BUFFALO NEWS REVIEW 8/6/08
Powerful Theater at 'Infringement'
By Galia Binder
NeXt Magazine Correspondent
The Infringement Festival, which has been held in Buffalo since 2005, is an
international, non-profit based, counter-cultural arts festival. Other
locations include New York City, Bordeaux, and Montreal, the festival's
founding city.
This year's Buffalo festival, which began July 24 and ended Sunday,
included more than 300 events at 40 plus venues in and around the Allentown
neighborhood. I sampled a variety of infringement events last weekend,
most of them free. The events, ranging from a moving poetry reading at a
center for developmentally disabled adults, to a trippy art-installation at
Nietzsche's, showcased the city's vibrant alternative arts community.
One performance in particular seemed to sum up the festival's creed of
using experimental art to provoke community reaction and reflection. This was
a play presented by Subversive Theatre called "... and they put
handcuffs on the flowers."
This drama by Fernando Arrabal was written and is set in 1969 when Franco
and his fascist government ruled Spain. The bulk of the story unfolds
within the walls of a political prison where four inmates describe their
predicament. Arrabal drew upon two experiences in writing the play: his
father's imprisonment during the Spanish Civil War for being a revolutionary,
and his own incarceration in 1967 for the crime of "blasphemy."
"... and they put flowers on the handcuffs." was
shown late at night at the Former Kitchen Distribution Warehouse on Buffalo's
West Side. Audience members congregated outside in the desolate parking
lot. When the doors opened, we were led into the performance space in groups
by women dressed in white and wearing white kabuki masks, who represented the
Fascist prison guards.
I found myself feeling grateful as they gently took our hands and led us
down a narrow staircase deep into a musty basement, protecting us from the
surrounding darkness and confusion. I soon realized that I was
experiencing precisely what Arrabal intended: Fascist leaders rise to power by
giving hopeless people a sense of security, through false, patriarchal acts
masquerading as compassion.
The warehouse setting was perfect -- we sat, as if prisoners, on overturned
boxes in the cavernous room, while the "real" prisoners sat on the
straw-covered floor of their cell. Our physical discomfort only added to the
sense that we were being subjugated by some unseen force.
The cast had eight characters: four revolutionaries and four women
guards. The play gave an intimate glance into the prisoners' lives
through poetic, surreal dialogue, and superb acting. Throughout the
play, the prisoners explained who they were and what they had suffered, while
the spectral guards coldly reported on conditions in Spain's political
prisons.
"... and they put handcuffs on the flowers." was
replete with powerful metaphor. The fact that masked women were used as
the Fascist guards underscored the fact that they were simply playing a role
anyone could fill; they represented the system of fascism, not particular
individuals.
The connections between fascism and theater were further suggested at the
end of the play, after the hero had been brutally executed. The guards
silently led us out of the basement. They didn't have to tell us to
leave immediately and refrain from applauding or even speaking.
Like Spain's citizens, we knew our roles and performed them obediently.
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