The rave scene in Hell House demonstrates Clifford Geetz’s notion of deep play very well. The entire idea of the Hell House is to show people doing things that they are not supposed to do within the constructs of that community or else they are severely punished and go to hell. The entire community is invested in pulling of the performance, and they take deep pleasure in the theatrical aspects. The creative, casting, rehearsal, and construction processes are all high stakes community projects, and people are so invested because there is a deep catharsis that takes place in the space.

The subject matter of the rooms in the Hell House, to the people participating, is too risky to ever do or take part in in real life because they take damnation and spiritual death very seriously. The whole project is a warning against certain ways of being, and in the context of that warning, people get to take part and release in “sinful” and spiritually dangerous activities without the expected consequence. One example is the rave scene. In the film, one student spoke about how fun the rave scene was because they got to dance. Going to a rave on one’s own accord would have been parallel to sinning, as the Hell House tried to show, but doing it in the context of the Hell House provided a catharsis.

The serious “consequences” that Hell House associated with the rave, the rape, depression, suicide, and separation from God, all carry too much risk for the people in real life. The creation, performance, and viewing of these scenes, however, I believe gives an emotional release that is cathartic to the people participating. I have heard it said that the pleasure in watching theater doesn’t necessarily come from experiencing happy emotions while viewing, but by experiencing surprise and shock. Hell House, I believe, is pleasurable because of the shock and thrill experienced while watching these events take place.

The narrator describes Ta’ziyeh as a string of performances of tragedy. This is correct, but the audience also shows a deep “buy” into the performances and a connection to the history and to each other. Ta’ziyeh is mourning, and the audience can be seen being shocked by some of the actions and sobbing for the deaths of the people in the show. The audience is acting the part of the actual mourners of the people who died, effectively constituting an important part of the performances themselves.

The actor says “this is not entertainment” to make a distinction between the seemingly trivial and the sacred. Ta’ziyeh is a tradition, passed down from generation to generation. When the actor says Ta’ziyeh is in his blood, he means that he has been raised in the tradition since childhood. Ta’ziyeh is also a communal experience, and a catharsis, as the reporter shows. It is not merely a show that people go to in order to feel something, but where people go to share community, experience a deep spiritual release, and heal together. There is a significance in its repetition each year. Ta’ziyeh continually inducts members into a communal mindset and strengthens the community.

Ta’ziyeh also has a way of implicating the audience. The audience is expected to take part in this ritual, making it religiously significant to the individual, especially in the mourning. The play also is significant in its message about emphasizing the importance of the freedom to pray. One actor talked about reminding the audience of the importance of resisting and admonishing oppression, since Hussein was killed fighting for “Islamic prayer and freedom.” This is a lesson of the different conflicts of the community conflict and a display of the holiness of staying true to freedom and the faith.

Trajal Harrell’s Antigone Sr is definitely best described by Marvin Carlson’s theory of fulfillment. In the beginning, it is hard to see that this is based on Antigone at all without looking at the title, and the performance definitely is focused on the different forms of expression present, from costuming to acting to music and movement. There are some lines, ideas, emotions, and general conflicts that are drawn specifically from the actual text, but Harrell obviously saw the original text as a springboard from which they could leap into their own creative vision. Harrell probably saw the text as something that was incomplete, to be added to by all of these other elements.

Anne Carson’s Antigonick is an actual translation, but it fits the illustration model best. Antigonick is firmly rooted in the text, and although the translation is sometimes humorous and unexpected, it carries as a textual piece to be read and not something that merits completion by performance. There are literal illustrations also, perhaps serving the function of what any performance would do in Carson’s mind, in simply adding something extra but not being a necessary part of the piece. The design is fun, but the manipulation of the text is the main focus.

There is also an argument for describing Antigonick as a translational work. The magnitude of Carson’s manipulation of the original text might stray too much from the extreme pragmatism of the illustration camp. The fact that Carson translated the text into sometimes such colloquial terms might be showing a viewpoint that art is supposed to aid people in understanding larger ideas. The presence of the artwork, the colorful lettering, and the typing design might serve interpretative functions for the original text.

In the film Couple in a Cage, there is one scene where a news broadcaster is shown saying, “…they are studying us more than we are studying them.” This was particularly interesting because it showcases the othering rhetoric when watching different people “perform” life. The way the newscaster said this made it seem like he was somehow justifying the idea of locking up people from other cultures in a cage, like if they were learning about “civilized” life then it was completely fine that they were being paraded around for white people. Since white people were doing “less” studying, then they were not in the wrong.

This paternalistic mindset can be seen in some of the people commenting on the exhibit. For example, one woman spoke about the marvels of learning about other people’s cultures, as if putting people in a cage was an acceptable way of learning about nonwhite cultures. When describing a dance that Fusco did, she said, “That to me looks like something for fifty cents.” Gomez-Pena and Fusco charged people to see their storytelling and dance performances to show how easily people become complicit in fetishizing, subordinating, and dehumanizing other peoples.

One interesting result of the piece for Gomes-Pena and Fusco was how they expected people to know right away that they were artists, but instead people thought that the people standing to the side describing the exhibit were the artists. This, though not a conscious choice, showcases how ready people were to accept the kidnapping and imprisonment of people for art as normal. Gomez-Pena and Fusco did intentionally create a frenzy around them, using words like “study” and “art” as a way to make colonialism seem more passive and less dehumanizing. One commentator said, “Right now we’ve found two new people to study, and we are trying to go back to the island to see if we can find more.” The excitement of “discovery” made most people forget (or forget to remember) to treat other human beings like human beings, and even of those who realized how disgusting the practice was, many were self-centered in their feelings, like the woman who spent a minute crying over how the exhibit made her feel bad about herself and America.

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton