[29 of 100] Equus
In his continuing quest to be the most awesome and actively supportive partner of a dissertator in the whole history of the world, Aatish bought he and I really good tickets to the NYC production of Equus for this weekend, the one starring Daniel Radcliffe (aka, Harry Potter), Richard Griffiths, and Kate Mulgrew, aka Capt. Jayneway from StarTrek: Voyager. It was a very very good production, and seeing it is making me want to go straight from working on Chapter 1 to working on Chapter 3, skipping over the intervening Lolita/Crucible/How I Learned to Drive chapter until this summer, so that I can make the best use of my fresh impressions from the play. I have already written up several pages of notes, which I will spend some more time with later this week after I'm done travelling. I am confident that, for now at least, the most important things have been recorded in a way that will still make sense to me in a few days or a few weeks.
The most stunning thing about seeing this play live is the horses--not real horses but six tall, leggy, muscular men, clad in brown velour pants and brown mesh shirts, hands clasped behind their backs, feet literally shod in metal platforms that, when lifted to show the audience the sole, have the shape of a horseshoe at bottom, and ritualistic horse masks made of welded, glittering silver wire that fit over the whole head of the actor. Because the masks are, effectively, a mesh construction they don't obscure the actor/dancer's vision, but they don't allow you to see the man inside them either. Their movements are at once naturalistic and ritualistic, clearly and expressively evoking actual horses while also bringing a haunting, holy presence to the stage as they stamp and turn and stare together. There is a wonderful movie of this play, made shortly after it first came out and starrring Richard Burton as Dysart, but even an inferior stage version would almost certainly trump the film as an aesthetic experience because film cannot create the kind of ritualistic effects of theater, effects which are so important to the thematics and message of this play. I feel inspired, both intellectually and aesthetically, and that is a wonderful feeling.
The most stunning thing about seeing this play live is the horses--not real horses but six tall, leggy, muscular men, clad in brown velour pants and brown mesh shirts, hands clasped behind their backs, feet literally shod in metal platforms that, when lifted to show the audience the sole, have the shape of a horseshoe at bottom, and ritualistic horse masks made of welded, glittering silver wire that fit over the whole head of the actor. Because the masks are, effectively, a mesh construction they don't obscure the actor/dancer's vision, but they don't allow you to see the man inside them either. Their movements are at once naturalistic and ritualistic, clearly and expressively evoking actual horses while also bringing a haunting, holy presence to the stage as they stamp and turn and stare together. There is a wonderful movie of this play, made shortly after it first came out and starrring Richard Burton as Dysart, but even an inferior stage version would almost certainly trump the film as an aesthetic experience because film cannot create the kind of ritualistic effects of theater, effects which are so important to the thematics and message of this play. I feel inspired, both intellectually and aesthetically, and that is a wonderful feeling.