subject matter
In tragedy: the violence of the resolute. In comedy, switchbacks galore: He is She, and I am You, and They are the Eggman. In tragedy also, the humour of the resolute, like a higher form of comedy.
The violence of resolution can come as a castration, where it has no consequence. So it forms a correspondence, but it is to Oedipus that it corresponds should that violence choose for what selects itself, should it choose for what surfaces, this selection being the narrowing down that the decision opens up. What presents itself is the necessary which must be risked.
The type of the selfish actor has her ova in one hand and his testicles in the other. And, casting them at the sky, curses the plague. As happens in a rather wonderful children’s book called Master Snick-up’s Cloak, which begins: Once upon a time, it was the middle ages…
A selfish actor believes it happens to her alone. Note how Oedipus pops his eyes, that might correspond to his balls. So as to say, we are always dealing with correspondences.
With the suppression by comedy it’s not conflict that is suppressed. It is its resolution. Not the resolution of conflict, where all things shall be well, and you were just dreaming, but the violence of resolution is suppressed.
You might think this is difference. But difference is suppressed, in favour of the irresolvable: the involuntary identity that must resolve itself and must not resolve its differences with any other. Leading to the diverse and diversity.
No wonder theatre is depressed: it cannot agree to what corresponds to its castration. And it will be said whatever risk, necessity, danger or sacrifice it may have held is in the past. Here comes the future. Where we must accept that whatever our actions they are without consequence. But they are ours. So we don’t dare give them away for anything, let alone for nothing.
And it is for nothing that the stage stands. It is for nothing, when it is most effective, that a risking actor inoculates himself with the smallest gesture. By a detail just then surfacing, she takes the decision it is the minimum that will support her. And not burst.
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