Why put on a play if it is just some egocentric obsession with one's own Narcissism? I ask this question of theatre companies all around the world and especially in Australia. I above all, ask it of myself!
Theatre companies, community theatres and schools all choose to do classic theatre productions, contemporary theatre productions and even some devised works and news works out of a sense of the need for artistic expression, political affirmations and cultural concerns; that alone being enough justification for the commitment! But in today's world is this enough?
While I won't argue that we are in an insane period of time only equaled by the time of the Inquisition in Europe, though by raising this point I do see similarities, theatre needs to take cognizance of the absurdities and lies that are at the base of commonly acceptable principles. Challenging these might a reason to produce a play.
ROMEO AND JULIET AND WAR ON WOMEN & GIRLS
Are we moving towards this? Girls at nine years old can be married and even made pregnant legally? Well according to some the answer is "yes". Take a look:
Some diabolical specifics of the Ten Commandments were obviously plagiarised by Islam. Don't covert thy neighbours "wife" etc is told totally from the male perspective. Just as the justifications for sex with young girls of nine years old within Islam is presented from a totally male perspective! One might be forgiven to think that Shakespeare was provocative in promoting a story of a thirteen year old girl wanting to be married to a young boy. In Islam marriage is essential for sex. Just as it might have been in Shakespeare's Christian times. The sexual morality for a young guy insisted on marriage; even if for multiple sexual encounters. The girl was kind of left out of the equation; a bargaining point for families.
So Juliet is 13; she is about to turn 14. If we listen to the contemporary Islamic guy in the video above, we hear it is all about her periods! Take advice from the doctors as to when one can have sex with her. Then a consummation of a legal marriage can take place! She is completely left out of the discussion. The founder of the religion was obviously careful not to impinge on this principle and, although marrying his wife when she was 6, he didn't have sex with her until she was nine!
Is this realisation "islamofobia"? NO! I'm only quoting the words of Imams, so watch the above video.
The reason for bringing this up is that while theatre might have assumed common grounds in shared values twenty or so years ago, it can no longer make such assumptions. So if one holds to such old values one must re-define the bottom line.
Juliet was to be married off to a young man at the time of her fourteenth birthday. Still young in Shakespeare's time, it was an acceptable time for marriage considering the life-expectancy of the times and the need for procreation of the species! What wasn't calculated was the unexpected intervention of Juliet's proposal to a young man, Romeo, that they should marry on the day after their meeting.
Shakespeare never mentions anything about a girl's periods, menstruation or ability to have children when calling for Romeo to have sex with Juliet. Most productions seem to side-step the brevity of their encounter and even the age of the protagonists. How often is a 25 year old actress playing Juliet? A betrayal of essential aspects of the play!
And before long, when will a trans-performer play the juvenile Juliet? If not already (Some state sponsored company must have already engaged such a proposal to ensure their funding) ...
Juliet is a young girl. In Shakespeare's time she was performed by boys.
Today, not only is a female being performed by males, some females are made to compete against males in sporting functions to an obvious disadvantage supported by laws in various communities. So have a look here:
Is this bias against women? Then what about the grooming gangs in England?
If one is following these stories, it will be obvious there is a bias against women and girls within traditionally Western culture.
SHADOWS AND LIFE
The shadows of reality are hidden and obscured. The fabricators of books of wisdom suggest answers and the procedures that must be followed to evade perpetual damnation. Charlatans abound within history and current situations. Yet all ecstatic revelations from such charlatans and would-be prophets are more likely to result from epilepsy or drug induced hallucinations. Theatre requires us to step outside and look in. And even then we probably will be wrong in our conclusions! I mean perhaps the notion of a 9 year old girl being sexually penetrated by a forty plus year old man is not necessarily a bad thing! RIGHT? See the link above! So we look in to the cultural and specifics of situations and need to make decisions! Yet all we see are the shadows on Plato's walls that tend to deceive and delude us ...
The liminality between personal experience, ideology and artistic creation is a dangerous syllogism ...
I suggest we need to be very sensitive in creating a production of ROMEO and JULIET that brings us back to the dreams of our youth and dreams of our expectations of something beautiful; something that died! Something that had nothing to do with waiting for a a girl to menstruate before fucking her! Something that took us all to a higher level where dreams followed moments of beautiful connection that stayed beyond for decades. Yes! It might seem a romantic context, but essentially it is about stepping above the biological mundanities into a spiritual realm that goes beyond the precepts of some fundamentally crippled advocate. Place your mind into that of Juliet. She is as much a prime being as any of the male usurpers of the Bible, the Tora or the Koran! Her mother, Lady Capulet surrendered her rights to her own dignity when she married Capulet! She also was a child when she had Juliet. But over the years she grew to pretend. Is this what religions ask of women? To PRETEND?
... and maybe to grow into the mindset of their captor?
BOOK HERE FOR ROMEO AND JULIET:
Joe Woodward
(11 Jan 2025)
Comments