Ridiculous Darkness satire at its heart
Adaptation of absurdist German radio play pokes fun at Conrad and Coppola
Heart of Darkness by PolishBritish author Joseph Conrad is considered a classic of English literature. The 1899 novel about a voyage up the Congo River in the Congo Free State to discover dystopian horrors raised questions around imperialism, racism and the whole notion of humanity. Film director Francis Ford Coppola adapted the story to wartime Vietnam in his acclaimed 1979 film Apocalypse Now.
German playwright Wolfram Lotz mashes up the two in his absurdist satire The Ridiculous Darkness.
Lotz’s story brings in everything from piracy in Somalia to a journey down a “rabbit hole” to put Alice’s to shame as two Western soldiers try to retrieve a fellow officer who has gone rogue. On the way, the two will encounter all manner of souls to challenge their opinions and preconceived notions and, ultimately, lead them to vital understanding.
First presented in 2014 as a radio play in Vienna’s Burgtheater, the show then went to Berlin the following year. It was so well received that Lotz received the Netroy Theatre Prize and was named Playwright of the Year by the influential magazine Theatre Haute.
Now the stage-adapted work has its première in a large scale production by Vancouver’s Alley Theatre, in partnership with Neworld Theatre. Among the participating community arts and social organizations in the production are Theatre Terrific, Tetsu Taiko, Richmond Youth Honour Choir, Downtown Eastside Street Market Society, Downtown Eastside Vendors Collective, Afghan Benevolent Association of B.C., Realwheels Theatre and the East Van Powwow Crew.
Directors Marisa Emma and Nyla Carpentier and stage adapter Daniel Arnold answered some questions about the production.
Q How did you come to the decision to adapt a German radio play into a theatre work with a cast of 40?
Daniel Arnold: Marisa and I were in New York performing our play Little One and we saw a production by Public Theatre which takes existing texts that can be adapted, puts together a professional cast and then goes into the five different boroughs and produces a show with the input of various local groups to get a ‘by the City, for the City’ production. We loved it. Then my literary agent and I met and she just happened to represent Wilfred Lotz in North America and she sent us this hilarious, weird, contemporary and relevant work. We realized we could do it in that style for Vancouver.
Q OK, so how have you made it ‘by the City, for the City’ with a story of two military men heading up a river in the ‘rainforests’ of Afghanistan in pursuit of a rogue comrade?
Marisa Emma: The real essence of the story is the journey of these two extremely Eurocentric, imperialist men, who they meet and how they are perceived by the people they meet with often hilarious effect. That is a pretty broad strokes description, because there are so many other directions that it goes to get its points across. It is a journey, for sure, with lots of detours.
Q Then we assume that the detours will include all of the many participants in the cast, but how did you come around to having everything from Japanese taiko drumming to street vendors involved?
Nyla Carpentier: I was contacted about a year ago with the idea of engaging the Indigenous community as this takes place on unceded Coast Salish Territory and I am a theatre maker here who is Indigenous. So I came on board as co-director and the discussions of including the different groups, from the taiko drummers, to slam poets and a lot of outreach. We needed to get a Vancouver version of what the text was delivering, but I don’t want to give too much away.
Q So the participants are there to enliven the story and to reflect that community engagement model you started with. But how do you bring that transformative feeling to it rather than having a variety show?
Marisa: It was really important to give all the parties the opportunity to be able to feed into their scene with their own perspectives. A lot of attention went into making sure that the community involvement was more than merely having them show up, do their thing and not have any more voice than that.
Q It says right on the poster that 30 per cent of all ticket revenue goes to the participant organizations. Isn’t that a tad challenging in terms of having the budget to mount the show?
Marisa: One thing I love about running our own company is that we can really question around the why or what we do. We have been thinking about how to make this possible from the very beginning and it was key to us in our grant writing process. We have been very fortunate in getting most of the ones we applied for and have also been fundraising for about two years.