The Trilogy of the Innocents
The innocence of war and of its
victims
Innocent is a luminous word. We don't feel
guilty because we are aware that guilt is a reaction of our
conscience. And this reaction is not automatically associated with
a misdeed that we may have committed considering it a legitimate
defense.
Let's look at the face of war: that of a tiger.
The tiger tears a child to pieces. This is
obviously a tragedy, but it doesn't tarnish the innocence of the
tiger.
Innocence does not take damage into account, it
demands only purity of intentions. For those fighting in a war,
innocence coincides with a respect for their role within the
mechanisms of a struggle whose purpose is to exterminate the
adversary.
We don't usually associate the word innocent with
war, but with its victims, those who don't commit outrages and
destruction. We think of orphans, widows, women who experience the
innocence of war on their bodies.
Odin Teatret's trilogy speaks of the many forms of
innocence, asking the question: are we all, perhaps,
innocent?
THE TRILOGY OF THE INNOCENTS
Three panoramas on the recent past, the present and a
near future
First panorama: the past
(1990-2000)
An earth abandoned by birds
At the heart of the space, ancestrally bound to life, the
tree of History grows vigorously and dead. The characters gravitate
around this vegetal cathedral, alive yet extinct. Warlords, with
their armies of child soldiers, sow death and chaos. Monks plant a
pear tree in the Syrian desert, hoping that the absent birds will
return. The daughter of a poet evokes her childhood dream to fly
together with her father. A Nigerian mother flees hiding the head
of her daughter in a gourd.
As customary in Odin Teatret's performances, different
languages and behaviours mingle, confronting each other. Actors
from Bali, Canada, Chile, Denmark, India, Italy and England give
life to a rite evoking mythical situations and historical
facts.
In the faint light of the final scene, a Liberian and a
Serbian warlord - real historical characters - fraternise. Birdsong
announces their return in a landscape that recalls Chateaubriand's
words: forests were there before civilizations, deserts followed
civilizations.
Second panorama: the present (2010 - 2018)
Changing countries more often than shoes
How does one live in a country at war, where soldiers are
only seen when returning from afar in a coffin?
The moon watches a gathering of friends. They discuss the
latest events. They sip a good wine while recalling their friends
who are far away. Sitting in comfortable armchairs they leisurely
quote their favourite poets - Bertolt Brecht, Jens Bjørneboe, Ezra
Pound, Li Po. They sing harmoniously about the horrors of the
present.
The moon weaves its romantic voice with that of the
actors. Its light melts together with flashes from the great cities
burning beneath it: metropolises in Europe, Asia Minor and the New
World, Guernica, Hiroshima and Aleppo, imperial China and Alabama's
cotton fields. Its compassion ignores melancholy.
Third panorama: the future (2031)
Here people eat without being hungry and drink without
being thirsty
Finally peace. We are in Europe in 2031 at the end of a
civil war. Financial crises, unemployment, riots, distress and
distrust muddle individuals and groups of different nationalities
and cultures. What happens when newcomers want to implant
themselves on foreign soil and be part of a society which thinks it
has solid cultural roots? What sort of misunderstandings and
discoveries arise from this confrontation?
A young boy from Colombia lands in a feverish Europe. He
is searching for his father who has mysteriously disappeared. He is
just a teenager and ignores what everybody knows: that life is a
chronic disease from which our planet with its history is unable to
free itself. Everybody knows that a thousand doors exist leading to
freedom, and all nourish this knowledge by eating without being
hungry and drinking without being thirsty.
People answer the questions of the young foreigner by
teaching him to avoid the worst of all vices: hope. "Stop searching
for your father!", they whisper to him while escorting him from one
door to another, among the wreckage of fables that they proudly
call our history.
It is neither innocence nor ignorance which saves the boy.
A new knowledge - blindness towards what is obvious - makes him
discover his door. Amid the bewilderment of all of us who no longer
believe in the unbelievable: that just one victim is worth
more than any value. More than God.
