Hope Hunt and the Ascension into Lazarus

A grey Golf arrives.
Roman twilight, bricks of India.
Headlights TEAR through the warmth, the bass PULSES, the void EXPLODES.

A figure barely opens the trunk

is it a BOY?          a BEAST?          DAMMED?

it’s Sati Veyrunes who already T-E-A-R-S the air before we even know it

moves like one with no home
like one forever searching

STARES, MEASURES, TURNS, ORDERS: “enter”
doesn’t ask
COMMANDS
and we follow

from here, there’s no turning back.

Inside
nude
cold lights
silence charged with t-e-n-s-i-o-n
then the voice
muscles
SPIT
deformed lips
taut back
a male that explodes, laughs, cries
a MALE who is not one

is a hundred
                            is all
                                          is none.

Hope Hunt and the Ascension into Lazarus
is not theater
is             AUTOPSY
a              E-V-I-S-C-E-R-A-T-I-O-N that makes the bowels pulse
and feel shit run.

Oona Doherty belongs to contemporary European dance-theater
where the political body transforms into poetic presence
it’s a generation that has made precarity a language
that has dug into the G-U-T-S of a continent
that stinks-of-fried
of-cold-sweat
chavs
neds
smicks
social slaughterhouse that no one wants to look at

she WATCHES them
                                       SNIFFS them
                                                                LICKS them
grants no mercy
offers hunger
thirst for rotten truth.

Post-Brexit Europe:
internal borders
white working classes
foreigners in their own home

Doherty captures the historical moment
and transforms it into choreographic matter
an ATLAS of gestures
accents
nervous ticks
applied ANTHROPOLOGY
danced ETHNOGRAPHY.

Not re-sumed.
Not translated.

Followed.
Undergone.
T-H-R-O-U-G-H

an organism that sheds skin every second
a cocky boy
chewing slang and fast food
NERVOUS LAUGH
EMPTY kick
physique says
what language doesn’t know

#craving
#anger
#shame
#desire.

Veyrunes doesn’t imitate
doesn’t interpret
channels
precisely channel-body
available for POSSESSION
collapses
as if the floor were the only ally
then rises
a-l-w-a-y-s
balancing between strength and ruin
dance of ticks
jolts
sudden pauses
like the Golf engine
that never stops vibrating.

Technique rooted in Pina Bausch
contemporary shamanic practices
living ARCHIVE organism
collective MEMORIES
generational TRAUMAS
every gesture is HISTORY
every contraction is decades of humiliations
but there’s more
transformation is sacred
when it bends
not just pain
is LITURGY
female body embodying proletarian male
not drag
transubstantiation
Christian mystery revisited
by class struggle
then –

Everything changes

white light
light clothing
same figure
another being
rises
but does not purify

crooked appearance
                   wounded angel without wings
                                       proletarian Christ

who REFUSES RESURRECTION
not begs for salvation
asks to be seen.

But me?
can I really stare at it?
or wait for the end?

Sacred music
screams that remain
black mass
rave
funeral without coffin
ambiguous ascension
rises
but does not fly
rises
but STAYS DIRTY
like Lazarus
that returns
but STINKS
lives
but does not heal
body with CRUSTS
his social class
not redemption
only recognition
…

And me?
What do I recognize?

Disgusting beauty
screaming grace
pain without explanations
place to happen
field to get dirty
dimension to stay.

July
Rome
Theatre India
a female figure
embodying a thousand men
we first
in circle
silent
industrial space
former factory
walls of labor
but then
audience
light
educated public
bourgeoisie
consumption of discomfort.

I’m in there

is it pornography of poverty?
sincere empathy?
resistance or aestheticization?

Veyrunes stares at us
does not beg for mercy
acts
assaults us
something cracks
for a moment
we don’t just watch
we tremble
not a spectacle of marginality
it’s the experience of marginality
contagion.

I feel complicit
I feel like a spectator
I feel observed

an exchange that doesn’t pass through the mind
but through the skin
…

This theater doesn’t seek consensus
doesn’t justify itself
doesn’t simplify
tells us:

LOOK at what you don’t want to see
FEEL what you’ve anesthetized
PAY the price for turning away

while it says so
trembles
sweats
collapses

Invisible threads.
Traces of blood.
Broken legacies.
Augusto Boal.
Mary Wigman.
Pina Bausch.
Jérôme Bel.
They’re there,
behind Veyrunes’ shoulders,
in the bent back,
in the body that bends like a sickle.
But here,
something breaks.

Doherty no longer tells oppression.
She i-n-c-a-r-n-a-t-e-s it.
She e-x-p-l-o-d-e-s it.
Doesn’t argue,
doesn’t convince.
Infects.

This theater isn’t understood.
It takes.
In blood.
In throat.
In sleepless nights.
It’s the p-r-o-l-e-t-a-r-i-a-t-e
that self-represents.
Without words.
Just TIC, JOLTS, SCRATCHES.

Classic political theater spoke of dialectics.
This one speaks to cells,
to nerves,
to memories.

Veyrunes doesn’t seek the spectator.
She INFECTS him.
DRAGS HIM INTO THE MUD,
into that mud she always avoided.

An organism that works
even when you’ve left the theater.
When you go home.
When you can’t explain what you saw.

And I, the critic,
what can I do?
Can’t reduce everything to theses.
Can only let myself be crossed.
Get my hands dirty.
Breathe doubt.

It’s not drag.
It’s not disguised spectacle.
It’s not makeup or irony.
Veyrunes doesn’t interpret proletarian males.

She goes inside.
Chews on it.
Devours it.

It’s not masculine, it’s not feminine.
It’s an organism in revolt.
Receptacle.
Conductor.
BROKEN MIRROR.

Her masculinity is possession.
Infection.
Pagan rite.
Genderless scream.
She’s a woman.
But it doesn’t matter.
It’s a body making space.
Deforms.
Takes on itself
what the world rejects:
discarded masculinity,
failed,
useless.

That of the unemployed,
warehouse workers,
hooligans.
Not toxic masculinity,
but the depressed one.

<<<<<< So the question isn’t who is she.
But who are we, when we watch her?
Who scares us more?
The woman dancing as a man?
Or the man who no longer knows how? >>>>>

It’s not theory.
It’s G-U-T-S.
An ORGANISM SCREAMING:
what can the body do
when it has nothing left to lose?

It’s not Brussels’ Europe.
Not treaties or institutions’.
It’s the continent that smells of FRIED,
of SWEAT,
of EFFORT.

White bodies.
Invisible Europeans.
No one sees them.
No one wants them.

Hidden European poverty.
Poor workers,
zero-hour contracts,
precarious lives.

Doherty WATCHES them.
STUDIES them.
DANCES them.
Veyrunes EMBODIES them.

They’re not refugees.
They’re not foreigners.
It’s us.
Our brothers,
our children,
our neighbors.
Breaking their backs
for a few hours of work.

And us?
At Theatre India,
legs crossed,
we consume discomfort.

She – Veyrunes –
forces us to feel.
To look inside.

And I wonder:
does this theater still serve a purpose?
Can it change reality?
Or are we just spectators
consuming pain
like a Netflix series?

Open questions.
                                   Burning ones.
                                                                       That remain.

THE BODY.
THE LAST PLACE OF TRUTH.

Sweat. Tremor.
Fall.
Opening.

HERE WORDS ARE EMPTY.

Just flesh.
Effort.
Life.
A-N-O-R-G-A-N-I-S-M-T-H-A-T-C-O-L-L-A-P-S-E-S
C-A-N-N-O-T-L-I-E.

This theater doesn’t persuade.
Doesn’t reason.
Infects.
It’s a virus.
That enters the skin.
That stays.

When you go home.
When you sleep.
When you can’t explain what you saw.

Post-religious rite.
Black mass.
Exhaustion without prayer.

Physicality frees itself.
But not from chains.
From illusions.
Transcendence isn’t escape.
It’s to stay.

Stay alive.
Stay dirty.
Stay human.

OONA DOHERTY HAS PASSED THE BATON.
SATI VEYRUNES HAS TAKEN IT,
WITH FURY AND GRACE.

And us?
We carry the shocks.
Those vibrations that don’t fade.
But what are they?
How long will they last?

Hope Hunt and the Ascension into Lazarus

doesn’t change the world.
But changes how we look at it.
Maybe its power isn’t in the immediate impact,
but in its ability to generate antibodies
against indifference.

Every spectator leaving Theatre India
with the image of those mutating bodies
is a multiplier of awareness.
Theater is a benevolent virus.
A rite that spreads.
A silent weapon.

And criticism?
Maybe it must get its hands dirty.
Put itself into crisis.
Let go of the canon.

If Doherty and Veyrunes dare to shake theater,
we must dare to shake criticism.
Let the body speak.

Let silence say.
Let doubt remain.