As you can imagine, or as you know if you were there, last night was a strange one.
The Water Clock was on at the QFT/Brian Friel Theatre. I was running late due to all the bomb scares around Belfast; does anyone know the significance of these? Why yesterday? Anyway, I got there just before it started.
The show seemed to be a sort of walk through the imaginations of four sisters, five if you count the one who spoke at the opening, that told a story about their past, including the loss of their youngest sister Taygeta. The sisters are named for the Pleiades, which was evident by their names in the program, if not by their nicknames (Ty, Ellie, etc.). One of the sisters was nicknamed Meri, and although I haven’t seen her in person in a few years, looked to be my old friend Meri Cain, and spoke about a boyfriend named David (the name of Meri Cain’s boyfriend). As if she was playing herself on stage.
I knew from her recent blog posts that Meri was coming back to Belfast, and she has been following [in]visible belfast with us, but she said nothing about having any involvement in The Water Clock, which is somehow connected with the mystery … I’m certain she is lying about some things. The question is why. I’ve been ringing Meri’s mobile number since last night after the play, but she's not answering.
I was handed a camera at the start of the play, right when I was seated, and told by the person who handed it to me (a “guide”?) to record everything I saw. I did my best. Then, at the end of the show, the guide took it off me again, and never explained why I was filming. Other people seemed to have been given handheld cameras as well. Were any of you?
I was so focused on watching the play and trying to film it that I completely forgot the task of picking up the letter from Aster’s scene. Did anyone pick it up?
As for the story of the play, my take on it is this. A Narrator introduced us to the story, about seven sisters who have a painful history. He told us that this would be a trial, and that the opinions of the audience would count for something. Then he opened the floor to the sisters.
There were six sisters in the play. In age order I would guess: Maia, Ellie, Alce, Meri, Ty. Each of them had part of a story to tell, and each of them had some sort of residual cross to bear, related to her father. The play really began when the oldest sister Maia wrote a letter inviting the other sisters to her home (their childhood home) to honor the 20th anniversary of the death of the youngest sister. Then you see each of the other sisters, getting a sort of glimpse into her life or her mind, traveling from one backstage space to another, led by the guides.
The second act was more traditional, as we were seated in the Brian Friel Theatre. I sat with a girl from my course who I ran into during the intermission, and afterwards we discussed what we think the father’s crimes were. The father killed the youngest, Ty, by using her as a “human shield” when his paramilitary cronies were after him. There also seemed to be the possibility of the girls being abused somehow, hinted at in a couple of the early scenes and then quite strongly in the second half. The father never showed up, giving it a sort of Godot-esque quality, but there still had to be a trial, according to the Narrator. So he put Maia on trial; it is revealed that the father was never coming.
Maia was made to give a testimony. Then the Narrator stopped the storytelling and demanded that the audience vote Guilty or Innocent, and votes were taken. The majority vote was innocent. The Narrator attempted to overturn this somehow, and the sisters overpowered him. In the final bit of the play, the Narrator seemed to stand in for the father, and pay for his crimes in some sense.
Things that caught my eye, beyond the obvious … Meri had the book Invisible Cities sticking out of her bag; the Faulkner quote in the second act about time; that fact that there was no seventh sister (Celaeno).
I don’t know what else to say right now. I left the theatre feeling very confused; it was all a bit surreal. Any thoughts from any of you?
Do you remember what the sisters said in the final act about the narrator having manipulated them? As I noted on the wiki, something about that suggested to me that he occupied a position not only like the father's but also a bit like [in]visible belfast's: just like the audience were manipulated into delivering a judgement on the sisters so too are we manipulated into solving these puzzles and into . . . we don't exactly know what. This impression was strengthened by the narrator's saying in the opening that we needed to walk between the lines to see the real story.
ReplyDeleteAlso, there are a few interesting literary parallels. First to Finnegans Wake: HCE's crime in Phoenix park involved young girls and was (likely) sexually abusive; while we don't know for certain that there was anything like that involved in the Water Clock, some of the behaviors displayed by the sisters suggest that. Then there's the centrality of Maia's letter, a bit like the centrality of ALP's letter. (Also, Joyce assigned glyphs to his characters, similar to the symbols assigned to the characters in the Water Clock's programme.)
Thematically, there's also a strong connection to the Oresteia. An Electra concerned with revenge on a parent sounds more like the daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra than like the Pleiad Electra. And in the end the curse on the House of Atreus is only lifted when a jury of Athenians presided over by Athena acquit Orestes as we acquitted Maia (though Orestes had killed his mother rather than his father).
I was one of the few that was not present at the play itself, but was connected through the internet feed which was provided for those who could not attend in person.. I however wish I would have been there since the feed got disconnected shortly after you met Alan. He was the one with the camera that allowed us to see it all...
ReplyDeletewe got disconnected while you were all outside, and the "drunken" sister came down the stairs.. Whatever was shown after that, I have no clue, and I would love to see the footage that was shot by you and others..
as for the parts that I did see.. there was certainly a conflict within each of the sisters.. and it seems this conflict was about their father... (in mythology this would be atlas) and I am not sure Atlas was at the play, the program at least doesn't show him, but the waterclock website does.. was the narator in fact the father??
One thing that strikes me though is that you also have (had??) a lot of anger with your father.. do you yourself see any similarities after seeing the play??
Then the fact the Meri might be in the play.. the waterclock website says the following:
The youngest of the living sisters, Meri has found she is not the last of the family line. She has disappeared into the ether beyond Belfast, doing her best to avoid the fray; and yet, the 27th of May will draw her back into the fold in ways she never expected. Her name means "mortal."
this suggests that the character is someone that came from elsewhere, returning to belfast for the play.. and not to forget that she had a younger sister called ty, who died, similar to the ty in the mythology.. it seems some ties are coming together.. I would try to contact jack sellars (jackcellars@gmail.com) the producer of the play to see if he can give you any insight if it really was Meri...
not sure about the invisible cities clue yet, but am sure we will figure it out...
I was wondering if someone in the audience was acting somewhat suspicious or so.. [in]visible belfast has chosen a conspirator to help them.. and i was wondering if you have spotted him..
awell, if I see something else going on, I will let you know..
D.
I commented on some of this in the vlog I'm uploading...
ReplyDelete