Attis Theater's 'Ajax, the madness' at the Wilma (1st review)

War and society have always been entwined. Social relations themselves breed antagonism and hence violence. Civilization exacerbates things, because it enables killing on a mass scale. It also frames killing in terms of values, dressing up brute slaughter in phrases like honor, loyalty and courage.

Lately, "democracy" has been added to the roster, or, even more fantastically, "credibility." We must kill, the argument goes, so that no one will doubt our resolve.

The earliest war of which we have a detailed description is the Trojan War. It was long thought to be a mythical account, but now we know such an event very likely happened, and we accept Homer's story about it as broadly credible. It was central to ancient Greek culture, and it remains for us the prototype of war as an institution. So we keep returning to it, as the Greeks themselves did.

Killing as a business

Ajax, by Sophocles, is of the central classical texts about the Trojan War. Ajax is the other guy at Troy. The Greeks' great hero was Achilles, fiercest and bravest of warriors, but also a temperamental character who sulks in his tent, weeps extravagantly over his slain friend Patroclus, and is in general a high maintenance asset.

We get the idea that, for Achilles, the war is all about him. Homer thus depicts the tensions inherent in war as a collective activity that depends on the motivation, resource and prowess of individuals.

When Achilles is killed, Ajax steps up. Ajax is straightforwardly a warrior. Killing is his business, and also his pleasure.

At the same time, he's sensitive to his new responsibilities of leadership. He knows he has big shoes to fill, and due recognition of his exploits will be necessary.

Self-destruction

When he recovers Patroclus's armor from the Trojans but is denied the trophy he regards as his rightful due by the wily Odysseus, he broods intently. No one would have dared to do this to Achilles, and Ajax has therefore been put down as the lesser man. Instead of honor, he has been dealt shame.

Ajax knows only one way to deal with this insult: He must kill those who have dishonored him.

The gods, however, have other plans, for it is determined that the Greeks must win the war. Accordingly, the gods madden Ajax, who butchers a herd of sheep in the belief that he is killing his enemies. This, of course, completes his destruction; and, in the Sophocles version of the legend, he kills himself.

Women at war

For the Greeks of Sophocles's time, the Ajax story was a parable about honor, and also about the shrewdness and cunning that, no less than valor, was an essential component of war. Brute strength may suffice for the skirmish or the melee, but war requires strategic thinking and political adroitness. Ajax is outwitted and therefore defeated, his great strength and courage notwithstanding.

What does Ajax mean for us today? In an age of drone warfare, killing is conducted by remote control. Ironically, "honor" belongs to the suicide bomber, at least for those on his side. Courage of a sort is certainly required, and a degree of cunning.

Physical strength, however, is beside the point; women and even children can be successful suicide bombers. The increased role of women in combat in our own military makes the same point. Ajax possesses a skill set, but it's obsolete.

Bursting balloons

Theodoros Terzopoulos, founder and director of the Attis Theater in Athens, wants to remind us of Ajax's relevance— indeed his centrality— to the idea of war. In his Ajax, the madness, presented in collaboration with the Wilma Theater, the idea of Ajax is stripped down to its barest essentials. Three actors, all dressed more or less identically, represent respectively Ajax himself, a messenger, and the chorus.

The stage is bare except for lines of metal troughs that, upended, reveal painted red interiors. These latter are, metaphorically, the kothornoi or raised shoes that actors wore on the ancient stage; here, they become a polyvalent symbol that represents the grid of tragedy itself and the blood concealed underneath (the actors themselves are barefoot, as well as bare to the waist).

Ajax "enacts" the vengeful slaying of the sheep by means of ritualized gestures and incantations; the messenger describes it; the chorus laments it. There are moments of heightened expression when the sense of violence is raised to a pitch, as when Ajax bursts two water-filled balloons above himself, and red light suggests a drenching in blood.

Out of control

For the most part, however, the stylized intensity of the actors' movement and recitation carries the burden of events— no longer a tragedy, hardly even a story, but rather a ritual that has undergone horrible debasement. Without the context of the Homeric legend or the Sophoclean play, Ajax's demented fury is merely a descent into savagery.

The text does allude to his sense of dishonor, without which the slaughter of the animals would have no meaning, but only enough to redirect the significance of the act.

In the legend and the ancient play, the slaughter represents the loss of control that, even in the heat of battle, distinguishes friend from foe, soldier from civilian. Without that control, war itself is impossible, and the human propensity for violence becomes an indiscriminate bloodletting.

Sergeant Bales's breakdown

This is why the recent case of Sergeant Robert Bales, the soldier who killed 16 unarmed Afghan civilians in their homes, was so horrifying: It was a sheer breakdown. For Bales in that moment, as for Ajax in his, whatever lived was to be killed, simply because it was there and alive.

Of course, Ajax thinks he is killing his enemies, not anybody or anything. Bales may have thought so, too— who knows? Terzopoulos's point is that at the moment of action, all that one sees is a target, and all that one experiences is the atavistic satisfaction of killing, of wading in gore. This deep pleasure is the essence of war, and the unacknowledged reason why we wage it.

In that sense, Ajax is not a hero gone astray nor a sport of the gods, but the soldier as Everyman. As rendered by Terzopoulos, he stabs again and again into empty space, chanting monotonously, "I kill! I kill! I kill!"

Looking at ourselves

It's a far more chilling and effective image than any parade of victims or pile of corpses could be. This is war's essential moment, abstracted from time and place; it's Man the Killer, rendered in all his mechanized frenzy— a creature at the same time perfectly disciplined and perfectly insane.

This kind of ritual theater derives from Jerzy Grotowski, although Terzopoulos's more immediate antecedents are Heiner Mueller and Robert Wilson. In it, the actor becomes an instrument in which tone, gesture and movement are all thoroughly integrated.

We must look not for character but for role in this theater. The ritual is not sacred, leading to epiphany or grace, although in its evocation of blood sacrifice it touches some of the deepest roots of religion. Rather, it leads us to the center of ourselves, and to the instincts that lie coiled there.

Who's in the middle?

The performers— Tasos Dimas, Savvas Stroumpos and Meletis Ilias— were each superbly expressive and tightly disciplined. None ever speaks or interacts with either of the others, but all are interwoven in the action that defines the drama.

In classical theater, action always takes place offstage, and what one sees and hears is description and commentary. This makes all events communal, and so it is in this production: Ajax carries out the action, but everyone owns it. As we plan, fight and fantasize our own distant, unending wars, it's a point to bear in mind. We are all in the middle of them.

Terzopoulos and his troupe had never visited Philadelphia before, and it would be very good to see them again, perhaps as in this case in partnership with the Wilma. There is all too little of this kind of theater here, and none at its level of sophistication. There is no lack of talent in the community, and— to judge by the capacity house at the Wilma— there's an audience receptive enough to the kind of drama the Attis Theater offers. What keeps our vision stunted is the wretched state of theater financing, which forces almost every professional company in town to hedge its bets and hew to the safe and familiar.

For the Greeks, theater was central to the experience of community and the exercise of citizenship. It was also something on the edge. We cheat ourselves to settle for anything less.♦


To read another review by Carol Rocamora, click here.