Liberating Ourselves From the Death Penalty: The Living Theater's Promise and Beyond

Liberating Ourselves From the Death Penalty: The Living Theatre's

Promise and Beyond

I give you my word that I will never kill you…We reverse the cycle of vengeance. I will never be an executioner because I have vowed not to kill you. I will never fire into a crowd because I have vowed not to kill you. I will never bomb a city because I have vowed not to kill you.

The Living Theater, Not in my Name, A Protest Play Against the Death Penalty

They make slaughter and they call it peace.

Tacitus

When I think of resistant art there are numerous people, theatre companies, forms that flood into my mind-- Augusto Boal, Ngugi wa Th'iongo, Tania Brugera, Brecht, Negro spirituals, guerilla theatre, street theatre, and The Blue Blouse group, to name a few. Resistance art is about revealing and communicating a message that counteracts hegemony. Using art to illuminate the idea, the artist aspires to reach a broader audience and to arouse the viewer to take a closer examination of the subject. Likewise, part of the goal is to build a collective awareness of the problem and a desire to take action to change the injustice by resisting the oppressive system, person, or social convention in question. In her book, The Body in Pain, Elaine Scarry speaks of this notion of taking action when she discusses the role of letter writing in Amnesty International's campaigns against torture. She states, "The goal…is not simply to make the reader a passive recipient of the information about [the oppression] but to encourage his or her active assistance in eliminating [the oppression]." [1]

I had never seen The Living Theatre perform live, so I was eager to witness the performance of Not in My Name, a protest play against the death penalty. Not in My Name has been ritualistically performed in Times Square on each night someone is executed in the United States since 1994, when it was performed. The Living Theatre is nationally known for its cutting edge work that fuses politics, life, and theater. Julian Beck and Judith Malina founded the Living Theatre in 1947 as an alternative to the commercial theatre of the United States. The group has staged over 80 productions in 25 countries and in eight different languages. The Living Theatre's mission is to

call into question who we are to each other in the social environment of the theater, to undo the knots that lead to misery, to spread ourselves across the public table like platters at a banquet, to set ourselves in motion like a vortex that pulls the spectator into action, to free the body's secret engines, to pass through the prism and come out a rainbow, to insist that what happens in the jails matter, to cry "Not in my Name" at the hour of executions, to move from the theater to the street and from the street to the theater. [2]

In New York, during the 1950's, the company began the "unconventional staging of poetic drama." They performed plays from famous American writers such as Gertrude Stein, Paul Goodman, and John Ashbery and works by European writers rarely staged in the US, such as Cocteau, Lorca, Brecht, and Pirandello. [3] Due to their inability to operate an experimental repertoire, The Living Theatre's space was shut down in 1963. In 1964, the core of the ensemble left New York and became a nomadic touring ensemble in Europe. Politically grounded in anarchy, The Living Theatre fit in perfectly with the tactics of the New Left emerging in Europe. The Living Theatre rebuilt their company with foreign actors and developed a following of anarchist kids, hippies, students and dropouts. [4]

Having performed and directed experimental performances that focus on the death penalty and the prison industrial complex, I watched Not in my Name closely to see how this performance would function to break the cycle of violence and restore humanity-- the proposed goal of this work. "Stay! Stay! Stay! Stay the murdering hand. Is it mercy." [5] These were the first words The Living Theatre spoke in their performance at the Anti-War, Anti-Empire Cabaret, at the Hemispheric Institute Politics and Performance: Spectacles of Religiosity, in New York City. In the play the ensemble used movement, text, facial expressions and tableaus to convey their abolitionist viewpoint. When watching, I felt that their gesture of opposition only entertained a banal space of communication-- it was not rigorous. This was mainly due to the over-stylization of the gestures.

At one point in the performance, the ensemble formed a tableau in which one man was positioned in the center, representing a condemned man to be executed, while the rest of the cast formed a semi-circle around him in positions representing people who were in mourning or grief stricken. In this picture, the cast chanted phrases such as, "His mother said: He was a good boy, The State says: an eye for an eye… the Judge says: Lethal injection." The condemned man in the center repeatedly performed the moment of his execution. In the series of movements, his body shakes in a controlled jerking manner, simulating someone being electrocuted, while attempting to make groans but the sound never comes to fruition. Since it is impossible to perform an actual execution on stage, develop movements that can represent and can convey the sentiments of the performance. In doing my own work about communicating physical pain and violence, I think one has to be extremely careful not to produce an overly reduced representation of the actual violent act. Scarry states that, "Whatever pain achieves, it achieves in part through its unsharability." She goes on to say "To have great pain is to have certainty: to hear that another person has pain is to have doubt. The doubt of other persons, here as elsewhere, amplifies the suffering of those already in pain." [6] Therefore, it is our responsibility, as artists making resistance art, to find the place in which our work not only communicates pain but enables the viewers to feel it within themselves; and because we have the human need to end pain felt within ourselves, the viewers would then seek to end what is perpetuating this pain.

The Living Theatre's performance was choreographed for an outdoor space and thus it was formulated in a circular fashion. This would enable viewers to witness the play from all sides. At the Cabaret, The Living Theatre had to perform on a proscenium stage, which not only flattened the presentation but reinforced the traditional actor/spectator role. In his work, Augusto Boal talks about the separation of the actor (they act) and spectators (they observe). He proposes that we need to move to a space in which people become Spect-Actors and in doing so "they can see themselves here and imagine themselves there." [7] Though Scarry does not reference Boal and visa versa, it is worth noting this idea of transference present in both of their work. In both instances it is the moment in which the other can see, feel, or imagine what is outside of their body that the pain (or situation) resonates in their bodies-- and thus fostering movement toward action.

At the same time, I was reminded of Ngugi wa Th’iongo's conception of space. In Penpoints, Gunpoints, and Dreams, he states:

The performance space is also constituted by the totality of its external relations to these other centres and fields. Where are they all located relative to each other? Who accessed these centres and how frequently? It matters, in other works, whether, say, the artist's space is located in a working-class district, in a bourgeois residential neighborhoods, in the ghettos, or in the glossy section of our cities. The real politics of the performance space may well lie in the fields of its external relations; in its actual potential conflictual engagement with all the other shrines of power, and in particular, with the forces which hold the key to those shrines.[8]

Times Square is a New York “Mecca”. Its streets are filled with lights, tourist, theatres, shops, it’s a place of commerce; and it is a place were thousands of people gather to celebrate the New Year at midnight. Midnight is also the designated time that executions occur. Outside the prison, at the time of execution, you will find people gathered in celebration and in mourning. These are a few of the similar activities found in both cites, however it is the friction between the protest of this state inflicted terror being positioned in a site that state deems as one its centers of prosperity. The Kimmel Center did not create this type of friction-- If it could have, I wonder if my reception of the piece would have changed

ROOTS

Much of the Living Theatre's work is rooted in Artuad's Theatre of Cruelty. Artaud was a French theorist, poet and actor. In his two manifestos, published in 1932 and 1934, Artaud speaks about "the need to create a new language that is midway between gesture and thought." [9] Artaud stated that "Between life and theatre there will be no distinct division, but instead continuity". In his theories, Cruelty is not synonymous with sadism but represents "an appetite for life, "acknowledgement for existential realities and that we are subject to the "darker forces." Artaud suggest that "cruelty signifies rigor, implacable intention and decision, irreversible and absolute determination." [10] I find this statement to be animated and compelling. This premise implies that not only is art, in Artuad's case theatre, divulgence but it is a fuel -- it pushes and resists stagnation.

THE SCRIPT and BEYOND

The script of Not in my Name is published on the Living Theatre's website. On the website, they invite people to use the script to perform their own enactments. In reading the script, the text alone created a space for me to consider the stark images about retribution and revenge that the ensemble tried to convey in the performance. In pieces that are unsuccessful as a whole, there may be elements that allow for disruption. These disruptions have the potential to inspire ways to open up discourse about the subject on hand. For me, this moment happened when I reread the ensemble's promise not to kill [me].ä

In the performance, the group descended into the audience and each actor announced that s/he was breaking the cycle of vengeance by beginning with her/himself. Each member of the ensemble approached a member in the audience and promised not to kill him or her. Reflecting upon this promise, I tried to consider was this promise a mere utterance or was there something hidden in their promise? What did The Living Theatre evoke by making this promise? A company member approached me and I too promised not to kill him. I do not know his name and I vaguely remember his image. Maybe part of the power was not knowing the person.

Since, 1976, when the death penalty was reinstated 871 people have been killed, and 111 people have been exonerated from death row--the numbers are rising in both categories. The death penalty is supposed to be reserved for individuals who commit the most heinous, such as murder or serial killing, but politicians promote the death penalty as a crime deterrent to boost their image of being tough on crime. However, the capital punishment does not deter crime, nor is it enacted fairly. Studies have shown that the average murder ration per 100,000 in states with capital punishment is about 8 while it is only 4.4 in states that have abolished the death penalty. [11]

In the text, The Living Theatre referenced the fact that there are over 3000 people on death row. More striking was the use of Mahatma Gandhi's famous quote, "a eye for an eye makes the whole world blind." Used in various struggles for peace, fair housing, human rights, and most recently the protest to stop the war in Iraq, this quote pushes us to view violence as a cyclical phenomena in which we will all be affected and we will be left without a vision of justice. The Living Theatre's promise is a gesture that attempts to break this the cycle of vengeance while separating themselves from state inflicted violence. In the piece, they state "These vows we make now are only the beginning." [12] If this vow is only the beginning, what is the next move?

We can promise to never be an executioner or fire into a crowd or bomb a city, but these are not the only methods by which we can participate in someone's death. In the United States of America, the land of the free, people are born every day into abject poverty, with no hope of an equal education, a clean and safe place to live, a job or other opportunities. Economic and environmental oppression is a slow but living death penalty for most people of color and other communities marginalized by other markers such as ethnicity or religion. If we are to "affirm the sanctity of life to reach our full potential for our humanity" [13] then the Living Theater's promise not to kill has to occupy a space in which death is not just the outcome of a bomb, a gun or a switch that releases electricity or potassium chloride. We must consider how the states’ use of disapperance, exploitation, war, police and military repression, and foreign policy perpetuate a state unjust death.³ When we widen our rubric of what we consider the death penalty and when The Living Theatre recites these words, "There is a man named…/Tonight he is alive/Tonight he will die/We are here to witness/ The intention of the State of…/ To kill…In the name of the People/ Of the State of…," [14] the person they are evoking becomes the men, women, and children that are dying because of state-inflicted terror and death. Making this leap allows us to truly view this performance as a depiction of reality. The deaths on the borders of Mexico and United States, off the coast of Florida, in Iraq, or in factories in Thailand, become referential bodies that symbolize homeland security, peace, political freedom and increased profits. It is not a mere digestion of the fact that people are being killed or an emotional occupation with another's pain. I call for a critical examination of what I would call the death complex.

Freud describes complex as "sets of ideas and memories that are largely unconscious but have an enormous affective power." [15] Moving from Freud's idea of complex, we then have to consider what is the death complex and what are these unconscious ideas and memories that occupy the death complex. I will define the death complex as the intersection between the negation of humanity, our apathy for another's pain and our desire for violence and revenge. Just as the Prison Industrial Complex [16] is built on a system that relies on the influx of bodies and movement of capital, so does the death complex. However, the bodies may or may not be visible, depending on your viewpoint. For example, we all know there are thousands of undocumented workers in the United States seeking economic resources to survive. It is our foreign policies, embargoes and sanctions that help cause their economic oppression. At the same time, we militarize our borders and make it dangerous for them to enter. They cook our food in restaurants, clean our offices and homes, take care of our children, and deliver food to our doors--in essence they are performing a type of labor for us that is essential to our economy. Yet, we deny their right to be here. In our capitalist driven economy, their labor and the things their labor produces become the sensuous things, we buy and love, while their bodies are dehumanized and become invisible. [17] I equate this invisibility and objectification with living death.

In the closing lines, The Living Theatre stated that "while there is a soul in prison, I am not free." [18] While I believe that it is imperative that we fight to abolish the death penalty, it is equally important that we fight to end all unjust death. We can no longer disconnect our actions from our desire for humanity and be complacent with the fact that the lives of marginalized others are of less value. So, when I revisit my promise not to kill the actor from The Living Theatre, I am forced to reevaluate the death I create by my needs, my ideas, and my desires.