My theatre speaks of secrets.
Howard Barker Anna Galactia, a woman painter, conducts her business (in her art as in her life) in such a fiery, hot-headed fashion, refusing any concessions whatsoever, that she ends up rotting in a jail in the Republic of Venice...And yet all began so well for her: Doge Urgentino had commissioned her to paint a gigantic tableau celebrating the naval victory of Lepanto. We then enter Galactia's studio; we discover her spiritual intelligence, her taste for provocation, her ferocious sense of humour, her proud and arrogant integrity. The term "To execute a painting" signifies, in English as in French, the work involved in the creation of a work of art. What art lover, what cultivated spectator hasn't dreamed of hiding in the studio of an artistic genius to see revealed the inner workings of the act of creation? Barker's play proposes to us to be present at the secret, sacred process that lies behind the artistic act. From this point of view it accords well with the way in which Christian Esnay approaches theatre, loving to put on exhibition the inner workings of the theatre so as to increase its enjoyment tenfold; here the stripping bare of theatrical artifices takes nothing away from their emotional power. But Scenes from an Execution is at the same time a bleak work. For "execution" also means a putting to death. Galactia reveals the horrible reality behind the glorious battle she is supposed to make sublime: this victory was mass slaughter. What relationships does the artist have with the power that commissions her works or the public that goes to see them? What are the relations between the reality of a subject, the vision of the creator designated to represent it, the interpretation to be given to the product of her work? What is the poet's responsibility in relation to the truth? Questions that Barker brings to the stage without intellectualism, in living, direct fashion. Galactia is thrown into prison, her scandalous masterpiece at first destined to disappear. But their story doesn't end there, for the Doge knows full well that against the virulence of a work a certain form of tolerance can be a much more effective antidote than the most brutal of censorships. An art deprived of its secret - divulged, explained, given up to the corrosive powers of publicity and consensus - isn't such art in the process of being insidiously brought under control? Galactia regains her "freedom," and she who saw herself as a heroine and martyr exclaims painfully: "To be understood is death. A horrible death..." But if such is really the case, then in what silence, by what ironical or hidden paths do these two singular liberties - that of the artist, that of each individual confronted by the work - manage in spite of everything to find common ground?
