Deep Trance Behavior in Potatoland
Claire Sammons
In a society that spoon-feeds itself the same empty gruel responsible for its malnutrition, Richard Foreman offers a banquet. Don’t come to his show demanding your theatrical meat & potatoes of plot driven action, character development, or linear time progression. Sit back, relax, & explore what theater can achieve beyond this.
As the title implies, Deep Trance Behavior in Potatoland will draw you into an altered state of consciousness- a pulling back & forth between distractedness and strict focus. Collages of nostalgic music & repeated phrases (“You will understand me immediately when I say…”) lead the audience members into their respective trances. Symptoms may include: slowed or accelerated heart rate, wandering mind, synesthesia disorientation, distractedness, nausea, hallucination, sexual arousal or minor dysfunction, & a slowing of time. In some cases it may stop completely despite the cluster of clocks on the set. You knew coming into this that it would all be over & you could go home after a mere hour & two minutes. But now you’re not sure if it’s been twenty minutes or three days & that one clock dead center isn’t helping you out any.
But don’t get used to this. Potatoland will soon rip you out of your dreamlike state. Blasts of abrasive industrial noise or sudden flashes of light from the stage will shock you back to a state of being. You are in the sensory theater; your mind will not be able to assist you here. I cannot help but look to Antonin Artaud at this point, “Without an element of cruelty at the root of every spectacle, the theater is not possible. In our present state of degeneration it is through the skin that metaphysics must be made to re-enter our minds” This is how Foreman’s play interacts with you; through the skin.
This tug of war between nonsense & sense, trance & awareness will continue through the length of the show.
Foreman’s play if nothing else, is a spectacle. It will take you on a wild ride through the vehicles of sight and sound. You will be stimulated & you will not know how to process it. It is multi-media art; the live actors rearrange themselves on stage in silence (if they do open their mouths it is usually to scream, growl, or place a pill on their tongues) while the actors on the screen speak their lines while remaining still. It is a bending of the rules perhaps, but nonetheless reminiscent of tableaux vivants.
Still thinking of The Theater and Its Double, many things appear with its respective double. Stage props, such as the lopsided pianos are in pairs, the walls are covered in old Victorian ectoplasmic photographs of mediums with their ghosts, the man in the pinstriped suit is belting out “Me and my shadow,” & of course the stage paired is with the screen. We are told that what happens on the screen has nothing to do with what is happening on the stage, yet there are poignant moments where the two synchronize perfectly. It is as if you have eaten one of those pills & become suspended in the overwhelming significance of an insignificant event. It is working on you.
