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Buddha tells us, "That which is sin is also Wisdom, the realm of Becoming is also Nirvana,"
The Faux King, written and directed by the ever–inventive Gregg Jones, ran for six performances at Theatre Santa Fe between April 13 and 22, 2006.
"It's been the most difficult and the most rewarding thing I have ever done in the theatre," Jones determined afterward. "I guess they go hand–in–hand. We were transformed in so many ways creating this piece. It's a very complex piece of theatre, using a variety of media—video, original music, sound effects, lighting, puppets, masks, circus acrobatics, and there were lots of creative problems to solve."
What Jones calls the play's Interior Sonic Atmosphere was created by Amanda Garrigues, Josh Lederman, Jesse Schlactman, and Iver Thue, who also served as audio engineer, editing the play's seventy–four audio cues. Solo vocalist Kenda McRaney provided an aria of respect to the Faux King that was sublime, and of a piece with a stunning aural design.
Jones credits John Czech, the renown University of Florida author and scholar for puppet and fairy tale inspiration.
Jones and his ensemble of actors and artists and artisans brought The Faux King into being through a creative process begun by the ancients. Its puppetry and elements of dramatic ritual hearken to the dawn of drama and find refinement in comedia delarte and now our state of the art in the third millennium CE.
"This piece is done in the tradition of the theatre of social protest, of Brecht, and the Living Theatre, and the Bread and Puppet Theatre," noted Jones. "I was feeling kind of powerless over the outcome of the past two presidential elections, and was interested in doing something about it, saying something. And then I remembered I had a voice as an artist, and decided to use it."
"A significant approach to the transcendent," Joseph Campbell wrote, "is the way of ritual, which allows us to participate in the enactment of a myth. You have a group reference, with everyone participating in the ritual thinking and finding themselves as members of the same organism."
The play runs without intermission, fittingly, for what would those original celebrants of the Dionysian Festival have done had there been a space between acts—fuck?
In the program art by Tabrisha Baker, The Faux King, who bears a resemblance to our own George W. Bush, is pictured behind bars made of Corruption, Deception, Injustice, Greed, Ineptitude, and Hypocrisy.
"We are in a time and place other than our own, but not unlike it," Jones explained in the director's note. "It's a place full of greed, where graft and corruption are a way of life, where the legions of the many are mesmerized by sorcerers spinning a circus of fantastic lies."
Greed was introduced to the world through money. That's not the same as saying money causes greed. It simply means that there was no greed before there was money.
Greed is not a part of human nature, for the simple reason that there is no such thing as human nature. We are a work in progress, thank God. Greed came into being along with that magical commodity, money, which could transform all other commodities, which is to say everything, into its equivalent, and buy it. Previously, there was no point in wanting anything if you could not use it. But money carries with it a hunger that cannot be satiated. Thus, there is greed.
Politically, our Founding Fathers saw trouble ahead. "I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country," Thomas Jefferson said in 1816. Lincoln would have similar concerns. Imagine a President actually caring about that, instead of siding with the aristocracy of monied corporations.
Alas, there's no going back. We have opened Pandora's Box. In The Faux King, the equivalent commodity is rocks. They work just as well. The gathering of stones signifies the tallying of votes. So the manipulators can take the votes away from the Kerry–character and give them to the Bush–character. As Stalin acknowledged, the real power lies with those who count the votes. "They who cast the votes decide nothing," Stalin said in 1927 when he was just learning how. "They who count the votes decide everything."
As you entered the performing space, the elements of the play enveloped you. The universe of The Faux King held sway, and you were now a part of it. You could see and sense your fellow travelers all around you.
Out of the fog, islands of acting areas emerged. The audience became a part of the stage picture.
An overture. Shades of Zappa. There is no curtain to raise. It is not life behind a curtain. It's not that kind of theater. We have fallen into the mystic chasm. The lights turn green and wash us like the moon might.
Here are the sensory impressions of the theatrical event rendered in a stream of consciousness.
The circus, and a nod to Fellini. All wrapped up in our presidential election. To teach and entertain. That's what Aristotle said. A sense of the strange. To approach with awe that which is greater than ourselves. Brecht lives. Vox Populi, followed by Hocus Pocus, as we are hypnotized. We won't be fooled again. The Chosen One is here. A kind of beauty.
Incense. To engage all the senses. A crown of dollar signs. It never takes long for the cruelty to set in. Suggestio Falsi. Homage to Delarte. The appearance of the dragon. The search. The futile search. WMD slipping through the code.
You're dancing…to the war! The monied strings attached to the crown. To dance with the Angel of Death. Homage to Bergman and The Seventh Seal.
How to stage a circus? How to orchestrate it? With a beginning, middle, and end. Yes, even in the Circus of International Intrigue.
As we learned from the ancients, "Nothing is difficult to those who are willing."
Sounds? Inflection?
Without ever being seen onstage, Gregg Jones gives voice to the puppets, practicing a lost art in the grand tradition of Second City, Jonathan Winters, Sid Caesar, and Danny Kaye, all of whom had that gift of gibberish. And you can hear the intonations Jones gives the characters—Italian here, German there, Swedish there, Jamiacan, Latino, it goes on and on.
Without fanfare, in creating the text of the play, to make aural its plot, Gregg Jones does what anyone who has tried knows is so very difficult, sampling languages, melding them, twining them, and communicating them, seemingly effortlessly.
Jones explained simply and modestly. "I used gibberish for the voices of the giant headed puppets because that's what a lot of what we hear on CNN and Fox sounds like. That's politician–speak."