DEADRINGER 2 - AFTER FRANCIS BACON'S THREE STUDIES FOR A CRUCIFIXION (MID PANEL) read performance script...
Music: drone; Study for a Theatre of Cruelty (playing for 30 minutes before the action starts) Wall projection: Francis Bacon; Three Studies for a Crucifixion (mid panel) A spotlight lights up the bed on the middle of the stage. The bed is made with white sheets, pillows and blankets. Rows of foot lights have been fetched to the bedsteads (the light goes on as soon as the spotlight has been lit). (Association: a theatre stage (a stage on the stage), peep show, blood red curtains, an altar of sacrifice). In front of the bed stands a table covered in black cloth. On the table stand/lie: 1 metal bowl containing 1 animal heart, 3 glass framed photographs of the Actor as a real young boy, 1 ponytail of the Actor’s hair, 1 hammer, 1 pair of scissors, 1 bottle of talcum powder, 1 bottle of light fluid, 1 box of matches, 1 white rag, bandages. Behind the bed on a round column stand/lie: 10 containers containing blood (5 litres; every container contains ½ litres; association: the human body contains about five litres of blood, doppelganger), 5 eggs, 1 white plastic tube with 1 funnel. The Actor and the Fellow Actor enter the stage. The Actor wears a pair of old white underpants, naked otherwise. The Fellow Actor wears a white protection overall, a pair of white plastic gloves and a green protection mask covers his mouth (association: antiseptic, doctor/executioner, post-mortem dissector, cleaner – picking bodies; forensic detective). The Actor sits down on the edge of the bed spreads his arms like crucified. The Fellow Actor takes the bottle of talcum powder from the table and approaches the Actor on the bed. The Fellow Actor rubs the powder on the Actor’s chest. The Fellow Actor walks over to the table picks up the heart and some bandages and approaches the Actor on the bed; he places the heart on the Actor’s chest (over the Actor’s heart) and fetches it with bandages. The Actor lies down on the bed; places his right hand on the heart and his left arm over his head (imitating the Bacon painting). The Fellow Actor picks up the plastic tube and puts it into the Actor’s mouth; he climbs up onto the column behind the bed and starts pouring blood into the funnel; the blood runs though the plastic tube into the Actor’s mouth; the Actor slowly releases the blood from his mouth, it pours out into the bed. After 1 litre has been poured through the tube into the Actors mouth the fellow Actor picks up an egg and climbs down from the column; he breaks the egg over the Actor and lets the content pour into his mouth; the Actor releases the egg yolk from his mouth; it pours out into the bed; the Fellow Actor rinses the actor’s mouth with bandages; puts the tube back into his mouth and climbs unto the column. The same ritual proceeds until no blood and eggs are left. (With each blood container the Actor’s behaviour becomes more and more dramatic; from just letting the blood pour from his mouth into the bed to violent spewing and vomiting; he also starts clawing at the heart with his right hand). The Fellow Actor walks over to the table, picks up the scissors and the white rag, approaches the bed and cuts the bandages holding the heart to the Actor’s chest and covers his head with the rag. The Actor pisses his pants. The spotlight goes out. The Fellow Actor picks up the heart and walks over to the table; he rinses the heart with lightning fluid; wraps it in bandages and places it in the metal bowl. He picks up the hammer and smashes the first of the three framed photographs; picks out the photograph from the broken frame, cuts it into pieces with the scissors and presses the pieces into the animal heart. The same ritual proceeds until all the photographs have been cut up and pressed inside the heart. The Fellow Actor picks up the pony tail; cuts it into pieces over the heart in the metal bowl; pours lightning fluid over the hair/heart and lights it (intensive smell).The Fellow Actor steps back; watches the fire until it is extinct. Lights out. The music stops. Anthology: Thomas De Quincey - The Collected Writings of Thomas De Quincey , vol 11: …any of us would be jealous of his own duplicate: and, if I had a doppelganger who went about personating me, copying me, and pirating me, philosopher as I am I might be so far carried away by jealousy as to attempt the crime of murder upon his carcase: and no great matter as regards HIM. But it would be a sad thing for me to find myself hanged: and for what, I beseech you? For murdering a sham, that was either nobody at all, or oneself repeated once too often. Fray Diego Durán – Book of the Gods and Rites and the Ancient Calendar: After dawn all those who were to be sacrificed were dressed in the garb and habit of the main gods and according to seniority they were placed in a row next to the great fire … Then came five other ministers and one called Tlehua. (This possessor of fire) swept carefully around the glowing coals. When he had finished sweeping, they took the ‘gods’ one by one, alive as they were, and cast them into the fire. Half-roasted, before they were dead, (these victims) were pulled out and sacrificed, their chests opened. Francis Bacon – The Brutality of Facts¸ Interviews with David Sylvester: I’ve always been very moved by pictures about slaughter houses and meat, and to me they belong very much to the whole thing of the crucifixion. There’ve been extraordinary photographs which have been done of animals just being taken up before they were slaughtered; and the smell of death. We don’t know, of course, but it appears by these photographs that they’re so aware of what going to happen to them, they do everything to attempt to escape. I think that these pictures were very much based on that kind of thing, which to me is very, very near this whole thing of the crucifixion. John George Haigh quoted in Brian King’s – Lustmord; The Writings and Artefacts of Murderers: The first dream I vividly recall was experienced when I was in the choir at Wakefield Cathedral. At nights after I had got into bed and closed my eyes I would see again the tortured Christ on the cross. Perhaps that day I had sat in the stillness of the great nave of the church, and had contemplated the High Altar. Now in my sleep the vision would return, and I would see either the head or the whole body of Christ with blood pouring from the wounds. I was startled and horrified and dared not disclose what I had seen…. Once acquired, the taste (for blood) obsessed me, and the recollection of it, with certain intervals, pursued me down the years… But none of these experiences crystallised into a frantic uncontrollable urge until after a motor accident Three Bridges, Sussex, during Easter of 1944. My car collided with a lorry, and turned over…. Blood poured from my head down my face and into my mouth. This revived in me the taste, and that night I experience another awful dream. I saw before me a forest of crucifixes, which gradually turned into trees. At first there appeared to be dew, or rain, dripping from the branches, but as I approached I realised it was blood. Suddenly the whole forest began to writhe and the trees, stark and erect, to ooze blood…. A man went to each tree catching the blood…. When the cup was full he approached me…. “Drink,” he said, but I was unable to move. The dream faded…. Always there was a consciousness of the ebbing away of the life force, and the urge to follow the man holding out the cup; the inability to reach it, and the feeling of frustration; the waking up to a state of semi-coma with a feeling of frustration still palpable; the hand still before me, and the urge to satisfy the appetite for the life force in my mind. Henry Darger - In the Realms of the Unreal: the boy was then carried before Jennie and the Glandelinians made her plunge the knife into his body. She was helpless and the man was holding the dagger with his own hands. “The boy’s abdomen was gashed open, and taking out the heart the cruel Glandelinian with a cruel laugh threw it in my face, and then slicing it up forced it bit by bit down my throat nearly choking me … These Glandelinians were human cannibals … Oh how I looked tward heaven begging God to let me vomit up the fragments of the hearts. The rest of the poor little boys were strangled and fairly hewn to pieces before our very eyes, their bodies being torn opened their very insides pulled out. They forced sliced fragments down the throats of my sisters who were fairly strangled almost to death. But God overheard our prayers and we vomited to the anger of the Glandelinians who saw us…I swooned." Lisa Cross quoted in Marilee Strong’s A Bright Red Scream – Self-Mutilation and the Language of Pain: Vomiting leads to remorseless hunger … Overuse of laxatives leads to intransigent constipation and laxative addiction. Weight loss leads to an escalating compulsion to lose even more weight. Self-cutting is never as satisfying as emotional catharsis and leads to a strong temptation to cut more frequently or to find other modes of bodily communication. What began as an attempt to resolve the paradox of a body that feels alien to the self now falls into deeper paradox. In a truly vicious cycle, body and self constantly shift roles between victim and victimizer, slave and master.
