peaked
Parallel to the rise of religious ideas in Fringe theatre, Steve Cramer disoerns a growing passion for ghosts, ghouls and other-worldly apparitions.
niie Boleyn is perhaps the most lainous
gllosl in the I‘K. She's said ol' course.
to walk about the low er ol' London with lter head in her hands. This is a position l‘ye seen a l’ew theatre audiences adopt during theatrical I‘ctclliligs oli ghost stories. it)!“ it‘s at risky business. conjuring tip a shade ol‘ past history. may contingent on the creation ol‘ atmosphere. which. once shattered. can make l‘or inady'ertently risible performance. All the same. theies any number ol‘ high quality l'ringe shows abotit the supernatural this year. which look like ay'oiding this pill-all. But why' conjttre up these gliosls now'.’
Boleyn ittight seem a good starting point lor the discussion. Why is it her ghost that haunts history. and not that ol‘ Kathryn lloward. llenry‘ \'lll’s other esecttted wil'e'.’ Well. Howard seems to hay e been guilty of the inlidelities ol' which she was accused. and while decapitation might seem an e\treme l‘orm ol marriage counseling in our century. no one l'elt particularly bad about it at the time. It was known in the Tudor era. though. that Boleyn was a \ictim ol‘ injustice. and she's been maintained to he so eyer since. The young woman. it somewhat guilel‘ul in her courtship with Henry. was aii innocent abroad at court. attd matched against the Mandelsonesque cotirtiers til. llic time. stood no chance politically. ller trial was conducted in such a blinkered manner that one wonders whether I.ord lltttton liad descendents at court. and she was dispatched without a murmur ol‘ descent.
So does the quite autonomous shade or Boleyn haunt tis with the ttnlinished business ol‘ an improper trial‘.’ Don't be silly. She‘s there because she haunts our political unconscious. We know that something pretty ropey went down. btit at the time. and ey en to some extent today. we don‘t wish to criticise systemic structures. 'l‘hus our political guilt enacts a manifestation ol‘ our repression.
This particular phenomenon or repression is something w e'ye been tattght to associate mainly with se\uality. btit are we really ttnable to talk about this subject these day s'.’ I would it were so. bttt sadly not. .-\t each pub chinwag I attend. there seems to be no shortage of discussion ot~ this: it takes no more than ten minutes ol‘ acquaintance to learn of someone's lesbianism. gayness. bisexuality or heterose\tiality. 30 years ago. this might haye been intriguing. bttt now he sat at dinner
parties atid become so bored listening to my neighbours~ se\ttal coiil'essions that he felt in peril ol~ becoming a ghost mysell'. Lets not pretend that this is an issue ol‘ repression any more.
But what we don‘t talk about is politics. We might know someone l‘or years withottt a discussion ol' otir \‘ic‘Ws on. say. the cttrrent war. long alter the Usual. polite ice-breaking
cony'ersation about what we do with our
genitals has been exhausted. And we know there's something wrong. jtist as we know that ottr media doesn't tell tis the whole truth about the political situation. ()l’ten. though. we're
*~'~‘ttllllllll
I'VE BECOME SO BORED OF LISTENING TO DINNER PARTY SEXUAL CONFESSIONS THAT I'VE FELT IN PERIL OF BECOMING A GHOST MYSELF
complicit in not wanting to know. hence guilt. and our need to conjure tip ghosts to haunt tts. ‘Psy'choanalysis has tattght that the dead — a dead parent. for example — can be more alive for tis. more powerl'til. more scary. than the liying. It is the question ol‘ ghostsf Jacques Derrida’s comment to the New York Times in 199—1 is characteristic oi this philosopher‘s obsession in his late years with ghosts. but the fear he referred to was not a personal and completely subjectiye one; it spoke oi the ghost of Marx. a man who himself spoke of “a
spectre haunting littrope — the spectre of
Theatre
(’ommunismf (iliosts are a wry political al’lair.
()ne needn‘t csplain this to tlte young and brilliant practitioners ol"l'li.-\.\l. the sensational New York based political theatre company. in ’articularly' in the Heartland t'l‘rayerse. 223 l4()~l. 3 27 .-\ug. tnot l4. 2| l. times \ai‘y. £8 U250 (USU—Wit they'll be conjuring tip the shade ol' the tragic and tlor .-\merical \ci'y radical Robert Kennedy. at a time in world politics where the West. in Lebanon. Iraq and Al‘gltanistan keep meeting the man ‘w ho wasn't there again today/ () how I w isli he'd go away". But the political impetus lot a play which sees Kennedy resurrected l'rom a Kansas l‘armyard started with domestic politics. 'It comes l'rom a New York 'l'imt'y article about president Bush signing a new kind ol bankruptcy legislation in ;\pi'il Zillli. It basically made declaring bankruptcy impossible in the [ISA it was entirely in liay'ottr of credit card companies. l.ast :\ugust when we were in lidinburgh. the law was preparing to go into el'l'ect. and bankruptcy l‘iles had jumped "particularly iii the heartland" as the article said.‘ csplains director Rachel ('hay'kitt.
People l‘rom this yery region. as opposed to the liast and West coasts. were particular Bush supporters. so there's a stinging ideological irony to this ghost. ‘We‘re also creating this absolutely loaded and tragic character in one part ol' the country. and hes popping tip in this other part ol' the country. where. it people condemned the VIUICIIL'L‘ oi his death. there was no sense oi political lossf ('hay'kin comments. But the collective guilt oy'er Kennedy's death goes l‘tirther. ‘When Rl'K died it was kind ol‘
jtist another thing. he died within two weeks (it
Martin Luther King. so we kind ol' barely noticed‘. say's actor Jake Margolin. ()ne ol the things we talked about was the idea ol‘.»\merica literally y'omiting tip Robert Kennedy. Whether America takes the blame tor the assassination or not. we‘y‘e skewed so wrong and not honoured that memory '. he adds.
Kennedy“. in other words. is about a political unconscious. 'There's a collectiy'c gttili or hope that it this ghost could kind ol' rise tip it would keep its grounded. kind ol attached to our history in a way that we need. It‘s about invoking the past as a hope for the luture. I think there's a sense oi unfinished business about a ghost. so it raises the question oi where would we be il‘ Nixon hadn't been elected:
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