Glyn Hughes 1931 - 2014

283 The large beast trampling. Or more beasts even. As in Apollo’s cave in the third section of Aeschylus’s Oresteian Trilogy, the Eumenides, the priestess sees “monsters robbing King Phineus of his feast; but these are wingless, black, utterly loathsome; their vile breath vents in repulsive snoring; from their eyes distils a filthy rheum.” Threatening insecurity symbolizes the buffer zone as it does Sonja and the workers in Man and the Masses. Fragmented and emotionally heightened. Officials, bankers, sentries, prisoners, and shadows attempt to get into this chaotic urban dream. Congealed in the painted picture. The response tomy own environment and situation provided the intensity for me to grasp fear that permeates Toller’s play. But I wanted more layers of imagery. Where the light can stream in like a spear of cruelty separating the forms from in front and behind. Where white and spaces of clarity appear to hide the unknown. Whose light is cast from an all-observant and unseen eye. By placing the puppets “at rest”, against the wall of Sonja’s dream, I wished to create yet another spatial dimension. They would be used, picked up by the cast, who could be wearing masks. Paired off, actor with banker puppet, actor with shadows, actor with “voices” in a grotesque twinning of reality and illusion, of energy and stillness. They would dance together. The puppeteer and the puppet. And when in full spate who is in charge? At one time, most of the cast would swirl around Sonja with white puppet shadows, which would later become entangled in the prisoners’ treadmill of fear of woe. Tongues to scream, silence, or even observe would pounce out from the painting. Held by actors. And mostly, of course, just the actors with Toller’s magnificent text.