Performance Review

Mythos

Figures

Mythos, the latest production by Odin Teatret, directed by Eugenio Barba, interweaves two seemingly unconnected stories simultaneously. On the one hand, it is the journey of a human soul from death to rebirth through an underworld of mythical archetypes rooted in Europe's ancient Greek heritage. On the other, it is about the revolutionary's struggle in the world of the living. The dual stories of Mythos signal a return of sorts for Barba. As in earlier Odin productions, such as Kaspariana (1967) and Brecht's Ashes (1980), the inspiration for Mythos and much of its text comes from the poetry of a well-known writer, in this case the Danish poet Henrik Nordbrandt. In keeping with this legacy of return, the casting of Mythos reasserts the group's Nordic roots. For the first time in over twenty years, all of the actors in this Odin production are either Scandinavian or have lived in Denmark and worked with Barba for more than twenty years.

The echoes of return are also evident in the connections between Mythos and an earlier Odin production, Oxyrhincus Evangeliet (1985). Both productions are peopled with iconic figures either taken directly from mythology or of mythological proportions. Antigone, Polinices, and Joan of Arc appeared in Oxyrhincus while Mythos includes Cassandra, Oedipus, Medea, Ulysses, Dedalus, and Sisyphus. Characters aside, the productions also share a great deal aesthetically. Mythos revisits a significant element of Oxyrhincus through the presentation of the mythological archetypes in rich colorful costuming that reflects the influences of both the traditional Japanese theatres of Noh and Kabuki as well as the rococo quality of the European baroque. Similarly, the productions have much in common in their staging. As in Oxyrhincus, the audience for Mythos enters a space enclosed by curtains that contain the performance and seating areas. In both productions, the spectators sit/sat on two sections of raked seating separated by a playing area that divides(d) the space. In Oxyrhincus, this playing area was dominated by a hanamichi-like wooden stage. In Mythos, a pathway of small pebbles on the floor, of similar proportions to the Oxyrhincus stage, replaces its wooden counterpart. And both productions mark(ed) the ends of the hanamichi with tower-like structures that are/were also used as playing areas.

As with all of Barba's creations, Mythos is far from a straightforward narrative. It does, however, contain the germ of a simple tale of biblical proportions: a man, the Brazilian soldier Guilhermino Barbosa, dies, travels through the land of the dead, and is reborn. Yet, it begins in a relatively realistic manner with people gathered for a funeral. The guests stand quietly talking among themselves at one end of a huge table covered in a pristine white table cloth while the audience enters. A toast to the departed marks the beginning of the action, but it is disrupted as an uninvited guest appears and the table is suddenly torn apart to reveal the path of stones beneath it. A dead body wrapped in cloth lies on the stones. The table as grave is transformed into the two towers, described earlier, as the actors become the mythical characters that, along with the Brazilian soldier, dominate the rest of the piece. The transformation thrusts the play from a theatricalized daily reality into a world of images and metaphors that connote both an odyssey in the liminal world between life and death, as well as a historical journey. This journey is the 25,000 kilometer march across Brazil that Barbosa, a poor, illiterate army private, took along with fellow soldiers protesting political and military corruption as part of Prestes's Column (named after its leader, Luís Carlos Prestes) in the early 1920s.

Barba's imagery in Mythos is rich with death. The path of pebbles, for example, is a dry, barren bed of stones in which small, lifeless white hands and [End Page 67] forearms accumulate during the production like so many shattered skeletons, as if it is the site of a disinterred mass grave. In keeping with the connotation of a grave, several large rocks that resemble tombstones are placed among the pebbles, and the pebbles themselves become a site of inscriptions reminiscent of the Egyptian hieroglyphics so often associated with the burial chambers of Pharaohs. These inscriptions are constantly erased and reinscribed by Dedalus as the action progresses, reinforcing the notion that the tale concerns a death unfolding rather than one concluded. Also, as mentioned earlier, the table that is torn apart at the beginning of the play reveals a dead body beneath it; and the cradle that supports the body on the stones transforms from death's support into a snake (with all the latter's Biblical implications of sin and mortality) made of shells. This snake, which consists of the corporal remains of dead sealife, overhangs the pathway of stones throughout the rest of the play.

Despite the imagery of death that permeates Mythos, it is one of Barba's most optimistic creations in years. Typical of his work, the piece is riddled with oppositions, beginning with the scenography, which prompts oppositional sites of action at either end of the pebble pathway, through the arid, lifeless imagery of stones and dust countered by the baroque richness of the mythological characters, to the conflict between life and death that are at the center of the work. Here, life wins out. At the play's end, we return to the funeral that began it all. The guests are once more gathered to mourn the passing of one of their own, but this time he does not enter as an uninvited guest who interrupts the proceedings. He is among the living. He has traveled through the underworld of death and been reborn. Historically, Barbosa's revolution failed, but his revolutionary ideals live on. The revolutionary spirit that prompted him and his colleagues to follow Prestes through the "underworld" of their nation's hinterland is the same spirit that survives in those who continue to fight for freedom, liberty, and justice. In Mythos, Barba celebrates the revolutionary spirit that is bound, as he says in the program, to "rise again." Mythos celebrates life's victory over death.

Ian Watson
Rutgers University-Newark

[an error occurred while processing this directive]