O'Neill, Eugene
Anna Christie, The Emperor Jones, The Hairy Ape
Purchased at the Fordham University Bookstore for a course on American theater.
I am thinking of Great Garbo as Anna Christie, Paul Robeson as the Emperor Jones. I've seen both films within the last few years.
I remember once going to see a staging of The Emperor Jones in New York by the Wooster group. I think Willem Dafoe's wife runs the company. Dafoe himself often stars in their plays. Their version of O'Neill's play did a kind of postmodern deconstruction of the colonial and imperialist themes running through it.
To say the turned it inside out is understatement.
Everyone dressed in Kabuki regalia, as I recall. All the movement was highly stylized. Three or four television sets, including one at center stage, faced the audience. Dafoe played Smithers, dancing around the stage like a dainty samurai with a cockney accent. He mumbled most of his lines. The Emperor Jones was played by a woman in Japanese whiteface.
For much of the play, or at least at the beginning, I can't quite recall, she faced a camera, her back to the audience. The image of her face was projected from the various television sets in negative, turning her whiteface into blackface. It was a pretty stunning performance, I recall, but when they started bringing the sound techs and light techs into it, I got a little annoyed. Brecht is Brecht, but I prefer my illusions.
Well, I just found this little video at their website. Turns out the Emperor Jones was played by Kate Valk, a white woman, in blackface, dressed in Kabuki dress. Her face in negative must have been projected as white. Hmm. Inside out, for sure.
Here's a clip with valk and Dafoe:
http://www.thewoostergroup.org/twg/twg.php?the-emperor-jones
0 comments:
Post a Comment