we hear from the ruthless Lover or the hotshot
Model, the sadomasochistic Teacher or the coarse Policeman, are not meant so
much to crush their opponents, as they are to help the speaker express the
pressing psychological issues within them. Relatively early on it becomes
evident that the topics regarding material difficulties such as the need for
money, secure accommodation, a reliable job or a stable partner are really just
the surface of a much deeper matter – of the sense of security and love whose
lack leads to disastrous instances of miscommunication and emotional
(self-)abuse.
What
the entangled paths of the verbal expression of these problems ultimately lead
to is by itself a catastrophe whose external executor becomes Phoebe Zeitgeist.
In the second part of the play, when she takes the reigns of the action in her
own hands, it is as if she embarks on a bloody crusade to free the world (hers
or ours?) from the presence of the poor losers whose helpless tirades she’s
been listening thus far. What makes the scenes to follow even gloomier is the
feeling that such a tragic fate can hypothetically be reserved not just for
Fassbinder’s characters but basically for every one of us, since we are, in our
suppressed desires and fears, not too much different than the people in the
play.
As
was already pointed out, Phoebe is not just a voyeur. But she isn’t a mere
witness of the verbal and moral crimes of the eight protagonists either. She is
the council of the jury at a trial personified, and not just that – she get to
be the judge, executing the sentence, too. In a way however, she is also the
convict committing a crime after she has already been brought to the trial
organized by the audience. It has embraced her out-of-this-world look and
presence on stage, has taken it for granted and has assumed throughout the play
what she might do in the end. She does not disappoint us and fulfills her share
of the deal. Should we be proud of ourselves for correctly predicting what she
is about to do? Or should we be ashamed of ourselves, of the protagonists, of
humanity in general, for letting itself fall prey to an alien vampire because
of its irreversible vices and weaknesses? Is that all we can pass on to an
extraterrestrial visitor to our planet – violence and cruelty?
Torn
Space Theater’s production and the amazing play of the actors will make you
think about these and many more issues, whether you like it or not. Because, as
a character in the play says, “You can’t avoid suffering.” But, as another one
exclaims, “When you’re unhappy, you have to talk about it.” And that’s exactly
what Blood on the Cat’s Neck does and
why it is still so important today, more than three decades after it was first
written.
