Saint Joan of the Stockyards

Due to its subject matter (the updated story of the Maid of Orleans in the hellish slums of American capitalism, the slaughterhouses of Chicago, where the bosses clash amongst themselves and with the workers, while the fortunes and downfalls are determined by the stock exchange,  but in the end always to the detriment of ‘those at the bottom’), and above all because of its dramaturgy of a political apologue, this text has often been unjustly confused with Brecht's Lehrstück dramas, mere training grounds for revolutionary apprentices in their intentions, such as The Baden-Baden Lesson on Consent, The Decision, The Exception and the Rule. Instead, we are dealing with a complex and extensive drama, a true tragic story, not only because it predictably ends with the death of the ‘heroine’, but especially because, unlike the historical original, this one attests to her failure, the futility of ‘goodness’ that fails to take action, despite her final drive of conscience. [...] For some time now, ErosAntEros has dedicated itself to engaged theatre, questioning the role of the artist in society, without neglecting formal research and expressive innovation. In this demanding multimedia production (with a profusion of live videos and clips) in four languages, Sacco and Tomšič, who plays Joan, bet on the topicality of Brecht's work, continuing to deal, as in their previous works (from Alarms! to Borders, from Libya to Gaia), with the great crises afflicting the contemporary globalised world, where classical capitalism has taken on the less blatant, but no less treacherous and ruthless, face of neo-liberalism.

ErosAntEros's dramaturgical reinterpretation of St. Joan of the Stockyards transfers the setting of the great economic and labour market crisis of 1929 to the present. Although 90 years have passed since Brecht's Saint Joan, and despite the enormous transformations of the capitalist-neoliberal labour and finance market up until today's post-Fordist era, the two historical periods still share common characteristics. [...] The show is lively, highly multi-media, scenes even projected live from the smartphone in the hands of Slift/Blaž Šef, who follows Mauler's stage movements. Numerous breaking news with the latest economic developments mimic the psychedelic American media style; red and black – passion and death, but there could be so many contrasts – are the dominant colours, leaving no room for other feelings, there is no middle ground, the struggle is between victory and defeat, an instance that concerns above all ordinary human beings in their fight against injustice, the downgrading of democracy and rights, the destruction of the planet's natural environments. The two main performances of the 110-minute production, Mauler and Joan Dark, are important, precise and convincing. The use of the different languages of the actors is captivating: besides giving a broader view of global society, it reminds us that there are many different peoples inhabiting the Earth, but the main issues of life, the struggles for survival, are getting all the more universal, while politics, using nationalist and racist strategies, tries to keep the world population separate for economic convenience. Maybe the musical group Laibach will have to raise the decibels of its experimental music even higher for the dormant or, much worse, indifferent consciences to awake.

We seem to have forgotten by now what and where we are, unconsciously immersed in a ‘fog’ of reason that for years has been undermining and conquering our minds and hearts, a subservient fog that we fear has invaded, like a mimetic stage effect, the stages of many theatres of today; could be that more the Italian than the European ones, unfortunately. We seem to have forgotten that we still live, perhaps now even more than in the past, in a system that makes the social inequality and the economic exploitation of man – the exploitation by the ever fewer of the ever more – the engine that feeds it, which is the ‘structural’ imbalance identified already by Karl Marx that produces and perpetuates economic ‘capital’ as the only conceivable form of wealth. [...] The artists of ErosAntEros, the talented Agata Tomšič and Davide Sacco, in excellent collaboration with the Slovenian music group Laibach, have done well to remind us of all this, and of the so very human pain that wounds the lives of men and women, sometimes even of those few above, who have also been dispossessed of their humanity and alienated from it. [...] The first essential element of this transformation in full fidelity to the St. Joan of the Stockyards is the multilingualism – conceiving the staging in four different languages (Italian, German, Slovenian and English) as a reminder that we now live in a ‘global’ world but also in many ‘small homelands’ closed in on themselves. The second is the use of music, with the group Laibach performing their original score live, as this is one of Brecht's dramas not set to music. This ‘rewrites’ the fabric of the text in sounds that are not only very modern but above all harsh and penetrating, and create an extraordinarily alienating atmosphere in the Brechtian vein (detach yourself from the epos to understand it). [...] Finally, of great aesthetic interest is the visual translation of the epic set design realised with the repeated video projections, which are at times not easy to ‘digest’ as they are filmed in contemporary ‘slaughterhouses’ to emphasise the physical and thus concretely material character of the highlighted contradictions. [...] A complex, highly stratified, suggestive show with innumerable implications that the duo ErosAntEros manages ‘skilfully’ (also in the sense of the courage required today), a great quality production in terms of scene, music and acting, even if some narrative unravelling could be mended. Set designs and tragically militaristic costumes are consistent while retaining their own autonomous beauty. At times positively ‘disconcerting’, this show was much applauded by a large audience.

Danilo Nigrelli is unbelievably good at ironically portraying the figure of the supposed philanthropist Mauler, the meat king, who aims to save himself from huge losses and increase his wealth by ruining his shareholders, competitors, meat manufacturers and cattle breeders, savers and, of course, workers. Everyone is expendable, everyone can end up in the meat grinder for the gain of a few or even one. Effective are the video projections of some of the characters who converse with Mauler as if in video conferences, allowing the actor to soak in his bathtub, comfortably doing business, disrupting the world economy to achieve his goals. Also striking is the organisation of the stage space with Laibach high up on an additional interior stage with their de-individualising uniforms here contextualised as being part of the Black Hats, the religious organisation to which missionary Joan Dark (Agata Tomšič) also belongs. In front of this stage, a transparent curtain allows images to be projected even during the songs, creating interesting suggestions. Vincenzo Bonaffini's lighting design is amazing and Arianna Fantin's costumes made by Eleonora Terzi are perfectly suited to the roles, functions and sense of Brecht's text. It is thrilling to see St. Joan of the Stockyards staged, to hear Bertolt Brecht's words resonate, albeit in an updated form, at a time when we need his social analysis, when we feel very close to the era in which he wrote as we hear the drums closer each day and wonder when they will come for us too and we will be pulled into the spreading of the current wars. St. Joan shows us the exploitation of man by another man, the depths to which men and women can go due to misery, hunger, despair and unemployment. [...] Of Laibach's music, I appreciated the extraordinary vocals of both singers, Milan Fras' incredibly deep and Mina Špiler's high and sweet one, and I imagine that their original pieces will resonate well with the young audiences as well as with the old who loved them in the 1980s. The interaction created between music, lights and projections, and the stillness of the musicians/characters is effective, isolating the musical moments from the flow of the action as phases of reflection, of thinking about the already represented. An impressive production, sure to be a success on European stages.