I believe only in the evidence of what stirs in my marrow, not in the evidence of what addresses itself to my reason. – Antonin Artaud
Jet of Blood is theatre to feel, to let into your body, to let cut, bite and burn. It is visceral theatre, a theatre of affect – the kind of theatre that walks up to its audience and slaps it in the face (you think I’m kidding, but I’m not). It is – to borrow from one of the many quotes which adorn the cover of the show’s program – the kind of theatre that stirs in your marrow, jettisoning reason and logic in favour of something entirely more physical, more vital. A disconcerting surrealist fever dream, as relevant today (which is to say, as affective) as it would have been in 1926, Jet of Blood is theatre that works upon the body (of the audience, of the actor), promising to change your life and – what? – arguably delivering on that promise.
Tiptoeing precariously along the fine line between comedy and terror – between slapstick and violence, parody and cruelty, hysterically funny and just plain hysterical – Ignite’s production is black comedy at its blackest, a satire so incisive you’re liable to cut yourself on it (reminiscent in this way of Pasolini’s Salo). Directed with great confidence and aesthetic élan by Olivia Allen, who is supported by a talented crew of WAAPA and VCA graduates, the show consists less of a cogent narrative than of a string of darkly comic and occasionally deeply disturbing images and events, loosely connected if connected at all. The power of these images and events resides not in any narrative logic they may or may not possess, but rather in their ability to illicit a physical reaction, to produce in the aftermath of their collision with the eye a residual sensation of revulsion, pain or otherwise. Artaud’s Theatre of Cruelty, it seems, is really a Theatre of Sensation. It so just happens that the sensations it privileges are almost exclusively painful.
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Artaud was convinced that in order to change the world you have to make people feel something, not only in an emotional sense, but also physically, viscerally. You have to set to work upon the body in order to shock it back into coherence. In this sense, Jet of Blood is about as Artaudian as they come. It is affective theatre at its finest, every element, dramaturgical and technical alike, working in conjunction or otherwise to produce in the viewer new ways of being, of seeing and hearing and relating to the world. The tools it uses may be extreme – indeed, they may even at times be cruel – but then ours is a particularly comatose culture and our sensibilities are particularly blunt. Akin to a shot of adrenaline to the soul, Ignite’s Jet of Blood may not necessarily change your life, as Death (Grant Cartwright) warns at the outset, but by God you’re going to feel it if it does, and either way it’s going to hurt…
Melbourne Stage Online, 25 September 2006
