A cello stands at the center of both This Is Why We Live, at La Mama, which closed September 29 and Oedipus, Sex with Mum was Blinding, at BAM Fisher, which also ended on that date, two international pieces—one based on the poetry of Wisława Symborska and the other after Sophocles, with a classical and jazz score by Tilemachos Moussas & Julia Kent. Both are directed by women and focus, primarily, on women’s themes and talents, down to a string’s last pluck and bow.
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The ideas of self-deprecation, penetrating self-criticism will reappear in Greek director Elli Papakonstantinou’s goth Oedipus.
My apologies to time for all the world I overlook each second /
My apologies to past loves for thinking that the latest is the first /
Forgive me, distant wars, for bringing flowers home /
Forgive me, open wounds, for pricking my finger /
I apologize for my record of minuets to those who cry from the depths /
I apologize to those who wait in railway stations for being asleep today /
Pardon me, hounded hope, for laughing from time to time . . .
Unless it is deeply, painfully ironic, laughter is not associated with Jocasta, the wife and mother of Oedipus. If Papakonstantinou (she also conceived and wrote the immersive opera) is to be believed, the ancient queen’s self-recriminatory behavior is also well-known in the lives of women today—and is an issue for men as well. ODC Ensemble’s Oedipus, Sex with Mum was Blinding is an intensification of Szymboska’s examination of women’s guilt, as well as a deep-dive into the psychology of the ancient queen (the seer Teireias also appears, who lived life both as a woman and a man). The grunge immersion—the often grainy cinematic environment is by Stephanie Sherriff–uses singing and technology, pop culture and neuroscience (advised by professor Manos Tsakiris), even an m.c., a keyboardist for the show, Misha Piatigorsky, who combines Joaquin Phoenix in Joker and Joel Grey in Cabaret. Other men in the cast include Lito Messini as Oedipus, Elias Husiak, and Tsakiris. Papakonstantinou may seem indiscriminate, because she can pull from everywhere—she is unafraid of postmodernism, myth, and onstage cameras–the kind many Americans will recognize having seen work by Ivo van Hove—music (Kent plays the cello onstage)—including Philip Glass sounds and an excerpt from “Nature Boy”–languages, social media, and politics—“this country is based on racism.” Debatably, she shapes the work into the story of three women, an actor (Nassia Gofa) and two singers (Anastasia Katsinavaki, Theodora Loukas), one classical and the other jazz, who might seem to be refracting the same character, in guilt and trauma. Papakonstantinou is never exactly clear in her excursion through the subconscious—but she understands and elicits the feelings Symborska transcribes, in, as another illustration, the baldly titled poem: “In Praise of Feeling Bad About Yourself”:
The buzzard never says it is to blame. /
The panther wouldn’t know what scruples mean. /
When the piranha strikes, it feels no shame. /
If snakes had hands, they’d claim their hands were clean.”
The poet finishes: “On this third planet of the sun / among the signs of bestiality / a clear conscience is number one.”
Current women’s theatre explicates, however, that no human, at least, has one.