'Bros', Romeo Castellucci's theatrical liturgy of violence by men in uniform. To be seen in the Holland Festival

About 30 men in American police uniforms on stage, of the kind we know from TV. But in the show Bros by Romeo Castellucci, to be seen at the Holland Festival in June, you don't get to see chases and interrogations, but brutal violence. The performance is about the anonymity a uniform offers, in this case especially to men. And how that can legitimise oppression.

The US police as a dark brotherhood of evil. We need only mention the name 'George Floyd' to know where that leads. For the Italian festival darling (he has been a fixed value at European festivals) and creator of often heavily religiously themed shows, however, the murder of Black American George Floyd in 2020 was almost precisely a reason to cancel this show.

Caught up with reality

During a conversation after the premiere in Hamburg, where I was able to see the performance earlier this year, he said that that murder, by some cops on a black man lying defenceless on the ground, brought reality too close. He did not want his performance to be only about that murder, but about much more.

It is telling for the director who was last seen in the Netherlands with a play that was 'Democracy in America' was called, and which in 2017 could be about little else but the political reality in the United States. Which had just been thrown into a deep crisis by Trump's election six months earlier. Trump was precisely trying to inflate democracy, and the checks&balances, which are supposed to guard the fragile American system against a dictator, were still creaking at the seams. Even then, Castellucci felt thwarted by reality rather than embracing it: his performance was to be seen metaphysically, as a ritual about how people shape the world they live in.

Yellow vests

Incidentally, Castellucci drew inspiration for the show Bros from reality anyway. He was in Paris when the Yellow Jacket uprising peaked there in 2019. Suddenly, he found himself in the middle of the riot and was himself arrested by French police. That had a lot of impact on his attitude to life. "Facing a uniform, I noticed, the question of guilt no longer plays a role. You feel suspicious anyway, even if you haven't done anything. That is the power of the uniform."

That goes deep, according to him: "The uniform is a primitive anthropological element. It has a totemic function, it affirms the clan, the brotherhood. It is also a deep-lying structure, a nocturnal structure. I am not just criticising the police, I am concerned with more. So I don't just want to give a social or political critique.”

Calling in the desert

The images Castellucci captured in Bros evokes are impressive and refer as much to dystopian science fiction as to the rituals of the Roman Catholic Church. That also makes this one of Castellucci's most religious performances, in a body of work already not averse to references to saints, statues of Mary and suffering apostles. The play even opens with the prophet Jeremiah, though he is not mentioned by name. What we see is an old man in a toga preaching unintelligibly.

That we cannot understand the prophet is also typical of Castellucci, he says: "It is very important that in the audience you feel that stress, of not being able to understand the prophet. That is also why he is not subtitled. By making the prophet unintelligible, I give him back his voice. The prophet is a cry in the desert. He utters a long lament about the people of Israel, warning about slavery in Babylon: 'Beware, Israel, do not become a slave!', but no one hears him."

Men in Black

In the performance, we see about 30 men in black uniforms. Six of them are regular actors in Castellucci's ensemble, the others are local men, which were only brought in a day before the performance. The Italian director chose this very deliberately: "The men are not cast through auditions: whoever applies, participates. We call the extras who participate together two days before the performance. They receive no further preparation, but have to do on stage exactly what they are told in their earphones. These include collective commands, but also individual ones. They have to carry out those orders mindlessly. For me, that is not only a representation of what the police do, it is also a picture of how society works."

Circle

Among all the theatrical images, for which Castellucci has drawn from rich Western history, up to and including Rembrandt's Professor Tulip's Anatomy Lesson, it comes rather suddenly to an outburst of violence. The group turns on one of them, who is beaten and kicked naked, not out of anger, but rather almost mechanically. "That is the violence at the core of the group. The performance shows the circle of violence in its narrowest form. It is ritual violence, it is primitive, a primal force. It is a force included in the law, and it is a fire that scorches, but it is also necessary for light."

Agents who en masse kicking the shit out of a naked man. I was immediately reminded of Bowie's Life On Mars, in which the passage occurs: 'Take a look at the Lawman, Beating up the wrong guy. Oh man! Wonder if he'll ever know, He's in the best selling show...', but there is no place for Bowie's music in this performance. There is, however, one for a hellish organ that ushers in the show's finale with steam, smoke and samples, in the best steampunk tradition. Crime in this show is not reserved for criminals, but for altar boys in uniform.

"I also use the image of Dr Tulp's anatomy lesson, Rembrandt's painting. The subject of that lesson is a deceased thief, so that is the only criminal in the picture. The rest is the violence that is organic to the powerful group."

The beating party takes a long time. Too long, according to some. But that, too, is Castellucci's intention: "For me, that is the core. The moment when the violence moves beyond fiction, and thus loses its easy frame. It is a realistic scene, which also has to be too long for it to become tedious. Because of that too-long scene, as a spectator you feel distance from the event, and that is necessary for aesthetics."

Homeopathic violence

He is happy to explain those: "Violence is also an element that has been used as a healing medicine since the Greek tragedies. I see it as a homeopathic remedy, where you put in a small amount of poison, to purify the body. The theatre is the only place where you can apply that."

Whether he was thereby not glorifying violence, an onlooker in Hamburg wanted to know: "In a sense, yes, but it is a complex philosophical and anthropological thing. It is a liturgy, but a theatrical one. Western theatre exists thanks to the death of the gods. The empty sky, the blue sky without gods, provided space for the birth of theatre. The liturgy in this performance is the liturgy of what was lost. It is a memory, and. more than a real liturgy, it is a ruin of the liturgy."