Has Romeo Castellucci become accessible with Democracy in America? #HF17

A prologue, two dialogues and a long interlude. All clearly connected. In a performance by Romeo Castellucci - it doesn't have to get any crazier.

Italian playwright Castellucci prefers to make theatre that is not easily or even misunderstood. In doing so, he does not shy away from shock effects. Visually overwhelming, but a clear line is often hardly recognisable. So that promises something, as he gets to grips with Democracy in America. Zeker with current events in mind: Donald Trump.

But the show is not about the 45th president of the US. Nor about democracy in America. It is, however, about Alexis de Tocqueville's book of the same name. But then again, it is not about what continues to fascinate legal scholars in it. Castellucci concentrates entirely on the core: America as tabula rasa, where a new democracy emerged from Puritan thought.

Glossolalia

After an explanation of glossolalia ('speaking in tongues'), the performance begins as if we have come to expect from Castellucci: loud and asbsurd. Eleven 'majorettes' dressed in white uniforms wave flags. On them are letters that first form 'Democracy in America', but soon more absurd variants like 'Car Comedy in America' and 'Cocain Army Medicare'. Words with meaning, but which, like glossolalia, are completely meaningless in this context.

In the first scene, a poor peasant family who continue to believe that God will give them what they need. When harvest after harvest fails, the farmer's wife sells her sick little daughter in exchange for tools. She loses her mind and starts speaking Indian words.

Shadowy travel dances

In the long dance interlude that follows, we see traditional row dances behind several layers of gauze curtain. All sorts of treaties and historical events from the early days of American democracy are projected on the front screen. The association with fertility rituals and the birth of a nation is obvious. The scene ends in a completely abstract dance form for of two objects floating through space. The dance has begun to speak in tongues.

The beginning of the last scene neatly refers back to the first. An Indian woman asks what happened to the white child. She speaks the language of the Ojibweg Indians, a language of sound completely unrecognisable to us, which she does not want to exchange for the English of the pale faces.

Void

The structure of the performance is obvious. So is the reason why the stage setting is bare and empty throughout the performance. Has Castellucci really become so transparent?

And then it dawns on you: this performance is as ironic as a book by De Tocqueville's compatriot Jean Baudrillard. He travelled across America two centuries after De Tocqueville and wrote about it Amérique, an ode to emptiness on the new continent. It contains the best summary of this performance: 'The freedom of body movement associated with the space they have compensates for the simplicity of their appearance and character. Vulgar, but "easy".'