Sexual Poetics

Dialogue - a thing written and spoken - does not belong specifically to the stage, it belongs to books, as is proved by the fact that in all handbooks of literary history a place is reserved for the theater as a subordinate branch of the history of the spoken language.
I say that the stage is a concrete physical place which asks to be filled, and to be given its own concrete language to speak.
I say that this concrete language, intended for the senses and independent of speech, has first to satisfy the senses, that there is a poetry of the senses as there is a poetry of language, and that this concrete physical language to which I refer is truly theatrical only to the degree that the thoughts it expresses are beyond the reach of the spoken language.
. . .
What is essential now, it seems to me, is to determine what this physical language consists of, this solidified, materialized language by means of which theatre is able to differentiate itself from speech.

Artaud speaks these words and it makes me think of the recent discussions about the role of the body and erotics in theatre. Sex is the human language of acceptance. For a moment, perhaps only a brief moment, the heart is laid open and bare for another to stare into and see in its infinite possibility. Fear and uncertainty are forgotten in the moment of orgasmic ecstasy. As someone once said, "No one feels low self esteem during orgasm."

That moment of ecstatic catharsis must be reached to allow us, perhaps for only a brief moment, to see ourselves as we are, infinite. This is the potential that the theatre affords us. To see the Human as a thing divine. Rob Brezney once said, "The thing to remember is that we are not Human Beings on a spiritual trip, we are Spiritual Beings on a human trip." The theatre holds the power to remind us of this.

This spiritual catharsis must be present in theatre. This concrete language that transcends mere words must be present. And it is present when Zay says

It has to be poetry.

It has to take part in the New Lyricism.

What’s on the page has to dance on the page.

To dance on the page and on the stage. A totality and unity of intention. Without this we are just playing games. The world is sick. And we must be as healers or shaman ready to exercise the deadly pathology of post-modernism from human consciousness and allow the birthing of a New Optimism.