“The vain spectacle, the frivolous sounds and the maelstrom of noise and colour that make up the world is only ever the world of madness, and that must be accepted. This artificiality of the world must be welcomed, and the knowledge that shallowness belongs not only to the spectacle but to the spectator as well, and that to appreciate it what is required is not the serious ear reserved for the truth, but that more light hearted form of attention more usually reserved for a fairground spectacle or a circus act.”
-Michel Foucault, “History of Madness”
Seurat's The Circus
“The circus is a tiny closed off arena of forgetfulness. For a space it enables us to lose ourselves, to dissolve in wonder and bliss, to be transported by mystery. We come out of it in a daze, saddened and horrified by the everyday face of the world. But the old everyday world, the world with which we imagine ourselves to be only too familiar, is the only world, and it is a world of magic, of magic inexhaustible”
-Henry Miller, “The Smile at the Foot of the Ladder”
So if the world is a metaphorical circus, then we are the clowns making light of the spectacle that is our physical existence. This is, in any case, what Chthonic Theater will attempt to channel in our production of the ‘Ship of Fools,’ an original musical. The storyline plays with definitions of concepts like exile and belonging as well as normal and abnormal which generally carry a very serious tone. Through the use of spectacle and comedy, these ideas will all become parodies of themselves!
The Real Ship of Fools
“(The Ship of Fools) had a genuine existence, for they really did exist, these boats that drifted from one town to another with their senseless cargo. An itinerant existence was often the lot of the mad…They were often entrusted to the care of river boatmen”
-from Michel Foucault’s History of Madness
Die Blau Schuyte by Pieter van der Heyden 1559. click to enlarge.
“Renaissance men developed a delightful, yet horrible way of dealing with their mad denizens: they were put on a ship and entrusted to mariners because folly, water, and sea, as everyone then “knew,” had an affinity for each other. Thus, “Ship of Fools” crisscrossed the sea and canals of Europe with their comic and pathetic cargo of souls. Some of them found pleasure and even a cure in the changing surroundings, in the isolation of being cast off, while others withdrew further, became worse, or died alone and away from their families. The cities and villages which had thus rid themselves of their crazed and crazy, could now take pleasure in watching the exciting sideshow when a ship full of foreign lunatics would dock at their harbors.”
-from Jose Barchilon’s intro to Madness and Civilization