Artists exist to create Art. Why does the state of the world today make them question that purpose and has it always been so? Suzanne Fournier and ted witzel have been asking themselves that, and why they keep trying to give up Art (and failing) for twelve years during which time the world has just got even more fucked up. The result is take rimbaud; a play by Suzanne Fournier, directed by ted witzel currently playing at Buddies in Bad Times in partnership with the Howland Company.

If Art has a purpose it’s to question what is and ask what could be but if the answers to the big questions have become unchallengeable; specifically if late stage capitalism is so hegemonic that we can’t even imagine an alternative and therefore dialectic is impossible because there is no opposing thesis. Is Art then just a commodity; a sort of soccer for high brows but less well paid?

In take rimbaud we take a crazy journey through time and space with Arthur Rimbaud, Paul Verlaine, Sylvia Plath and Sappho for company in search of answers with plenty of sex and drugs along the way. It’s structured as a series of short scenes; some in the present, some the recent past and others in multiple time frames; from c.580 BCE to the 1970s, simultaneously.

It’s fast paced, it’s sexy, it’s disturbing and sometimes very funny. We first meet Sylvia Plath trying to commit suicide by sticking her head in an electric oven. We flirt with the possibility of real change in 1871 Paris but the Commune is repressed. Capitalism is far more resilient than Karl Marx ever imagined. Sappho ends up in a box wrapped in duct tape. Verlaine flirts with giving up Art for the law. Plath imagines marriage to Verlaine before going to bed with Sappho and so on. There’s a strong flavour of meta-theatre too. It’s not so much fourth wall breaking as audience imprisoning. We are as constrained by the structure of the play and our role as audience as the actors. We could revolt against our assigned passive role but we won’t, as we are told from the stage. It’s chaotic but hypnotic and the 100 or so minutes fly by.

It’s a very physical and engaging ensemble performance. Thomas Mitchell Barnet is a very gay R(imbaud), Julien de Zotti plays his present day boyfriend film maker Paul (Verlaine), Ruth Goodwin is the somewhat obsessive Slyv(ia Plath) and Rose Tuong playing a gender fluid Sapph(o); director of a cultural centre in the present. Breton Lalama, Hallie Seline, Courtney Ch’ng Lancaster and Cameron Laurie play multiple roles from stoned party goer to French general.

The set (Ting – Huan 挺歡 Christine Urquhart) is centred by a gantry which serves multiple purposes; bedroom, party space and more but, along with the gantries around the stage area allows for some seriously physical antics. Props (including an electric stove) appear and disappear. Music breaks out. The lighting (Darren Shaen) and sound design (Dasha Plett) are often spectacular.

It’s a riveting but highly unusual theatre experience. Twelve years in the making it asks big questions about what witzel describes as “the hopeless thing that gives us the greatest purpose we’ve known.” To me, a few years older than Fournier and witzel it feels like an epitaph for the Hope I can’t quite stop believing in.

take rimbaud runs at Buddies in Bad Times until May 23rd.

Photo credit: Nicole Eun-Ju Bell

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